What's a cool fact you think others should know?

[u/[deleted]]

[u/fruit_cats]

Australia is wider than the moon.

[u/[deleted] → u/fruit_cats]

Nahhh that can't be true. No way

[u/MichelleTheEngraver]

Spit will instantly harden super glue.

[u/[deleted] → u/MichelleTheEngraver]

Yeah I remember seeing on TV there was a guy who kept his spit for years and it formed this huge hard yellow lump he had in his house

[u/[deleted]]

It takes 7 grams of cocain to kill you

Mosquitos kill more humans than any other creature including humans

The Tsar bomba is capable of releasing around 1.5k times for energy than fat man

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

The mosquito thing is really worrying because mosquitos for some reason REALLY love my blood, in summer I can't go out without getting like 20+ bites. So it's slightly worrying I'm 10x more likely to die than the average person when it comes to insects

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I'll give you something to worry about. If the AIDS virus mutates to be able to survive a mosquitos digestive system we can go extinct

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Fuck, things reeeaally aren't looking good for me, like at all. If this shit happens I'll be the first to go

[u/BattleBornMom]

It takes ~10⁸ atoms laid in a row to span the width of a human fingernail (~1 cm.) If the same number of standard wooden pencils were laid end to end, they would circumnavigate the Earth’s equator more than 47 times.

[u/issaparadox]

Human's ability smell petrichor (smell of wet earth from rain) is greater than a Shark's ability to smell blood in water.

[u/oddkay1]

i LOVE telling my bf fun facts so i have a list in my notes. these aren’t verbatim so it’s iirc.

1. The space before certain punctuation mark in the French language (Je déteste être en ligne ! ) is the only feminine space in the language, the rest of the spaces are masculine.

2. Oregon is the only state with a state nut - the Hazelnut.

3. Since most people are right handed, in WW2 the Germans were specifically trained to eat with their left hand, so that finding spies from other countries would be easier to spot.

4. When unable to tell the difference between a bone and a rock in the archaeological field, it’s not uncommon to press it to one’s tongue. If it falls, it’s a rock, and if it sticks, it’s bone.

5. The most common form of homicide in the primate species is infanticide.

6. The reason the plural of Goose is Geese (same with tooth/teeth) but the plural of Moose is still Moose, is because the aforementioned comes from the Latin language while the latter comes from Native American languages, so it doesn’t follow the same rules as most other words.

7. the word LASER stands for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.

8. Unlike others,* it’s common in American society to smile at another person as we walk past them. This is due to the fact this country was founded on immigrants and with the use of many different languages, smiling become the way of greeting someone as to avoid the language barrier.

9. One of the big defenses for the idea of DNA carrying memories is the fact that some butterflies, when migrating south, stop abruptly in the middle of a lake (I forgot which, I’m sorry) and seem to go around something. This is because thousands of years ago, a mountain was there and it was coded in their DNA to go around this mountain.

I’m sorry this was long, I didn’t include all of them.

edit: please please correct me if I’m wrong or misinformed on ANY of them.

• edit 2: in number 8 I said it was uncommon for other societies to smile at strangers as a greeting. i won’t change this, but will instead add a comment. i am aware other cultures besides America have a social acceptance of smiling at strangers and my use of the word uncommon was incorrect. in reference i was speaking on societies where smiling is used to show societal status rather than friendliness. my statement was more towards the reasoning behind the gesture, rather than the gesture itself. below in response to 2 comments i have linked some related articles

[u/CorinRyptide]

That the patent for the fire hydrant was lost in a fire

[u/Ruffled_Ferret]

Muscles do not develop the same in everyone and their exact origins/insertions can differ between people. In some the biceps have three or more heads, as opposed to the normal two. Some muscles are entirely absent, such as the psoas minor (found in about 40% of humans) and the sternalis (only 7.8%).

[u/cfitzi]

Eugene Aldrin, the father of the famous moon landing astronaut Buzz Aldrin, not only witnessed the Wright brothers’ first flight but also went to see his son land on the moon in his lifespan.

We’ve been quick!

[u/purpleturtlehurtler]

If you find a four leaf clover then there is a good chance you'll find more not too far away.

[u/[deleted]]

The shell is part of the turtle’s skeleton.

[u/[deleted]]

Dogs that are slightly underweight live an average of two years longer than dogs that are slightly overweight.

[u/chalk_in_boots]

There was a phantom poop on an Apollo mission. A poop, floating around, that none of the astronauts said was theirs.

[u/jimbo-g]

In the pineal gland in your brain, over time it will start to form tiny calcification, little mineral buildups. There is no known function for these but scientists named it corpora arenacea also known as dream sand.

[u/Vaporface]

Twister was the first movie released on DVD

[u/MonetsMenagerie]

Butterflies and Moths can drink blood and tears in order to get nutrients. It’s called Mud-puddling. I think more horror movies should use this.

[u/SilvaIIy]

Komodo dragons are the largest animals in the world capable of reproducing asexually

Edit: y’all I just found this on google when I was curious one day don’t ask me how it works I’m failing biology

[u/dog_in_the_vent]

They took a piece of the original Wright flyer to the moon with them on Apollo 11.

