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While scrolling through social media, we often stumble upon fun and quirky facts that make us smile or shrug. But then, there are those facts that make you pause and wonder, “Wait…is that really true?” So when a curious Redditor asked, "What’s a fact you learned that instantly made you question reality?" people flooded the thread with some of the most jaw-dropping facts they’ve ever encountered. Ready to have your mind blown? Keep reading, Pandas!
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
I read somewhere that we can only see about 0.0035% of the electromagnetic spectrum, meaning we’re practically blind to most of what’s going on around us. It made me question how much of reality is hidden from us, existing beyond what our senses can perceive.
Another one that shook me was learning that trees can communicate with each other through underground fungal networks, sharing nutrients and even warning each other about threats. It completely flipped my understanding of forests — they’re not just a collection of individual trees, but more like an interconnected community working together. Reality suddenly seemed a lot more complex.
Greg Wilhelm 1 year ago
I'm an arborist and have been for 20 years. When I learned about the biology of the trees I started feeling more like a vet/Dr than a laborer...
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#2
That some people don’t have an inner monologue or voice; and that some people literally can’t picture things in their minds.
Justin Tyme 1 year ago
People can’t picture things in their minds? Wow, that must be really different. I can't visualize it.
#3
I was raised Mormon. When I learned how much was copied from the Freemasons, I began looking at the non-church sources for information. Finding out your whole life has been a lie is a hell I wish on no one.
Colleen Glim 1 year ago
Any church is just a cult. People don’t need religion to tell them how to be a good person
When we sit down to eat, we often don’t think about the science or history behind what’s on our plate. But food is more than just something to fill us up—it’s full of surprises. From our favorite fruits and veggies to those delicious snacks we’ve been enjoying for years, there’s a lot more to food than meets the eye.
For instance, did you know that your beloved strawberries aren’t actually berries, but bananas are? These little-known facts about everyday foods can completely change the way we see our favorite snacks and meals.
#4
The Romans figured out how to make heated floors. Central heating sounds like a modern invention, but apparently its been around for 2000 years.
Phil Green 1 year ago
I learnt about the Romans in school in 1969. We visited Chedworth Roman Villa as well. There are still stretches of Roman roads, aquaducts, viaducts and walls, all over Europe, still standing and still used today. That thing in "The Life of Brian", when they are sat talking about "what have the Romans ever done for us", is testament to their engineering.
#5
That everyone you know or have met has a different version of you in their minds. Their perceptions are based on their interactions or impressions of you. No one really sees you exactly the same way.
#6
My son is 5 now and I still look at him dumbfounded at times. Like I MADE you. You grew inside of me and now you exist with your own consciousness. And continue to grow. Crazy.
Many of us enjoy eating classic berries like strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries, but here’s a twist—they’re not real berries at all! Surprisingly, bananas are scientifically classified as berries, along with eggplants, grapes, and oranges. Confused? You’re not alone!
The reason behind this mix-up is pretty simple: people started calling certain fruits "berries" way before scientists came up with a proper definition.
#7
That there is no way to know for sure if you and any other person sees the same color when looking at the same thing.
#8
You know those fun universe animations that starts out with the earth, or maybe something on earth, then zooms out bit by bit, comparing us to something larger in the universe? Then it keeps going. You can't see earth anymore, but you can focus on the sun. But then the sun is gone. And we're still getting smaller because we haven't gotten to the biggest object yet. Smaller and smaller and smaller. We barely even exist. But I complain about the drive to Dallas.
#9
Not really a fact, but a feeling. I was raised in a religious setting, so the question became "If God made everything, who made God?" I used to spiral into these thoughts, like "How does the universe exist?" "Where did everything come from?" "How is it possible to exist? Nothing can exist!" I eventually learned about dimensionality and stuff and put it to bed with the fact that whatever the answer is, I have no capacity to understand it anyway.
Rose the Cook 1 year ago
I remember aged about 5 asking in scripture class, "Pease Miss, who was God's mummy and daddy?"
According to Judy Jernstedt, a plant sciences expert from UC Davis, the word “berry” was used for centuries without a scientific explanation. But now, we know that for a fruit to be a true berry, it needs to have three distinct layers: the exocarp (which is the skin), the mesocarp (the juicy middle), and the endocarp (the part that holds the seeds).
