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31 Assorted Facts Like a Donut Box of Knowledge

No jelly facts

31 Assorted Facts Like a Donut Box of Knowledge

October 12, 2023

The world is filled to the brim with interesting facts, trivia, intel, general knowledge and inspiration. Since most of us are unfortunately constrained to this one life, well, we best get cracking. For example, you might find it surprising to hear that the first-ever food consumed on the surface of the moon was a wafer and wine, as part of the Christian communion. So buckle up because we’ve assembled more than 30 now-you-know facts about science, history, movies and other fascinating subjects that are sure to delight and surprise you…

31

Banking

... - AVA 200 PROGRAM-ID. EVALALSO. 300 ENVIRONMENT DIVISION 400 DATA DIVI 500 WOR 600 YOUR SAVINGS DEPEND ON DECADES-OLD SOFTWARE. STALALSO. 2017 APONMENT DIVISION, DATA DIVISION. 500 WORKING-STORA 600 01 AGE FTC 9,831 PVC X(011 0700 01 GENDER PROCEDURE DIVISION, 00800 ACCEPT AGE 000900 ACCEPT GENUER 001000 EVALUATE 001100 WHYN A ridiculously large part of the world's financial system (including ATMs, credit cards, mortage payments, and so on) relies on software written in COBOL, a language created in 1959. And programmers with the skillset required to maintain that are becoming fewer and fewer, as they're all basically dying off. — Source: 18 Amazingly Interesting Facts To Stick In Your Brain

30

THE PORGS ARE DIGITALLY DISGUISED BIRDS. The Irish island of Skellig Michael, which stands in for Luke's refuge in The Last Jedi is home to a population of hundreds of puffins that kept photobombing the shots. Porgs exist because turning the birds into a different critter was easier than editing them out. They didn't exactly hurt the film's bottom line, either. CRACKED.COM — Source: 18 Amazingly Interesting Facts To Stick In Your Brain

29

THE ROBOT IN ROCKY IV HAS A TOUCHING STORY. That puzzling robot butler is named Sico, and was built to, among other things, interact with autistic children. So Sylvester Stallone arranged for his autistic son, Seargeoh, to meet the robot. Then Stallone wrote Sico into the movie as a way to please Seargeoh. The franchise wasn't bombing itself just for kicks. CRACKED.COM — Source: 18 Amazingly Interesting Facts To Stick In Your Brain

28

HUMAN MEDICINES HAVE WEIRD EFFECTS ON ANIMALS. When our medicines reach the environment, animals go all kinds of freaky. Prozac makes crabs fearless, so they don't hide from predators and brawl among themselves. And metformin, a drug used to treat diabetes, makes male fish develop female organs and lay eggs. Side effects aren't limited to what happens in your body. CRACKED.COM — Source: 18 Amazingly Interesting Facts To Stick In Your Brain

27

CARS ARE BANNED IN MACKINAC, MICHIGAN. Back in the 1890s, the residents of Mackinac Island didn't care for those newfangled horseless carriages, so cars were banned. The ban still stands today. If you try to drive around Mackinac, you will get in serious trouble. Horse-drawn buggies are still used to ferry things around. And they like it that way, thank you very much. CRACKED.COM — Source: 18 Amazingly Interesting Facts To Stick In Your Brain

26

SILICON VALLEY MILLIONAIRES KEEP PAMPERED CHICKENS. Sometimes, the people who create the future like to return to the basics and raise their own chickens. Ridiculously expensive chickens that wear diapers, roost in high- tech coops made of redwood, and sometimes have their own chefs. It's like being poor, only way costlier and fancier. CRACKED.COM — Source: 18 Amazingly Interesting Facts To Stick In Your Brain

25

WANT A NUCLEAR BOMB? THE GOVERNMENT WILL HELP! In 2007, congressional investigators set out to find out how easy it'd be to get your hands on nuclear materials. All they needed to do was set up a fake company and apply for a license to buy some. And they got it. The Regulatory Commission did no background checks. Sleep tight, though: That specific loophole has been closed. CRACKED.COM — Source: 18 Amazingly Interesting Facts To Stick In Your Brain

