Culture & entertainment
Discover facts about culture & entertainment. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Culture & entertainment
Hashtags group disparate internet posts into single streams
A simple pound sign successfully turned chaos into categorized chaos. Adding this symbol instantly links your random thoughts to a massive global feed,…
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Movie arrow sounds come from bamboo sticks
Instead of risking actual airborne projectiles in a crowded recording studio, audio artists employ garden supplies. By whipping thin bamboo rods directly past…
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Arrested Development foreshadowed Buster's missing hand
You have to respect a writer's room that commits this hard to a bit about permanent dismemberment. Long before Buster lost his hand to a loose seal, the show…
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Why Van Gogh gave his ear to a brothel worker
Nothing screams romance or deep mental instability quite like handing someone a freshly sliced piece of your own head. Following a vicious argument with a…
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Roller coaster screaming is highly encouraged
Parks know that terror is contagious, so they actually orient coaster drops to face pedestrian pathways specifically so the shrieks of the damned will attract…
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Why infomercial numbers change by channel
That exclusive toll-free number is just a data-mining tool. Different channels display slightly different phone numbers for the exact same product, allowing…
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Peanuts characters never actually aged a day
Despite running for fifty years and referencing modern pop culture, the depressed bald child and his hyper-imaginative beagle remained trapped in a perpetual…
Discover moreMichelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman suit was vacuum-sealed
Breathing is a luxury when you're dressed as a feline anti-hero. Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman suit was so incredibly tight that she had to be covered in…
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Why rain can shut down the world's tallest coaster
The tallest coaster in the world is incredibly fragile. Hitting tiny raindrops at 128 miles per hour feels like getting shot in the face with a pellet gun.…
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Lilo and Samara were played by the same actress
Try watching Lilo and Stitch again without picturing a dead girl crawling out of your television screen. Daveigh Chase, the talented child actress who gave…
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The X-Files episode that helped create Breaking Bad
If Bryan Cranston had never played an anti-Semitic crazy person trapped in a moving car with Mulder, Walter White would not exist. Vince Gilligan wrote that…
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Muting microphones prevents background noise on group calls
The true hero of digital collaboration is the button that enforces absolute silence. Without it, every online meeting devolves into an auditory nightmare of…
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Crash Bandicoot was almost Wily the Wombat
The manic spinning marsupial went through several bizarre iterations before finding his iconic look. Executives strongly pushed for a wombat protagonist,…
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Sheet music dominated the industry before phonographs
If you wanted to hear a hit song in the 1800s, you literally had to learn how to play it yourself. Before recorded audio existed, the 'music industry'…
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Super Soaker water blasts exert immense physical pressure
A seemingly innocent backyard toy that utilizes heavy pneumatic science to essentially create a handheld, highly pressurized aquatic canon. It successfully…
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Why balloons are banned at Animal Kingdom
Leave your inflated joy at the front gate, lest you accidentally traumatize a giraffe. The Animal Kingdom park absolutely strictly forbids any guests from…
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Drafts folders are digital graveyards for abandoned posts
Every account harbors a hidden stash of intense opinions that were wisely reconsidered. These private folders are stuffed with aggressive rants and overly…
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The mathematician who invented Wonderland
The surreal, completely unhinged tea parties of Wonderland were actually conceptualized by a man who spent his life obsessed with rigid logic. Under his real…
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Why Friends viewers thought Chandler was gay
Sarcasm and a complete inability to talk to women somehow translated to a totally different vibe in the early nineties. When the script for the Friends pilot…
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Digital avatars allow players to attend virtual concerts
Paying premium prices to stand in a digital crowd while a pixelated rendering of a pop star sings pre-recorded tracks is the peak of modern entertainment.…
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Domain name Cars.com sold for a fortune
Proving that simply claiming an incredibly obvious digital keyword early is better than actual hard work, this highly generic web address changed hands for…
Discover moreJoaquin Phoenix faked a rap career for a year
Sometimes the greatest performance is just aggressively annoying the entire world. Joaquin Phoenix spent a solid year claiming he was retiring from acting to…
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Zelda Majora's Mask gives you exactly three days
Rather than exploring a sprawling fantasy kingdom at your leisure, you are thrown into a localized time loop with a terrifyingly angry moon crashing toward…
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One mistyped chord can turn speech into gibberish
When the subtitles spout absolute gibberish, it is highly technical. Stenographers press entire chords of keys simultaneously to build words. A single…
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