Cracked Egg Trivia

1. Chris Evans wasn't the only choice for the role of Captain America. Other famous people auditioned for the role including: Dane Cook, Joe Jonas, Kevin Jonas, John Krasinski, and Sebastian Stan who went on to play Bucky. And one of them may have gotten the part since Chris Evans turned down the role three times. He was worried about what would happen to his private life after such a sudden increase in popularity. He did decide to take the role after talks with Robert Downey Jr, Joe Johnston, and the producers of the film. 2. Stan Lee made a cameo appearance in the movie. He played an old general that mixes up Captain America with a different man, and then comments "I thought he'd be taller." His cameo was the only one he ever made in a feature film adaptation of a Marvel Comics superhero character that he had no hand in originally creating. 3. A future Avenger's mother was in the film, sort of. Around 50 minutes into the movie Laura Haddock appeared as...

Louisa Catherine Johnson was born on February 12, 1775, in London. She was one of only two first ladies to be born anywhere but the United States. Her father, Joshua Johnson, and her mother, Catherine Newth, were not officially married until 1785 according to documentation, which would make Louisa the only first lady to be born out of wedlock. It is possible that documents from their first wedding were lost, and that the wedding documented was actually a second one performed for some reason. The truth is that nobody really knows, and it is unlikely we will ever find out. In 1778 Joshua moved his family to France. Louisa loved France, and considered herself to be more French than English. While she was in France she learned to play the harp and piano, and sing. She also learned to read and write French in addition to speaking it fluently, in fact when her family returned to England in 1783 she had to learn to speak English again. Back in England she continued her schooling at a boa...

I did a post on bumblebees last month with the hope that I wouldn't be as afraid of them after I knew more about them, it worked. But I'd like to start out this post by saying that I don't think the same will be true for wasps, I'm pretty sure I'll hate them until I die. There are many different types of wasps, about 30,000 species exist that we have identified. This list includes hornets, yellow jackets, and many others. Since there are so many we divide them into slightly smaller groups, solitary wasps or social wasps. Solitary wasps are the larger subgroup, there are only about 1,000 species of social wasps. One of the differences between the two is that solitary wasps don't form colonies, and social wasps do. Another one is that solitary wasps rely on their venom to hunt, while social wasps only use their stingers for defense. Social wasp colonies start fresh each spring. A queen that was fertilized the year before comes out of hibernation, and builds a ...

1. There were pranksters on set. Clark Gable was one of them. He reportedly ate garlic before filming kissing scenes with Vivien Leigh. Another one of his pranks was to pour actual alcohol into a decanter instead of the tea that they normally used. The victim was Hattie McDaniel, who found out about the prank only after she took a swig. Gable payed for his crimes though. Another prankster (Olivia de Havilland) had her herself fastened to the set for one of the scenes where Gable was supposed to pick her up. He almost threw his back out. 2. The movie resulted in a lot of award firsts. Hattie McDaniel, who played Mammy, was the first African-American to be nominated for an Oscar, and by winning it became the first African-American to win an Oscar.  Gone with the Wind was the first technicolor movie to win an Oscar in the best picture category. And Vivien Leigh's performance in the movie was the longest to ever win an Academy Award, she appeared in 2 hours, 23 minutes, and 32 s...

Elizabeth Jane Kortright was born in New York City on June 30, 1768. Her father, Lawrence Kortright, was a wealthy merchant who was also one of the founders of the New York Chamber of Commerce. Her mother was Hannah Kortright, formerly Hannah Aspinwall. Hannah died on September 6 or 7, 1777, and a few days later her 13-month old baby also died. Elizabeth was only nine years old at the time. On August 3, 1778, her family home caught on fire, and was almost destroyed. The fire at their home was a result of a larger fire that caused damage and destruction to almost fifty homes. Fortunately, no one in the family was hurt. In 1785, when James Monroe was living in New York City and serving as a member of the Continental Congress, he met Elizabeth. They were married on February 16, 1786, at her father's home by Reverend Benjamin Moore. Monroe was twenty-six at the time, Elizabeth was seventeen. They honeymooned briefly on Long Island, before returning to New York to live with her fat...

The amorphophallus titanum, titan arum, or corpse plant is a flowering plant that emits a terrible odor (similar to that of a rotting corpse) when it blooms. I know it's pretty gross, but it's also really cool. And there is a scientific reason for the smell. The corpse plant doesn't bloom very often, generally every 7-10 years, but when it does it has to make sure its species continues. To do this the plant must make sure it attracts pollinators. In order to attract the dung beetles, flesh flies, and other carnivorous insects that are its primary pollinators it needs to look, smell, and feel like rotting meat. This is the reason why the plant has it's pungent odor. It is also the reason why when it blooms the color inside the blossom is a deep burgundy, and why the corpse plant has the ability to warm up to 98 degrees Fahrenheit. I mentioned earlier that these plants don't bloom very often. Now its time to tell you why, it simply doesn't have the energy. It ...