#10
These were both from when I was relatively young, 7 or 8. And obviously as a result of the religious environment I was raised in.
1. There are religions other than Roman Catholicism. I thought RC was just what everybody did.
2. People *actually believe their religions are true*. I thought that everyone else was just going along with things for whatever reason - as I was - because, even as a kid, none of it made sense. I quickly learned that questioning things just got you in trouble so did what I was told.
#11
That one about how bananas are berries but strawberries aren't really berries... like what even is fruit anymore.
#12
Dude when I found out honey never spoils like how is that even real... is it just magic or what?
Just like bananas, watermelon also fits the scientific definition of a berry because it has those same three layers. In bananas, the peel is the exocarp (outer skin), the flesh we eat is the mesocarp, and the little seeds inside are protected by the endocarp.
Watermelons have the same structure—though the exocarp is tougher, appearing as the thick rind, and the juicy red part is the mesocarp. Who would’ve thought that bananas and watermelons would have so much in common?
#14
When you do a proper shuffle of a normal 52 card deck, the resulting shuffle order of the cards has a very near 100% chance of that being the first time that order has ever happened in the history of the universe.
Justin Tyme 1 year ago
In order to calculate the exact percent chance of being a first-ever order, you would need to know the number of times decks of cards have been shuffled. However, there is a 99.999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999998760200069142851407604965801105360671233740381709570936378473764561471114369242670321231350929093806287608708750528549344883853521288% chance of one shuffle being different from one other shuffle.
#15
My physicist husband claims that there are differently-sized infinities. Apparently, a lot of mathematicians think that, too. HOW????
SadieCat17 (she/her) 1 year ago
There's an infinite number of numbers between 0 and 1. There's also an infinite number of numbers between 0 and 2. However, there is twice as much room for numbers between 0-1 and 0-2. Adding infinitesimals hurts my head.
If you’re a fan of peanuts, here’s a fun fact: you're actually snacking on legumes! That’s right, despite the “nut” in their name, peanuts belong to the same family as beans, lentils, and soybeans. They grow in pods, just like other legumes. Still, many of us think they are tree nuts like walnuts, almonds, or hazelnuts.
#16
The double-slit experiment. Even when you slow the experiment down so that it's only a single photon, electron, etc. being measured you still see the interference pattern. Unless you put your detector behind the slits, then it's a solid set of two lines behind the slits.
It's almost like the universe is rendering itself differently based on observation.
#17
Apparently schizophrenia can hit anyone at any time, and using psychoactive d***s (like LSD and magic mushrooms) significantly increase the chances of you getting schizophrenia. To keep a long story short, it isn't a stretch to say that most religious and philosophical figures of our past were probably schizophrenic since many religions and metaphysical questions before science were based on visions, voices, and generic "signs" of whatever sparked their tirades. Makes me wonder a lot about how reality and unreality are just a matter of perception.
iseefractals 1 year ago
Psychedelic d***s do not cause schizophrenia, but they can be a trigger for people who are already predisposed to the disease, and it's not something that can "happen at any time" it presents sometime between mid 20's to mid 30's, with anything below 18 being classified as "early onset" and being extremely rare. Schizophrenia runs in families, there is a genetic component there, though it's not a single gene, it's some combination of genes that we've yet to identify. If you have zero family history of the disease, it's very, very unlikely that you're going to suddenly come down with it because you smoked a joint or dropped some acid.
#18
Most everything is made up of nothing. The distance between the nucleus of an atom and the electron is insanely large.
If the nucleus were a ping pong ball, the electron would be about 2 mi away.
sturmwesen 1 year ago
that concept f****d up my chemistry grade. nobody could explain to me why it's "nothing" and not vacuum or sth. unknown. I was so hung up on it I couldn't concentrate on anything else...that was when I decided it was not nothing but cola..just so that topic was solved for my brain. Just imagine a world where every nook is filled with soda pop
Broccoli might seem like a totally natural veggie that many of us might love or hate, but it actually has an interesting backstory. It’s a result of farmers tinkering with wild cabbage, also known as wild mustard, for centuries! The original wild mustard plant had edible parts, but they were pretty bitter.
So, farmers started picking and planting seeds from plants with traits they liked more, slowly creating what we now know as broccoli. This process is called selective breeding, where humans step in to guide how a plant evolves over time. So, broccoli wasn’t just found growing in the wild—it was carefully developed over hundreds of years!
