Culture & entertainment
Discover facts about culture & entertainment. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Culture & entertainment
The green dress that created Google Images
Because text-based results simply were not satisfying the sheer collective thirst of the digital public, engineers were forcefully pushed to innovate.…
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Katamari Damacy demands players roll up entire continents
A deeply serene experience where you attempt to appease a flamboyant cosmic deity by literally crushing millions of screaming citizens into a massive ball of…
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The giant phone that buddy-cop movies made famous
Long before you were doom-scrolling on a sleek rectangle, an eighties buddy cop movie proudly featured an absurdly massive, brick-sized portable phone. It was…
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Why daytime TV follows an industrial-age schedule
The daily broadcast schedule is a relic of heavy industry. Daytime blocks were explicitly designed around housewives and off-shift factory workers, creating…
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Smoking areas exist entirely due to municipal laws
The tiny, depressing chain-link pen where attendees are shoved to use their nicotine products isn't provided out of corporate courtesy. Organizers absolutely…
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LP records spin exactly at 33 and one-third revolutions
A deeply specific speed chosen purely for physical endurance. The 33 1/3 RPM standard for Long Play (LP) vinyl records was developed by Columbia Records in…
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Why Taco Bell became Pizza Hut in Europe
In the utopian future of 'Demolition Man', Taco Bell is the only surviving restaurant. Unfortunately, nobody in 1990s Europe had any idea what a Taco Bell…
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How cats hit their marks on film sets
Unlike dogs, felines have absolutely zero interest in pleasing their human overlords. Wranglers often resort to hiding laser pointers just out of frame to…
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The TV box that let viewers vote in 1977
Decades before smartphones, viewers used clunky wired boxes. The 1977 QUBE system gave audiences large plastic buttons to answer polls in real time, providing…
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Where Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451
While preaching heavily about the dangers of a dystopian, anti-intellectual society, Ray Bradbury was literally just trying to keep his expenses down. He…
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The Smashing Pumpkins song built from dozens of guitars
If one heavy guitar sounds good, why not record forty of them? Billy Corgan took studio obsession to terrifying new heights on 'Siamese Dream,' manually…
Discover moreDavid Copperfield hoards a massive private magic collection
When you have successfully made the Statue of Liberty disappear, you tend to collect weird things. The famous illusionist privately owns the absolutely…
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Animated gif pronunciations divide internet users
Nothing tears families apart quite like deciding whether a file extension uses a hard or soft consonant. This graphical format has sparked decades of furious…
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The one-dollar strategy on The Price Is Right
Human empathy goes out the window when a jetski is on the line. The entire meta-strategy of the showcase involves bidding exactly one dollar higher than your…
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Auto-generated captions frequently misinterpret accents
Speech recognition technology is completely flawless, provided you speak like a robotic news anchor. Anyone with a slight regional dialect is immediately…
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Castanets consist of two concave wooden shells clacking
Originating strictly as small, handheld rhythmic noisemakers, castanets rely entirely on the hollowed-out shape of the wood. When the two shells snap together…
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Why some game shows turn pain into prime-time comedy
While Western game shows hand out cash for answering simple questions, international obstacle broadcasts essentially demand bodily sacrifice. Japanese…
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Broadcasters use redundant towers on mountains
Paranoia is built into the infrastructure. Stations maintain entirely separate, backup transmission towers on high elevations, ensuring that if their primary…
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Tomb Raider ancient traps include turning into solid gold
Exploring lost ruins comes with standard hazards like spikes and boulders. However, one specific palace punishes your greed by forcing you to step on a…
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Crowd sourced board surveys perfectly encapsulate bias
Finding the 'number one answer on the board' has absolutely nothing to do with objective truth. These televised surveys simply ask random people on the street…
Discover moreWhitney Houston sang her iconic ballad's opening in one take
Most pop singers require dozens of vocal takes edited heavily together to sound decent. Whitney Houston walked up to the microphone and recorded the legendary…
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The turkey leg at the Renaissance faire isn't medieval
Eating a massive roasted turkey leg feels incredibly medieval, except turkeys are native to the Americas and were entirely absent from Renaissance Europe.…
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Pull-to-refresh gestures update feeds via downward dragging
Nothing replicates the anticipation of a casino quite like a mobile interface. Dragging a screen downward triggers a little spinning icon, offering the exact…
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Teen drama parents are universally oblivious or missing
Adult supervision would instantly ruin every plotline, so parents in teenage narratives are conveniently scrubbed from existence. They are either chronically…
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