Fun Fact: giraffes have black tongues.
Not so fun fact: there will be no fun facts featured in this article.
Why? Cause folks on Reddit have actually been sharing "fun facts" that are anything but "fun". But don't you worry, it's not the fun that makes a fact interesting, but the educational factors or just the straight up "I never thought about it that way" element.
So, strap yourself for it's gonna be a peculiar ride as you scroll down the top submissions found on the now-viral Reddit post. Be sure to upvote, comment, and tell us your not-so-fun facts about everything that truly matters in this life.
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Crows are currently in their own Stone Age. They’ve been seen making very articulate tools.
‘Money can’t buy happiness.’
A phrase taught that you don’t need money to be happy, conveniently though those on $50k + salaries tend to live longer than those on the bread line.
Speaking from personal experience here, but your body can randomly decide to become allergic to damn near everything edible at any time. Not very fun.
Deaf schizophrenics don't hear voices, they see hands or lips as mental images that tell them what to do.
The oldest person alive was born with an entirely different set of humans on the planet.
Your brain blocks you from feeling your organs moving around inside you.
Not always. After major surgery I am very aware of my organs jostling to regain their rightful positions.
Thanks to pregnant women, the average skeleton count per person is higher than one.
50% of Americans diagnosed with cancer will lose their life savings.
if you ever had the chance to accumulate savings, that is. Not an easy tasks with student loans, mortgages, low minimum salary, costs for medical treatment of any sort..
If you are an identical twin it is possible that you and your siblings identity’s were swapped and your parents never caught it.
This is why I think Elvis may have died in infancy, and all of us have actually been listening to the rock-and-roll stylings of his twin, Jessie.
The united states has misplaced or lost 6 nuclear weapons over the years.
There have been 32 "Broken Arrow" incidents, which are unexpected incidents involving a nuclear weapon. Of those 32, 6 were lost and never found.
That Washington Sqaure Park in New York is essentially a graveyard, with an estimated 20,000 bodies buried below the surface; many were yellow fever victims, wrapped in yellow sheets and buried by the poorest residents. When the foundation for the famous arch was dug, a number of these were exposed.
Guests love to dump the ashes of their loved ones on the Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland. In theory, this seems fine and like an okay place to do that, but when the ashes get dumped custodial cast members come in and vacuum up the ashes.
If you are ever tasked with spreading ashes somewhere, do it anywhere but Disneyland. Because their ashes will not be in the park for long.
Antarctica smells like penguin poop.
Antarctica is a desert, it is too cold for bacteria to live. Nothing there to clean up penguin droppings. If you are close enough to see penguins, you will also smell them.
Um. It may smell like penguin poo, and maybe not the right sort to break down said poo, but there are plenty of bacteria in Antarctica. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_microorganism
In the books, Stuart Little was never explicitly called a mouse. He's pretty much described as a deformed mouse-esque person born form human parents.
Only one in a thousand sea turtles born actually make it to adulthood.
A Teratoma is a kind of tumor that can grow hair, teeth, or even eyes.
Fun fact: the giant tortoise was so delicious, it caused not only itself to be hunted to extinction, but also the dodo.
Giant tortoise meat was supposedly better tasting than chicken. Its fat tasted better spread on bread than butter. Also, it was the perfect food for sailors at the time, as their bladders stored 1 litre of purified water, and they could survive without food in hibernation for almost a whole year in the hull of a ship. Not to mention, because they evolved without humans, they were easy to hunt. You could tie one to your back, and roll another to the ship and they would just let you. It was so delicious, they went unrecorded for a long time because expeditions to bring living samples of wildlife to Europe kept eating them on the way.
Conversely, the dodo, while as easily captured by sailors, tasted awful. It was completely unpalatable. HOWEVER, one day, someone discovered if you cooked dodo meat in the more delicious tortoise fat, it tasted just like chicken. So now, sailors were hunting a few tortoises at a time for their fat and water, storing them, and then hunting dodos on the daily.
Overhunting, plus the introduction of rats to the environment (because sailors) which would eat eggs, led go the population to decline at a rate they could not breed to keep up, leading to both animals going extinct.
"leading to both animals going extinct" You sure? What's in the picture then?
There's a bird that feeds its younger offspring to the eldest.
[FYI, roadrunner].
Sloths sometimes mistake their arms for tree branches and fall to their [doom].
When North Koreans defect to the South, one of the biggest struggles reported by them is often how many English words there are in South Korea (like coffee being 커피/ko-pi) that they just do not recognise. That’s because South Korea takes a lot of linguistic influence from English speaking countries (namely the US), while North Korea creates new words based off Russian/pre-existing Korean words
Not overly depressing in general, but you can never really count a fact about North Korea as ‘fun’.
