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The beautiful thing about life is that we all have completely unique experiences. Sure, it may not feel that way when you open a birthday card and pretend not to see the money inside or realize you’re not the only one to end searches with “Reddit” to find the most honest results online. But when it comes to the knowledge we acquire throughout our lives, we all have some niche fun facts floating around our brains that the average person has no need to know.
Below, you’ll find some of these interesting and bizarre facts that people have been sharing on Reddit, so even more of us can be aware of this information. Have fun scrolling through and learning something new, and don’t bother wondering how people know these facts… Just enjoy the ride!
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#1
Manatees control their buoyancy by farting. Toot toot floaty sea cow.
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#2
Opossums are immune to rabies. Immune in the sense that their core body temperature is too low for the virus to live and multiply in their nervous system. They can be bitten and "infected" with the virus, but it won't survive in the animal long enough for it to take hold and make them rabid. They also love to eat ticks, mosquitoes(especially mosquito larvae), and even garden slugs and snails. All the general bugs that we consider pests, they happily eat. They may be ugly as sin, but having one regularly visit your yard at night keeps away the real pests. If you live in a more metropolitan area, then their mere presence at night will generally also keep raccoons away, since it would be easier for a racoon to simply walk across the street or a few houses down instead of worrying about dealing with another nocturnal scavenger. Opossums are a mutant rat looking blessing in disguise. They're also not hostile to humans at all, unlike raccoons.
#3
The national animal of Scotland is a Unicorn.
Trisec Tebeakesse 2 years ago
Do you know the backstory? Mythologically, the only creature that can defeat a Lion is a Unicorn. The national animal of England is the Lion.
#5
Some tribes of ancient people used to tie up a goat, whisper their sins to it, then allow it to "accidentally" escape so it would carry their sins away and thus resolve them of guilt.
It was, literally, their "escape goat" and that's where the term scapegoat comes from.
The Original Bruno 2 years ago
Uhhhhh... no. That doesn't seem consistent with the biblical usage of "scapegoat." RESEARCH: Not entirely wrong, but not accurate. The biblical sacrifice of a pair of goats directs one to be slaughtered, and the other to be sent away into the wilderness. A scapegoat was called "azazal" meaning "appeaser." In the Latin bible, "azazel" was translated as "caper emissarius," or "ambassador goat." Tyndale's bible apparently mistook the meaning of "caper" (goat) and referred to a "capegoat," later extrapolated into "(e)scapegoat." But such a name is merely the product of several translations between cultures, and would be entirely alien to the culture that actually had scapegoats.
#6
A Buttload is an actual unit of measurement for about 126 gallons of wine.
#7
More Iraq veterans have died by their own hand than that of the enemy. This is America.
SparkleFarts 2 years ago
The US military has never taken care of their service members mental health, and the isn't much better. On average, 22 veterans a day commit suicide
KombatBunni 2 years ago
Yup. My father is a Vietnam Vet, and though we never really got along, seeing what the war and then how he was treated did to him makes my heart ache. I hope something is done to make some kind of reparation or apology for what happened
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Stannous Flouride 2 years ago
The same folks who wave the flag and brag about how much they support and love the military are the ones who consistently vote against support for veterans' programs. "They love the military they same way Michael Vick loved his dogs." -Bill Maher
Downunderdude 2 years ago
Same in Australia, sadly. We are currently having a Royal Commission into exactly that.
Kim Kermes 2 years ago
I'm not surprised, what with the hoops we have to jump through at the VA medical centers for routine care, and how many reservists were deployed - they don't have the same entitlements as vets from 'regular' service. I always had the deep, dark feeling this was deliberate. Many VA hospitals have had someone dive off the roof.
Laura Williams 2 years ago
Thank you. Mental health around the world. But the worst has to usa
Danish Susanne 2 years ago
I heard we have a problem in Denmark with our veterans. Sadly it seems usual for politician to use soldiers as you use throw away plastic cups.
detective miller's hat 2 years ago
My cousin had an absolute blast in the Middle East, but he's also a total sociopath. :/ I heard about a year ago he's hit some kind of record for the amount of time spent in active service.
