15 Unusual Facts That They Didn’t Teach Us About In School
![15 Unusual Facts That They Didn’t Teach Us About In School](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/7/0/837670_320x180.jpg)
"I don't know whether you'll like this or not... I mean I can tell by your face that it won't be to your taste. But I think you're going to want to read it anyway. I was talking to an old lady at my doctor's last week. She said that when she was in school her favorite teacher always had something interesting to say about the day. 'Today,' she said, 'the weather forecast is for fog. If it clears up later it will be cloudy.' It got me thinking...What do people actually need? Do they just have these little daily forecasts? I mean what if we gave people the real news of their lives? For instance, there's this woman down the street—she's got a new boyfriend, he's a doctor and makes $160,000 a year."
That's what my mother-in-law said last Thanksgiving dinner, and I longed for anything, anything at all, to break up the monotony. Suddenly, my gaze landed on an article listing 15 surprising facts. I read them with the eagerness of a man stumbling into an oasis after wandering the desert for days, and I can still recall them word-for-word. This is what they said:
Lots of real corn was grown for “Interstellar.”
![Christopher Nolan grew 500 acres of corn for Interstellar. CRACKED COM In order to cut down on filming costs and make the film as realistic as possible, the corn featured on Cooper's family farm was a real crop that was planted and grown before filming.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/8/3/837683.jpg)
To get into the Joker role, actors go absolutely nutty.
![Heath Ledger hid out in a motel room, drank pee to prepare for his Joker role. CRACKED.COM Before filming The Dark Knight, Ledger locked himself in a motel room for 6 weeks. Не refused to leave or have contact with humans, and even went as far as peeing in milk jugs and drinking it.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/8/5/837685.jpg)
“Toy Story 2” was ok, but it could have been destroyed.
![Toy Story 2 was almost permanently deleted. CRACKED.COM At Pixar, an unnamed employee accidentally removed all files, including Toy Story 2, permanently. Luckily, an employee had been working from home and had a hard drive with the film on it.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/8/2/837682.jpg)
$5 well spent by Ben and Jerry.
![Ben & Jerry spent $5 to learn how to make ice cream. CRACKED.COM Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield originally knew nothing about the process to make the dessert, so they took a $5 correspondence course offered by Penn State on the making of ice cream.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/8/4/837684.jpg)
Smarties were the original “melts in your mouth” candy.
![Smarties inspired the creation of M&Ms. GRACKED COM Forrest Mars noticed that the Smarties candy shell prevented the chocolate from melting, so he collaborated with Bruce Murrie to create M&Ms (Mars & Murrie).](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/8/1/837681.jpg)
Lip impressions are like fingerprints.
![No two lip impressions are the same. GRACKED.COM Researchers have found that every lip imprint is unique and able to identify a single person, just like fingerprints. This is due to the grooves in the lips all being different.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/7/8/837678.jpg)
Peanuts under pressure make peanut butter, which makes diamonds.
![Peanut butter can be converted into diamonds. CRACKED.COM By combining peanut butter with carbon dioxide and placing it under immense pressure, the process essentially extracts the oxygen from carbon dioxide and leaves behind carbon.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/8/0/837680.jpg)
Early police uniforms were just Civil War hand-me-downs.
![Police wear blue because there were a lot of Union Army uniforms to spare. CRACKED.COM During the Civil War, blue Union Army outfits were easy to come by, and the extras often went to police forces that didn't have official uniforms yet.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/7/7/837677.jpg)
Huge “elephant birds” ruled Madagascar until extremely recently.
![Madagascar used to be full of 10 foot tall emus up until the 8th century. CRACKED.COM The largest known species of these elephant birds stood 10 feet high, weighed 1,400 pounds, and laid the largest eggs of any animal.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/7/9/837679.jpg)
The first country to give women the right to vote was New Zealand.
![New Zealand was the first country to allow women to vote. CRACKED COM New Zealand women first went to the polls in the national elections of November 1893. It took the U.S. 33 years to do the same, and Great Britain eight more years after that.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/7/6/837676.jpg)
O-Canada! Land of Eight Hundred Thousand Lakes.
![Canada has 879,800 lakes. CRACKED.COM Of the 1.42 million lakes around the world with a size of over 0.03 sq. miles, Canada is home to 62% of them. Lakes in Canada's north could be severely affected by the fast-melting glaciers due to global warming.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/7/3/837673.jpg)
A Viking king helped yuppie d-bags have hands free conversations everywhere.
![Bluetooth technology is named after Viking king Harold Bluetooth. CRACKED.COM Jim Kardach, who created Bluetooth technology, felt the king's endeavor to unite Viking tribes was similar to what he hoped to achieve with his new tech, giving it its name.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/7/4/837674.jpg)
Organic crops are not any safer than GMOs.
![GMO foods are as nutritious and environmentally friendly as organic crops. GRACKED COM There is no significant difference between organic and GMO foods when it comes to nutrition or the environment. This is because organic farmers can use pesticides, insecticides, and fungicides.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/7/5/837675.jpg)
Cows like Mozart, make more milk.
![Cows produce more milk when they listen to music. сля CRACKED.COM Classical music, which includes Beethoven, Bach, and other famous composers of that time period, was found to increase the milk yield of COWS by approximately 5%. Call it Classical moo- sic.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/7/2/837672.jpg)
Flamingos have beaks in reverse.
![Flamingos evolved to have upside-down beaks so they can filter feed. CRACKED.COM Because they need to bend upside down to feed, the Flamingo evolved to use its top part of the beak-like the bottom beak of most birds, meaning it can open and close the top while the bottom remains stationary.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/7/1/837671.jpg)