Earth is no stranger to crazy things. I mean, it’s inhabited by humans, the most bizarre creatures ever, despite how normal we may look! Humans remain mysterious, even though we’ve been studying ourselves and the world for thousands of years.
And it’s not like we haven’t made any progress or found out tons of interesting facts about our planet, of course. It’s just that there are too many things to dive into and explore! Like, did you know that vending machines kill more people than sharks? Or that men have a 1 in 200 chance of being related to Genghis Khan? Or again, that the longest interval between the birth of twins is 87 days?
Yeah, there’s a lot of stuff going on around the globe, and here at Bored Panda we have a weird obsession for learning about insane coincidences and random events happening in this cool, cool world. If you’re like us, you’ll be mesmerized by the amazing facts we’ve collected on this list! Go on, read them and let your brain get tickled for good.
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A large percentage of the budget for Monty Python and the Holy Grail was donated by members of Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd.
Also true: Beatle George Harrison saved "Monty Python's Life of Brian" with an influx of 2 million pounds after the chairman of EMI shut down the project.
Boring, Oregon, and Dull, Scotland, have been sister cities since 2012.
In a 2008 survey, 58% of British teenagers thought Sherlock Holmes was a real person, while 23% thought Winston Churchill was not.
Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than all of the Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined.
Just before the Nazis invaded Paris, H.A. and Margret Rey fled on bicycles. They were carrying the manuscript for Curious George.
Along with the five traditional senses of sound, sight, touch, smell and taste, humans have 15 “other senses.” These include balance, temperature, pain and time as well as internal senses for suffocation, thirst, and fullness.
The "most typical human" is right-handed, makes less than $12,000 per year, has a mobile phone, and doesn't have a bank account.
A TI-83 calculator has six times more processing power than the computer that landed Apollo 11 on the moon.
Vending machines kill 4 times as many people as sharks per year.
In the mid-1980s, Fergie of The Black Eyed Peas was the voice of Charlie Brown's sister Sally.
Marie Curie is the only person to earn a Nobel prize in two different sciences.
Her name was Skłodowska-Curie, not just Curie. She was born in Warsaw, Poland and lived there until the age of 24, when she moved to Paris to study there.
Machine-spun Cotton Candy was invented by a dentist.
More people in the world currently suffer from obesity than from hunger.
You replace every particle in your body every seven years. You are literally not the same person you were 7 years ago.
All the ants on Earth weigh about as much as all the humans.
The average four year-old child asks over three hundred questions a day.
The best place in the world to see rainbows is in Hawaii.
Airplane food isn't very tasty because our sense of smell and taste decrease by around 30 percent during flights.
The delegates who attended the Constitutional Convention spent much of their time getting drunk. One surviving document is a bill for a party on September 15th, 1787, two days before the signing of the Constitution. Items on the bill were: 54 bottles of Madeira, 60 bottles of Claret, 8 bottles of whiskey, 8 bottles of cider, 12 bottles of beer, and 7 bowls of alcoholic punch. All of this for 55 people.
Starfish can re-grow their arms. In fact, a single arm can regenerate a whole body.
Multiple "Marlboro Men" have died from lung cancer.
Odd fact: 100 years ago, Marlboros were marketed to women. The slogan was "ivory tips protect the lips." Men refused to buy the cigarettes, so the company wooed them back with images of a rugged cowboy alone on the range.
Cookie Monster's real name is Sid.
I didn't know this. Apparently this was revealed in the 2004 song "The First Time Me Eat Cookie," 35 years after the birth of Sesame Street.
Humans are just one of the estimated 8.7 million species on Earth.
And, as Mark Twain said, we're the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.
If "The Simpsons" aged normally, Bart would now be older than Marge was in the first season.
Neptune was the first planet to get its existence predicted by calculations before it was actually seen by a telescope.
Uranus was discovered in 1781, but it’s orbit didn’t make sense, so they started looking for another planet. Neptune was found in 1846, it’s approximate location predicted ahead of time. Fun fact! At the time Neptune was discovered, asteroids Ceres (1801) and Pallas (1802) were considered planets, and were only demoted as the real nature of the asteroid belt because apparent. Pluto is not the first to get the boot.
The world wastes about 1 billion metric tons of food each year.
While working on Pac-Man, video game designer Toru Iwatani was allegedly inspired by the shape of a pizza with one slice removed.
Sounds like he had an all-nighter at the office. Does anybody know what choices he rejected? And by the way: https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/GameOn/pac-man-10-secrets/story?id=13084900
There are more atoms in a single glass of water than glasses of water in all the oceans of the Earth.
I'd really like to thank the person that did the math for this. Lol
Mount Everest is bigger now than the last time it was measured.
I think that is because the Indian subcontinent is still moving and pushing against the rest of Asia. So the mountain is being squeezed upwards as it is located along the intersection between the 2 land masses
New creatures have been found in deep-sea volcanoes.
The average adult human has one to three kilograms of bacteria in their body.
