Popular Culture
The Minecraft movie (2025), starring Jack Black as the main character Steve, features a post-credits Easter egg scene that reveals Alex to be the owner of Steve’s old home. Alex was in the original version of the Minecraft video game as an NPC.
Alex was not an NPC, but an alternate female skin for the default Steve player character.
France gifted the U.S. the Statue of Liberty after World War II as a sign of friendship between the two nations.
The Statue of Liberty was given to the U.S. in 1865 to honor the alliance that helped both see through their own respective revolutions.
Giraffes have green tongues to protect themselves from both sun damage and the spiky leaves they eat.
The original Percy Jackson & the Olympians is a five-book series by author Rick Riordan. It stars a 12-year-old Percy Jackson who discovers he is the son of the Greek god Zeus and must learn to hone his demigod powers at Camp Halfblood to complete his quest.
Percy's father is Poseidon, not Zeus.
William Shakespeare was an American poet and author known for many, many important plays, including Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He invented almost 2,000 words in the English language!
Shakespeare was British! He lived several centuries before the U.S. was founded.
Fortnite has collaborated with many celebrities in the past for special in-game events and skins, including Sabrina Carpenter, Snoop Dogg, and Taylor Swift. Their longest standing collab, however, is with the Star Wars franchise—most recently this past May in “GALACTIC BATTLE”, which has players fight against Emperor Palpatine’s forces.
While Russia is technically the largest country in the world by size, China is the largest by population with 1.438 billion residents.
India is the largest country with 1.4 billion residents, not China; although, China does have 1.411 billion residents.
Of the seven planets that orbit the Sun in our solar system, though many of them rotate on an axis—all except Mercury—only Uranus spins completely on its side at a 90 degree angle.
There are eight planets in our solar system!
In the Wings of Fire series, only five of the seven tribes have animus dragons—IceWings, SeaWings, SandWings, SkyWings, and RainWings. Darkstalker is an animus dragon.
The NightWings have had an animus, not the RainWings.
Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and Langston Hughes—to name just a few—were all influential figures who helped slaves escape to the free North via the Underground Railroad.
Langston Hughes was a poet from the Harlem Renaissance, and did not contribute to the Underground Railroad.
In Disney’s Moana (2016), the main character is the daughter of the Motunui chieftain, Tui. After his mother (and Moana’s grandmother), Gramma Tala, passes away, Moana flees the island in a boat to seek out help for her tribe. Gramma Tala (in the shape of a giant whale shark) helps guide Moana on her journey to rescue the Heart of Te Fiti alongside demigod Maui and her pet rooster, Heihei.
Gramma Tala's spirit manifests as a giant manta ray, not a whale shark.
There are more than 1,500 active volcanoes across the globe, with many being underwater such as those in the Ring of Fire in the Pacific Ocean. In fact, while Volcanoes can be found on every continent in the world except Africa, the majority—up to 80%—are actually in the ocean!
There are many volcanoes in Africa; Ethiopia is an especially active area.
Rainforests are home to over 50% of earth’s animals! Tropical climates have the most biodiversity of any biome, including both flora (plants)—like coffee, figs, and banana trees—and fauna (animals)—like jaguars, raccoons, and toucans.
Raccoons don't live in the rain forest!
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is the longest book in the series; the US version has 766 pages, and the UK version has 870!
The Order of the Phoenix is the longest Harry Potter book, not the Deathly Hallows.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was a college professor and American Civil Rights activist anywho advocated for non-violence resistance to effect change amongst the masses. He is considered one of the most important advocates for Civil Rights in history.
MLK, Jr. was a minister, not a college professor.
Hello Kitty! is a Korean mascot for the Sanrio toy and entertainment company, which actually includes a wide cast of cute characters including Gudetama, Chococat, and Cinnamonroll. Players can create their own character in the Sanrio style in the recent video game Hello Kitty Island Adventure (2025), though Sanrio characters have been included in many other franchises beyond their own, such as Animal Crossing: New Leaf as unique villager Amiibo cards.
Sanrio is a Japanese company, not a Korean one.
The first Olympic marathon was run by a Greek soldier in 490 BC who ran from the city of Marathon all the way to the distant city of Sparta to tell of the Greek victory over the Persian soldiers who had attempted to invade the coast. After 26.2 miles, the soldier arrived, collapsed, and died.
He ran to Athens, not Sparta -- it was the Athenian troops that were fighting the Persians!
You can technically always see your nose, your brain just chooses to ignore it! This is because humans have binocular vision, which means that you have two eyes that provide your brain visual information. While some animals have more than two eyes (like spiders), there are no known creatures that have monocular vision—or, that have only one eye.
There is, in fact, one species with only one eye; they are a marine animal called a "copepod".
The Magic Treehouse series by Mary Pope Osborne stars brother and sister Jack and Annie, who travel to the past to go on quests for the powerful sorceress, Morgan le Fay. The series is broken into two parts; in the second half of the books, Jack and Annie go to Camelot and receive quests from King Arthur himself instead of Morgan.
They receive quests from Merlin in the latter half of the series, not King Arthur.
There are five presidents featured on U.S. currency: George Washington ($1), Thomas Jefferson ($2), Abraham Lincoln ($5), Alexander Hamilton ($10), and Andrew Jackson ($20).
While there are five presidents on U.S. currency, Hamilton is not one of them. Ulysses S. Grant is the fifth, featured on the $50.
The beloved anime Demon Slayer was adapted from a manga series of the same name, written and illustrated by artist Haruichi Furudate. The protagonist, a 13-year old charcoal-seller named Tanjiro, joins the Demon Slayer Corps after his sister, Nezuko, is turned into a demon. In so doing, he swears to get revenge for the death of his family, and hopefully restore Nezuko’s humanity in the process.
Furudate wrote Haikyuu!!, not Demon Slayer -- that was Koyoharu Gotouge.
California has had five official state capitals after entering the Union in 1850: San Jose, Vallejo, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Sacramento. The capital was only temporarily located in San Francisco, however, due to major floods in the Sacramento River in 1862 that forced the government to relocate until it was safe to return the following year.
Los Angeles was never a capital; Benicia was!
When you touch a balloon and your hair stands on end, this is an example of static electricity, in which energy moves from one object to another. A “static shock” occurs when the built up energy discharges. Lightning is actually an (extreme) type of static electricity! It is incredibly rare for someone to survive a lightning strike, however—most people, about 90%, die.
Most people actually survive lightning strikes! About 70%.
In the book Holes by Louis Sachar, Stanley Yelnats sings the following song, passed down in his family for generations:
… "If only, if only, " the sparrow sighs
"The bark on the trees was as soft as the skies"
As the wolf waits below, hungry and lonely
He cries to the moo-oo-oon, "If only, if only"
… "If only, if only, " the WOODPECKER sighs
"The bark on the trees was as soft as the skies"
As the wolf waits below, hungry and lonely
He cries to the moo-oo-oon, "If only, if only"
Miss Gilbert has three dogs: A French bulldog named Maxwell, a Great Pyrenees mix named Jenny, and a golden retriever named Buffy.
Buffy was my childhood dog; I have a beagle named Rosie now!