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People Are Sharing Facts That Blew Their Minds And Here Are 30 Of The Most Interesting Ones
No matter how many all-nighters you pull devouring volume after volume of dust-laden encyclopedias, it will never be enough. Because learning is a process, and there’s no end visible on the horizon.
But most of us are just fine with one or two "did you know that?" facts always ready to be served at a dinner table. Except they get old fast and nobody wants to listen to another “banana is a berry,” like, ever.
Luckily, one Reddit user who goes by u/RyanBlitzpatrick did everyone a favor and asked people on r/AskReddit “What's a fact that just blows your mind?” 3.6K upvotes and 3.5K comments later, the results are in and you’d better get your notebook ready, 'cause these are some of the hand-picked knowledge bites that may honestly surprise you.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
When you dream, one part of your brain is making up the story, and another part is experiencing those events and is genuinely surprised by all the twists in the plot.
K.Kobayashi 5 years ago
It's running simulated training sessions for itself, which may help you deal with real-life situations.
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Marley Lennon 5 years ago
I had a dream once where I asked Leonardo DiCaprio to be my friend and he said “DiCapriNO”
Rick 5 years ago
I had a dream once where I punched Leonardo DiCaprio in the face and then said “HAHAHAHA! Catch Me If You Can!” and then ran away laughing, but he did catch me because everybody knows you can’t run in dreams.
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Karen Garnett 5 years ago
LOL, I got stuck on the dirty feet. After that, the point of this went out the window
Christina SchweitzerGrigoriou 5 years ago
I am often aware that I am dreaming and sometimes"edit" or "critique" my dream while asleep...
RELATED:
#2
2006, which doesn’t feel THAT long ago, saw the death of two colossally old tortoises. The first, Harriet, was reportedly collected by Charles Darwin when he visited the Galápagos on the HMS Beagle. She belonged to Steve Irwin at the time of her death. Charles Darwin and Steve Irwin shared a “pet.” Estimated to have lived 176 years.
The second, Adwaita, was born before the United States declared its independence from England. Think of it: just 14 years ago, there was a land creature alive that was older than our country. Just incredible.
SilverLining 5 years ago
Why did someone down vote this? There are other countries besides 'merica
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Becca Gizmo the Squirrel 5 years ago
I would Thank you for blowing my mind. I'm a big tree person. I love trees.
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Mark Johnson 5 years ago
I was lucky enough to visit this zoo in 2006 and see Harriet before she died. I edited a video of my trip and dedicated it to her.
Courtney LeDroit 5 years ago
There's a shark called a living fossil, it was alive in the 1800's and is still alive today.
Nicky OldfieldDesciple 5 years ago (edited)
There is a tortoise called Johnathan still alive and well today and living at a plantation house in St. Helena who was born in 1832. This was while Andrew Jackson was president and 5 years before Queen Victoria ascended to the throne.
Dynein 5 years ago
I heard that it took awhile for some (Galapagos?) tortoises to be documented as a species... not because people didn't know about them, but because all specimen were eaten before the ship returned to a place with zoologists. Apparently they are/were too delicious to resist... (Was in some QI episode)
Caroleann Mc Callion 5 years ago
Yep. QI. Worth watching just for the repeated pronunciation of DeliSHIOUS.Very funny.
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Agnieszka Cichy 5 years ago
About first one, well, apparently Charles Darwin and Steve Irwin were Harriets pets, not other ways around :D
Gabor Dvornik 5 years ago
To be true that land is originally belongs to native indians just white men stole it. Today's americans are not owners of that land but herited from thieves... imho. Not for offending.
Theodore Theodora 5 years ago
Also, "Adwaita" means "undivided." A lovely name with a lot of spiritual heft.
#3
November 2, 2000 was the last time all humans were on the planet together. Since then at least one person has remained on the international space station
Alyssa Kopenhafer 5 years ago
Right! Can’t tell you all the missions but Apollo 13 and before.Spudnick, (sp?)