You're more likely to become the President than you are to win the lottery.
The longest music piece in the world is being performed in the city of Halberstadt in Germany: John Cage's composition for organ ORGAN2/ASLSP.
If the human brain were a computer, it could perform 38 thousand-trillion operations per second. The world’s most powerful supercomputer, BlueGene, can manage only .002% of that.
Yeah, but the average human brain contains a lot of malware.
New Zealanders have more pets per household than any other country.
Most of them are sheep, the USA holds the record for most pet cats per household.
Bubble wrap was originally designed to be used as wallpaper.
Recent droughts in Europe were the worst in 2,100 years.
Climate change is causing flowers to change color.
People that think climate change isn’t real because it got extra cold outside yesterday are like those who would insist during the Great Depression that the economy was doing great because that one bakery down the street was doing good business. Talking to you, David.
Copenhagen is the most bike-friendly city in the world.
🎶 I want to ride my bicycle. I want to ride my bike. I want to ride my bicycle. I want to ride it where I like. 🎶
Google's founders were willing to sell to Excite for under $1 million in 1999—but Excite turned them down.
"Rain of fish" is an annual weather event in which hundreds of fish rain from the sky onto the Honduran city of Yoro.
In New York City, approximately 1,600 people are bitten by other humans annually.
All giant pandas in zoos around the world are on loan from China.
The first person convicted of speeding was going 8 mph. (13 kmh)
One of the American presidents (I think it was Harrison) was ticketed for speeding while in office. When the cop realized whom he had ticketed, he tried to take the ticket back. The president insisted on paying the ticket.
The hottest chili pepper in the world is so hot it could kill you.
Evolution: wiping out people who will put anything in their mouths since 300,000 BCE.
Tokyo is the world's largest city with 37 million inhabitants.
Half of all humans who have ever lived have died from malaria.
More people visit France than any other country.
Creedence Clearwater Revival has the most No. 2 Billboard hits—without ever hitting No. 1.
They did "Proud Mary" first, and even wrote the song, I believe. Once I heard Tina Turner's version, I was like-- CCR who?
You have a 1 in 200 chance of being related to Genghis Khan.
What is the chance I have ancestors that were murdered by him and his people?
Some people have an extra bone in their knee (and it's getting more common).
Jousting is the official sport of the state of Maryland.
The longest place name on the planet is 169 letters long.
Water makes different pouring sounds depending on its temperature.
An adult is made up of 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (7 octillion) atoms. For perspective, there’s a ‘measly’ 300,000,000,000 (300 billion) stars in our galaxy.
90% of the world’s population lives in the Northern Hemisphere.
The world's quietest room is located at Microsoft's headquarters in Washington state.
And yet, a guinea pig placed in the room will still imagine it hears a salad bag opening.
It's estimated that Sweden has more islands than any other country.
The dot over the lower case "i" or "j" is known as a "tittle."
There is a garbage swirl in the Pacific Ocean twice the size of Texas.
A company called Ocean Cleanup is doing a great job developing technology to clean plastic from the ocean
Muhammad is thought to be the most popular name in the world.
Interpol was founded in 1914 when legal professionals from 24 countries got together to discuss catching fugitives.
Human fingers are so sensitive that if your fingers were the size of Earth, you could feel the difference between a house and a car.
A Blue Whale's heart is the size of a VW Beetle and large enough that you could swim through it's arteries.
Abraham Lincoln's bodyguard left his post at Ford's Theatre to go for a drink.
Oh, please. He was just scoping out the perimeter. Next he was going to scope out the perimeter at the nearby whorehouse.
For 100 years, maps have shown an island that doesn't exist.
The average hummingbird's heart rate is more than 1,200 beats per minute.
Dolphins have names for each other and can call out for each other specifically.
Cleopatra lived closer in time to the first Moon landing than to the building of the Great Pyramid.
Glaciers and ice sheets hold about 69 percent of the world's freshwater.
The Earth's ozone layer will make a full recovery in 50 years.
People who are currently alive represent about 7% of the total number of people who have ever lived.
The oceans contain almost 200,000 different viruses.
The severed head of a sea slug can grow a whole new body.
What about squished? So many of those gross invasive leopard slugs... 🤢
Pineapple works as a natural meat tenderizer.
The healthiest place in the world is in Panama.
Riding a roller coaster could help you pass a kidney stone.
If I were on a roller coaster, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't need help passing anything.
Facebook engineers originally wanted to call the "Like" button the "Awesome" button.
Canada has 9% of the world's forests.
The first iPhone wasn't made by Apple.
It was made by InfoGear in the late 90s and was a landline phone.
Two-thirds of Africa is in the Northern Hemisphere.
The entire world's population could fit inside Los Angeles.
Indonesia is home to some of the shortest people in the world.
Only two countries use purple in their national flags.
Dominica and Nicaragua. This is because purple dye used to be so expensive in the past.
There are 41 countries that recognize sign language as an official language.
