1. Cheetos exist because of the U.S. military. It needed a new way to ship and store cheese during World War Two, and a USDA scientist invented cheese powder.
Then after the war, manufacturers including the Frito Company bought the leftover powder and came up with new ways to use it. Cheetos were the first.
2. “National Lampoon’s Vacation” gets credit for killing the station wagon. After the movie came out, sales plummeted and the minivan almost immediately became the most popular family car.
3. Baskin-Robbins was almost Robbins-Baskin. They were brothers-in-law . . . Burton Baskin was married to Irv Robbins’ sister Shirley. They each had ice cream shops, decided to merge in 1948, and flipped a coin to see whose name would go first.
4. “Tradition” and “treason” both come from the same Latin word, tradere, which means “handing over.”
5. Only one scene in the movie “Fargo” is set in the city of Fargo, North Dakota . . . and no scenes were actually filmed there.
(Wired / Mental Floss / Los Angeles Times / Mental Floss / The Atlantic)