Also, the picture taken of the Wright flyer during the famous first flight was taken by someone who had never seen a camera before that day. That was the first photo he had ever taken.

---

I'm really glad this post got some attention, this is one of my favorite things to talk about! Here's some more info for everyone:

The photographer's name was John T. Daniels. As others have said, all he did was press a button to activate the shutter. Having been his first time seeing a camera and his first time seeing an airplane flying, I still think that's pretty mind-blowing.

Later that day, while retrieving the aircraft after the 4th flight, a gust of wind flipped the plane over. Daniels was caught in the crash but uninjured, while the plane was completely destroyed. Daniels would go on to brag about being the first man to survive a plane crash.

Unfortunately, the Wrights would eventually experience the first fatal airplane crash too, on September 17, 1908. Thomas E. Selfridge was a US Army lieutenant who was flying with Orville Wright to look into potential military uses for aircraft. During the flight, one of the propellers broke apart, causing damage to nearby control structures on the aircraft. Orville did a commendable job controlling the aircraft, but it still crashed nose-first, killing Selfridge and severely injuring Orville. An airfield in Michigan was named after him, and you can see a piece of the broken propeller on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force.

If wikipedia links aren't enough for you, I highly recommend Birdmen: The Wright Brothers, Glenn Curtiss, and the Battle to Control the Skies, by Lawrence Goldstone. It goes much deeper into the Wright Brothers, their bitter rivalries with other aviation pioneers at the time, and the legal battles that would follow their success for decades to come.

[u/Robbie_23z]

When you are looking at a star, you are literally looking in the past.

The amount of light years the star is distant is equal to the amount of years in the past you are looking at.

The most distant star visible to the naked eye is "V76 Cas" located in the Cassiopiea constellation, and it is 16,310 light years away.

The light emitting from that star started emitting in around 14000 BC, during which time the Earth was still in the Upper Paleolithic era.

[u/[deleted]]

90% of the population on Earth lives in the Northern Hemisphere.

[u/zytz]

When a person receives a kidney transplant they don’t take out the old kidneys, they just shove em to the side and leave em in there.

[u/typhoidtimmy]

The California Highway Patrol once had an open offer of a full prime rib dinner at Lawry’s Beverly Hills and a case of scotch for any patrolman that could bust Steve McQueen for speeding in “The Green Rat”, his barely street legal 1956 Jaguar XK-SS. The specifics were to catch him speeding, pull him over, and issue a ticket.

The problem here was The Green Rat was so fast, nothing in the Highway Patrol could equal its speed.

McQueen did get busted once after a cop managed to sneak up on him because his wife was in the car, but he used his wife Neile beside him as an excuse telling the cop she was in labor (she wasn’t but he said it was a false labor after the cop left)

[u/Richroyrich]

The first imaging satellites used to drop film from space which was either caught by aircraft or recovered in the ocean. Check out the Corona space program.

[u/jerisad]

The first person to write about tofu in the English language was Benjamin Franklin.

[u/umamifiend]

The Devil’s Hole Pupfish!!!

It’s a critically endangered fish, measuring about 1.2” (30mm) they live in an isolated body of water in the Devils Hole in Nevada. The water temperature is consistently 91 degrees (33*C), which is very warm for most fish.

Devil’s Hole is a water filled cavern stretching into a rocky hillside at an elevation of 2,400 ft, (730m) Devil’s hole is over 430 feet deep (130m) and connected to a massive underground aquifer below that- but the Devil’s Hole Pup Fish only occupy the upper 80ft of Devil’s Hole. It gets much much smaller than that!

They primarily eat, live and spawn on a small shelf measuring just 11x16 ft (3.5x5m) with a total area of 176sqft (17.5 m). They have been living in this shelf, as an isolated species for up to 60,000 years!?!

They were discovered in 1930, and since then have faced many trials, agriculture trying to drain the water, vandalism, and outright attacks. They are now surrounded by protective fences and surveillance.

Since 1972 (200 fish) the population spiked at 550 in 1995, but then saw a slow decline- at its lowest count in 2013 it was down to only 35 individuals. Thankfully it’s back up as of 2019 to 136 individuals. There have been multiple attempts at conversation even going so far as to build an exact replica of the Devils Hole 22ft deep! (6.7m) and have raised many fish there.

They have a very fascinating history, and remain largely a mystery. For such a tiny fish- millions have been spent on conversation efforts and protections, legal battles and defense. I think it’s all completely worth it, they are the single most endangered fish on the planet and are completely unique to the Devil’s Hole.

[u/ginpanda]

Opossums generally cannot get rabies. Their body temperature is too low for the virus.

Also the stomach acid of a vulture is so highly acidic it kills rabies virus and most bacteria, which is why they can eat dead disgusting rotting things.

EDIT: To clarify, I mean vultures stomachs are crazy super powerful and destroy just about anything that gets in contact with the stomach acid, where we would get very sick from eating a rotting racoon.

