12 Random Facts That Keep Us Up At Night

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12 Random Facts That Keep Us Up At Night

Ignorance is bliss. It can protect us from the truth. It can protect us from despair. It can protect us from the impending sense of doom that takes our thoughts away from puppies, ice cream, love, and all other great joys that being alive can bring. 

Knowledge of the world brings wisdom, but at what cost? Knowing all things means knowing awful things. Knowledge brings harsh truths. Knowledge brings pain. Knowledge brings hell.

But we can't escape knowledge, we have to face facts. In fact, you should face these facts. Sure, they may not make you happy, but they'll least make you smart. They'll at least keep you entertained. They'll at least give you something interesting to talk about to that one rep in HR with the nice hair that you like. Sure, you'd be playing with fire trying to date in the workplace but, hey, you only live once and were going to quit anyway.

So here's some facts:

THE COURTS TOOK 78 YEARS TO FIGURE OUT ONE GUY'S WILL. CRACKED When Daniel Clark died in 1813, he willed all of his vast estate to his mother. His daughter Myra sued for her inheritance in a legal battle that spanned a generation. The case lasted so long, the legal system in place at the end wasn't the same one when it began. It finally came to a close in 1891, six years after Myra's death. She was awarded close to a million dollars, which all went to legal fees.

DISNEY FAILED AT A STUNT TO PUT THE FIRST FEMALE ON MONEY. CRACKED.COM In 1990, Disney wanted to stake their claim on putting the first female on North American currency by sticking Minnie Mouse on the $5 Disney bill that could only be used in their parks. The US had put Martha Washington and Pocahontas on their currency in the late 1800's, so Minnie would not be the first. In fact, if counting fictional women, the US also placed Lady Liberty, Lady Justice, and the figure of Columbia on bills before

BEER IS A PERFORMANCE-ENHANCING SUBSTANCE, ACCORDING TO THE OLYMPICS. CRACKED.co Olympic veteran Hans-Gunnar Liljenwall participated in the pentathlon for Sweden in the 1968 games. Before the shooting competition, Hans had two beers to calm his nerves, and completed the games winning his team the bronze. Unfortunately his drug test came back as over the limit for alcohol, and Sweden had to return their medals. For competitions like shooting, alcohol is actually a performance enhancer, precisely for the nerve calming effects.

A HUNDRED FAMILIES GOT FREE DOGS BECAUSE OF ONE NFL PLAYER. CRACKED.COM Defensive lineman for the Kansas City Chiefs, Derrick Nnadi, pledged that every time the team won in the 2019 season, he would go to a shelter and pay the adoption fees on a dog there. They won 12 games, and so he paid for 12 dogs to go to families. They won two more in the postseason, sending them to the Super Bowl. The Chiefs hadn't won a championship in nearly 50 years, and Nnadi declared that if they did win this time, he'd pay for every dog

A COURT REPORTER JUST KEPT TYPING I HATE MY JOB INSTEAD OF TRANSCRIBING TESTIMONY. CRACKED.com After being sent to jail for fraud, mortgage broker Aaron Hand hired a hitman to kidnap and torture one of the witnesses at his trial. The hit man turned out to be an undercover investigator, so now Hand had a second charge and more prison time. When he appealed, lawyers found that transcripts from his original trial were gibberish, written by disgruntled and dysfunctional alcoholic court reporter, Daniel Kochanski. He was found to have often just mashed keys during trials, at one point typing the phrase 'I

BONNIE AND CLYDE WERE BOTH MANGLED DUE TO THEIR OWN STUPIDITY. CRACKED In 1930 Clyde was sentenced to The Ham, a farm/prison in Texas that ran on forced labor, after stealing cars. To get out of laboring, Clyde mangled his foot with an axe, severing his big toe, but they still put him to work. Three years later, driving with Bonnie in the car with him, Clyde plowed through a barricade at 70 mph. In the crash, battery acid spilled on Bonnie's leg, and Clyde delayed bringing her to the hospital until days later. Once real doctors finally saw Bonnie,

THE (SECOND) RICHEST NBA PLAYER EVER GOT RICH OFF BURGERS, NOT BASKETBALL. CRACKED.co Junior Bridgeman spent 12 years in the league with the Milwaukee Bucks, leaving in 1987 with a final salary of $350,000. He used this small pittance to franchise a Wendy's, something he studied about for the last few years. After buying a few more Wendy's, he expanded to Chili's, until Bridgeman Foods Inc. owned over 450 restaurants. In 2016 he sold the restaurants and invested in bottling Coca-Cola, and now he is worth $600 million.

A HOUSE IN KANSAS BECAME A GEOGRAPHIC SCAPE-GOAT BECAUSE OF ONE COMPANY'S LAZINESS. too CRACKED.com When the company MaxMind, which offers a service that pinpoints real-world addresses based on IPs, can't find the location of one IP, they default to the geographic center of the continental US. This location was a 360-acre farm in Kansas, owned by James and Theresa Arnold since 2011. James and Theresa would get hundreds of visitors because of this mistaken identity, sometimes law enforcement and sometimes vigilanties that heard they were imprisoning children. The couple sued MaxMind when reporter Kashmir Hill broke the story, and

THE NAVY REPLACED A SUB'S CONTROLS WITH AN XBOX CONTROLLER. CRACKED.COM The Navy uses photonics masts in their subs, which are like periscopes but using digital imagery rather than direct ne-of-sight. Since these masts could be controlled electronically from anywhere in the sub, Navy personnel suggested that the heavy and clunky mast controls be reconfigured. A device to generate analogue signals to precisely rotate a virtual camera had already been invented, and most of the crew was already familiar with it: the XBox 360 controller.

LAWYER RICHARD NIXON'S FIRST CASE WENT SO BADLY, HE ALMOST GOT DISBARRED. CRACKED.COM After mishandling a case, costing his firm the equivalent of $80,000 in today's money and leaving his client with nothing, Nixon's former client filed a suit against him. During the trial, Nixon defended himself and submitted a fraudulent affidavit. The judge admonished him with the following words: Mr. Nixon, I have serious doubts whether you have the ethical qualifications to practice law in the state of California. I am seriously thinking of turning this matter over to the Bar Association.

THE MILLIONAIRE WHO WANTED TO BE BURIED WITH HIS BENTLEY WASN'T WHAT HE SEEMED. CRACKED.COM Chiquinho Scarpa came down with an infection after a cosmetic surgery, putting him into a months long coma. A few years later, his mother died, also from an infection. Seemingly and suddenly aware of his own mortality, Scarpa announced he was building a tomb on his property in Brazil, starting with burying his $500k Bentley and invited the media to watch. When that day came, Scarpla took a mic and said, Yes, burying my Bentley with me when I die would be absurd. But most

ONE COMPANY KEPT MARKETING THE SAME ITEMS AS TWO DIFFERENT PRODUCTS, WITH WILDLY DIFFERENT PRICES. CRACKED.COM In the '90s, the eyewear manufacturer Bausch & Lomb offered a line of single-use contact lenses for $3. They also sold a line of reusable lenses under the premium brand name Optima F.W. that cost $70 and could be used for a whole year. The price difference sounds reasonable at first, but in reality the two products are exactly the same. They did it again with their eye drops that were the same solution as their lens cleaner, despite being 20x the price. Bausch
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