Beatrix Bennet 2 years ago
Now Im kinda glad that my grandpa couldn't serve in the Vietnam war cuz he had had polio recently and his heart was backwards🙃
Potato 2 years ago
The part where their government expects them to sacrifice their lives but not provide mental health support in return was really lost on you. Or you just have no problem with them having PTSD after their service, which is worse.
Load More Replies... #8
Dragonflies are the most efficient killers on the planet with a 98% kill rate.
Giles McArdell 2 years ago
They are also the only insect that can fly backwards and can even fly upside down, they are truly fascinating.
#9
That dead ants produce a pheromone that alerts the other ants that they need to move them to the ant graveyard. If a drop of this pheromone is placed on a live ant, it will take itself to the graveyard and stay there until the pheromone dissipates.
DforDory 2 years ago
Ohh,so that's why when I put an ant killer dispenser,I observed after about a week that they started to bring out small black "balls". I followed their path and found that they were bringing their dead out from the nest in the wall and gathered them outside in one of the corners nearby. I also saw them bringing out their eggs and moving them to another hole in the wall... couldn't get rid of them yet, but it is fascinating.
#10
If you have a d*ck and you take a pregnancy test and it comes out positive, you might have testicular cancer.
#11
You can duplicate your liver.
JetScreamerBaby:
A liver consists of two distinct lobes. When doctors perform a transplant from living patient, they remove half the donor’s liver and give it to the recipient. Eventually, both patients regrow their missing half of a liver.
#12
When you get a tattoo laser removal, you pee out the ink particles.
Brittania Kelli 2 years ago
I peed radioactive dye for a week and wasn't allowed to use public toilets after a cardiac test to check what damage chemo was doing to my heart. Fun being injected with something it a metal biohazard container by a tech in a hazmat suit. Fun times.
#13
The island of Java has more people than the entirety of Russia. Despite being 170 times smaller in size.
David A Paterson 2 years ago
Java population 151.6 million people. Russia population 143.4 million people. Amazing but true.
#14
Australia is wider than the moon.
#15
Elephant penises are prehensile and can move on their own like trunks (I.e. to scratch their belly or as an extra support leg on uneven terrain).
#16
That drain hole at the inside top of a sink is called a porcelator. Won $1000 on a radio show back in the day for knowing that.
#17
By the time the Aztec empire was founded, Oxford University was as old as the United States is today.
#18
Horny toads can squirt blood from their eyes up to 30 feet.
David A Paterson 2 years ago
Just a quick clarification, the photo is correct and the "horny toad" is a lizard not a toad.
#20
Cockroaches will be able to smell when another cockroach dies. If you ever see one in your home, 1) obviously there’s more, but 2) they will come out in droves to look for the dead roach. They don’t “starve out” like mice or weevils, they cannibalize.
We had a roach problem for a bit, we couldn’t afford pest control so I had to handle this s**t myself LMAO certified roach annihilator here.
Downunderdude 2 years ago
'Cockroach died in my kitchen' 'So - that's a good thing!' 'Yeah, except for the 500,000 who came for the wake'.
#21
The name of the shape of Pringles crisp/chip is “hyperbolic Paraboloid”
Downunderdude 2 years ago
Good name for a heavy metal band. (Hyperbolic Paraboloid, not Pringles. That would be a boy band)
#22
The sun is actually white not yellow/orange. It’s earth atmosphere that shifts the color of the light rays. It’s the same reason a sunset is so much more colorful than mid day. The angle at sunset means the light rays have to travel through more atmosphere before reaching your eye.
#23
It is physically possible to be so constipated that your stool will back all the way up your digestive tract and you can vomit feces. Witnessed it first-hand when I was an EMT- it's quite a sight to behold...
Katie Everswick 2 years ago (edited)
Aww, that happened to my grandma years ago. It's a funny story, actually. She had an oncologist who was the biggest a**hole in the world. So my grandpa called and told him that my grandma had not pooped in like 3 weeks, and first he asked him which patient he was talking about, because he didn't know his patients' names, just their id numbers. He had been seeing her for YEARS. Then he said he was LEAVING ON VACATION the next day and to just give her a laxative. Well, my grandpa took her to the hospital anyway and the minute the doctor saunters over, she vomited sh*t all over his expensive shoes. My mom said it was priceless! She died not much longer after that. Stupid doctors who think they're god. Don't become a doctor if you won't even bother to think of your patients as human! Funny but not funny, he died just a few years later from a heart attack.