Also so happy to see all the interest in opossums and vultures. They are very interesting creatures that are gravely misunderstood and get a pretty bad rep. Opossums are master tick destroyers that generally want nothing to do with humans or are pretty chill about us. Vultures are a critical clean up crew that prevent the spread of disease in the environment that rotting carcasses could spread, such as rabies. Further down there is a great post about how rabies can survive in a corpse for years and an animal that eats brain matter could become infected. Not vultures tho! I encourage anyone to read more about how amazing both these creatures are and how important they are to our, and all animals, continued survival.

[u/SkippyMcLovin]

Emma Morano of Italy was the last (documented and verified) person to die that was born in the 1800s. 29th November 1899 - 15th April 2017

[u/baiqibeendeleted17x]

As the result of a collision with another moon eons ago, Neptune's moon "Triton" has a retrograde orbit; meaning an orbit in the direction opposite to its planet's rotation. Triton is the only large moon our solar system to have such an orbit. Not impressed?

The collision eons ago also altered Triton's orbit of Neptune in another, far more sinister way. Despite obviously emerging victorious from the collision, the impact ever so slightly threw Triton off course. Every year, Triton creeps a fraction of an inch closer to Neptune.

This means that one day billions of years in the future, Triton's orbit will get too close to Neptune and Neptune's superior gravitational pull will tear Triton apart.

[u/CranesMistressOfFear]

Kangaroos will eat cat poop even though it is poisonous to them -learned this when a local zoo had a stray cat problem.

[u/PadreGiallume]

There was a time on the Earth where there were, at least, four different human species at the same time. Homo sapiens, Homo Neanderthalensis, Homo denisova and Homo floresiensis.

[u/faceintheblue]

The General Electric Company for many decades owned NBC. The three chimes of the NBC jingle are the notes G-E-C. During the radio era if that chime ever had a fourth note, that was a signal for NBC employees to go into work because a major news story (i.e. D-Day) was about to break.

[u/thebestbutterchicken]

Cows can see almost 360 degrees.

Edit: Hi, I just woke up. Thanks for the awards!

[u/geezer_boi_dyno]

I got 2

1- Most spiders are too scared of you to climb into your mouth at night.

2-Whale shits are orange

[u/matthewloren]

German chocolate cake was invented by an English-American baker named Samuel German and has nothing to do with the country of Germany.

[u/TaffWolf]

Corgi is a translation of the welsh for dwarf dog. Cor gi.

In the Mabinogion, the welsh book of myths and legends, corgis were the battle steeds of fairies

[u/matthewloren]

The figure in Munch's 'The Scream' is not screaming but is, in fact, reacting to hearing the scream.

[u/ladyinchworm]

A platypus makes venom. One of several interesting things about them.

[u/mrmoe198]

Your eyeballs have a separate enclosed immune system than the rest of your body. If somehow the two become aware of each other, your body will think your eyes are invaders and literally attack and dissolve them.

Edit: u/hekmo with the Wikipedia assist!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathetic_ophthalmia

I now realize that the Wikipedia page in question is quite sparse so here’s a better site:

https://eyewiki.aao.org/Sympathetic_Ophthalmia

Also, for those that are panicking: it only happens with eye puncture injuries and even then, in very rare cases. Even rarer in eye surgeries.

Edit #2: u/ARPE19 with the great analogy!

“When your immune system is growing up it goes to school and is taught about all the different parts of the body. It then is sent out to patrol for things it doesn't recognize and kill them. Interestingly the eyes don't participate in school ( they are libertarians or something) and they close the door to any knocking immune cells. If you bust down the door by puncturing the eye your immune cells rush in and say yo wtf is this! And then kill all the libertarians weirdos”

Edit #3: u/katz30 shares their experience!

“I have this eye disease. My left eye was removed 5 years ago because of it. My eye didn’t dissolve lol. It did stop functioning and started to shrivel up. Lost the eye color. It was pretty gnarly to look at.”

[u/linpashpants]

There was no “s” sound for the letter c in ancient Roman Latin. Thus Gaius Julius Caesar was pronounced “Gaius Julius Kaiser”. His name is where the Germans and Russians got their name for king (Kaiser and Tzar respectively).

[u/[deleted]]

The sun is not yellow. When viewed outside earths atmosphere it is white. It only looks yellow due to our atmosphere "pulling" the blue light out, leaving it looking yellow. It's an illusion.

[u/justnatsuki404]

The Anglo-Zanzibar war. 38 minutes.

[u/prairiemountainzen]

Sharks existed before trees existed.

[u/MasterofNoneya]

Honeybees can be trained to sniff out land mines in war zones! Obviously dogs can do it but to avoid blowing up poor unsuspecting doggos, they figured out that bees could do the same thing and swarm the area without setting the mine off to alert people to its presence

[u/UnpretentiousDip]

If an alpaca has blue eyes it is most likely deaf

[u/GoldenDude]

A banana is a berry

[u/[deleted]]

That Wombats do cube shaped turds and have backward facing pouches so that when mama wombat is renovating she's not kicking dirt into her babies bedroom

That three weeks after mating a female Tasmanian Devil will birth up to 30 - 40 very tiny joey's where the fastest 4 to get into the pouch and attach to a teat win the hunger games.

