Some, like mathematician Roger Antonsen, believe that numbers are the key to understanding the world. (Antonsen even gave a brilliant TED talk to explain this statement, which I highly recommend.) And there's a Reddit thread that vividly illustrates the point.
It started when platform user JustinMGH made a post, asking others to share facts and stats that sound like obvious exaggerations but actually aren't.
Immediately, people started delivering fascinating, weird, and even disturbing titbits of information, changing each other's perspective about everything around them, even if ever so slightly.
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The difference between million and billion is huge (relatively):
1 Million seconds = 11 Days
1 Billion seconds = 31 years
The budget to send to the Curiosity Rover to the Mars is less than the worldwide military expenditure for thirteen hours
Cleopatra was alive closer to the Moon landing than she was to the construction of the great pyramids.
I’ve heard this one a hundred times and it blows my mind every single time… what a history
USA citizens privately own more firearms than all countries combined. Even more than most militaries.
Pocahontas and William Shakespeare died less than a year apart less than 150 miles away from each other.
Barbara Walters, Anne Frank, and Martin Luther King Jr were all born the same year.
The original height of Mount Everest was calculated to be exactly 29,000 ft high, but was publicly declared to be 29,002 ft in order to avoid the impression that an exact height of 29,000 feet was nothing more than a rounded estimate.
Everest gets a little taller every year. It's where the plates of India and Russia come together, they are still crashing into each other and rising. In a few thousand years they will peak, then begin falling very slowly. There was a point when the rising mountains changed the entire world's weather pattern. That will also change again in future. What a world!
With headlines like the one below I think the cat is out of bag on that one. "Why did they add 3 feet to Everest? This new measurement means the world's tallest mountain technically reaches a bit higher into the sky than we previously thought. The measurement also stands as a de facto agreement between the two nations as to Everest's true elevation above sea level.Dec 8, 2020 "Mount Everest Is Now Officially 3 Feet Taller"
Americans won't understand unless you use football fields or skyscrapers for scale. Unfortunately it's too large for Bananas. It's hard to imagine something 49,714 Bananas high.
Are the Bananas stacked Side by Side or End to End ?
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And, did they place some additional object atop, that is 2 feet high? I mean, if they fake a number to sound believable, they should make it true.Just ... erect a stone already there or so...
First measurments of Mount Everest were done in 1850s. Nobody climbed the mountain then (first humans to climb Mount Everest were recorded 100 years later), it was measured from distance. 1950s measurments were more detailed and showed that the mountain is 26 feet higher (29028 ft) than original measurment from 1850s (29002 ft). Nowadays it is even higher - some soures say 8849 meters, some 8850 meters (29032 - 29035 ft).
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I first heard about this on an episode of QI. https://youtu.be/IoMIOro_-zA
To quote Adam Jeff's reply to a similar question "The height was calculated in the Great Trigonometric Survey organised by the British, who were very much into Imperial measurements (Imperial everything, in fact)"
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The height was calculated in the Great Trigonometric Survey organised by the British, who were very much into Imperial measurements (Imperial everything, in fact)
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It keeps growing every day due to the snow. So, remeasure and tell us the accurate value
The snow pack on the top of the mountain is not glacial. I can melt and is blow away. If you google the peak, there are plenty of pictures of the very tip uncovered in the late-summer.
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1 in 2 Australians will get skin cancer in their lifetime
Neutron stars are so dense that if you dropped a gummy bear from one meter away it would hit the surface in a microsecond with the force of 1,000 nuclear bombs.
The state of Maine has more Black Bears than black people.
This does actually appear to be more-or-less correct, depending on the estimation of the bear population and the accuracy of the first Maine demographic statistics which popped up in a quick web search. Also, with the same caveat, there seems to be approximately one black bear for every square mile of Maine.
Vatican city has a population of 2 popes per 1 square kilometer.
More silent films have been lost than saved
We live in an era where everything is saved, and it's hard to imagine such a massive loss of creative material. Plenty of films are lost, as late as the 1970s too.
Monsters Inc was released closer to the fall of the Berlin wall than to the present day.
All the ants in the world weigh about the same as all the people in the world.
Also, they work extremely hard and live only about 8 days, while turtles don't do shït and get to live 150 years. Let it sink in.
Nintendo existed at the same time as the Ottoman Empire.
You could walk from North Korea to Norway and only pass through one other country.
Also, your feet would be a little sore.
Radio astronomer here! You exert more energy when you unfold a single piece of paper than we have collected in *all* the radio waves we have *ever* collected from outer space.
In a room with 23 people there is a ~50% chance that 2 people share a birthday
According to former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, every two days human beings create as much information as we did from the dawn of time until 2003.
The same facts that BP has posted 20 million times before. This s**t has been posted over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. Annoying af
I try posting new articles and for whatever reason BP just won't publish them. Wonder how many people try and get the same results.
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9 US states have more cattle than people. Texas is not one of them due to being very populous but Texas has more cattle than there are people in 45 states and DC.
A light bulb, which is known as the Centennial Light, has been burning at a Livermore, CA firehouse since 1901. It is very rarely turned off, which accounts for its longevity, since turning bulbs off and on contributes to wear and tear. To put it in perspective, this bulb has been around longer than powered flight, and was shining all through the Chicago Cubs' notorious World Series drought.
The same facts that BP has posted 20 million times before. This s**t has been posted over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. Annoying af
I try posting new articles and for whatever reason BP just won't publish them. Wonder how many people try and get the same results.
Load More Replies... 9 US states have more cattle than people. Texas is not one of them due to being very populous but Texas has more cattle than there are people in 45 states and DC.
A light bulb, which is known as the Centennial Light, has been burning at a Livermore, CA firehouse since 1901. It is very rarely turned off, which accounts for its longevity, since turning bulbs off and on contributes to wear and tear. To put it in perspective, this bulb has been around longer than powered flight, and was shining all through the Chicago Cubs' notorious World Series drought.
