January 2011
21 posts
The woman who downloaded iTunes’ ten billionth app hung up on Apple when they called to congratulate her.
After one of her daughters downloaded a free game called Paper Glider, UK resident Gail Davis received a phone call. Believing it to be a prank, Davis hung up on the Apple executive, who had been calling to inform her that the family had won a $10,000 iTunes gift card!
Upon her daughters’...
The Muppets version of the song “Bohemian Rhapsody” has nearly twice the number of views as the original Queen music video.
More specifically, the Muppet version has 18,534,318 views. The Queen version has 11,521,062. The Queen video has been up for over a year longer too.
Just for fun, try playing both of the videos AT THE SAME TIME. If you get it right it sounds pretty cool.
Sea urchins have self-sharpening teeth.
Urchins are infamous for their spiny outer shell, but most people do not know that these creatures are able to chew through rock! The secret to this unique ability lies in the composition of their teeth, which are only 2 centimeters long. Scientists examined urchins’ teeth with an x-ray to find that 200 million years of evolution has created an ingenious...
An adult electric eel can generate a charge capable of knocking a horse off its feet.
This charge can be at least as powerful as 600 volts, which is about five times the capacity of a typical American wall socket! This power is generated by a group of around 6,000 specialized cells called electrocytes, which are able to store electricity like a battery. Despite their name and appearance,...
In the original Wizard of Oz novel, Dorothy wore silver slippers.
The color of the shoes was changed from silver to ruby by screenwriter Noel Langley in order to take full advantage of filming in Technicolor! When trying to design an appropriate pair to film, Oz’s costuming department experimented with several different types of slippers. The most vivid-looking looking ones turned out to be a...
Jasmine is the only Disney princess who is not the main character of her movie.
This may come as a surprise at first, but think about it - EVERY other princess is the focus of their movie’s narrative. The titles of all the other movies mention the princess by name, nickname, or an allusion to their character:
-Pocahontas, Mulan, Cinderella, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (duh)
-Sleeping...
Ariel is the only Disney Princess to have had a child.
This is shown in the terrible straight-to-video sequel, The Little Mermaid 2: Return to Sea. In the film, Ariel’s daughter Melody has a rebellious streak just like her mother, and once again the family is put into jeopardy. Only this time, Aurora is a human and she wants to become a mermaid. So, in a plot that is definitely not exactly the...
Slash of Guns N’ Roses refuses to allow the band’s music to be used on Glee because he thinks the show is horrible.
The guitarist went on the record with Rolling Stone magazine saying, “Glee is worse than Grease and Grease is bad enough. I look at Grease now and think, ‘Between High School Musical and Glee, Grease was a work of art!’” Slash does have a heart though - he allowed the band’s songs...
A cow gives nearly 200,000 glasses of milk in its lifetime.
(source)
There are 24 drawings for every second in animated cartoons.
Seth McFarlane, the creator of Family Guy, was supposed to be on one of the planes on 9/11.
On 9/11, MacFarlane was scheduled to return to LA on AA Flight 11 from Boston. Suffering from a hangover from the previous night’s celebrations, and with an incorrect departure time from his travel agent, he arrived at the airport sometime around 7:30 and was unable to board the flight as the gates...
The founder of McDonalds served in the same unit as Walt Disney during World War I.
McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc served in the same Red Cross unit as Walt Disney. They were both medical technician drivers. Years after the war, Kroc approached Disney about opening one of his restaurants in Disneyland.
This idea never came to full fruition until 1997, when McDonald’s opened its first Disney...
Drinking tea can protect you from Alzheimer’s and cancer!
A study published earlier this week concluded that compounds present in green tea can help prevent dementia like Alzheimer’s and can help fight cancer by slowing down the growth of tumor cells. It was already known that these nutrients existed in green tea, but it has been proven conclusively that the body does in fact absorb them during...
The Black Eyed Peas have been sued for copyright infringement three times in the past year.
The first of these lawsuits was filed last January by hip-hop duo Phoenix Phenom. The pair claims that the Peas ripped off their tune “Boom Dynamite,” which they claim was submitted to Interscope Records (B.E.P.’s record label) a year before the Peas recorded their megahit “Boom Boom Pow.”
About a month...
It takes 6 months to produce an episode of The Simpsons.
The writing and editing take place at Gracie Films, six months before the airing of the episodes. After that, much of the animation is done in Korea. (source)
On the other hand, it only takes 6 days to make an episode of South Park, with rewrites of parts of an episode occurring even while animation and production has already started.
...
If the world’s population stood shoulder to shoulder, we would only fill an area the size of the city of Los Angeles.
A man in Oklahoma city asked a judge to extend his 30 year sentence to 33, because he wanted to have Larry Bird’s number.
In 2005, Eric James Torpy was charged with shooting with an attempt to kill and robbery. He received a sentence of 30 years. He then asked to extend his sentence an extra 3 years, so that the number of years he serves in prison is the same number as NBA star Larry Bird’s...
Baskin-Robbins once made ketchup-flavored ice cream.
At a factory in Burbank, CA, the young ice cream company experimented with hundreds of ice cream flavors that never made it to the public. This included Ketchup, “Grape Britain”, and Lox and Bagels. This was years after they had come up with their first 31 flavors, but they kept the “31 flavors” slogan, and instead used it to mean that they...
A North Dakota teen survived being frozen solid, with a body temperature too low for a thermometer.
In 1981 Jean Hilliard collapsed outside of her friend’s house in Northwestern Minnesota, in -22° F temperatures. When her friend found her frozen in the snow and brought her to the hospital, she was so frozen that her skin was too hard to pierce with a needle. Doctors had to wait for her to thaw...
NASA has voted 2012 the most scientifically flawed film ever made.
We’ve already discussed before why NASA thinks that 2012 doomsday theories are ridiculous, but it turns out that NASA isn’t done yet. It has also decided to take aim at Roland Emmerich’s apocalyptic blockbuster film on the subject.
Apparently, the film (despite being completely ridiculous) fanned the flames on...
Dogs are smarter than cats.
It has commonly been accepted that dogs are dumb because they need attention and cats are smart because they can take care of themselves. Not so fast, my friends; a recent study has shown that canines’ social tendencies are actually the REASON they are more intelligent than felines! The researchers even found that there is a common link among all mammals - the more...