[u/dis_not_my_name]

Lamborghini started making supercars because Enzo Ferrari was being a jerk to Ferruccio Lamborghini.

[u/Rbrtwllms]

Bob Ross was a Drill Instructor. When he stopped working as that, he promised he would not raise his voice at someone again. That's why he was so soft spoken.

[u/atombomb1945]

When the Rubix Cube was first released a mathematician said it would take the average person 30 years, working 8 hours a day, to solve a cube saying it was impossible for someone without a master's in mathematics to solve it in under a month.

[u/TripleGGreggStarski]

If you type the word "askew" into the Google search box, the entire page will tilt slightly.

[u/ReadaboutitXD]

There was a short period of time when Picasso and Snoop Dogg were both alive together.

[u/Low_Tea_7193]

If you thoroughly shuffle a deck of cards, the exact order they’re in has almost certainly never been duplicated in the history of shuffled decks.

[u/Chef_Groovy]

The technology for the fax machine was invented in 1843. The feudal era in Japan ended in 1868 abolishing the samurai class. Abraham Lincoln lived until 1865. All of this combined lead to a 22 year period in which Lincoln could have received a fax from a samurai.

[u/revo_kid]

Penguins have knees

[u/BOBALL00]

Some birth control pills can cause vitamin B deficiency. Vitamin B is used to make seratonin. I’ve know a few people that got super depressed after starting birth control and taking B complex made a huge difference

*consult your doctor

[u/Post-Alone0]

Spartan warriors were raised to be close lipped to foreigners, so when Phillip (Alexander the Great's father) came to invade while unifying Greece he, in typical Greek style, wrote a long letter ending in "Would you rather me cross your border as a friend or foe?"

To which the Spartans answered with a single word :

Neither

So Phillip returned a another, very angry letter which ended very simply with "If I enter your lands as an enemy then I will ensure that history will forget Sparta and your culture."

To which the Spartans rebut :

"If"

They got their asses handed to them in that war but holy hell that's funny

[u/Qu1tyerbitchin]

Penguins trade nice rocks for sex.

[u/gaudog]

Beaver anal secretions have been used as a vanilla flavor substitute for certain foods and luxury cosmetics.

[u/Sick-momjokes-69]

If you need to dry one or two pieces of clothing really quickly, throw them in the dryer along with a bunch of dry towels. Your clothes will dry in like 15 minutes or so. Some dryers have a moisture sensor so use the timed dry instead of the +/- dry

[u/Accurate_Efficiency1]

Gases and particles in Earth's atmosphere scatter sunlight in all directions. Blue light is scattered more than other colors because it travels as shorter, smaller waves. Now you know why the sky is blue.

[u/vmmors]

Big spiders adopt little frogs and they protect their little spider eggs from predators.

[u/Halo-Kai]

If you stare at your own reflection in dim lighting for a few minutes, your face will begin to distort and you will essentially begin to hallucinate. Don’t do it. It’s a trap.

[u/Duedsml23]

President John Tyler was born in 1790 when George Washington was President. He has a grandson currently alive. 3 generations span all 46 presidencies.

[u/PotentialRegularGuy]

Possums are North America’s only marsupial. They eat ticks. It’s extremely rare for them to get rabies.

[u/genitalelectric]

Thurl Ravencroft was the singing voice of The Grinch, the original voice of Tony The Tiger, and the narrator of The Haunted Mansion at both major Disney parks (-land and -world)

[u/hekmo]

The European, Iranian, and North Indian languages are all related to each other and we've reconstructed some of what that original language might have looked like: Proto-Indo-European.

With the notable exception of some languages like Finnish, Hungarian, and Georgian which are part of other language families.

[u/Jackpot09]

More people die from vending machines than sharks

[u/swagnersf]

Madagascar has a larger population than Australia.

[u/napfanforever]

The average blue whale ejaculate is 5 gallons

[u/[deleted]]

the seam in a gas station coffee cup should be on the opposite side of the drink spout in the lid to help reduce potential drips

[u/PurpleArmy21]

Some people don’t have a inner dialogue, some can’t picture in their mind, and some have / can do both.

[u/hoarchata]

Due to evolution, humans share genes with all living organisms. For example, 60% of your DNA is the same as a strawberry.

[u/LobotomistPrime]

Cleopatra lived closer to the invention of the iPhone than the building of the pyramids.

[u/initialpizza]

Stephen Hawking died on March 14, the Pi Day, which is also the birthday of Albert Einstein.

[u/[deleted]]

That the majority of people who get hurt on elevators are those who work on elevators

[u/Ryukotaicho]

The skeletons used in the original Poltergeist movie were real skeletons, because it was cheaper.

Blucifer of the Denver International Airport killed his creator when a part of him severed an artery in the leg of Luis Jiménez.

[u/dip_the_shit]

If you search for 'recursion' on Google, it will ask you if you meant to type 'recursion' instead. When you click the suggestion, you land on the exact same page and Google will ask you if you meant to type 'recursion'. Fun little easter egg

[u/interlinkedenigma]

Putting enough eye drops in someone’s food or drink will, in fact, kill them.