24

Scooby-Doo Cons

SCOOBY-DOO-STYLE CONS USED TO BE A REAL THING. Belief in ghosts was more widespread in the past. And, of course, some took advantage of it for fun and profit. Someone in the 17th century pretended to be the ghost of a suicide victim haunting an establishment to scare gamblers off and steal their money. Having ghosts (or being one) could be very lucrative. CRACKED.COM — Source: 18 Amazingly Interesting Facts To Stick In Your Brain

23

CHAPLIN'S BODY WAS STOLEN BY MECHANICS. In early 1978, shortly after his death in Switzerland, Charlie Chaplin's body was dug up by two Eastern European mechanics. Then they tried to extort $600,000 out of his widow, Oona O'Neill. It worked out for them as well as you'd expect: The Swiss police monitored every pay phone in the area and found them. Chaplin was reburied in concrete after that. CRACKED.COM — Source: 18 Amazingly Interesting Facts To Stick In Your Brain

22

Airborne Viagara

Ter 100 OO A VIAGRA FACTORY IS LR100 CAUSING AIRBORNE HARD-ONS. VGR 10 zazija ٨ولا 001 fizer VGR zer 100 1100 Most of the world's Viagra supply is manufactured in Pfizer's factory at Ringaskiddy, Ireland. Neighbors claim that fumes from the plant are causing them to stand at attention at all times. Pfizer laughs off the claims, calling them an amusing myth. Still, locals stand outside the factory to inhale deeply. CRACKED.COM — Source: 18 Amazingly Interesting Facts To Stick In Your Brain

21

Dr Seuss himself wrote the lyrics to the song You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch. Не co-produced the How the Grinch Stole Christmas! special, and got credited as Ted Geisel. CRACKED.COM — Source: 13 Facts To Make Us Sound Smarter And/Or More Informed

20

Bryan Singer outright banned comics on the set of the 2000 X-Men movie. Не said that they were trying to create three-dimensional characters, so comic books were out. CRACKED.COM — Source: 13 Facts To Make Us Sound Smarter And/Or More Informed

19

John Hughes

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles was supposed to be over 3 hours long. That was John Hughes' original cut, but it was lost, and his guess was that it was rotting away in a vault somewhere. CRACKED.COM — Source: 13 Facts To Make Us Sound Smarter And/Or More Informed

18

We've found the first animal that somehow doesn't breathe using oxygen. It's a very tiny critter - a white salmon parasite that's just a few millimeters long. CRACKED.COM — Source: 13 Facts To Make Us Sound Smarter And/Or More Informed

17

Fraud Acquittal

In 2005, a CEO was miraculously acquitted in a $2,7 billion fraud case. EAM UNITED NOTE RAL Fifteen execs, including five finance chiefs, testified he was in on the fraud since the start, but the jury didn't believe them. CRACKED.COM — Source: 13 Facts To Make Us Sound Smarter And/Or More Informed

16

A baseball manager tried to get on the field in a comic book-level disguise. They ejected him from a game, so he got back with a mustache and fake glasses. Не was recognized right away. CRACKED.COM — Source: 13 Facts To Make Us Sound Smarter And/Or More Informed

15

A Brazilian priest tied 1,000 ballons to himself, and it ended very badly for him. It was a stunt to raise money for a good cause, but he ended up flying away and his body was later found in the ocean. CRACKED.COM — Source: 13 Facts To Make Us Sound Smarter And/Or More Informed

14

Couples

SEX ISN'T ALL THAT IMPORTANT TO PEOPLE. A survey found out that 62 percent of women and 48 percent of men stop mid-sex to check their phones. Different studies discovered that nearly half of people would rather give up bumping uglies than the internet. A good WiFi connection ranked above the horizontal mambo for 40 percent of responders. (Where are you reading this, by the way?) CRACKED.COM — Source: 18 Amazingly Interesting Facts To Stick In Your Brain

13

FROGS WERE USED AS PREGNANCY TESTS. Your grandmother didn't have cheap sticks to pee on to find out if she was pregnant. But she had frogs. Between the '30s and the '50s, doctors would inject African clawed frogs with urine and wait. The human pregnancy hormone would trigger ovulation if present, causing the frogs to lay eggs. Immunological testing kits left them without a job. CRACKED.COM — Source: 18 Amazingly Interesting Facts To Stick In Your Brain