Load More Replies... Techniker 5 years ago
Nope! This was 12 April 196 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Gagarin, and there also was a manned space station before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir,
Demos Ioannou 5 years ago
it means continuous . from 02/11/2000 we always have someone in space .
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Susan Lighon 4 years ago
Lunar landing 1969? Sputnik? What about all those planes flying around up in the sky? So at some point prior to 2000 not EVERY person was ON the planet.
James Pointer 4 years ago
... "From this date onward, not all humans are on earth continuously" Nothing before 2nd Nov 2000 matters in that sentence.. Planes are still in atmosphere, they will come back down if they do not have the means to stay a flight.
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Chris Challis 4 years ago
humans have been using spacecraft for eons.. There are humans under Mars and probably elsewhere..
Carrie Perrine 5 years ago
Wow people!! The people that were in airplanes were still in Earth's atmosphere! Get your facts straight BEFORE you post something so that you DON'T make everyone think you're stupid!
CATMONSTER2018 5 years ago
Hmm. heres a good tip. rather then making a (in my opinion) rather rude remark about how stupid someone is. what if you just made a tiny note about what they did wrong?
Load More Replies...I wish it was as easy to remember these facts as it was to scroll through. In reality, we do learn things every day, but not much of that information sticks with us.
But memory is a very complex function. It turns out, much of it is generated not only through recollection, but also through the emotions that are attached to it. Shahram Heshmat, a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Springfield, believes that “emotion affects all the phases of memory formation.”
For example, “Attention guides our focus to select what’s most relevant for our lives and is normally associated with novelty.” And nothing focuses the mind more than a surprise which escalates emotional intensity.
#4
Martin Luther King, Jr. and Anne Frank were born in the same year.
Also, that same year, Betty White was already 7 years old.
WhatsUpKittyCat? (I wuv dogs too) 5 years ago
OOoother than the fact war was about to break lose and bring all hell down on Earth.
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ruthenium the ruther 5 years ago
Said to say... but yeah. That's true. It's terribly true.
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Meyer Weinstock 5 years ago
With Wikipedia's calendar listings, I like seeing whose birthday it is, and comparing it to family members. -Dr M, retired historian
#5
The oldest living tree in the world methuselah is 4851 years old
Meyer Weinstock 5 years ago
There's a whole grove of them. See my other comment. It's a forest preserve, so it patrolled.
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Ruta Vitkauskaite 5 years ago
The world's oldest recorded tree is a 9,550 year old spruce in the Dalarna province of Sweden.
Meyer Weinstock 5 years ago
If this is the one I'm thinking of, it's a bristle-cone pine here in CA. It's in the White Mountains of Inyo County, near the border of CA and NV, off of US hwy 395. 12-13k feet above sea level, the grove gets snow in August (in a desert????). Come visit us here in CA. We're more than Hollywood and beaches! -Dr M, retired historian and desert rat
Damián Dell'Amico 5 years ago
Hi there, fella. A mlillion thanks for that info! I'm a big fan of ancient things, and happen to have an aunt in CA. So I'm guessing I'll pay a visit to my aunt someday and sneak out to pay my love and respect to this tree as well. Have a nice weekend!
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#6
That the Oxford Univeristy is older than the Aztec Empire
Kit Tan 5 years ago
Oxford University established in 1096, the alliance of three city-states forming the Aztec Empire occured in 1428.
Francesca Annoni 5 years ago
And Bologna University in Italy is even older (founded in 1088 as university but before 1067 as "schola")
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Jakub Wasilewski 5 years ago
Prague's Charles University is older as well :D by nearly 100 years
François Carré 5 years ago
I guess this is surprising only from an American point of view. In the Old World, you live among many things that are pretty ancient (like some 2000 year old Roman walls still standing in the neighbourhood) and hardly pay attention to them. Besides, the Aztec empire was one of the latest of many native states that existed in Central America, many of which had collapsed long before the conquistadors landed there.