#19
Octopuses have three hearts and blue blood. Like, what kind of alien sea creature is that?
Richard Graham 1 year ago
Also, Octopuses have nine brains, including a central brain and a small brain in each of their eight arms.
#21
Brain Eating Ameobas are everywhere and the only reason people don't constanly dying from them is because it's really hard for them to enter our bodies through our nose.
Most fruits take a while to grow, but pineapples are in a league of their own—they can take up to two years to ripen. So, the next time you slice into a pineapple, take a moment to appreciate the journey it took over those 24 months to become the sweet, juicy treat we love.
#23
It is literally impossible to describe, in words, what quantum superposition is. Everything you've heard about quantum superposition is, at best, "sort of right" but also "alot wrong" but we *don't have a way to describe it properly* so those half-assed (schrodinger's cat, both and neither at the same time, etc) 'explanations' just stick around because without understanding the math you just can't understand quantum superposition properly.
Quantum reality is simply that different from macroscopic reality. Our intuition cannot comprehend what is happening. I do not understand quantum superposition, and unless you're a theoretical quantum physicist neither do you. And some of them don't!
But we *know* it's real. It happens. It affects reality. We cannot convey what is happening with words. That f***s with me so hard.
Toothless Feline 1 year ago
I think that’s as much a failure of language as understanding. No human language has the right grammar to describe quantum superposition in a non-paradoxical manner. Human language is based on our macro-scale perceptions, and is full of assumptions about how things work that are true only above quantum scale. Even the math can’t really tell you what it is, only how it works, because the meaning of the mathematical symbols and expressions is understood through the same filter of macroscale experience. If you can manage to think about it without trying to label things, you *might* be able to come close to a fuller understanding, but thought free of language in a mind that has language is a difficult skill to master.
#24
That about 97% of the observable universe is already out of reach for us even with light speed technology.
Ketchup is a household staple that we don’t really need to introduce. Whether you’re dipping crispy fries or savoring crunchy onion rings, it’s hard to imagine enjoying appetizers without a bowl of this sweet and tangy sauce.
But did you know that ketchup’s journey began as a medicine, not a condiment? Back in the 1830s, people thought tomatoes could cure indigestion, so ketchup was actually sold as a remedy in pill form.
#26
Who ever spends more money on their lawyer, wins in court. Truth doesn’t matter. It only matters who argues better.
#27
I learned that lobsters can theoretically live forever, and now I’m questioning why we’re not all trying to unlock the secret to lobster immortality.
If you have a favorite color when it comes to bell peppers, here’s a fun fact: they’re all the same pepper, just at different stages of ripeness. Green bell peppers start off as unripe versions, and as they mature, they transition to yellow, then orange, and finally red. Interestingly, the red bell peppers are the sweetest of them all.
It’s not just food that has surprising facts; the world around us is filled with intriguing tidbits, just like the ones in this post, that can genuinely make you question reality and change your perspective. Which one of these facts caught you off guard the most?
#28
One fact that often blows people’s minds is that the universe is constantly expanding.
#29
I remember watching a video on how the universe might end. It was a 30-minute time lapse of what occurs from the Big Bang to the "end." EARTH'S entire existence from beginning to end wasn't even a minute before it formed and burnt out. Really felt insignificant just trying to comprehend the time frame of the universe.
Philly Bob Squires 1 year ago
Guy: God, how long is a million years to you? God: A minute. Guy: How much is a million dollars to you? God: A penny. Guy: Can I have a penny? God: In a minute
#30
Human comprehension of reality is so far from accurate its functionally useless. Every understanding, scientific discover, whatever we make, is at BEST just us trying to make things make sense to us. But humans simply don't have the brainpower/hardware to come anywhere close to an actual understanding of reality.
It's like an ant walking on an iphone. Its brain can process things like "this surface is smooth" "there is no food here" and thats about as complex as it can get, but that's nowhere near the level of complexity of the iphone itself.
Skara Brae 1 year ago
The scientific method tries to explain how something works, then revise the explanation when new information proves the previous explanation is wrong. Repeat as often as new information comes in. The scientific method is useful, because even though we don't know everything, once we know enough we can use the knowledge for making things or avoiding things.
