Oil Doesn't Come From Dinosaurs And 29 Other Trivia Tidbits
![Oil Doesn't Come From Dinosaurs And 29 Other Trivia Tidbits](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/1/7/811417_320x180.jpg)
Your brain is hungry for facts! Feed your brain these facts before it rebels! The last thing we need around here is an insurrection in your brain. Just think of it: little beret-wearing rebels hiding in the folds of your grey matter, plotting and scheming for control, where they can launch their supposed utopian future.
But luckily that doesn't have to happen - you can head this whole mess off at the pass by diving headlong into this fine, 30-strong list of arcane and fascinating facts like how nuclear bombs have made shipwrecks more valuable, sonic weapons that really work, oil doesn't come from dinosaurs and how Brad Pitt threatened to kill Harvey Weinstein.
All that and much more is just what you'll need to feed up that brain, protecting it and you from rebel invasion. You'll emerge, triumphant and smarter - where else can you get a better leg up than that?
![Scotty kicked ass during D-Day. While you rarely notice it in Star Trek, James Doohan was missing a finger - according to him, he gave it to Hitler. Lt. Doohan led an infantry unit as they stormed Juno beach, and the German couldn't stop him-it was friendly fire that wounded him. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/1/6/811416.jpg)
Source: 15 Random Facts Ready To Plug Any Holes In Your Knowledge
![The death of Robin was inspired by Saturday Night Live. Batman: A Death in the Family famously let readers decide Jason Todd's fate - a move DC lifted from an SNL sketch, where Eddie Murphy asked viewers to vote on whether a lobster would be boiled or spared. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/1/4/811414.jpg)
Source: 15 Random Facts Ready To Plug Any Holes In Your Knowledge
![The water in Titanic contains traces of actors' pee. If you're shooting a James Cameron film, get ready to hold it in, because he doesn't believe in bathroom breaks. While filming Titanic, many extras just let it go in the water (also Kate Winslet, reportedly). CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/1/5/811415.jpg)
Source: 15 Random Facts Ready To Plug Any Holes In Your Knowledge
![CRACKED.COM Stan Lee tried to do smut for decades. Lee pitched a dirty comic to Playboy in the '70s, and didn't let that project's failure discourage him. Не kept pushing raunchy ideas for years, until he succeeded in the early 2000s with the cartoon Stripperella, starring Pamela Anderson.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/1/2/811412.jpg)
Source: 15 Random Facts Ready To Plug Any Holes In Your Knowledge
![CRACKED.COM Rock, papers, scissors was a sex game at one point. In the 1600s, an early form of the hand game was (somehow) used as foreplay in Japanese brothels. According to scholarly research, it seems that it especially fulfilled this role in homosexual relations.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/1/3/811413.jpg)
Source: 15 Random Facts Ready To Plug Any Holes In Your Knowledge
![CRACKED.COM Great Britain got rid of their Soviet spies because one of them got drunk. You cannot beat me, Oleg Lyalin rebuked the cop who arrested him for drunk driving in 1971. I am a KGB КГБ C officer. MI5 eventually took him into custody, and got him to defect and rat out over 100 of his comrades.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/1/1/811411.jpg)
Source: 15 Random Facts Ready To Plug Any Holes In Your Knowledge
![A 12-year-old fought in World War II. When a tween boy lies to his mom about what he's doing, it's usually not to pretend to be older and enlist in the Navy, but that's exactly what Calvin Graham did. His military career ended when his mom spotted him in a newsreel. By then, he had a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star. GRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/0/9/811409.jpg)
Source: 15 Random Facts Ready To Plug Any Holes In Your Knowledge
![Black widow spiders don't usually eat their mate. The one thing that gives black widows their name isn't actually something they do more often than other spiders. The cannibalistic behavior tends to only be observed in caged spiders, and it rarely happens in the wild, where the male can easily get away. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/1/0/811410.jpg)
Source: 15 Random Facts Ready To Plug Any Holes In Your Knowledge
![Daredevil almost got a dog. A 1980s cartoon which was never produced planned to give Matt Murdock a seeing-eye dog, which also helped him in his superhero forays as... Lightning, the Super- Dog! (Не wasn't actually super, though-just a regular good boy.) CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/0/8/811408.jpg)
