Many of us are exposed to a massive, constant stream of information every single day. Not just at work but during our leisure time, too. And with so much data to process, it can be hard to distinguish between real facts and twisted truths.
That’s the topic that internet user u/Leefiey tackled in a r/AskReddit thread. At times, you can end up in confusing situations where some bizarre-sounding facts and stats are actually true, even though they genuinely sound fake. We’ve collected the top ones, as revealed by the people in the thread, to share them with you, Pandas. Scroll down to check them out. They might just change your perspective on science and history.
Bored Panda wanted to learn about the reliability of statistics, so we reached out to Steven Wooding, a member of the Omni Calculator project, as well as the Institute of Physics in the UK. Steven is the creator of interesting tools like the Weird Units Converter, among others. Read on for his insights.
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If every church in America took in two homeless people, there would not be homeless people in America, and not all of them would have two people.
There are more museums in the US than there are McDonald's and Starbucks combined.
Ancient egyptians had their own historians.
By the time of Cleopatra, there were records of egyptians 'discovering' stuff about the pyrimad of Giza and others, and studying early egyptian practices. Cleopatra lived closer to modern day than she did to the building of the Giza pyramid, so that makes sense, but still.
Those f*****s had been around so long that even Egypt thought Egypt was ancient.
We were interested in what to keep front of mind when considering the possible reliability of statistics. Steven, from the Omni Calculator project, was kind enough to share his thoughts on this.
"Check the statistics are from a reliable source and up to date. In addition, a very important number to check is the sample size: A larger sample size is more likely to represent the whole population. However, the sample must also be representative of the population and not biased, so check what methods were used to ensure these critical points," he explained to Bored Panda.
"Another aspect is to check the margin of error of data points. If they are too large, the data points effectively overlap so that no solid conclusions can be made. Finally, check the same data from multiple sources or studies to see if they agree," he suggested.
We Went To The Moon Before We Put Wheels On Suitcases.
I saw a scale model of the earth, moon and sun in a museum. The sun was about the size of a basketball, and the earth was on the opposite side of the room, the size of a small marble, I'd guess about 30 metres away. The moon was the size of a tiny pinhead, about 10cm away from the earth.
On this scale, the nearest star to earth, Proxima Centauri, wouldn't be in the same building, or even in the same city. It would be 10,000km away.
And that's just one star, the nearest one to us, in a galaxy containing billions of stars, which is just one of billions of galaxies.
The scale of the universe really is mind bogglingly big. Far bigger than we can begin to comprehend.
After the british made head protection mandatory in WW1, the amount of head wounds increased.
It's due to they were no longer KIA, but "only" a head wound.
Bored Panda was also curious as to why using statistics can make a claim seem more trustworthy. "Statistics can provide a sense of objectivity," the Omni Calculator representative said.
"When you see a statistic, it can be easy to think the claim is based on hard data, not just someone's opinion. This can make the claim seem more credible, but of course, the statistic itself could be made up," Steven noted.
"It often happens that someone's guess at a statistic becomes pseudo-facts. For example, 'You only use 10% of your brain,' which any neuroscientist will tell you is wrong."
Fake news is a very broad term that encompasses a wide range of different types of false information. For instance, fake news in the narrow sense is literally a collection of made-up stories that are presented as though they were true, the Walden University Library explains.
However, that isn’t the same as biased stories which are based more on propaganda and opinions. And that, in turn, is different from clickbait that sensationalizes and exaggerates headlines for the sake of, well, clicks and greater ad revenue.
In English, the color orange was named after the fruit. Before that, orange was just considered a shade of red. That's why gingers are called redheads.
We do the same in Italian with redheads though. And the words to describe fruit and colour are the same. And i doubt oranges are native from England. So... i guess there's more to know to the story
The Appalachian, Scottish Highlands, and the Atlas mountains are actually the same prehistoric mountain range.
Humans have patterns (like stripes, spots and geometric shapes) on our bodies that are invisible to us but cats can see them
Other forms of fake news include satire—parodies of real events for the sake of humor and entertainment. You'd be surprised how often people fall for them: folks often read the headline and share it with their friends and followers without bothering to read the text itself.