#26
The fear of long words is called hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia.
The Original Bruno 2 years ago
Ah, the English language, where all you have to do is make up a word, convince people it's a word, and BLAMMO! it's a word. See "thagomizer" or "anatidaephobia."
#28
The brain named itself.
#29
The fastest man made object was essentially a large steel manhole cover. During nuclear testing decades ago in 1957 they capped a shaft for an underground nuclear test with it. By replaying the video frames and seeing its initial takeoff, it was calculated to have been going 125,000 miles per hour with the nuclear blast force behind it. They don’t know if it made it to space.
#30
Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on the exact same day (February 12th, 1809).
#31
McDonald’s holds a specific contract to get their Coca Cola syrup in a metal vat vs plastic bags which makes McDonald’s taste better.
#32
There are more Hydrogen atoms in a spoon of water than there are spoons of water on earth.
#33
For every human being there are about 2.5 million ants in the world, so if the ants one day spontaneously decide to attack us humans about 90% or more of the world's population would die.
There are about 20 quadrillion ants in the world.
#34
Frederick Bauer (the guy who invented Pringles) had his ashes buried in a Pringles can.
#36
Some military helicopters on aircraft carriers are made of magnesium and should they catch fire it's literally impossible to put them out as the magnesium will take the oxygen from the water and use that to keep burning. So the only thing that can be done is to push them overboard and even as they sink they will continue to burn until the magnesium is completely burned up.
#37
Raspberries are not berries but watermelons are. This was a life altering useless fact to me. Mind blown....
The Original Bruno 2 years ago
Supposedly, these fruits fit the more technical definition: bananas, avocados, citrus like oranges or lemons, cucumbers, kiwifruit, all squash including pumpkins, eggplants, coffee beans, and melons. I don't understand this claim, because part of the botanists' definition of "berry" is that it has a thin exocarp (peel or rind), and all of these have a tough or inedibly thick exocarp. (Yes, I'm including cucumber, you restaurant chefs! Get off your lazy asses and peel the damned cucumber!) However, cherries are drupes like apples and not berries. And raspberries and strawberries are composite fruits, which mean they're sort of like lots of tiny fruits which have grown together.
#38
Cowbird females lay their eggs in other species nests. But she keeps watch. If her egg is removed or damaged she may attack the nest and destroy the other eggs that are not hers. But she'll never help feed or nurture her baby. When the young cowbird is able to fledge (fly), the mother will take the young bird and introduce them into the cowbird flock so it can live it's best cowbird life. Nature is weird and wonderful.
censorshipsucks 2 years ago (edited)
"Has fledged, is able to fly." No, has fledged means has its flight feathers and can start flight training. Hence the term fully fledged. Fledge is from old english flecgan or flicgan meaning to fly, pronounced flidge-an. A similar bird-related word is Callow. It means naked. The term callow youth means an inexperienced youth. This is because baby birds are born naked. The word Callow has cognates in other germanic langages eg Kaal in Afrikaans means naked.
#39
A certain fish called koi tend to swim in groups of four. Ichthyologists usually label them A, B, C, and D. If a threat is detected, the A, B, and C kois will scatter, leaving behind the D koi.
censorshipsucks 2 years ago
nice, but I wonder if the D-coy knows he's tanking for them. Get it ? Fish tank, tanking?
#40
When Phillips designed the cd, the hole in the middle was designed to fit a dutch 10-cent piece. It is still used in dvd's, blurays etc.
Mimi La Souris 2 years ago (edited)
...why ? edit : I laughed a lot but I still don't have a (real) answer :D
#41
At one point in time PepsiCo had the 6th largest military in the world.
David A Paterson 2 years ago
From the web "How Pepsi came to own a Soviet naval fleet". "In a bizarre agreement, Russia sold Pepsi 17 submarines, a frigate, a cruiser, and a destroyer in 1989".
