I’ve been a music lover since I was pretty young. My brother, who is nine years older than I am, got me into all the good stuff from a very young age: AC/DC, The Ramones, The Sex Pistols, etc.
Since then, it’s been a love affair with finding cool, new (and old) music to sink my teeth into, and seeing live bands when I get the chance.
Let’s take a look at 10 really cool music facts to get our day started the right way!
There have been several times while plotting books when I discarded an idea because it sounded too outlandish…even though, in some cases, it was historically true.
In that vein, Redditors thought it would be fun to share facts that are truly hard to believe, and I bet at least a few of these are going to blow your mind!
15. This isn’t really surprising, if you think about it.
Death rates in boxing exploded after the introduction of the boxing glove. Almost nobody ever died bare knuckle boxing because head punches often resulted in broken hands, so nobody used them.
14. A man-eater.
The Champawat Tiger was a female Bengal tiger responsible for an estimated 430 deaths in Nepal and India, (listed in the Guinness Book of World Records and Wikipedia) More people than died in the U.S. in the last 100 years from, snakes, bears, wolves, and spider fatalities combined.
13. I’m going to need video of this.
President Lyndon B. Johnson owned an Amphibious car, the Amphicar, and used it to scare guests by driving them into his lake screaming about brake failure.
12. Let’s get on activating that, hmm?
Humans have the gene to, and are capable of hibernation. It’s just not active
11. This is not actually surprising.
There was once a war between Honduras and El Salvador started by a soccer game.
10. It’s Australia. There’s any number of things that could have happened to him.
Australia once lost a prime minister. as in straight up couldn’t find him. and they have yet to find him.
9. Wait, why?
Saudi Arabia imports camels from Australia.
8. That’s gotta be uncomfortable.
Wombat poop is square. Go ahead, google it. *edit: yes, cube-shaped.
7. A desert is just a desolate, arid environment.
My friend doesn’t trust me with these things now that I’ve told her that Antarctica is the world’s largest desert. She still doesn’t believe it.
6. I’m sure that’s pretty.
It rains diamonds on Saturn, and Jupiter.
5. In case you want to hate corporations a little bit more.
There is a little town in Mexico called Chamula where shamans started using Coca Cola in their religious rituals to heal worshippers. Pepsi heard about this and began giving commissions to shamans if they recommended Pepsi instead, so then Coca Cola did the same and there are now rival religious groups based on which soft drink they use.
4. Crazy or innovative? You decide.
In the 1950’s Popular Mechanics published a story about a former artillery Sergeant who attempted to invent a personal delivery system similar to what Amazon intends to create with drones. Except he used modified artillery shells. He actually got a hold of an M116 howitzer which he fired modified shells over a small town in upstate New York.
The shells were hollowed out inside and a parachute would automatically deploy as it approached the target. The problem was the shells weighed twenty pounds and if the parachute did not deploy that meant a twenty pound shell would come crashing down from the sky and wreck someone’s house or possibly kill someone in the street. As the Sergeant tested the device and was utterly convinced it was a way of the future he offered to sell a solution installing expensive iron plating on the roofs of people’s homes and heavy protective armor for navigating the streets.
This Sargent’s story had become an inside joke among people who market modern electronics and virus software. Create a problem that is unnecessary and then sell people an expensive and completely impractical solution.
3. I fail to see how this could be a bad thing.
Thanks to a botched burglary attempt at the Émancé Nature Reserve (about an hour outside Paris) in the 1970’s, there is now a feral Wallaby population in France.
2. And they were Nazis.
The founding of Adidas and Puma.
Rudolf “Rudi” Dassler and Adolf “Adi” Dassler were born into a German family, and Adi eventually began to produce athletic shoes. Rudi joined his younger brother’s company, and everything went swimmingly… for a while.
Eventually, both brothers joined the Nazi Party and turned on each other. Rudi formed “Rudas,” now known as Puma. And Adi formed “Adidas,” now known as Adidas.
The first time I heard this story, I was convinced it was fake.
1. He might be an alien.
In the hockey world, some of the numbers that Wayne Gretzky put up are mind-boggling. He scored nearly 3,000 points, nobody else even has 2,000. He has more assists than anyone else does points. He recorded 4 seasons with at least 200 PTS, nobody else has ever scored 200 in a season, though Lemieux came close. Rarely do we see a 50 goal scorer anymore, Gretzky set the record with 50 goals in a mere 39 games. So many other records that just make you say “wow.” No wonder he’s known simply as “The Great One.”