Another subtype is astroturfing where political or religious organizations or sponsors create the illusion that their message is being shared by small, grassroots organizations. By creating the appearance that the local community is behind it, they then draw in more and more people.
Among other types of fake news is native advertising which looks like a collection of news stories but is simply meant to promote a certain product line. While incomplete news stories simply lack the proper background and context, and are examples of poorly-researched journalistic pieces.
It took us more time to go from bronze swords to iron swords than it did for us to go from iron swords to nuclear weapons.
My favourite "progress" factoid is that Orville Wright and Neil Armstrong were both alive at the same time so we went from the first air flight to the first landing on another planetary body within the lifetime of a single generation. EDIT: say what you want about fossil fuels but they really do get s**t done.
A million seconds is 12 days. A billion seconds is 31 years. A trillion seconds is 31,688 years. People have a lot of trouble comprehending numbers that big
I remember yahoo-ing all this in 1999 as an 11 yr old with my bff 😆before google there was yahoo, remember that ?
With so much junk, bias, and lies out there, it would be completely impractical (not to mention utterly exhausting) to double-check every tiny little claim by yourself. Doing your own research is very important. But at some point, you have to start applying strategies for spotting fake news.
Some key things to keep in mind, according to the Walden University Library, include evaluating the news source, as well as the author of the piece. Dig a bit into what kind of reporting they do, and how (un)reliable it is. Though everyone makes mistakes at times, not every source is equal. An outlet’s track record for being right or wrong, factual or sensational, is what matters.
Meanwhile, do your best to read beyond just the headline and opening couple of paragraphs. If you have the time, read the entire thing and try to get a sense of the entire story. Read a few more articles on the topic from different sources to compose a more detailed and nuanced picture of the events. Moreover, take the time to see how the sources back up claims and stats: take a peek at the sources that they themselves rely on.
1 out of every 4 girls & 1 out of every 6 to 13 boys are sexually assaulted as child. Child rape is far more common than people think & the majority of rapists get away with it to rape more children.
*Edit- sources:
CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/childsexualabuse/fastfact.html
National Sexual Violence Resource Center: https://www.nsvrc.org/sites/default/files/publications_nsvrc_factsheet_media-packet_statistics-about-sexual-violence_0.pdf
Back in my stripper days, not saying it’s industry related but because we are a huge groups of girls, out of about 70 of us only one claimed to never have been sexually assaulted as a child. It was eye opening. We had a group discussion one day. We were close and all friends
Trees existed millions of years before rot. So trees, for millions of years, didn't rot.
We live closer in time to Tyrannosaurus Rex than the T Rex did to the Stegosaurus.
Substack writer Gurwinder Bhogal, who runs the popular ‘The Prism’ blog, had a very creative and unusual approach to tackling the rise of misinformation. In his opinion, instead of censoring fake news, we should instead embrace it because then people will be more wary of misleading facts. In other words, being constantly exposed to misinformation creates a sort of immunity to it.
He argues that we should “let misinformation spread so it becomes a clear and constant presence in everyone’s life, a perpetual reminder that we inhabit a dishonest world. Deception is part of nature, from the chameleon’s complexion to the Instagram model’s beauty filters, and it will never be legislated away while life still exists, so let’s stop trying to prevent people from seeing lies, and instead teach people to see through them.”
For some more facts that sound unreal but are true, check out Bored Panda's earlier posts here and here.
If you took the populations of both China and India, then removed 1 billion people from each, they would still be the two most highly populated countries on earth.
And you'd probably be convicted of crimes against humanity for wiping out 2 billion people
Depending on which of the two countries carries out the trial, and which communities you wiped out, you probably wouldn't face death.
The Oxford university in England existed centuries before the rise and fall of the Aztec civilization.
Everyone loses their s**t over this one, it’s not even the oldest university still in operation. That title goes to the University of Karueein, in Fez, Morocco, established in 859 AD
Cleopatra lived closer in time to the mobile phone than she did the construction of the pyramids.
There was a window of time where a samurai could have faxed Abraham Lincoln
She was also Ptolemaic Greek. ::gives the new Cleopatra "documentary" series the side-eye::
Three out of every million Icelandic people are Björk.