12

Theoretically, you could actually cross the entire universe in your natural lifetime. To do that, you'd have to accelerate at 9.8 meters per second squared, and billions of years would pass while you got a few decades older. CRACKED.COM — Source: 13 Facts To Make Us Sound Smarter And/Or More Informed

11

AT FIRST, BRUCE BANNER BECAME THE HULK AT NIGHT. The Hulk wasn't always the green rage monster we all know and love (from afar, because Hulk). Не was actually conceived as a gray night monster. What triggered his transformation was retconned several times until settling for anger. And his color was changed to green without any explanation. CRACKED.COM — Source: 18 Amazingly Interesting Facts To Stick In Your Brain

10

Antoine Walker

Antoine Walker made over $100 million in the NBA, but filed for bankruptcy. Despite making a total of $108 million in his career, he was bankrupt two years after he retired. CRACKED.COM — Source: 13 Facts To Make Us Sound Smarter And/Or More Informed

9

Ghostbusters

THE GHOSTBUSTERS THEME WAS THROWN TOGETHER AT THE LAST MINUTE. With the film's release imminent and no theme they liked, they asked Ray Parker Jr. to give it a try. And they gave him a couple days for it. Не came up with the Who you gonna call? part a few hours before the deadline. The inspiration came from a TV ad for bug exterminators. CRACKED.COM — Source: 18 Amazingly Interesting Facts To Stick In Your Brain

8

It turns out that Elvis never actually wrote any of the songs he performed. Не got the idea for All Shook Up, but even that one got written up by a friend - and that's it, really. CRACKED.COM — Source: 13 Facts To Make Us Sound Smarter And/Or More Informed

7

A MAYAN PYRAMID WAS DESTROYED TO MAKE A ROAD. In 2013, a construction company in Belize needed limestone for a road, so they decided to go the closest available source. Which just happened to be a 2,300-year-old Mayan pyramid. That's right, they destroyed an invaluable archaeological site out of laziness. They were fined a grand total of $24,000. CRACKED.COM — Source: 18 Amazingly Interesting Facts To Stick In Your Brain

6

In the 1920s, people discovered a hidden tunnel underneath Washington DC. The mystery was really simple: it was built by an entomologist who just liked digging tunnels in his spare time. CRACKED.COM — Source: 13 Facts To Make Us Sound Smarter And/Or More Informed

5

HUMANS AND POKÉMON USED TO MARRY EACH OTHER. In certain Pokémon games, you can set the cruelty to imaginary animals aside for a while and read about them in a library instead. There you can learn that once upon a time, people married Pokémon. Really. Except that the English translation turns married into ate together at the same table. People outside of Japan are afraid of commitment, we suppose. CRACKED.COM — Source: 18 Amazingly Interesting Facts To Stick In Your Brain

4

Warren Buffett made a bet with a hedge fund for a million dollars, and won. The bet was on whether hedge funds or index funds would make more - Buffett was sure it'd be index funds. Не was right. CRACKED.COM — Source: 13 Facts To Make Us Sound Smarter And/Or More Informed

3

Parachuting Beavers

31 Assorted Facts Like a Donut Box of Knowledge — Source: 18 Amazingly Interesting Facts To Stick In Your Brain

2

Indonesia

Indonesia has made it illegal to hunt and kill manta rays anywhere in its territory. A cost-benefit analysis showed that a live manta ray makes about $1 million from tourism, but a dead one only makes $400-500. CRACKED.COM — Source: 13 Facts To Make Us Sound Smarter And/Or More Informed

1

- - GOOGLE MAPS GOT A HOUSE DEMOLISHED BY MISTAKE. A demolition company was hired to tear down a house at 7601 Cousteau Drive, Rowlett, Texas. Too bad that Google Maps pointed them to 7601 Calypso Drive. Whoops. The owner must be glad that Google soon corrected the directions to her pile of rubble. The demolition company stated: It's not a big deal. CRACKED.COM — Source: 18 Amazingly Interesting Facts To Stick In Your Brain

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