1. We don't actually know if they ate turkey at the first Thanksgiving. Four men were sent on a "fowling" mission by William Bradford according to the journal of Edward Winlsow, who was a Pilgrim chronicler, but although there would have been a plentiful supply of wild turkey in the area we can't be sure that the men didn't bring home ducks, geese, or even swans. They ate all those birds on a regular basis. We do know that there was plenty of venison, the Wampanoag arrived with five deer to contribute to the festivities. 2. There was more than one Boston Tea Party. It happened in March of 1774, three months after the Boston Tea Party that we all know. Sixty men, in disguises, boarded a ship called Fortune, forced the crew below deck, and then dumped chests full of tea into the harbor. This incident isn't as famous as the original since only about 30 chests were dumped, compared to the 340 that were destroyed three months earlier. 3. The Declaration of ...

"You scream, I scream, we all scream for ice cream!" It's an old saying derived from a 1927 song written by Howard Johnson, Billy Moll, and Robert A. King, and it is so true. So I took some time to scoop up some facts about the classic snack, and yes I know that was corny. 😀 First of all, flavors. I can't really tell you how many flavors there are in the world because anything could be an ice cream flavor. So lets say the number is unlimited. Don't believe me? While I was looking around online I found out that vanilla is the most popular flavor in most countries, but some people also enjoy their ice cream with anything from cold noodles to habanero peppers. I'll think I'll stick with chocolate. I also found out what causes ice cream headaches. It turns out that the blood vessels that run in between your mouth and your brain tense up when something really cold touches the roof of your mouth, trapping blood in your brain, therefore causing a headache. D...

1. They're harmless, mostly... There are only about 100 shark attacks a year, and only one-third to one-half of those are actually great whites. So in fact great whites are only responsible for about 5 to 10 attacks a year. Additionally research shows that the sharks are only "sample biting" and then letting the humans go, which is why most of these attacks aren't fatal. So that means that despite being the largest predatory fish in the world, they don't usually eat humans. 2. They don't have to work very hard for their first meal. The female develops several eggs in her womb after mating, and the baby sharks hatch inside her belly. Once they hatch they feed on unfertilized eggs in the womb while they grow and develop. And they need the food, by the time they're born (after about 12-22 months in the womb) they weigh 50 to 60 pounds. 3. Great whites aren't the largest shark . Even though they're impressively large, growing to an average of...

Dolley Payne was born on May 20, 1768, in Guilford County, North Carolina. Her parents were John Payne and Mary Coles Payne. Both her parents were Quakers, her father becoming so three years after marrying her mother in 1761. Dolley had four brothers and was the first of four girls. She grew up at her parents plantation in rural eastern Virginia after they moved there in 1769, and became close to her mother's family while she was there until her father moved them to Philadelphia when she was 15. There he started a laundry starch-making business that failed by 1791. He died a year later, and her mother started a boardinghouse, but by the next year she moved to her daughter Lucy's house in western Virginia along with her two youngest children, Mary and John. Previously Dolley had married John Todd, who was a Quaker lawyer, in the January of 1790. They lived in a three-story brick house in Philadelphia, where they had two boys (John Payne and William Temple) over the course o...

1. The Donkey Kong games were supposed to be Popeye games. Originally Nintendo wanted a game based off of Popeye characters, but they failed to obtain the rights they needed to make it, so instead Shigeru Miyamoto was hired to to create a game to fill that spot. He decided to keep the same premise of Popeye, a giant steals a man's girlfriend and the man tries to get her back. Only instead of Popeye it was Jumpman (later known as Mario), instead of Olive Oyl it was Pauline, and instead of Bluto it was DK himself. 2. Donkey Kong was also based off of another classic. The name and plot were similar to the movie King Kong , and in 1982 Universal Studios sued Nintendo because of it. Nintendo hired an American attorney to handle the case, John Kirby. Nintendo won due to the fact that Universal themselves had successfully sued RKO Pictures in 1975 by proving that the rights to  King Kong  was in fact public domain. 3. Kirby wouldn't have had his name if not for Donkey Kong. ...

Cirrus clouds form high in the atmosphere, and are made of tiny ice crystals. The word cirrus is Latin for "curl of hair", so the name is fitting for these thin, wispy clouds. Although cirrus clouds can mean that rain or snow is on the way, the clouds themselves hardly ever release precipitation, and if they do the ice crystals that they drop will evaporate before they reach the ground. Cirrus clouds mean changes in the weather. Stratus clouds are relatively low-lying. They look like fog that isn't touching the ground, and in fact sometimes they are formed from fog that has lifted. Stratus do produce light precipitation, and will often be accompanied by a drizzly rain or snow. This is more likely to happen if it is a nimbostratus cloud. Stratus clouds mean that the weather will be gloomy, even if it doesn't rain.             Cumulus clouds are also pretty low in the sky, and look like big balls of cotton. Cumulus clouds develop vertically, s...