Source: 15 Random Facts Ready To Plug Any Holes In Your Knowledge
![D.B. Cooper wasn't called D.B. Cooper. The mysterious hijacker gave his name as Dan Cooper when he bought his plane ticket. Still probably fake, but he never used the initials D.B. - those came from Oregon journalist James Long, who misheard the name over the phone. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/0/6/811406.jpg)
Source: 15 Random Facts Ready To Plug Any Holes In Your Knowledge
![Duke Nukem got to keep his name because of an oversight. The most '90s video game hero debuted a couple years after Captain Planet, which had a villain with the exact same name. Luckily for Duke, the Captain Planet production company never bothered to file a trademark. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/0/7/811407.jpg)
Source: 15 Random Facts Ready To Plug Any Holes In Your Knowledge
![Finland's military used swastikas until 2020. The Finnish Air Force adopted the swastika in 1918 - and they kept it for decades, even after the symbol got the worst PR campaign ever in the '30s and '40s. It took about 80 years for them to realize it wasn't a good look and drop the thing. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/0/5/811405.jpg)
Source: 15 Random Facts Ready To Plug Any Holes In Your Knowledge
![Groucho Marx began his career with a murderer. 14-year-old Groucho started out as part of a group called The Leroy Trio, headed by one Eugene Leroy - who became a wanted man years later for brutally murdering his wife. (Young Groucho was lucky - Leroy and his partner just left him stranded in Colorado.) CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/0/4/811404.jpg)
Source: 15 Random Facts Ready To Plug Any Holes In Your Knowledge
![Glaciers are plundered for luxury ice cubes. Ice from glaciers is highly valued by whisky snobs, which makes it a valuable trade good - great for a time when glaciers are retreating. This has led to hijackings - in 2012, a man was arrested in Chile with about $6,000 worth of ice from a Patagonian glacier. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/0/3/811403.jpg)
Source: 15 Random Facts Ready To Plug Any Holes In Your Knowledge
![A band gamed Spotify's low payments (with silence). Michigan-based funk band Vulfpeck released an album with ten short tracks of utter silence, and encouraged fans to stream it while they slept. That way, they made $20,000 instead of the diddly-squat independent artists usually get. Spotify took down the album after two months Spotif CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/0/2/811402.jpg)
Source: 15 Random Facts Ready To Plug Any Holes In Your Knowledge
![Steven Spielberg did Jaws because the original director flunked basic sea biology. Director Dick Richards was fired because he kept calling the shark a whale during planning meetings. Let this be a lesson, kids: Don't sleep through class, and you may one day change movies forever. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/0/1/811401.jpg)
Source: 15 Random Facts That Quenched Our Thirst for Knowledge
![CRACKED.COM The Emmys apparently didn't believe Mindy Kaling produced The Office. When The Office was nominated for an Emmy, Kaling (and only Kaling) was asked to justify why she had to be included. She needed to fill out a form, write an essay about her contributions, and get the other (male, white) producers to vouch for her.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/0/0/811400.jpg)
Source: 15 Random Facts That Quenched Our Thirst for Knowledge
![Brad Pitt threatened to kill Harvey Weinstein. In 1995, Weinstein tried to, well, get all Weinstein on an up-and-coming Gwyneth Paltrow. When her then- boyfriend Brad Pitt found out, he confronted Weinstein about it - and by confronted, we mean he told him, If you ever make her feel uncomfortable again, I'll kill you. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/9/9/811399.jpg)
Source: 15 Random Facts That Quenched Our Thirst for Knowledge
![CRACKED.COM Football used to be a deadly game. 18 people died while playing football in 1905 alone. Predictably, there were calls to get the game banned. President Teddy Roosevelt got personally involved, and got colleges to change the rules and make helmets mandatory.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/9/7/811397.jpg)
Source: 15 Random Facts That Quenched Our Thirst for Knowledge
![Oil doesn't come from dinosaurs. Maybe some oil does have a teeny-tiny bit of dinosaur, but by and large, the stuff comes from microbes in the sea. The dino-oil connection comes from the Sinclair Oil and Refining Corporation, which used to sponsor paleontological research and had a dinosaur as its mascot. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/9/8/811398.jpg)