F. H. 5 years ago
That is kind of stupid. I mean, of course they were! The Aztecs were the _last_ of the pre-columbian Mesoamerican civilizations.
Meyer Weinstock 5 years ago
Yes. Is it older than the Maya kingdoms? The Iroquois Confederacy (the first one, not the one the Europeans encountered)? The Moche kingdoms?
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Steve Cruz 5 years ago
And it only took nearly 1000 years for Oxford to admit WOMEN: founded 1096, women allowed in 1961.
TheYendor24 5 years ago
Lol I love how white ppl still want to make themselves feel special by claiming they are older than Aztecs... how in the hell do they know that the Aztec empire was formed in 1428... was there an stone in one of the structures that said “EST 1428”... ppl stop making everything about anglosaxon better or first Than things of color...
BoredPundits 5 years ago
Yendor24, I don’t know how they dated the Aztec empire – probably the same way they date other ancient civilisations – although this is technically the Middle Ages. There are several sources that state that the Aztec Empire began in the 13th Century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_Empire (okay, it’s Wikipedia, but they do reference a lot of other sources). See also https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-americas/aztecs The original posters weren’t trying to state that Anglos are better, they were just stating that Oxford University was established before the Aztec Empire. There are those of us on here who find this interesting from an historical perspective, without turning it into a race issue.
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Another interesting thing which escalates long-term memory is not the recollection of a fact itself, but rather the so-called mood memory. Prof. Heshmat explains that “Our current emotional state facilitates recall of experiences that had a similar emotional tone.”
For example, being in a bad mood primes us to think of and remember unpleasant moments.Having said that, most of the things we forget easily have to do with our inability to put them in our long-term memory.
#7
The sound made by the Krakatoa volcanic eruption in 1883 was so loud it ruptured eardrums of people 40 miles away, travelled around the world four times, and was clearly heard 3,000 miles away.
That's like you standing in New York and hearing a sound from San Francisc
MiraiJack 5 years ago
I know it's partly my fault, but that distance parameter didn't help at all my understanding.
Aragorn II Elessar 5 years ago
Paris to Tehran, or Beijing to Kabul is a similar distance, if that helps
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Melissa Spencer 5 years ago
It also had an artistic influence. Landscapes from this time have wonderfully colorful skies. It is because of all the way in the atmosphere. It created brilliant skies around the world.
Erin Machell 5 years ago
If it traveled around the world three times, wouldn't that mean you could hear it from anywhere on the planet? i.e. more than 3,000 miles away?
Tiina Lehtineva 5 years ago
And was it heart over and over again for days? As sound travels not so fast... 😅
Load More Replies... Steve Cruz 5 years ago
And the ash cloud it produced changed weather patterns worldwide for years. The summer storm is credited with inspiring young cratives gathered in a mansion to produce both Frankenstein and Dracla. https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-summer-storm-that-inspired-frankenstein-and-dracula
Lisa Chambers 5 years ago
WOW! No wonder people have such references for something that happened so long ago, that should have been overcome by other events more current.
#8
If time travel were possible, you would need a time-and-space-machine to survive the trip, otherwise when you travelled back in time, the planet would be at a different point in its rotation around the sun and our solar system would be at a different point in space as it rotates, which means you'd travel back in time and be in an empty part of space
Cathrine Gundersen 5 years ago
I have seen a thousand comments on Boredpanda over time. You good sir was the first comment I actually found it worthy to registrer to "upvote". Made me LOL :P
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Johnny 5 years ago
Since no one knows how to make a time machine, it's not clear if that's true -- maybe the time machine is somehow bound to the matter beneath it, so it doesn't have to travel anywhere, it's location gets pulled along through time.
Dynein 5 years ago
What if the matter was taken from several places? Hold on - what amount and type of matter are we even talking about? A molecule? An atom? How would "atom" even be defined in a metallic compound? If it's several atoms, how many, and is the reason for that amount? Does the bit of air between the ground and your feet (surfaces are pretty rugged from up close) count?