Wait this doesn’t make sense, only 330,000 people live in Iceland and about 400,000 people living in the world total. Does that mean that there is only 1 Björk? Please don’t downvote, I’m genuinely confused :D. Edit: I just googled it, I understand now lol. I’m such an idiot
Hang on... So 3 out of every million are named Bjork, or 3 out of every million are ACTUALLY THE ONE AND ONLY Bjork making Bjork 3 people? I'm confused
Basically there’s around a third of a million Icelandic people is what this post is saying
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We are the Björk. Lower your shields and surrender yourselves. We will assimilate your biological and technological distinctiveness into our own. Resistance is futile.
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If the population of Iceland triples this year to reach about one million, there will STILL be only one Björk. Bored Panda loses cred with all the illogical nonsense like this that it posts.
First you need 1,000,000 Icelanders. Right now there's only about 373,000.
Continents move at the same rate that fingernails grow. Which is also the same rate that the moon is receding from the Earth.
There’s an answer to the meaning of life here…I’m just sure of it! Something about our interconnectedness 🙃
The world population has never been more peaceful, healthier or happier than in the last few decades. On average we live in the best time humankind has ever had.
Yes, this is absolutely true. In fact, you can even see it as our bones changed over human evolution, becoming thinner and more delicate, particularly the skull, and particularly in subsaharan Africa and East Asia populations, which is highly correlated with increased sociability. However, we still have a ways to go, and there are still many who need our help and compassion. But I like to remind myself of this fact when I hear something that really makes me hate all of humanity for a few seconds...
George Washington didn’t know dinosaurs existed
“D is for dinosaur, but it’s a brand new word/ Invented in 1841, it means ‘terrible lizard’/ Spelled D-I-N-O-S-A-U-R/ Sir Richard Owen thought it up: D for dinosaur.” Isn’t it funny how little jingles you learn as a kid stick with you?
Not positive how accurate these are but I seem to remember them being reliable.
80% of the people on the planet will never step foot on an airplane.
If you make more than $40K in a year you're in the top 1% of the world.
My life is far more privileged and luxurious than I lead myself to believe.
New Delhi hired people to hunt cobra snakes which led to people having Cobra Farms to earn money then the government stopped the project which led the Cobra Farmers to release their snakes causing twice as many snakes than they first started.
Horses [takes out] more people every year in Australia than all the other beasties combined. Everyone thinks it's the spiders and snakes that'll get you, but it's the horses you've really got to watch.
I live in Australia and I've never heard of a horse taking anyone out. No movies, no dinner dates, nothing!
Tyromancy is the art of divination/prediction by studying cheese.
*Stares at cheese* Lo, I prophesy that I shall soon taste delicious Cheddar! *chomp* The prophecy has been fulfilled!
Nintendo has existed longer than Disney.
Joe Biden was born closer to the Lincoln presidency than to his own.
*puts on aviator sunglasses* *does fingerguns* *gives someone a shoulder massage* *tells an anecdote about Delaware*
Chainsaws were invented to assist with childbirth…
[In 1780, two Scottish doctors invented the prototype of the chainsaw. Not to cut down trees or clear debris. No, John Aitken and James Jeffray invented the hand-cranked chainsaw to cut through the pelvises of delivering mothers who were having trouble pushing their babies out.]
If you made $100,000 a day since birth you'd still not be worth as much as Bezos
He has a lot of money. Bezos himself is worthless. Just my opinion.
You are more likely to be married to Kim Kardashian in the United states then you are to die of Ebola in the United States. ( I know. Poor sample size and all. )
Meerkats have the highest "homicide" rate of any mammal.
The weight of a sloth is anywhere up to one-third poop.
Sharks are the largest threat to the Internet.
Sharks apparently like to chew on underwater cables if they get the chance to do so
Barcode scanners scan the white lines, not the black ones.
If for some strange reason you WANTED your child to be kidnapped by a stranger you would have to keep them outside, unattended, for 750,000 years. Based on statistics.
depends on country, surely? I imagine this statistic would be higher in my country
The average human a**s can stretch up to 8 inches in diameter, and also an average full-grown raccoon can squeeze through a 4 inch hole. Therefore, technically speaking, you can fit two adult raccoons in your a*s.