Do you have something you would add to the list? Share it in the comments!
People will always eat weird stuff, but it can be jarring to find out that people en masse – or at least, Americans en masse – used to eat very differently from today. Some of these recipes-past sound interesting, and not necessarily in a bad way.
And some of them sound downright horrifying.
Here are 17 things people used to think were delightful dishes – a good mix of interesting and horrifying, I hope!
Doesn’t it seem like old, classic Hollywood movies get a free pass? Like we’re supposed to just accept their brilliance and not question it on any level.
Well, NO MORE OF THAT…
People on Buzzfeed got pretty fired up about old movies that critics think are incredible and life-changing…but these folks definitely don’t feel that way. At all.
“It’s just… bad. The story is all over the place, the acting isn’t really all that great, and the ending is just stupid. I watched it once quite a while ago and was unimpressed.”
2. Gone with the Wind (1939)
“Scarlett O’Hara is spoiled, selfish, and self-absorbed, and Rhett Butler is a fuckboy. Yes they’re made for each other, but mainly to keep them from poisoning the general population.”
3. Mary Poppins (1964)
“I’ve never really understood the hype around Mary Poppins.”
4. Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961)
“This movie glorifies racist stereotypes, organized crime, child marriage, and utter inauthenticity. I also hate to say this because she was utterly lovely to look at, but Audrey Hepburn’s performance is completely unbelievable. It’s a bad, bad movie.”
5. The Wizard of Oz (1939)
“I don’t know why, but I’ve always found something awful about The Wizard of Oz. I don’t think it’s that great.”
6. Casablanca (1942)
“This movie is SO boring and overrated. I had to watch it for my film history class, and then I found myself rewatching it three separate times because I kept falling asleep!”
7. West Side Story (1961)
“West Side Story doesn’t bring anything interesting to the table. It’s just another Romeo and Juliet movie and I’m frankly sick of movies using that trope.”
8. Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
“The acting is terrible in Rebel Without a Cause and James Dean is very overrated.”
9. All About Eve (1950)
“I’ve heard for years this movie is incredible, chilling and thrilling, and then I watched it and found an utterly lifeless, dull movie. Absolutely nothing happened in this movie at all. It was frankly one of the most boring movies I’ve ever seen.”
10. The Seven Year Itch (1955)
“I love Marilyn Monroe, but this movie is just truly awful. It’s incredibly boring and the main character’s paranoia and conversations with himself really ruined the plot for me.”
11. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
“I love old Christmas movies, but I can’t stand It’s a Wonderful Life. It’s a schmaltzy piece of mediocre film that’s somehow managed to get classified as something no one is allowed to criticize. If you want your Jimmy Stewart fix at Christmas time, I recommend watching The Shop Around the Corner instead.”
12. The Birds (1963)
“The Birds is tedious to the point of boredom for most of its runtime. If you take out all the long, dialogue-less scenes of driving, parking, and walking from the freshly parked car to the next shot, this movie would be like 20 minutes long.”
13. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
“A Streetcar named Desire is about an abusive relationship that has been glorified as a passionate romance for decades. Brando’s character is abusive to both his love interest and her sister, and when I first saw it in my twenties, I was stunned that it’s lauded as this great film. No thanks.”
14. Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
“Rosemary’s Baby is just hours of lackluster content with no real storyline. I found it very boring and the end was a disaster.”
15. Citizen Kane (1941)
“People say Citizen Kane is the greatest film of all time, but I think it’s incredibly boring. The characters are flat and very detached. It’s just really hard to connect with them.”
What do you think?
Are there any old films that get a ton of praise that you believe are really overrated? Tell us about them in the comments!
I’m way behind on all the TV I’m supposed to have been watching, and it pains me to admit it, but I’ve only seen a few episodes of the hit show Peaky Blinders. I mean, I’ll get to it sooner or later, I hope. And, by all accounts, I definitely should – because it was named the best TV show of the last decade based on a poll by LADbible.
The poll included more than 29,000 voters, and Peaky Blinders, which is now five seasons into the action, got 29.4% of the vote, beating out Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, and Chernobyl as the best TV show of the decade.
Peaky Blindersdebuted in 2013 on BBC Two and the fifth season hit the screen in the fall of 2019. The show is set in Birmingham, England, after World War I, and it revolves around an ambitious gang that seeks to control Birmingham’s underworld. Cillian Murphy stars as the gang’s leader, Tommy Shelby.