Source: 15 Random Facts That Quenched Our Thirst for Knowledge
![Oil Doesn't Come From Dinosaurs And 29 Other Trivia Tidbits](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/9/5/811395.gif)
Source: 15 Random Facts That Quenched Our Thirst for Knowledge
![Miraculous fasting girls were a big attraction in Victorian times. As Netflix wasn't a thing in the 19th century, people would entertain themselves by visiting fasting girls, who were said to live for years on end without eating anything. (As the girls weren't being watched by visitors 24/7, it isn't hard to figure out how this miracle happened.) CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/9/6/811396.jpg)
Source: 15 Random Facts That Quenched Our Thirst for Knowledge
![CRACKED.COM THAT WILL STOP YOU COLD, OFFICERS! Mr. Freeze was cured in his first appearance. Mr. Zero was a one-shot villain in a 1959 comic - by the story's end, Batman cured him of his freak cold dependency. The character as we know him was defined by Adam West's series, with Batman: The Animated Series giving him his tragic backstory three decades later.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/9/0/811390.jpg)
Source: 15 Random Facts That Quenched Our Thirst for Knowledge
![Pepsi tried to buy a song's title. T EPS BLUE When the popular calypso song Rum and Coca-Cola was about to hit the U.S. in the '40s, Pepsi offered songwriter Morey Amsterdam a lot of money for changing it to Rum and Pepsi-Cola. Amsterdam contacted Соса-Соӏа and got a counter-offer, and in the end, he made big bucks for exactly zero work. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/8/9/811389.jpg)
Source: 15 Random Facts That Quenched Our Thirst for Knowledge
![CRACKED.COM The Sound of Music clashed with Salzburg over swastikas. The people of Salzburg weren't Nazi sympathizers! local authorities said when asked for permission to drape the city in swastikas for the movie. So the filmmakers said they'd just use newsreels from the time - which showed the people of Salzburg very much cheering on the Nazis. A compromise was quickly reached.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/9/1/811391.jpg)
Source: 15 Random Facts That Quenched Our Thirst for Knowledge
![The title of Asimov's I, Robot was swiped from a different work. AMAZING VER ССК EMPRESS ЗАМЦАЯТ 20 KS JOHN STOPIES AMAZING CONFESSION I. ROBOT DISPER Asimov wanted to call his robot book Mind and Iron, but his editor just reused the title of a story by author Otto Binder, thinking it was punchier. Asimov didn't want to do this, but eventually the editor had his way. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/9/3/811393.jpg)
Source: 15 Random Facts That Quenched Our Thirst for Knowledge
![CRACKED.COM NZ BOYS COM West Police use weaponized sound. Sound weapons aren't just a science-fiction technology. Police forces sometimes disperse crowds with a device called LRAD (Long Range Acoustic Device), which hits you with a beam of sound of around 137 dB. The effects of this sonic shotgun include nausea, vertigo, and of course, hearing loss.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/9/2/811392.jpg)
Source: 15 Random Facts That Quenched Our Thirst for Knowledge
![CRACKED.COM Turbans helped African Americans avoid racism. Some black people in Jim Crow America got to wrapping pieces of cloth around their heads to pass as Indians, who were exempted from the arbitrary segregation laws. The first black man to have his own TV show did so by donning a turban and calling himself Korla Pandit.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/9/4/811394.jpg)
Source: 15 Random Facts That Quenched Our Thirst for Knowledge
![Nuclear bombs have made old shipwrecks incredibly valuable. Due to radioactive pollution from nuclear explosions, metal produced after World War II has impurities that makes it unfit for delicate electronics or lab-grade equipment. This has given rise to an entire shady industry, which loots metal from ships which sank before 1945. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/8/8/811388.jpg)
Source: 15 Random Facts That Quenched Our Thirst for Knowledge
![CRACKED.COM A mafia drug dealer was caught because he became a YouTuber. After hiding out for years in the Dominican Republic, Marc Feren Claude Biart decided to open a YouTube channel to share his cooking skills with the world. Of course, he never showed his face - but he neglected to hide his distinctive tattoos, leading authorities straight to him.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/3/8/7/811387.jpg)
Source: 15 Random Facts That Quenched Our Thirst for Knowledge