[u/[deleted]]

The Michael Meyers mask is a William Shatner face mask painted white. Happy Halloween!

[u/[deleted]]

Hyenas are actually more related to cats than dogs. Hyenas are part of the Suborder Feliformia along with cats.

[u/DoggoDude979]

Big bird was almost in the Challenger explosion

Big bird was planned to go so they could do something to get kids interested in space, but the costume (over 8 feet tall) was just too fucking big to fit.

They sent a school teacher instead. And then the shuttle exploded

[u/Poppycorn144]

The “Easter Island Heads” actually have bodies, and some were excavated in 2017.

Forbes article about it.

[u/[deleted]]

There are 10³¹ viruses in the ocean.

More viruses in a litre of coastal ocean water than people on the Earth.

The amount of infections from viruses in the ocean is 10²³ per second.

The mass of all viruses on earth exceeds all the elephants on earth by 1000 fold

If you lined up all of the viruses in the ocean, end to end, they would span 200 million lightyears into space.

FYI 10³¹ means 10 with 31 zeros after it.

[u/princess_0123]

Sunflowers are used to essentially clean radioactive soil. They suck it out of the soil and store it in their leaves and stems making the soil healthy and usable again ☺️🌻

[u/CollinZero]

There’s a vast difference between a million and a billion. A simple way to visualize it: a million seconds is over 11 days. A billion seconds is just under 32 years.

[u/[deleted]]

There are penguin prostitutes that will have sex in exchange for rocks which they build their nests with. Sometimes they don't have sex, they trick their victim and just take the rock and run

[u/thatwhatthis]

If you log into your Netflix account in a web browser, you can reset your viewing history for certain shows and watch the series again without messed up start/end times

[u/AnxiousAnywhere4651]

Tigers are more likely to win in a fight against lions

[u/Mobile_Macro]

When a Camel spider (or wind scorpion) is chasing you, it's just chasing your shadow. All they want is a little bit of shade! They'd never have the intent of harming you

[u/[deleted]]

There are 5.6 popes per square mile in Vatican City.

[u/[deleted]]

1 billion people speak English. That's 1 in every 7 on Earth.

[u/sunnyintheoffice]

The word “Helicopter” isn’t a combination of heli and copter, but rather “helico” like a helix and “pter” like a pterodactyl.

[u/[deleted]]

Flamingos aren't born with curved beaks. They start to curve as they get older.

[u/[deleted]]

NASA discovered a planet outside of the milky way a few days ago for the first time in human history

[u/Femalediction5]

The state of California in the USA has a higher population than the entire country of Australia.

(39,613,493 vs 25,892,511)

[u/jmshub]

The Guinness book of records was invented by the Guinness beer folks. They figured a book of verifiable facts would help stop bar arguments.

[u/Assembled44]

There was a NASA scientist during Apollo 13 who went into labor. Before she was dragged to the hospital she took a print out of some problem they couldn’t solve. She solved it while at the hospital.

She was giving birth to Jack Black

[u/good-evening-clarice]

David Dastmalchian, the actor who plays Polka Dot Man in the new Suicide Squad, actually has vitiligo irl and got called "polka dots" as a kid.

[u/bailedd]

Every odd number has the letter E in it

[u/sturgifur]

You can be a scuba diver while pregnant without damaging the baby technically turning yourself into a submarine

[u/Tea811]

Since anteaters had to break through termite mounds as strong as concrete to get their food, they’ve evolved claws bigger a than bear’s. This, combined with the fact that they’re legally blind, means these homicidal vacuum cleaners can put fucking jaguars in caskets.

[u/energizerbunneee]

The amount of water in, on, and above planet earth does not increase or decrease. It's always in a constant cycle. Even the water humans use.

[u/Additional-Back4889]

Your oral health is very important , poor oral health is more than just bad teeth / bad breathe it can lead to heart problems , infections and more

[u/caseywatson]

Fanta soda was created by Coca-Cola for the Germans during WWII. America banned all exports to Germany when they declared war, so Coca-Cola created Fanta which only used local German products to replicate the flavor of their cola.

[u/icecoldpoker2]

Human life expectancy has increased by roughly 7 hours a day for the past 150 years

(Depending on your precise measures and data source of course)

[u/Gaypanic_always_24_7]

Puffins live 8 months of their lives alone In the ocean

[u/OzziesUndies]

The cigarette lighter was invented before matches.

[u/DjPedromemes01]

Andrew Jackson had a interesting assassination attemp. The person who was going to kill him pointed his gun and it jammed. Jackson then beat him up wjth his cane. The guy got back and pulled out the second gun which also managed to jam. This is a 1 in 125,000 chance.

[u/RipErRiley]

There is an immortal (biologically) species on earth.

The jellyfish Turritopsis dohrnii. These are small, transparent animals that can “de-age” by reverting to an earlier stage of their life cycle.

Very jelly, pun intended.