#42
In 1999, hackers uncovered a flaw in Hotmail's security. Access to any Hotmail email account was granted by simply entering "eh" as the password.
#43
The Cesar salad was invented in Tijuana Mexico. The Hawaiian pizza was invented in Toronto.
#44
Apparently deaths (unaliving themselves) in teens rose 13% after 13 Reasons came out on Netflix. Never watched the show, but my kids did.
starshollow 2 years ago
That show also caused rising cases of self harming, especially amongst girls in the UK.
#45
Diddy, the music artist, doesn’t like the way towels feel on his skin. So instead of drying off like a normal person after a shower, he walks around his house to air dry instead. Why do I know this? Because for some reason, this was a fact given during an old show on VH1 called “Pop up videos” where they would play a music video with random facts being shown throughout. I have zero idea why of all vital things I should have stored in my memory, this was one that stuck after all these years.
#46
Using proper typing technique, the longest word that can be typed with just the right hand is ‘lollipop’ and the longest word that can be typed with just the left hand is ‘stewardesses’.
#47
* Dolphins are just a type of (toothed) whale. * Fireflies are beetles. * In spite of lacking notable elytra, the staphylinids are also true beetles. * Only the hemipterans can be called true bugs. A cicada or assassin bug would be decent examples of them. * Speaking of cicadas, most periodical cicadas live within the USA, with a couple exceptions. There's the so-called "World Cup" four-year cicada in India, and then there's another species in Fiji that's actually displayed on the local currency.
Karen Weiss 2 years ago
FYI, there are 7 species of cicada in the USA. There are 300 species of cicada in Australia with the possibility of up to 1000.
#48
1g of uranium contains a billion calories. And if you eat 44000 bananas in 5 minutes the radiation will kill you.
David A Paterson 2 years ago
If you eat 44,000 bananas in 5 minutes then it's not the radiation that will kill you. I've always wondered, the radioactivity of the potassium in bananas must depend on the soil in which it is grown. So are there bananas that are non-radioactive?
#49
If you feed bread to ducks they’ll swell up and get bloated because bread to ducks is like junk food so instead we feed them corn and peas.
censorshipsucks 2 years ago
Well if you have anatidaeophobia that's one way to kill the bastards.
#50
Anatidaephobia is the fear of being watched by a duck.
Two_rolling_black_eyes 2 years ago
It is a joke condition invented by Gary Larson in a Far Side cartoon. DSM-IV does include phobias of a type of animal related to trauma there isn't a specific one related to just ducks. Dogs are the only one who get their own listing. The fear of being watched is scopophobia and it is usually generalized - you know something/somewhere is watching.
#51
Omphalophobia is the Irrational fear and or disgust of someone else's or your own Belly Button.
#52
If your dead body is left outside in the right atmospheric conditions you can become completely skeletonized dry remains in as little as two weeks.
David A Paterson 2 years ago
Two weeks seems awfully short. It depends on the local species of beetles, which find the body and start the decomposition process within one week.
#53
Squid's brain is ring-shaped.
#54
Colonial America officially declared independence from Britain on July 2, but the final wording of the declaration wasn’t completed until July 4.
#55
Pregnant woman are recommended to sleep on their left side, ive told many girls this and they can never understand why I know this, they google it and confirm it in front of me. I have no idea why I have this knowledge.
cerinamroth 2 years ago
I think most pregnant women know that. Not everyone does, but I got dizzy if I slept on my right (because the blood flow through your vena cava is restricted).
#56
A gram of activated carbon has the same surface area as an aircraft carrier.
David A Paterson 2 years ago
Activated carbon is literally the best material to use as a water filter.
#57
King of hearts is the only king without a mustache.
#58
The U.S. is the third most populous country in the world. If it added 1,000,000,000 immigrants it would still be the third most populous country.
#59
The amount of time it takes all mammals to pee is roughly the same. The amount of pee is different, and the intensity of the pee stream is different, but the amount of time is roughly the same.
#60
Mongolia is basically an entire country of nothing with a single city in the middle where a majority of the population lives.
Lyone Fein 2 years ago
Vast, undisturbed natural beauty is not "nothing". A large portion ( 1/3 ) of the population still lives in the rural areas. They love the beauty of the steppes.