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Stephen Lyford 5 years ago
Which is why the TARDIS is the ultimate time machine: time and relative dimension IN SPACE
fainasKeturatis 5 years ago
well, it's nearly at the same point in the solar system every year, also, you don't necessarily need to jump to some date in the past at the same location in space - if you find, so-called, worm-hole, you will travel to a certain space which is entwined with the exact difference of time compared to your current location and time or exact location can only lead to other exact location which will be linked with a certain time. otherwise, you need to use other technology/logic route to acquire time travelling which, f.e. could be manipulating time flow within certain sphere/space/room of controlled material which means you are at the same location and only undoing things. There could be other theories but it would be completely against the current theory of physics at least to my knowledge.
Chuck Sanford 5 years ago
Well no... I suppose that's one way to solve the issue, but the reality is you just need to be in space, or travel to points in time where the earth was in the same position.
Parmeisan 5 years ago
Either way requires massive calculations regarding your position and the earth's position.
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Doggo Georgia 5 years ago
Also, you wouldn't be able to go to the future unless going to see the 'future' on another planet or star. Again, that's not relevant.
Doggo Georgia 5 years ago
And your atoms would be messed up when they reconstruct, so you might have a leg on your butt, and your arm and belly button might switch places. Either that, or you wouldn't reconstruct.
#9
The International Space station is closer to the earth than San Francisco is to L.A
Johnny 5 years ago
You can bike from SF to LA in 42 hours, less than the typical 2 day trip to the ISS (though some have been shorter)
Evil Little Thing 5 years ago
You don't have to match an orbit to bike from SF to LA.
Load More Replies... Chris Challis 4 years ago (edited)
and if you believe this is a true picture of Earth I have some swampland to sell you.
Meanwhile, forcing yourself to memorize things is likely not to be very effective because our brains are not capable of making sense of dense information quickly and forming strong associations.
It's better to use super simple tricks such as visualization (imagine what you are trying to remember), repetition (boring but effective), and learning the opposite things (create associations in your head).
And never underestimate the power of understanding that which you’re learning, because you'll never be able to remember something you can’t explain yourself.
#10
Arctic foxes can survive temperatures as low as -70 degrees Celsius
Tracy Wallick 4 years ago
That fox is making the face of someone who just unleashed a silent but deadly fart, and is waiting for everyone else in the room to smell it
#11
If an underwater bubble is collapsed by loud sound, light is produced and no one knows why
Chyppa Homer 5 years ago
Good. So next power outage I'm gonna fart in the tub and yell at it :D
Nathan Seddon 5 years ago
The process is called sonoluminescence, the speed of the collapsing bubble generates heat, causing ionisation and emits light.
Shelby P 5 years ago
so what you're saying is only the first half of this is true... People do know why :-)
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John Baker 5 years ago
Another interesting factoid: "...and no one knows why" is one of the most common clickbait taglines on the internet. And just as is the case here, it usually isn't true.
Erin Machell 5 years ago
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/tiny-bubbles-explain-puzz/#:~:text=Initially%20physicists%20attributed%20the%20flashes,determined%2C%20created%20a%20glowing%20plasma.
MrOwlAteMyMetalWorm. 5 years ago
You Sir, are the real hero here. I thank you for existing. Stay safe.
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Elisa Panetta 5 years ago
We do know why - adiabatic heating of the bubble during the collision with the sound wave creates energy that is released as light when the bubble collapses.
Richard Brown 5 years ago
Because the energy of the sound ignites the oxygen content. To cause the collapse the sound wave has to break the bonds of the bubbles contents and convert them from one form to another. In this case a short burst of heat and light with the heat variance being so slight that it probably does not register on a thermometer
Petros Noter 4 years ago
It is called Sonoluminescence. The light is produced because as the sound wave reaches the bubble the energy of the sound wave gets transferred to the bubble leading to the adiabatic heating of bubble when the energy reaches its saturation point , the bubble collapses and releases energy in the form of light.
#12
Some people don’t have an inner monologue, like they literally don’t have a voice in their head.
