Culture & entertainment
Discover facts about culture & entertainment. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Culture & entertainment
The Oscars have their own trademarked red
The iconic red carpet walked by massive celebrities before the Academy Awards isn't just any generic crimson fabric. The specific dye blend, known as 'Academy…
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Spoiler once meant a political candidate
Long before intensely aggressive internet users violently weaponized the word to fiercely protect massive cinematic plot twists, the specific terminology had…
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Why anime often looks deliberately choppy
While classic western animation smoothly utilizes twenty-four unique drawings per second, traditional eastern styles heavily lean on a cost-saving visual…
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The soap-opera actor who invented the teleprompter
Tired of frantically memorizing rapidly changing dialogue for intense daily soap operas, a frustrated television star dramatically revolutionized the modern…
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The Oscar statuettes that vanished before the ceremony
Weeks before a massive Hollywood award ceremony, the shipping truck carrying fifty-five freshly cast golden statuettes mysteriously vanished. The priceless…
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The movie-set detectives who track every prop
Script supervisors are the ultimate cinematic detectives employed directly on movie sets. Their sole obsessive duty is to perfectly track the exact length of…
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Why Frankenstein’s monster became green
The legendary, flat-headed undead movie monster created in the 1930s is culturally remembered as having sickly, pale green flesh entirely due to promotional…
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The first CGI movie character was a stained-glass knight
A decade before completely digital dinosaurs terrifyingly stomped across screens in Jurassic Park, the massive visual effects powerhouse ILM made quiet…
Discover moreThe character Disney created after losing Oswald
Before Mickey Mouse became a global corporate empire, Walt Disney's breakout animated star was Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. When a ruthless distributor legally…
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National Lampoon coined the word spoiler in 1971
Before the internet, the modern concept of ruined movie plots did not have a name. The term 'spoiler' was officially coined in 1971 by an article in National…
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First reality shows were heavily manipulated
Long before survival competitions dominated network television, an early documentary series called An American Family set the template for unscripted drama.…
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Color film was capturing moving images in 1901
Decades before brightly colored magical lands dazzled audiences on the silver screen, visionary inventors had already successfully captured moving images in…
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Doctor Who Was Once Meant to Teach History
The massively popular British television show Doctor Who is globally famous for battling deadly metallic aliens and robotic exterminators. However, when it…
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Hello Kitty is officially a human girl
Despite prominently featuring cat ears and bold whiskers on thousands of bright pink merchandise items, Sanrio explicitly insists that Hello Kitty is not a…
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What actors said in silent films
Because early black-and-white silent films utterly lacked any synced audio, the actors on set rarely bothered to memorize proper scripts. They would…
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The MGM lion that survived a plane crash
One of the early majestic lions utilized for the famous roaring Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer theatrical studio intro lived an incredibly chaotic life off-camera. While…
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Ben Turpin insured his crossed eyes
Famous silent film actor Ben Turpin suffered a severe visual defect that accidentally turned him into a massively wealthy comedic superstar. Because his…
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The famous anti-piracy ad stole its music
In a bizarre twist of irony, the terrifying anti-piracy video campaign that played before every DVD in the early 2000s actively stole the background music.…
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Comic Sans’s creator barely used his own font
Vincent Connare created the infamous childlike typeface for a specific software tutorial dog, but he personally avoided using the font in his own daily…
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John Malkovich starred in a film sealed until 2115
In 2015, heavily renowned actor John Malkovich starred in an incredibly secretive experimental movie funded by a high-end cognac company. Once the filming…
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Tom and Jerry were once Jasper and Jinx
The iconic cat and mouse duo Tom and Jerry originally debuted under the clunky names Jasper and Jinx. Creators hosted an internal studio competition to rename…
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The strange chord that changed modern music
In 1865, composer Richard Wagner actively included a profoundly strange arrangement of notes in his dark opera Tristan und Isolde. The profoundly agonizing…
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Westworld brought early computer graphics to the big screen
The critically completely groundbreaking entirely strictly 1973 sci-fi massive massive thriller Westworld entirely absolutely brilliantly debuted the strictly…
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The shark jump that gave TV its favorite insult
When a television show sharply declines in quality by relying on absurd gimmicks, critics say it jumped the shark. This bizarre phrase directly originated…
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