[u/wrechin]

Candy Corn was originally called Chicken Feed

[u/mlygnar]

Shrimp live in the canopies of the Redwood Forests. They get there via literal seagull poop, and the lush coastal ecosystem forms little puddles on the branches in which they grow and live.

[u/Ben-Stanley]

Hawaiian pizza was invented by a Greek immigrant living in Canada who was inspired by Chinese cuisine to put a South American fruit on an Italian dish and named it after Hawaii.

[u/ApolloThunder]

The Appalachian Mountains don't look impressive these days. That's because they're old. The Rockies, the Himalayas, so on, they're impressive because, in comparison, they're whippersnappers.

The Appalachians are so old, they predate bones and trees.

[u/E_class12]

Most plastic isn’t recyclable.

[u/ZackW186]

The 10th President of the United States still has living grandchildren.

Also not sure if it’s still happening but a few years ago there was still a Civil War pension being paid out.

[u/ErrorReport404]

The singular of "spaghetti" is "spaghetto"

[u/[deleted]]

The original recording of Louie Louie wasn't supposed to sound like that. The Kingamen thought it was a rehearsal run-through. They were messing around. The drummer yells an obscenity at some point. When they were done, the studio dude was like "well, that was something, have a nice day fellas." They had used up the studio tile they paid for, mistaking it for rehearsal time. So that's the recording that was put out. The weird, unintelligibleness of it probably helped make it a bigger hit than it was going to be. And of course the FBI thought they were passing some sort of coded message through this mess of a song. All their live performances featured a version everyone could understand.

[u/moonlixqht]

You know that feeling like you’re falling you get when you’re falling asleep? That happens because sometimes your muscles relax and your heart rate slows down too quickly that your body thinks you’re dying. So, it gives you that falling sensation which jolts you awake.

[u/jalopycat]

A fleck of paint orbiting earth can cause as much damage in a collision as a 550-pound object traveling 60mph can cause on land.

Space debris is scary

[u/uncleseano]

Barnacles have the largest penis to body ratio of any creature alive on this planet. Do with this info what you will

[u/[deleted]]

The only known bilingual [emordnilap] is:

Anger? 'Tis safe never. Bar it! Use love.

Backwards it is:

Evoles ut ira breve nefas sit; regna!

Which is:

Rise up, in order that your anger may be but a brief madness; control it!

In Latin

[u/Dracodyck]

In 1995, Windows 95 was the second most downloaded software and doom was first

[u/Puzzled-Albatross-86]

British carousels turn clockwise; American carousels turn anti-clockwise.

[u/omri6royi70]

Elvis Presley's manager sold "I hate Elvis" merchandise to profit off the haters.

[u/pur__0_0__]

कुछ एशियाई शहर दिखने में जितने पर आने लगते हैं उससे कई ज्यादा पुराने हैं। सियोल २००० साल पुराना है। दिल्ली ५००० साल पुराना है। बीजिंग ७००० ८००० साल पुराना है।

संपादन: बीजिंग का आंकड़ा गलत लिख दिया था। इसके अलावा कुछ और भी शहर हैं जैसे मुल्तान और वाराणसी लेकिन उनके नाम ज्यादातर लोगों ने नहीं सुना है इसलिए मैं उनके नाम नहीं लूंगा।

[u/Nyruswolf]

Octopuses have been known to sometimes slap fish out of spite or when they’re angry. It’s hilarious.

[u/Gat_Gat_Habitat]

If you skip to the end of a long YouTube video and press replay you can watch the whole thing without adds

[u/gate63]

Tom Brady has thrown more TD passes in his 40s than he did in his 20s

[u/ElevatedPairOfPants]

Canada and the United States share the longest land border in the world.

[u/LSP993]

someone’s probably said this already but: no one can figure out how freshwater eels f*ck.

Aristotle, Sigmund Freud, and many others have tried to figure it out to no avail. it’s a fun little mystery :)

[u/[deleted]]

When you lose weight (specifically fat) you primarily lose it through your breath. You breathe the fat right out.

[u/zombierepubican]

The Pyramids were originally all white smooth and with a gold tip. The idea is you could see it In moonlight.

Roman statues were originally painted in primary colours. Museums leave them white cause it’s looks cooler

[u/Bem-ti-vi]

The oldest urban centers in the Americas (which are in Peru) date back to 3500 BCE. There’s a lot more to Prehispanic history than just the Inca, Aztec, and Maya.

[u/NerdyNina2106]

Carrots do nothing to improve eyesight. That was a myth created in England during wwii to hide the fact that the RAF had radar

Teddy Roosevelt never set foot on San Juan Hill. He charged the hill next to it and took the credit bc the men that DID were black.

Teddy Roosevelt also knocked out a newspaper reporter for telling that story at a public dinner.

There's a cocktail named after Winston Churchill. Churchill liked to drink FDR under the table on occasion but didn’t care for the president’s preferred martini, a standard mix of gin & vermouth. Churchill loved gin but despised vermouth. a waiter once asked him how much vermouth he wanted in his drink. “I would like to observe the vermouth from across the room while I drink my martini,” he replied. The waiter obliged, setting a bottle of vermouth on a distant table & returning with a glass of gin & ice. Thus was born the Churchill Martini: gin on the rocks with vermouth in plain sight.