#61
Die Hard's John McClane role was originally offered to 70-year-old Frank Sinatra.
UpQuarkDownQuark (he/hey you) 2 years ago
It was a formality at that point. Sinatra was in a 1966 movie called The Detective, and Die Hard was technically a sequel. Sinatra’s contract gave him first right of refusal to any sequels, so he had to be asked first.
#62
Because of a song that used to constantly play on the radio I have it pretty well memorized that there are 86,400 seconds in the average day.
#63
A mile is 5,280 feet. And easy way to remember is this “Five Tomatoes.” FIVE TWO m-EIGHT Os
troufaki13 2 years ago
Or... hear me out... you can use the metric system and you don't have to remember any of this. 1 KILOmeter = 1,000 meters, 1 meter = 100 CENTImeters. How neat is that??
#64
Horse has 15 horsepower.
#66
Most North American Freshwater mussels have a parasitic stage in their life cycle. Common hosts are fish and sometimes salamanders.
#67
Pee into bleach and u WILL chloroform gas yourself.
David A Paterson 2 years ago
Chloroform gas is normally made from bleach plus alcohol. Urine plus bleach (or ammonia plus bleach) makes Chloramine gas, which is not quite the same.
#68
Once, it was raining whale, because the corpse of one was blown up by dynamite. One guy died because a chunk of whale fat landed on him.
Jon Hughes 2 years ago
Nobody was injured by the exploding whale (Florence, Oregon, USA, 1970), but one car was flattened by the falling blubber.
#69
The first person to own a video-phone in the UK was Jeremy Beadle.
#70
The dashed lines on highways etc in the US are typically 10ft long. Blew my mind.
#71
10! (factorial) seconds is the same amount of time as six weeks. 10 * 9 * 8 * … * 1 = 6 * 7 * 24 * 60 * 60 …it’s less weird if you think about it logically, l didn’t for quite long xD Also, the Fibonacci sequence is a good approximation when converting miles to kilometers. 3mi ≈ 5km, 5mi ≈ 8km, 8mi ≈ 13 km and so on. I omitted the first three digits of the sequence (1,1,2) for obvious reasons.
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TMoxraaaar 2 years ago
here's one: the definition of "north" is from planetary rotation. If you are in space and looking straight at a pole, if it's rotating counter-clockwise ("anti" for you Europeans) it's north. There is no up and down in space.
Stannous Flouride 2 years ago
The deadliest gunfighters (fictional or real) were Matt Dillon (138 men and seven women) and Lucas McCain (120). John Wesley Hardin (25-40), Tom Horn (17-20), Jim Miller (12-15), Wild Bill Hickok, (8-10) [Also Chuck Connors was the first person in the NBA to break a backboard while dunking a basketball. During warm-ups while playing for Boston]
Janine Randall 2 years ago
Moose antlers can grow up to an inch a day. My personal useless fact.
Nice Beast Ludo 2 years ago
Thanks for these...learn something new every day ..or 30 new things Thanks to BP
WoodChuckCouldChuck 2 years ago
So a few inaccurate posts and a couple of jokes. Pretty typical for this site.
TMoxraaaar 2 years ago
here's one: the definition of "north" is from planetary rotation. If you are in space and looking straight at a pole, if it's rotating counter-clockwise ("anti" for you Europeans) it's north. There is no up and down in space.
Stannous Flouride 2 years ago
The deadliest gunfighters (fictional or real) were Matt Dillon (138 men and seven women) and Lucas McCain (120). John Wesley Hardin (25-40), Tom Horn (17-20), Jim Miller (12-15), Wild Bill Hickok, (8-10) [Also Chuck Connors was the first person in the NBA to break a backboard while dunking a basketball. During warm-ups while playing for Boston]
Janine Randall 2 years ago
Moose antlers can grow up to an inch a day. My personal useless fact.
Nice Beast Ludo 2 years ago
Thanks for these...learn something new every day ..or 30 new things Thanks to BP
WoodChuckCouldChuck 2 years ago
So a few inaccurate posts and a couple of jokes. Pretty typical for this site.
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