Well, those 3,500 rectal foreign bodies removed by doctors kinda advice against trying that out
We are bioluminescent.We glow the light just isn't perceptible to the human eye.
How can we make this light perceptible to the human eye? I want to see myself glow, pretty please.
If we lost all the dead space inside our atoms, we would each be able to fit into a particle of dust, and the entire human species would fit into the volume of a sugar cube.
There is no "dead space". Atoms don't work like that. Quantum mechanics describes atomic-level behaviour in terms of clouds of probability densities determining the position of the particles so the "empty" space isn't empty at all.
There are 80,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 possible arrangements of a 52 card deck.
USA is only 2.4 miles from Russia.
2 islands in the Bering Strait, the body of water in the Pacific Ocean that separates Alaska from Russia, are 2.4 miles from each other at the narrowest point; one island is owned by Russia, the other is owned by USA.
The number one cause of death for pregnant women is [being unalived].
Research keeps finding that ice cream (1/2 cup per day) is correlated with positive health outcomes the same way yogurt and skim milk are, but since no one has a good idea of why that is (there's a reverse correlation, something else is going on, etc) it's mostly not talked about. No one wants to be the person saying ice cream is a health food.
The death camps in Germany have so many deaths that the top soil has bone fragments mixed in.
My go to answer to this is - Ted Cruz is younger than Gwen Stefani.
Imagine a rope circling the Earth so it is tight, and the Earth is a perfect sphere.
You want to lengthen the rope so it is 1 m above the ground all the way around. How much extra rope do you need?
About 6.3 metres extra
1% of the population controls 99% of the wealth. (Keep in mind we live in a planet with over 8 BILLION ppl)
Congratulations! You have subscribed to Centipede facts. Scolopendra Cataracta is the only known **amphibious** centipede. It grows up to 20cm (8 inches), has a hydrophobic carapace, can run, hunt and rest underwater and swims like an eel.
About half of the people in the world have below average intelligence.
“Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906, by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics.” ~ *States of Matter* by David Goodstein
In the United States alone, cats kill roughly 2.4 **billion** birds a year. I still can't fathom that. [Link](https://abcbirds.org/program/cats-indoors/cats-and-birds/#:~:text=Cats%20%231%20Threat%20to%20Birds&text=In%20the%20United%20States%20alone,of%20millions%20of%20outdoor%20cats.). I've never seen a cat kill a bird and it's not like there are dead birds all over the place. *They hide this from us*.
Because they know if we really knew the extent of how murderous they are, that we'd suddenly realize that after the birds are gone... we're next, and then the real war begins...
84% of statistics are made up.
Sounds fake but it's been mathematically verified.
Every 26 seconds someone attempts suicide. Every 11 minutes someone is successful
100% of people who ate pickles on August 3rd 1893 *died*.
At a certain time of the year, when the moon is the furthest away from the earth, the other 7 planets can fit in the space between the Earth and moon.
In average, a human eats 2 spiders a year. This sounds fake, but it's actually thanks to Spider George, who eats 16 billion spiders a year
In a randomly selected group of 23 people there is a 50% 2 of them will share a birthday.
A total of 3,500 rectal foreign bodies were removed over the course of 9 years. Males accounted for 85.1% of rectal foreign bodies whilst 14.9% were females. This equates to 348 bed-days per annum. Admission peaks were observed in the second and fifth decades of life.
Bhasin S, Williams JG. [Rectal foreign body removal: increasing incidence and cost to the NHS](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34719960/). Ann R Coll Surg Engl. 2021 Nov;103(10):734-737. doi: 10.1308/rcsann.2020.7129. PMID: 34719960.
England doesn’t crack the top 5 in a count of “total citizens who speak English.”
(They’re 6th, but still)
Is that the UK or England? Biggest pet peeve as a Scotsman is when people call the UK England it absolutely drives me nuts 😞
97.3% of UK drivers hold a licence to drive a manual transmission car whereas 2.7% hold an automatic ONLY licence.