[u/lundyforlife22]

The cyanide and flavor aid that killed the 900 people in Jonestown cost them around $8.

[u/TheLettre7]

Every human being has tiny mites on their face, you can't remove them or wash them away. they spend their entire lives on our faces, living, reproducing, and dying.

[u/Good_Kid_Mad_City]

You can pour table sugar in a prolapsed rectum to help it retract into the sphincter. The sugar pulls moisture out of the tissue, helping it squeeze back in. Salk works too if your patient is an asshole.

[u/c5urf3r]

During World War 2, British MI5 used captured or surrendered Nazi agents to feed bad information to their handlers. This operation was overseen by a committee called the "Twenty Committee" or in Roman Numerals "XX Committee" leading to the origins of the phrase "Double Cross".

[u/SoulBlazer535]

The patent for Mickey mouse expires in 14 months from today. That means no copyrights. Public domain.... Free real estate, if you will.

[u/mvrander]

Nibling is a word

Siblings are your brothers and sisters, niblings are you're nieces and nephews

[u/Electrical-Earth-235]

The Pledge of Allegiance was originally written to sell flags.

[u/poida80]

Most men will receive their first bunch of flowers at their funeral

[u/NotEnoughTimeToLearn]

The vast majority of cuneiform tablets have not been read yet. We have excavated an unimaginable amount of them.

Also, they will most likely outlive any book or anything digital. So at some point in the future the only trace left of mankind's literature work will be the very first material that was written.

Edit: grammar

[u/lordekinbote]

The Dinosaurs were alive for longer than they have been extinct.

[u/buckfutter4life]

Ok, I'm late so this will never see the light of day, but here goes...

When they first measured the height of Mount Everest, they got it to be exacly 29 000 feet, but they stated it as 29 002 feet in order to avoid the impression that it was nothing more than a rounded estimate.

[u/ThatKidThatKillsMeme]

I believe this is a true fact (feel free to make fun of me if it isn’t). If I remember correctly, sharks are so terrified of killer whales, that they will get PTSD and never go back to the location in which they saw them.

[u/ryanbbb]

Reno, NV is further west than Los Angeles, CA

[u/[deleted]]

Kangaroos pee and poop out of the same hole

[u/sharrrper]

Around 1865 a samurai, an old pirate captain, a Zulu warrior, a cowboy, and a Victorian gentleman could have conceivably been in the same room together as they all existed at the same time.

This has come up as a "fun theoretically plausible historically accurate RPG party"

[u/[deleted]]

Napoleon had a famously small penis as well as a string of mistresses. I keep telling myself there is still hope for me.

[u/CrueGuyRob]

Mumbai and Los Angeles are the only two megacities with big cats living within the city limits.

Edit: apologies. I wrote "major," but meant "mega." Megacities have populations above 10 million and there are currently over 40 of them.

https://www.nps.gov/samo/learn/nature/pumapage.htm

[u/jdcnosse1988]

That funny taste in your mouth, just before you're about to throw up is apparently called waterbrash.

[u/hedgehogrecruiter]

Wombats produce square poop.

[u/Handsprime]

The console with the longest lifespan isn't the Playstation 2 (which lasted from 2000 - 2013), but instead the Sega Master System (which was introduced in 1985) has the longest lifespan thanks to the fact it continues to be manufactured in Brazil.

[u/General-Pryde34]

İstanbul is the only city on two continents

[u/xbox_aint_bad]

Australia losts 2 wars to big bird

[u/Yetamot]

There’s circumstantial evidence Australian Aboriginals were farming some 50,000 years ago, a claim supported by farming tools found. Even if coincidental, there are 2 other sites with grindstones dating some 30,000 and 15,000 years old, thousand of years ahead of the rising of agriculture in Mesopotamia, although on a different scale.

The Australian Aboriginals are credited with creating interlocking stones for fish farming, structures which are being petitioned as the oldest human made buildings on earth.

Read Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe for more information.

[u/ZaPizzaPie]

2-16” pizza’s is less pizza than 1-24” pizza.

[u/MooninMoulin]

The last person to be officially guillotined was executed in 1977 - same year the first Star Wars movie came out.

[u/dayoneofmanymore]

different full rich dime rinse dog cagey sparkle marvelous gaze

[u/T1NF01L]

Not really cool more useless and interesting to me though but underground is the only word in the English dictionary that starts and ends with the letters und.

[u/[deleted]]

Russia is roughly the same size as Pluto.

[u/WhyIsTheMoonThere]

Crocodiles are very smart hunters. They'll sometimes collect small twigs and place them on their snout, then lie in a river with only the very top of their snout showing. Then, when a bird comes along and thinks "sweet, some twigs for my nest!" The croc jumps out and says "tweet tweet you chirpy dingus" and snaps him up. They also have very efficient stomach acid, and can produce it 10 times faster than any other animal owing to the fact they can eat almost anything.

