15 Obscure Trivia Tidbits

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15 Obscure Trivia Tidbits

It was late afternoon, and the sun had been beating on my back all day. It felt like an eternity since I'd left the house. The heat was intense as it beat down from the sky, baking everything in its path. My clothes stuck to my skin and I could feel sweat pouring out of every pore. The ground around me was hard, and it made the going difficult as well. It wasn't easy traveling across the hot desert sands when you're alone, with no supplies or shelter, just your own two feet and some ragged clothing. I tried walking at night once but it only resulted in a painful sunburn. The moon was too bright to travel during the night anyway, so I spent most of each day trying not to die.

Each sunset was a welcome reprieve from the relentless burning light overhead. They gave me time to rest and think as darkness took over for an hour or two after sundown. I'd thought about my family, wondering if they were okay. And sometimes, like today, I thought about this list of fifteen facts I couldn't get out of my head. It went:

Don’t tell Anish Kapoor about TrES-2b.

The darkest planet ever discovered absorbs nearly all of the light that touches it. CRACKED.COM Our Milky Way is home to the darkest planet ever discovered, a distant, Jupiter-sized gas giant named TrES-2b. It reflects less than 1% of the sunlight falling on it, making it blacker than coal or any planet or moon in our solar system.

Nasa 

Shenzhen is blowing up.

The fastest growing city in human history sex-centupled its population in 37 years. CRACKED.COM In 1980, Shenzhen in China had a population of 30,000. In 2017, that had sex-centupled to nearly 20 million. It is believed to be the fastest growing city in human history.

CNBC 

The creators of Rocky and Bullwinkle picked the wrong time to visit the White House.

The creators of Rocky and Bullwinkle were turned away from the White House at gunpoint. Score : 269 CAUTION BIOHASARD F *mV++(Pr-Pe) CRACKED.COM They started a campaign to get Moosylvania recognition as a state, and arrived at the White House and demanded to see President Kennedy. They would later learn that they arrived during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

MentalFloss

A serial killer won “The Dating Game.”

A serial killer was on, and won, an episode of The Dating Game. THENG DA AGAME GAME CRACKED.COM In the midst of a three-year killing spree, serial killer Rodney Alcala was featured as a contestant on The Dating Game and was picked by the bachelorette. She never followed up on the date because she found him creepy.

AU News

African Clawed Frogs were our best pregnancy tests until the 960s.

The only reliable pregnancy test up until the '60s was to inject a woman's urine into a female African clawed frog. CRACKED.COM If the woman was pregnant, the Frog would ovulate within 12 hours. Was the resulting offspring a prince, and could the spell be lifted with a smooch?

Smithsonian Magazine

Also known as “Elden Ring catacombs full of good loot after the collapse of civilization.”

Billionaires in London are building Iceberg Mansions where most of the home is below ground. CRACKED.COM Excavation work under the mansion of a Goldman Sachs director resulted in his neighbor getting trapped inside her home, unable to open her front door since it had shifted so much.

Curbed

Homework and doodles from a boy 800 years ago survived.

Handwriting lessons from the 13th century survived on a piece of birch. CRACKED.COM Onfim was a six or seven year old boy that lived in Russia during the 13th century who had written letters and drew pictures on birch bark. Onfim's notes describe life in Medieval times impartially and can be studied as social history.

History Daily 

You had to have a mustache in the British army, or else.

From 1860-1916, the British army required every soldier to have a mustache. GRAGKED.COM Command No. 1,695 of the King's Regulations read: The hair of the head will be kept short. The chin and the under lip will be shaved, but not the upper lip. If a soldier were to shave their mustache, he faced imprisonment.

Insider

Tara Strong is an extraordinary alien.

Canadian voice performer Tara Strong was given a special visa into the US. FORMERS FORMERS TRA TRANS Has DTU FOR FORME TRA FO RS CRACKED.COM Tara Strong, the voice actress on Powerpuff Girls, Rugrats, Teen Titans, Princess Mononoke, and much more, was given a visa into the US as an Alien of Unusual Ability. This is not something available to screen actors.

YouTube

There are poisonous trees known for growing in graveyards.

Creepy 'Yew' trees grow in graveyards and there is no antidote for their poison. CRACKED.COM Yew trees can live for more than 1000 years, are often found in graveyards, and have a long association with death; they're deadly poisonous to humans, with no known antidote.

National Trust

It was easier to see cracks on planes when they allowed smoking.

It's harder to detect microscopic cracks in the fuselage now that smoking is banned on planes. GRAGKED.COM When smoking was allowed on aircraft, engineers used nicotine stains on the outside of planes to detect microscopic cracks in the fuselage. Now that smoking is banned, these cracks have become much more difficult to detect.

UPI

England had a window tax in lieu of income tax.

England used to tax people based on how many windows their homes had. CRACKED.COM People refused to disclose how much money they made, considering it an invasion of privacy -so you would be charged based on how many windows your house had. In retaliation, people bricked up their windows.

Parliament

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