They basically have to relearn Korean. And since their accents will give them away, some find it hard living in SK and decide to locate to other countries. The linguistic aspect is super interesting to me, I wrote a paper about the differences between Pyongyang and Seoul accents in college. Extremely limited sources, understandably
The TSA missed 96% of contraband during an inspection in 2015.
Otters look cute but are pretty vicious animals that often threaten their own family if food is scarce.
Alzheimer's disease can cause you to pass away since your brain will no longer be able to chew, swallow, breathe, etc.
Many alzheimer and dementia patients end up dying from pneumonia and other infections. It becomes a quality of life issue and the medical care staff usually bring up DNRs and withholding medications (except pain killers) to let them pass peacefully. Alzheimers is rarely a COD on paperwork
I had to withhold food from a lady assigned to me. It was heartbreaking. Eventually couldn't swallow water and I could only gently wet her lips with it. I was the last person to wash her and brush her hair, she died an hour later. That messed me up for a bit, I lost 3 clients in 2 weeks. My line of work is heartbreaking in general.
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My mother passed away in 1999 from Alzheimers. She was only 66. She started forgetting us around 1993. My father took care of her until he got cancer. I remember we were giving her some water to drink around 1995 or so and she would take a drink but would not swallow. She would open her mouth to say she didn't understand and all of the water would come back out. We had to put bread in a bowl of water and she would eat the bread but would not swallow. This went on for only a couple of days, then she started drinking again. My father sent her to live in a house with an RN and they took very good care of her until she died in 1999. My father never missed a day visiting her, even the days he had chemo he had to go sit with her for an hour each day until she died. My father beat his cancer and died in 2007. Sorry this got long. I wish I could find my mother's caretaker, she and her daughter were wonderful to my mother.
My Nan passed from Alzheimer’s, and I remember my mother calling me to tell me that the nursing home had called her to let her know my Nan had reached the stage where she could no longer eat or swallow. It wasn’t long before I got a call the next morning at 1am from my mother telling me Nan had finally passed on. I felt so sad and yet so relieved that she had finally found peace. It’s an ugly disease and it robs so many people of a good life.
My grandma was constantly afraid. She almost got my grandpa arrested after she started running and screaming down the street and told the police she didn't know who he was or why he was keeping her in his house.
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My father had Alz.'s. I spent the last 30 days of his life with him, 24/7. It can also cause your personality to reverse itself. My dad was a kind soul who tried to kill me. I was his baby. Had my ex husband and a nurse not been with us, I would be dead. I was even on Oprah, discussing, with Gary Zukov, author of Seat of the Soul, my inability to deal with that situation. I had no problem with his attempt to kill me, but rather the aftermath. As soon as I got away from him, he realized what he had done. He started crying, asking my ex if I was OK, sobbing that he didn't mean it.He would never hurt his baby. George kept reassuring him that I was fine, and other than bruises around my neck, I was fine. It took me a few minutes to recover, and be able to talk. He died 23 years ago, and I still haven't mentally recovered knowing how badly he suffered when he realized he physically hurt me. Crying as I write this. I never went back home while he was in the hospital/nursing home as I lived 2
hours away. I had to go back home to a doctor's appointment that I cancelled numerous times. He had a heart attack just after I left, but his stupid nurse called 911 even though he had a DNR. He did not want me there when he died. But in the end, I was, he just didn't know it. I then had a nervous breakdown, and moved to Scotland. A 3 year old named Leah, saved my life. She was a neighbor who I met the first day I was there,
Load More Replies... No-one's brain can do that anyway. However, you may mean the signals from your brain telling you to chew, swallow, breathe will no longer be transmitted.
Just a thought, please be kind to the elderly. One day, if you’re lucky enough you’ll get old too. I see horror stories of abused Alzheimer’s patients being abused in nursing homes. Many of it caught on video. It breaks my heart. The very young and the very old are vulnerable to abuse. If you are a nurse or a caregiver or a cna…. Please be compassionate with our loved ones.
Alz kills when the part of the brain that controls breathing, respiration, and heart beat all disintegrate & die...
All I know is it's absolutely devasting to watch someone slowly succumb to this disease. I wish no one would ever have to experience this disease ever again.
my grandma died from alzheimers. she spent over 12 years in a nursing home slowly getting worse. at the end she couldn't even swallow on her own or hold her head up. horrible way to go. and she was a teacher for 40ish years b4 that
Also, the doctor, Alzheimer, initially diagnosed this disease in young patients! (Early onset) Only later did people realize that it was the same disease affecting older people. My cousin had a friend diagnosed in his 30's with early onset.