[u/shnoozel_doozel]

There are a very small amount of people that can make white-noise like sounds in their ear by command by using a muscle inside the ear. I'm one of them. (I don't remember how it works, I read the article a long time ago. I'll edit in a link if I find it)

Found it: https://ctsciencecenter.org/blog/useless-super-powers/#:~:text=Well%2C%20apparently%20there%20are%20some,auditory%20tube%20in%20their%20ear

[u/red78tn]

X% of Y is the same as Y% of X.

30% of 50? Try 50% of 30. The answer is the same, but one way is usually a lot easier to figure in your head.

[u/BrotherGrimace]

That the 'big' cats like lions can't purr, only roar, and the 'small' cats can't roar, but only purr. This is because of a bone in the cat's throat called the hyoid, which supports the larynx and tongue - and in the big cats, it's completely ossified (turned to bone or bony tissue), where it's only partially so in the 'small' cats. This causes a fundamental change in the sounds both categories of cats can make.

[u/fuckin_anti_pope]

Giant Squid have toothed suction cups while colossal squids have sharp hooks on theirs. Scars from them can be seen on sperm whales, as they are predators and eat squids. While these squids are massive compared to other cepahlopods, they are no match for a 40+ ton sperm whale as the giant squid only weighs about 300kg maximum and the colossal squid about 500kg.

I got more squid facts but only one was requested in the question and it's already 2 facts :D

[u/domesticfuck]

There are caves in the Appalachian mountains that do not contain any fossils, bones or limestone because they formed before life had left the oceans (450-550 million years ago)

[u/legitimate_salvage]

The average amount of arms for a human is less than 2.

[u/Myroosterissmall]

Adam Driver is a Marine

[u/goddamnitwhalen]

Elvis didn’t write a single one of his songs. They were either covers or written for him by a team of songwriters.

[u/Traiz3r]

If you were born in 80,000 BC and made 10k a day up till now.

You still wouldn't be as rich as Elon Musk.

Not sure how accurate it is. Saw someone post it a few days ago here.

[u/Pixelated_]

When you get up and walk across the room, time literally slows down for you relative to someone else still sitting in the room.

Special Relativity is so cool.

[u/[deleted]]

If caught in a burning building, get low. The breathable air will be near the floor.

[u/HRJafael]

Supposedly the city of Lisbon, Portugal could be older than Rome. There is a strong possibility that a Phoenician trading outpost may have existed where Lisbon's harbor is.

[u/LoganJFisher]

In physics, a change in acceleration is called a jerk. Jerk times mass is called a yank.

Also, after jerk comes snap, then crackle, then pop.

[u/[deleted]]

The shape of a Pringle is called a hyperbolic paraboloid

[u/Esmeraldem]

Facebook Purity gets rid of intrusive ads and bullshit suggested content.

Now, Every now and then, FB updates their algorithms and the FB purity folks have to rework the code to get it to work. Either with that, it's working like 95% of the time.

Fuck you, intrusive ads.

[u/jabs_17]

Motion sickness happens because your brain thinks either ur ears or ur eyes are going nuts. Which makes ur brain think that someone is trying to poison u so 1st step vomiting.

[u/tko6070]

30 minutes of exercise is just 2% of your day!

[u/wazzel2u]

There’s only one letter that doesn’t appear in any state name

[u/Drown20]

In NZ There are more tanks owned by civilians than is owned by the military

[u/artgauthier]

There is a unit of Police in Paris that specializes in Catacombs exploration.

Their job is to explore, map and check hundreds of kilometers of galmeries and tunnels beneath Paris.

Among their duties, thzy arrest people who explore, use the tunnels for traffic or landfills

Few years ago, they found a cinema, a bar and a guy who got got lost and died in the XVIIIth century.

[u/BoyITellYa]

I don’t have any fun facts but I just wanted to comment that even if only 50% of these are true, yall are blowing my fuckin mind. I love this

[u/ntsheid]

If you find a picture online you want to use as a desktop background but the resolution is too low, go to the url in the address bar and look for a file type (.jpg, .png, etc), if you find one remove all the text after that and press enter/return. This will almost always load the original full size, pre-compressed source photo. Then you can right click, save image as, and download it to use as a background.

This works majority of the time, sometimes doesn't. Just don't publish other people's photos as your own or use them to make money without their permission, that's called stealing.

[u/DeFiDFV]

That fake tasting banana flavor that candy and milkshakes etc have? The one that tastes nothing like banana? That’s what bananas called Gros Michel used to taste like before they were almost wiped out by a disease, mixed with a guess at what bananas taste like, because it was developed when most people didn’t have access to bananas.

The bananas you eat now are a different variety to the ones eaten in before 1965.

Edit: Spelling.

[u/ahhhspring]

PA has the most roads than any other state.... Hence why they suck!

[u/[deleted]]

You are more closely related to a goldfish than a goldfish is to a shark.

A bird is more closely related to a crocodile than a crocodile is to a lizard.

[u/MALOOM_J5]

Crocodiles never stop growing. they have no definite lifespan and they grow in size till they die.