The creator of the show, Steven Knight, talked about where he thinks the series will ultimately go: “The destination for the whole show has always been the start of the Second World War, so the show is the story of the family between the wars. I really want to end it with Tommy being alright. I want Tommy to be good and on the side of the angels.”
I grew up on VHS and I actually still have a decent collection, so it was a real treat seeing folks tweet out the tapes they watched when they were young.
I can tell you what my VHS tapes were (are) that I played out over and over. I had Road House and Point Break taped onto a single VHS, and I brought that tape to every single sleepover I ever went to. Two classics, if I do say so myself.
My grandparents gave me a bootleg tape of this for my 10th birthday in ‘85. Still to this day, one of my most meaningful gifts ever. pic.twitter.com/mjCsO2FhOB
The men who served in World War II are a dying breed – in fact, most of them have already passed on from this plane of existence to the next (where hopefully they will not be asked to save the world by enacting great mental and physical trauma on themselves).
Lawrence Brooks of New Orleans, Louisiana was born on September 12th, 1909, and had his most recent birthday celebration at the National World War II Museum in his hometown.
During the war, Brooks served in a primarily African-American unit in the army, the 91st Engineer Battalion, with which he was stationed in New Guinea before heading to the Philippines. He was active between 1940 and 1945, exiting duty as a Private 1st Class.
The National World War II Museum in New Orleans has hosted Brooks’ last five parties, loves doing it, and hopes to be asked to help celebrate for a few years yet to come.
“We absolutely love Mr. Brooks,” said a spokesperson for the museum. “We’ve told him, ‘As long as you keep having birthdays, we are going to keep having birthday parties for you here.’ We consider him ‘our’ veteran.”
Though Brooks is definitely getting long in the tooth – he has poor vision and low blood pressure and requires a walker to get around – he’s thankful to have good hearing and to never have been faced with any serious diagnoses in his long life.
“I’ve started to think about not having many birthdays left. But I’m not worried about it, because God has let me live this long already. I think it’s because I’ve always liked people so much. Oh, yes, I do.”
It’s safe to say that plenty of people like him right back – including me, now that I’ve leaned a bit most about him.
Brooks takes over the title of oldest living WWII veteran from Mr. Richard Overton, who passed away in 2018 at the age of 112.
Remember a few years ago when pulling down statues erected to Confederate war heroes was all the rage? Sadly, people have moved onto other ventures, leaving many monuments to the Confederacy still standing like they contributed positively to history and deserve to be remembered.
One Tennessee lawmaker, though, hasn’t forgotten – and he has the perfect replacement for an homage to Nathan Bedford Forrest (you probably only know his name because of Forrest Gump, be honest) in mind.
Forrest’s bust is currently one of eight bronzed figures on display at the Tennessee State Capitol, even though Forrest was a Confederate general and a founding member of the KKK. He had made a fortune trading human beings as slaves before the war, and is best remembered for leading 1864’s Fort Pillow Massacre.
This “hero” allowed (or directed) his troops to murder hundreds of black soldiers trying to surrender.
Forrest fans (?) argue that Forrest’s later decision to support racial harmony means he should be allowed to remain on the good side of history, but Republican representative Jeremy Faison (and other people who can read history books without rose-colored glasses) thinks it’s time someone else be honored.
Someone like Dolly Parton, a native Tennessean who is as noted for her charity work as her country music career.
“My daughter is 16, and I would love for her to come into the Capitol and see a lady up there,” Faison told the Tennessean. “What’s wrong with Anne Dallas Dudley getting in that alcove?”
Dudley, a suffragist born in Nashville, helped the state ratify the 19th Amendment (very last, but still).
Faison himself used to be an advocate of keeping history the way it was – and Forrest in the capitol – but after he delved into Forrest’s ideology, the politician got on board with the idea that history could be studied in schools.
No veneration of Confederate generals and racist slave holders necessary.
There are about 50,000 signatures on a petition calling for the bust to be removed to a museum, but before governor Bill Lee can remove it, both the State Capitol Commission and the Tennessee Historical Commission would have to vote on a yet-to-be-introduced resolution.
I guess Dolly and Anne – and the rest of us – are going to have to wait just a little bit longer for a woman to join the ranks of history-on-display.
We’ll get there. For now, I suppose we can be somewhat mollified by the knowledge that such a thing is on people’s hearts and minds, if not on the books.
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