Source: DVLA.
A 40yo woman has a 1200% chance increase in having a child with Down’s syndrome compared to a woman in her 20s. That being said, it’s still a 1:100 odds for the 40yo woman.
This is my example for why % odds changes give misleading impressions
My favourite is this: if you eat a pound of bacon every day, your chance of bowel cancer rises 20%. But the chance of getting bowel cancer in general is 5%. If that chance rises 20%, then you have a 6% chance of getting bowel cancer instead of a 5% chance. Not so dramatic, is it?
Glass is made out of sand.
I've got a science degree but still barely believe this
seems completely obvious to me, if you look close at a small neat sand crystal on a beach it pretty much looks like a tiny piece of glass.
"Have you any idea what kind of noise happens when somebody's stabbed in the back?" Lee said he asked Jackson. "Because I do." (For the record, it's more of a gasp because "the breath is driven out of your body," according to Lee.)
--Christopher Lee. Actor, former nazi hunter, and [metalhead](https://youtu.be/cvKRbi2ovDY?t=118).
If you shuffle a deck of cards a few times, you will have the cards in an order that has never been seen before in the history of the world, and will never be seen again.
Falling coconuts kill more people every year worldwide than sharks do.
So the real danger is *not* in the water
Over 96 percent of all slaves from Africa did NOT go to the United States.
https://www.statista.com/chart/amp/19068/trans-atlantic-slave-trade-by-country-region/
German football defender Philipp Lahm played for almost 20 years and never got a red card. Mind you he was a defender and played in a top league and was never sent off for fouls
The average human has fewer than four limbs, and about one ovary and one testicle.
Technically, the average human body also contains more than 1 skeleton because pregnant people exist
The official death toll from the Chernobyl Reactor 4 disaster is 31 people.
"Official" reported death toll. Russia lied and covered up, so it didn't look so bad. Actual death toll is in the thousands.
Crabs have evolved at least five times from separate groups of crustaceans.
It's called "carcinisation". Chance are if we encounter (biological) aliens they will be crab-shaped.
Greenland is further North, South, East and West than Iceland.
A little map for you
[https://brilliantmaps.com/greenland-v-iceland/](https://brilliantmaps.com/greenland-v-iceland/)
Plus nowhere in the contiguous US is north of the most southernly bit of England.
There are more trees on Earth than there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy.
[Fact check.](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trees-stars-milky-way/)
There are only around 25 blimps left in the world. You'd think there would be more but apparently not.
Helium is quite rare and Hydrogen isn't used anymore for obvious reasons
Only .02% of the earth is water.
The top of mount blanc is in a museum in the Netherlands.
The first episode of Doctor Who had its broadcast delayed by a day due to the assassination of JFK.
The British TV series "Spooks" was renamed for US TV as Mi5 and had episodes cut in length removing many important plot points as first, the name had racist connotations and secondly US test audiences didn't like the non action scenes!
The official name of Mi5 is "the security service" and the official name of Mi6 is "the secret intelligence service".
At various times other MI agencies have existed, mi9 helped smuggle escape information to prisoners of war during ww2.
The battle of Waterloo was also called 'the great war".
Nobody knows what happened to Australian prime minister Harold Edward Holt. Though it is highly likely that he drowned, but no body has been found.
Traditionally, MI5 (Military Intelligence 5) handles security inside the UK and MI6 handles issues outside. When The Avengers TV series showed Steed and his companions handling both sorts of threats, it was explained that they worked for "MI5 and a half".
Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle is not a limitation of human measurement, its a fundamental principle of all particles.
HUP says that the more you know about a particle's position, the less you know about its energy and vice versa. But the "you" (more traditionally referred to as the observer) doesn't have to be human - it doesn't even have to be sentient.
Anything that interacts with that particle, even other particles, is the observer and is bound by this limitation.
If the age of earth was scaled to 24 hours, human’s existence on it would comprise 4 seconds of it.
When sailing trough the Panama canal from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean you are sailing west to east.
Northwest to Southeast and you're climbing at least 26 meters depending on the tides.
