Culture & entertainment
Discover facts about culture & entertainment. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Culture & entertainment
Why movie romances often start with hatred
Healthy communication and mutual respect are utterly boring, so true love must always begin with intense, borderline toxic animosity. If two people meet and…
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Why game-show buzzers punish being too quick
Being the fastest means absolutely nothing if you lack patience. If a contestant presses their buzzer even a millisecond before the host finishes reading a…
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Mark Wahlberg was almost a New Kid on the Block
Before he was fighting Decepticons or demanding people say hello to their mothers, Mark Wahlberg was practicing synchronized choreography. At the age of 13,…
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Sailor Moon gave teenage girls demon-fighting powers
Instead of using magic just to bake cakes or solve minor social disputes, this iconic franchise handed teenage girls cosmic powers and told them to physically…
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Why renovation shows love knocking down walls
According to home improvement broadcasts, every single house on earth needs a completely open floor plan immediately. Hosts routinely convince perfectly happy…
Discover moreVal Kilmer’s Batman suit barely let him turn his head
Fighting crime is tough, but doing it with fused cervical vertebrae is impossible. The Batman suit worn by Val Kilmer was sculpted from such rigid,…
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In Counter-Strike, you can make a chicken follow you
In the middle of an intense tactical shootout between highly trained operatives, you can simply walk up to a random wandering bird and press a button to make…
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A legendary rap album was written by a teenager
While most seventeen-year-olds are intensely struggling with basic algebra, one legendary East Coast lyricist casually penned what is widely considered the…
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Bryan Cranston learned to make meth for Breaking Bad
Method acting is cool and all, but catching federal charges is where most actors draw the line. Production hired actual DEA chemists to teach Cranston the…
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Haydn wrote a symphony that could wake the audience
Haydn's Surprise Symphony famously features a sudden, blasting chord in an otherwise whisper-quiet movement. He specifically composed it this way to literally…
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The televangelist who sold apocalypse food
Nothing sells bulk food quite like the fear of eternal doom. A prominent televangelist utilized his massive broadcast platform to aggressively push enormous…
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Willy Wonka's original fate was much darker
Before heavily sanitizing the narrative for highly impressionable children, the beloved author originally intended a significantly darker fate for his…
Discover moreU2's Joshua Tree was the wrong kind of yucca
The title of U2's legendary album 'The Joshua Tree' evokes sweeping American landscapes, but the iconic solitary tree photographed for the cover isn't…
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The Game Gear that devoured six batteries
An absolute financial black hole disguised as a portable entertainment device. While boasting a glorious, full-color backlit screen, its insatiable hunger for…
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Salieri didn't poison Mozart
Hollywood loves a sinister murder plot, but historical rivalry is usually far less fatal. While Salieri and Mozart certainly competed for royal commissions,…
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The podcast that lasted 36 hours
Because some people possess an absolutely horrifying inability to simply stop talking, a massive vocal endurance record was violently shattered online. An…
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What PlayStation’s four symbols mean
Those sacred geometric shapes you've been aggressively mashing for decades aren't just random aesthetic choices. Designer Teiyu Goto insisted that the…
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Voice notes allow people to speak instead of typing
Why send a concise text when you can force someone to pause their music and hold a phone to their ear? This feature successfully brought back the sheer…
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Houdini died on Halloween
The undisputed master of escapes managed to pick the most dramatic possible day to permanently exit. The legendary illusionist passed away entirely from a…
Discover moreGary Oldman once forgot his natural speaking voice
When you fully dedicate yourself to portraying eccentric villains, your vocal cords occasionally file for divorce. After decades of doing aggressive accents,…
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William Gibson coined the term cyberspace
In a classic case of fiction violently colliding with reality, a foundational cyberpunk author just completely made up the word to describe digital networks.…
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The famous Indian rope trick was a newspaper hoax
The holy grail of magic—where a boy climbs a levitating rope and disappears—never actually happened. In 1890, a frustrated journalist for the Chicago Tribune…
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Kabuki used revolving stages centuries before the West
Long before Hamilton was spinning actors around on a fancy turntable, 18th-century Japanese Kabuki theater had already mastered the art. They built massive…
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Summer reruns were invented purely to save money
There is no artistic reason television traditionally vanished in June. Executives realized decades ago that viewers went outside during the summer, meaning…
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