#31
Quantum entanglement. There are particles light years apart that react instantaneously when the other is touched. We live in a world of magic and wonder.
Miliukov Oleksandr 1 year ago
Imagine a pair of socks. The moment you pull one onto your right feet, the other became left sock. This is quantum entanglement 101
#32
How big the universe is. Conversely, how small the smallest building blocks of the universe are.
Toothless Feline 1 year ago
We exist in a world of the infinitely large that is entirely made up of an infinitude of the infinitesimally small.
#33
"The Birthday Paradox" is a fun one. I wouldn't say I "questioned reality" as I am math nerd, but it's fun to share with people who aren't so inclined.
For those unaware, it deals with the probability of two randomly chosen people out of a larger group of people having the same birthday, and that you only need a room of 23 people for that probability to be greater than 50%. 50 people and it becomes 97%.
To explain a little further on why this ends up seeming so surprising/impossible for most people when they first hear this, it's because people often confuse the premise of "probability that 2 randomly chosen people share a birthday" with "probability that 1 other randomly chosen person shares MY birthday", which is not the same calculation.
Richard Graham 1 year ago (edited)
For example, there have been 45 United States Presidents. Two of them share a birthday (November 2): James Knox Polk (born 1795) and Warren Harding (born 1865).
#34
If you had a really long stick that connected to the Moon, and you pulled the stick, the other end of the stick wouldn’t move instantly. It would take as long as it takes for the speed of sound travelling through wood to reach the Moon from Earth for the other end to move as a result of your pulling the stick
I think the thing that gets me about this is I knew everything I needed to know to reach this conclusion on my own but I’d literally just never thought about this specific hypothetical before, and when you actually write it out like that it feels so counterintuitive even though I intellectually understand all the component pieces that make it true.
#35
Light doesn't experience time. From its departure from a quasar on the far end of the universe to a sensor on a space telescope that was built a decade ago, the journey took almost the entire lifespan of existence.
And yet, as far as the photon is concerned, the trip was instantaneous.
If that wasn't wild enough, here's the real mindf***: There's no such thing as a free photon. They only exist as a carrier for energy exchange between electrons. For a photon to exist it has to have a sender and a recipient. Two electrons separated by the entirety of space and time somehow agreed to exchange a photon.
smugdruggler 1 year ago
I remember reading once a hypothesis that, because an electron doesn't experience time, that all the matter and energy in the universe may consist of a single electron.
Danny Dorito 1 year ago
I don't think thats the reason I think you assume too much
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#36
When measuring a coastline, the smaller the unit of measurement, the longer it is.
Peter Parker 1 year ago
It's not about the units, it's about how many details you measure. On a large scale, you brush over the little crevices and bays so the total distance is shorter. The more detailed you measure, the more "left and right" you measure instead of a straight line, making the total length longer..
#37
Chicagos parking meters are paid out to a non USA nation for the next like 50! Years!
#38
I read once that the arrangements of molecules or cells or atoms (i really can recall what precisely) looks eerie similar to the way galaxies and clusters look.
This made me think that perhaps our universe is just a sumatomic thing within something larger, like a fly in a cats a*s.
Image that!
#39
Just learned today that if a photon enters a cloud of atoms that are cold it can leave that cloud before it enters.
negative time.
[https://www.newscientist.com/article/2448067-light-has-been-seen-leaving-an-atom-cloud-before-it-entered/](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2448067-light-has-been-seen-leaving-an-atom-cloud-before-it-entered/).
#41
Rock beats scissors. Sure, I get it.
Scissors beats paper. Again, makes sense.
Paper beats rock. WHAT? That's some serious *we live in a simulation* situation.
Richard Graham 1 year ago
Scissors cuts Paper - Paper covers Rock - Rock crushes Lizard - Lizard poisons Spock - Spock smashes Scissors - Scissors decapitates Lizard - Lizard eats Paper - Paper disproves Spock - Spock vaporizes Rock - (and as it always has) Rock crushes Scissors
#42
What is reality without any mind to see? Is it just atoms and electrons? What are the characteristics of these "ultimates" with no mind?
Michael Danhauer 1 year ago
I assure you that reality cares not for our perceptions. The universe did not begin with us.