We share 60% of our DNA with Strawberries. Over 60% for bananas.
Not so crazy when you think about how we're 70% water.
Edit: apparently we don't even have DNA in water so it's even crazier than I thought =)
*removes 40% of a human body* great! no need for bananas for scale anymore, we can just use this!
One out of every 200 Native Americans died of COVID.
Not to stir the pot here, but I wonder how most Native Americans feel about all the black reparation payments being put on the table out there? Pretty sure I’d be kinda pissed!
If you took all the DNA in every cell of your body and laid it end to end, it would reach from the sun to Jupiter and back 13 times. (I think that's the proper number that I read in a science book...it's been a while)
But you couldn't see it because A, it's microscopic, and B, you'd be dead.
Lobsters have cells that regenerate. So lobsters never age.
Technically they might never die, but they generally die from other factors like disease or predators.
And the fact that they moult, the older and bigger they get, the harder it is to moult. so it is more and more likely to kill them.
The Haunted Mansion is the most common attraction at Disneyland for people to surreptitiously scatter the ashes of their loved ones.
The saxophone was invented by Adolphe Sax, also inventor of the saxtuba.
Since pi is an infinitely non-repeating number, if we encode letters by two number intervals such that '01' = a, '02' = b .... '26' = z, else = null, we will have every single event encoded in the number pi.
The world's history? It is encoded somewhere in the number pi. Every facebook DM, every scientific fact, every goodbye, EVERYTHING is encoded in the number pi.
"We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that it is not true." - Robert Wilensky (from a speech in 1996). QED.
If you dropped Saturn into a body of water, it would float.
Glacier ice can flow uphill. Glacier ice is also a mineral, which would make glaciers rocks. So, in [Book 1, episode 7 of Avatar: The Last Airbender](https://avatar.fandom.com/wiki/Winter_Solstice,_Part_1:_The_Spirit_World), "The Winter Solstice, Part 1: The Spirit World," when Zuko discovers Iroh has been captured, he is wrong to say that rocks can't follow uphill. This is because glaciers, which are rocks, can flow uphill.
Of course rocks can flow uphill. That's how we end up with mountain ranges. The Himalaya are still growing.
Picasso died in 1973
If Wayne Gretzky never scored a single NHL goal he would still be the all-time leader in points. He is also the all-time leader in goals scored…
Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo is a grammatically correct sentence.
Henry Ford worked for Oldsmobile. He quit that job and started Ford motor Company. He was ousted from that company but sued to get his name back. That company was renamed Cadillac. Henry Ford would start Ford motor company again, with funding from the Dodge Brothers.
Edit:grammar
Not sure on the first part, can't find evidence that he worked for Olds. Ford left the Henry Ford Company after a dispute with his investors, they didn't force him out. Cadillac was founded by engineer Henry Leyland, and Ford's financial backers, after Leyland convinced the backers to buy and convert the factory and assets into a new company using his engine instead of liquidating them. There was no suing to change the name, Cadillac was formed under that name six months after Ford left. It was named after the French explorer Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac.
Tom Brady has more receiving yards after his 40th birthday than every non-Jerry Rice NFL player in history combined had after turning 40.
Not passing yards. Receiving yards.
This censorship really triggers me. Instead of reading a perfectly normal sentence I focus on this bs words like being unalived, then wonder what in the hell they meant and then ponder for next two minutes about the word to kill.
Stop censoring words. "unalived" is ridiculous, and grammatically horrifying.
It seems that BP believe something posted on Reddit is true despite nearly all of these apparent 'facts' having no source or reference. Either the educational standards of the BP writers are very low or this is just yet another lazy copy & paste article supported by quickly written trite comments in the heading
This censorship really triggers me. Instead of reading a perfectly normal sentence I focus on this bs words like being unalived, then wonder what in the hell they meant and then ponder for next two minutes about the word to kill.
Stop censoring words. "unalived" is ridiculous, and grammatically horrifying.
It seems that BP believe something posted on Reddit is true despite nearly all of these apparent 'facts' having no source or reference. Either the educational standards of the BP writers are very low or this is just yet another lazy copy & paste article supported by quickly written trite comments in the heading
