20 Compelling Facts For Every Trivia Overachiever

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20 Compelling Facts For Every Trivia Overachiever

You know, when people enjoy this list of odd facts, they usually say things like “Oh! That's so weird! I had no idea!” and “Wow! I never knew that!” and stuff like that. I can't help but feel that if we as a species were as intelligent and informed as we think we are, that these odd facts would be more widely known. The first time I heard about an interesting fact on television was when a woman on The Learning Channel was discussing how many people have died from shark attacks in Australia. (She said the number was two-thousand-six-hundred-and-thirty-two, which is obviously false.) I thought, “Wow! What a fascinating number! But it's also kind of scary.” 

And then she said that sharks only attack humans once every six years on average. That's not too surprising, but it was still interesting to learn. The most amazing thing about the list is that it's never going to end. There are just so many fascinating odd facts. 

Crude oil can be green.

Crude oil isn't always black. The color varies greatly based on the concentra- tion of hydrocarbon mole- cules and other com- pounds in the mixture. Pennsylvania grade crude oil is typically greenish in color. CRACKED NOW YOU KNOW

PRI

Bank of Italy changed to Bank of America in 1930.

Bank of America was originally named Bank of Italy. BANK OF AMERICA BANK OF AMERICA Though it was founded in the United States, it originally catered to people of Italian heri- tage and smaller bor- rowers that bigger banks saw as a risk. CRACKED NOW YOU KNOW

OCC

BRB, moving to North Dakota.

Washington D.C. has about 277 lawyers for every 10,000 residents. This is nearly 14 times more lawyers per 10,000 than any other state in the United States. The lowest lawyer rate per capita is North Dakota with around 4 lawyers per 10,000 peo- ple. CRACKED NOW YOU KNOW

One Legal

Air Force One is not a single aircraft.

Air Force One is only called that when the U.S. President is aboard. THISE UNITED STATES 118 AMERICA It is not a specific plane and the U.S. maintains a presidential air fleet at An- drews Air Force Base in Maryland, with each plane meeting the requirements for transporting the Presi- dent. CRACKED NOW YOU KNOW

White House

Nearly 1 in 10 potatoes grown in the US are for McDonalds.

8% of all potatoes grown in the United States are made into McDonald's fries. About 3 billion pounds of potatoes are used to make McDonald's fries every year, this is about half a percent of all pota- toes grown in the world per year. CRACKED NOW YOU KNOW

Yahoo

A baseball pitch has the energy of a bullet.

A fastball has the same energy as a bullet. A baseball thrown 90 mph has about the same kinetic energy as a 0.22 caliber bullet fired from a handgun - which travels at around 730 mph. CRACKED NOW YOU KNOW

WWL

The word ‘school’ means ‘spare time.’

School means leisure time. School comes from the Ancient Greek sk- hole, which meant leisure or spare time. This is not how we would have described school, but go off. CRACKED NOW YOU KNOW

Word Detective

The sun blasts us with billions of particles every second.

Billions of neutrinos pass through us every second. Close to 65 billion neutri- nos from the Sun pass through every square centimeter of us that is currently perpendicular to the Sun every single second that passes. CRACKED NOW YOU KNOW

Nature

It wasn’t illegal to have a drink during prohibition.

It was still legal to drink alcohol during prohibition. FRUT un Strop PUNTICARIN O THE SCOIC NICOLAL Company VISA ALBALI RESERVA CHERRY 19+1 - IN The 18th Amendment only forbade the manufacture, sale and transportation of intoxicating liquors, not their consumption. Any li- quor Americans had in their homes before January 1920 was completely fair game. CRACKED NOW YOU KNOW

History

‘Bambi’ was translated into English by a spy.

The first person to translate the Bambi novel into English was a Soviet spy. The 1923 Austrian com- ing-of-age novel was translated by famed writ- er and Soviet spy Whit- taker Chambers. Disney later based their Bambi film off of this work. CRACKED NOW YOU KNOW

NY Times

The Finnish version of a Grammar Nazi is very evocative.

The Finnish have their own word for a Grammar Nazi. x 27% Pilkunnussija comes from pilkku, meaning comma, and nussia, meaning to fuck - translated literally into English, it means com- ma fucker. CRACKED NOW YOU KNOW

Word Sense

One Chinese district makes a third of all socks.

A third of the world's socks are made in one place. The district of Datang in Zhuji, China, also sometimes known as Sock City, produces 8 billion pairs of socks a year. CRACKED NOW YOU KNOW

NY Times

A safe cracker was also a prolific pantie raider.

Police in Bangkok arrested a safe cracker and found thousands of stolen panties in his home. Danai Raiwet was arrested in January of 2012 after steal- ing the money out of a Metro Praken safe. Police discov- ered he had been breaking into homes for three decades to steal panties, totalling 10,000 in his home and 1,000 in his car. CRACKED NOW YOU KNOW

Bangkok Post

Just desserts have nothing to do with cake and ice cream.

The 'dessert' in the idiom just dessert means to get what is coming to you. It's been used in English since around the 13th cen- tury, but is no longer in common usage. This has led many people into thinking just desserts is referring to a savory, af- ter-dinner treat. CRACKED NOW YOU KNOW

Merriam Webster

A solid gold statue was hidden under plaster.

The solid gold statue of Buddha from the 13th or 14th century was discovered by accident. The ropes being used to move the statue broke and it fell, cracking the plaster outer shell and revealing the figure - worth a quarter of a billion dollars in gold - underneath. CRACKED NOW YOU KNOW

The Vintage News

A Saudi prince has a palace with jesters that perform tricks.

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia has court jesters in his palace. His palace has 420 rooms where he maintains an en- tourage of little people who are hired to dance, laugh, and perform various tricks in the classic court jester fashion. CRACKED NOW YOU KNOW

Business Insider

Stonehenge was bought as a gift in 1915.

Stonehenge was purchased in 1915 by Cecil Chubb as a gift to his wife. Chubb was the last person to own Stonehenge, buying it for the equivalent of $800,000 today. His wife, re- portedly, did not appreciate the gesture, and the rock for- mation was donated three years later to England. CRACKED NOW YOU KNOW

Sarsen

Bobby survived Niagara Falls but was done in by a banana peel.

Someone who survived going over Niagara Falls in a barrel later died after slipping on a banana peel. Bobby Leach was the sec- ond person to achieve the impressive feat, after An- nie Taylor, but met his end just 15 years later after slipping on the peel and the subsequent infection and surgery complications. CRACKED NOW YOU KNOW

Papers Past 

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