#43
That UFOs/UAPs are acknowledged by the US government and Congress is currently debating legislation about whether or not to declassify information related to them that has been kept hidden by top secret defense programs since 1947. All of this being spurred by multiple whistleblowers (whose information was recently leaked by the inspector general's office) making astonishing claims under oath before Congress such as exotic (not of this Earth) materials being in the possession of defense contractors and even more incredibly that non-human biological material has been recovered from crashed UAP.
All of it seems unbelievable and very well might be complete nonsense, but the attitude of our elected officials who have been privy to more info than us screams to me that there's more to it all.
https://youtu.be/NB1oTeTOgHw?si=bs5r85-38lcBGgsZ.
Toothless Feline 1 year ago
UFOs/UAPs are fancy acronyms that mean nothing more than “something was seen in the sky that those observing it could not identify.” Once identified, the “U” is no longer true. So of course they’re acknowledged: not knowing what it is doesn’t invalidate the fact that you saw something.
#46
It may be the case that the universe goes on forever in all directions and it's all just as full of galaxies as what we see around us and that there is no center.
There are infinite Shakespeares and one of them wrote a play about monkeys. He called it Monkbeth.
That could be literally true.
Paulina 1 year ago
Well, you're right and wrong at the same time. In a sense, yes, universe goes on forever and has no end and no center - that's the theory. At the same time, the same theory supposes that there was a beginning and it resembled an explosion that pushed matter (I'm using that word very loosely) equally in all directions. That would indicate there should be a center from which the universe is expanding. And possibly an end - the ever moving edge of that initial flow, wave of matter expelled from the bang. The thing is, nearly everything we know about those topics is a theory - the best assumption we can make with the best knowledge we have. And there's just so much we don't know and understand, that it can't be even quantified.
#47
Rabbits don't have toe beans. There is fuzzy fur on the entirety of their toesies.
#48
Saw this on Reddit last week, it blows my mind and I’m lost.
In your car, you can reach from the driver seat to the passenger door (might have to lean.) You cannot however be on the left hand side of a bus and reach across and touch the right hand side of the bus. But both vehicles fit in a single lane on the road.
#49
There's 10+ years of peer-reviewed science on pre-cognition (seeing the future) that is replicable, and anyone can learn to do it.
Schmebulock 1 year ago
Every day I preconceive that I will read at least one dumb thing. Here it is.
#50
Grass is invasive and more like a parasite than greenery.
Also money is fake and monarchies invented it to prevent getting overthrown by people who owned less land or no land. Stop pretending money and social class are real; at this point we're just polishing our chains in front of each other.
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What do you think ?
Broad Panda 1 year ago
I know that these days the bulk of BoredPanda is stolen from Reddit, but it would be great if the 'author' copy and pasting could, at least, fact-check an article purporting to be facts.
Pandemonium 1 year ago
In the US this is an election year so facts are optional. (Myself I prefer fact-based decisions but the other side is embracing known lies.)
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Incognito11 1 year ago
Too many universe is big ones. How about this? Reading silently in your head wasn't always a thing. It's a learned skill. The only way people could read was by reading out loud. The inabilty to read silently is believed to date back to the middle ages.
Kelly H. Wilder 1 year ago
My favorite part of this article: the comments from other Pandas gave me several books for my reading list! Thank you, Pandas! 🤗
Disgruntled Panda 1 year ago
That doesn't mean you cannot be happy for people feeling that joy of discovering or realising something. Although since you've apparently always known these things I'm not sure you know how that feels
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Broad Panda 1 year ago
I know that these days the bulk of BoredPanda is stolen from Reddit, but it would be great if the 'author' copy and pasting could, at least, fact-check an article purporting to be facts.
Pandemonium 1 year ago
In the US this is an election year so facts are optional. (Myself I prefer fact-based decisions but the other side is embracing known lies.)
Load More Replies... Incognito11 1 year ago
Too many universe is big ones. How about this? Reading silently in your head wasn't always a thing. It's a learned skill. The only way people could read was by reading out loud. The inabilty to read silently is believed to date back to the middle ages.
Kelly H. Wilder 1 year ago
My favorite part of this article: the comments from other Pandas gave me several books for my reading list! Thank you, Pandas! 🤗
Disgruntled Panda 1 year ago
That doesn't mean you cannot be happy for people feeling that joy of discovering or realising something. Although since you've apparently always known these things I'm not sure you know how that feels
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