The moon has moonquakes.
Pigeons can tell the difference between a painting by Monet and Picasso.
A dozen bodies were once found in Benjamin Franklin's basement.
There's a giant fish with a transparent head.
I think this refers to the Barrel-Eye fish, which is freaky as heck.
A tick bite can make you allergic to red meat.
Lone Star ticks carrying a certain disease, yes. Deer ticks give you Lyme disease, not meat allergies.
There's a basketball court above the Supreme Court. It's known as the Highest Court in the Land.
The coldest temperature ever recorded was -144 degrees Fahrenheit. (-98 degrees Celsius)
The most expensive coin in the world was sold for more than $7 million.
The world’s oldest wooden wheel has been around for more than 5,000 years.
Only two mammals like spicy food: humans and the tree shrew.
I wonder what a tree shrew tastes like. Imagine an animal that comes readily seasoned
Children's medicine once contained morphine.
Although, back in the day, pretty much every medicine contained some sort of opiate, or mercury or strychnine .....
The world's most densely populated island is the size of two soccer fields.
People 60 years and older make up 12.3% of the global population.
They're only making it up because they're getting older and can't remember so well any more.
A narwhal's tusk reveals its past living conditions.
The feeling of getting lost inside a mall is known as the Gruen transfer.
The human body literally glows.
Redheads aren't actually going extinct.
I’m the only redhead out of 37 cousins. My triple great aunt was the last one before me.
I heard but can’t confirm that anaesthetists have to administer higher levels of anaesthetic to put red heads under
True! It’s thought that they perceive certain kinds of pain differently than the rest of the population.
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*thinks of Max from Stranger Things and thanks the heavens that red heads exists*
I am a redhead. My closest direct ancestor with red hair was a great-grandfather. Only redhead of 4 kids. My sister's oldest son had red hair, even neither she nor his dad were redheads.
Hasn't it been said that natural blondes will eventually become extinct?
There's a country (Benin) where twins are most likely to be born.
Ah, unless you are an old acquaintance of mine who was French and adopted, who got married to a girl from St Helena (look it up) who had twins in her families make up ; turns out, as he found out later, both of HIS natural parents had a high instance of twins - and multiple births - So, long story short, the first pregnancy ended up with twins, the second one she gave birth just short of 10 months after the first was twins again (at this point most of us would've had a vasectomy or at least been careful), his wife was pregnant within 6 weeks of giving birth to the second set of twins and 9 months after that, pushed out TRIPLETS !!! I have never seen a more broken man in my entire life - he was 25 ..... They are still together as far as I know 20 years later.
Fredric Baur invented the Pringles can. When he passed away in 2008, his ashes were buried in one.
The Dancing Plague of 1518 was a case of dancing mania that occurred in Germany, where people danced without rest for a month straight.
The Paris Agreement on climate change was signed by the largest number of countries ever in one day.
North Korea and Cuba are the only places you can't buy Coca-Cola.
South Sudan is the youngest country in the world.
There's a website that tracks the world's population in real time.
More people speak Mandarin Chinese than any other language.
There's a decorated war hero dog.
There are only two countries with names that begin with "The."
Dolphins have been trained to be used in wars.
There's only two countries in the world that doesn't use the metric system.
The lack of subject-verb agreement in this sentence caused me to have a stroke.
The red-billed quelea is the most common bird on Earth.
The longest wedding veil was the same length as 63.5 football fields.
5.8 kms long. Huh. Not sure what the point of that is, I’d have stopped after the first km :p
"E" is the most common letter and appears in 11 percent of all english words.
Pringles aren't actually potato chips.
They're compressed "chips/crisp" made from a variety of flours and starch which includes potato but they are not potato chips/crisps. It's about 40% potato per basically every site that pops up on Google.
Facebook has more users than the population of the U.S., China, and Brazil combined.
Fingernails doesn't grow after you die.
Dentistry is the oldest profession in the world.
That's a new term for the world's oldest profession that I haven't heard before.
The first computer was invented in the 1940s.
This is false. The first computer was the Babbage difference engine in 1822. It was mechanical. The ABC, the first electric computer, was 1942.
Thanks for the info! I'm going to use this figure in my statistics paper! Wish me luck :)
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Some BP posters are getting lazier and lazier. This is mostly a rip off of a post last week, and that post was a lazy one as well, literally no context to any "Fact".
Over. And over. And over. Same photos. Same "facts." It's getting really... BORING.
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Well, yes! That made-up "fact" belongs right here on this list of totally made-up "facts."
Load More Replies... Thanks for the info! I'm going to use this figure in my statistics paper! Wish me luck :)
Load More Replies... Some BP posters are getting lazier and lazier. This is mostly a rip off of a post last week, and that post was a lazy one as well, literally no context to any "Fact".
Over. And over. And over. Same photos. Same "facts." It's getting really... BORING.
Load More Replies... Well, yes! That made-up "fact" belongs right here on this list of totally made-up "facts."
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