Most people don't realize it kills you a few months after diagnosis. If you see images of the brains of Alzheimer's sufferers it is very creepy how huge portions of the brain is getting eaten away rapidly.
Not sure about this. My mother lived around 5 years after her diagnosis.
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Basically happened to my step dad's mother. Not officially, as she developed aspiration Pneumonia, but that was caused by the deterioration in ability to swallow. She was unable to communicate, barely opened her eyes, couldn't walk or use the toilet and could only consume liquids for many years, I never met her when she wasn't in that state.
I worked with all kinds of dementia patients for years. Every single one is different. For many, they are still in there but lost underneath the disease. Many can still learn new things. They often come up with new meanings for common things. People in dementia units can come up with their own culture. And for the love of God, yes, they still feel pain. I've seen doctors try to do procedures on dementia patients while under the impression they won't feel it. Never tell an Alzheimer's patient that their spouse, parents, or other loved one has died. They could be dead 40 years but each time you tell them, it's like hearing it for the very first time.
People often use the word Alzheimer's instead of Dementia, Alzheimer's is a specific type of dementia
Happened to my father. He didn't have Alzheimer's per se, but after liver failure, his waste products poisoned his brain. Instant dementia. Died a few weeks later after the damage spread to his brain stem.
Lost my grandmother to alzheimers in 2021 just before my son's first birthday she never got a chance to make a bond with him she got ill so fast only took a year before she passed away
Um...no teeth, muscles, or respiratory system (etc.) included in the brain...perhaps the poster forgot to include "remember how to" between "to" and "chew."
Not really, many become violent because of frustration, as well as depressed. They may not remember things, but often know there is something they should be remembering, and completing tasks and finding the right words become difficult.
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When you're four months pregnant, the baby starts to pee inside you.
Malaria is the #1 cause for human [mortality] of all time.
I think this post is referring to Sonia Shah's research, which found that malaria is most deadly infectious disease in history. That doesn't mean it's the leading cause of mortality. Heart disease is now responsible for almost 1/4 deaths in the US. Historically, heart disease was probably less likely to be the cause of death, but was definitely a leading cause of death even in the ancient world (we see signs of plaque build-up in Egyptian mummies).
In some regions of Australia, 90 percent of koalas have chlamydia, which poses a threat to the species' extinction unless a vaccine is created or widespread koala culling takes place.
A gamma ray burst could [unalive] everyone on Earth within a few seconds and because it's just a beam of light coming from space, nobody would find out until we would be cooked.
Clowns make $30/h on average. Who is the real clown?
In spite of the comments disbelieving that clowns can get work on weekdays I may just get one for my Monday D&D group now.
Sweet jeepers BP, what is with all the chuffing censoring of words. For example, the original post on reddit said "Vending machines kill more people than sharks do", you changed it to say "Vending machines [are more lethal] than sharks [are]". This is getting quite quite daft, quite daft indeed.
Supposedly, their sponsors are making them do it. I say get some new sponsors - preferably ones who aren't [furry animal with wings]-[guano] [mentally unwell].
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So many of these 'facts' have a little nugget of truth, but have been badly expressed. This takes them from being facts into 'unfacts' - they are almost there, but not quite close enough.
Agreed. And some citation on each "fact" would be great!
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I tried to make a witty comment on one or two of these, but now I'm just left alone and afraid.
I met a giraffe once. I gave it some rabbit pellets in a big coffee can. That tongue reached the bottom of it. Their tongue is a purple color. Safari horse. Was an amazing experience.
If a bear has been eating human flesh, their scat will be white. You learn some strange things in Search and Rescue.
They're not-fun facts. Says it in the title
Load More Replies... Sweet jeepers BP, what is with all the chuffing censoring of words. For example, the original post on reddit said "Vending machines kill more people than sharks do", you changed it to say "Vending machines [are more lethal] than sharks [are]". This is getting quite quite daft, quite daft indeed.
Supposedly, their sponsors are making them do it. I say get some new sponsors - preferably ones who aren't [furry animal with wings]-[guano] [mentally unwell].
Load More Replies... So many of these 'facts' have a little nugget of truth, but have been badly expressed. This takes them from being facts into 'unfacts' - they are almost there, but not quite close enough.
Agreed. And some citation on each "fact" would be great!
Load More Replies... I tried to make a witty comment on one or two of these, but now I'm just left alone and afraid.
I met a giraffe once. I gave it some rabbit pellets in a big coffee can. That tongue reached the bottom of it. Their tongue is a purple color. Safari horse. Was an amazing experience.
If a bear has been eating human flesh, their scat will be white. You learn some strange things in Search and Rescue.
They're not-fun facts. Says it in the title
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