Lynda Momalo 5 years ago
I can't even imagine. Those must be the people who fall asleep easily!
Liz 5 years ago
I have a super active inner monologue and crazy vivid dreams but minutes after my head hits the pillow, I'm out. I did have terrible insomnia in high school, though. So I know the pain. But I seemed to grow out of it, thankfully.
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Rick 5 years ago
I asked some deaf (from birth) people what they have as their inner monologue if they’ve never heard their own voice or any other persons voice. They all said they visualise a random pair of hands signing everything they think rapidly.
Parmeisan 5 years ago
I have an inner monologue but it's not a voice at all, it's just the awareness of one word after another
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Quinn Parker 5 years ago
Wow, am I the only person in this thread who is like this? I didn't realise the rest of you actually hear voices in your heads??
Aaron Molina 5 years ago
its like when you read a sentence, you dont actually hear a voice voice, but is a voice. kinda like imagine calling out your favorite person's name in your mind.
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ruthenium the ruther 5 years ago
Me neither. It's like: they don't think? I don't understand.
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Dave Walker 5 years ago
Count me in to this one. I thought "voices in your head" was a metaphor before I asked other people! I can make myself "vocalise" internally (imagining a voice reading words), but it's not what's normally going through my mind. And, yes, I can fall asleep extremely quickly!!
Nicole Jones 5 years ago
I did as well. I can't get my head around the fact people actually hear voices... in their thoughts. It's so weird!
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My O My 5 years ago
I didn't have one and memories and feeling were pictures. Had to learn to vocalise my thought to cope with them
Nicole Jones 5 years ago
I don't have an inner monologue but I also can't think/visualize pictures in my head either. I feel like my brain is rubbish lol.
Load More Replies... Parmeisan 5 years ago
Also images. Some people actually have an inner eye and can "see" detailed images... like imagining yourself in a meadow with a stream running and trees and flowers around. Some cannot "see" at all. And lots like me are in the middle - I can start to picture some of that stuff but it's broad strokes only, no detail, I can only focus on the detail of one thing (maybe the petals on a flower) but I lose them instantly if I try to think of something else (e.g. the stream). I can "see" my mom's face, but only really a very broad "idea" of it or a more detailed image of any ONE feature e.g. eyes or nose or hair.
Parmeisan 5 years ago (edited)
Also, some people have multiple voices in their heads (like they are literally thinking two completely different things at once, all the time) and some don't. Some have a better or worse inner ear. My husband says "counting sheep" for him is actually an image of sheep jumping a fence (for me I can see a sheep but only one at a time so the idea of counting them is kinda pointless, I might as well forget the sheep and just count) but they're cartoons and they bleat when they jump. He can't imagine it without the sound. Everybody has such different experiences in their own mind and everyone generally assumes there's just one way to think but that's not true at all. It's quite fascinating! Have a conversation or three about this stuff, you'll learn a lot about the people in your life.
Load More Replies... Katinka Min 5 years ago
I'm one of them and I was completely stunned when I found out only last year, that some people hav a non-stop monologue in their brain. That would drive me insane!! My brain mostly works with images and concepts, not actual words.
Sanna Koskinen 5 years ago
IKR?! Monologue-based thinking just sounds like it's incredibly slow and inefficient!
Load More Replies... #13
A woman once jumped off the 86th floor of the Empire State Building but the wind pushed her back and she fell on a ledge on the 85th floor. She survived.
Mark Kelly 1 year ago
What about all the other people who don't get saved?
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Patrick Shore 5 years ago
just looked her up, got a big smile in a hospital bed..''elvita adams now''
Patrick Shore 5 years ago
another one did same thing, minor injuries 85th floor
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George Klingler 5 years ago
A man was standing on the balcony of the empire state building, another man was there and he said "do you know that if you jump off here the wind ill blow you right back" the other man said your nuts! The man said watch me and he jumped off and blew right back the other man said WOW I gotta try that so he jumped off and as he was falling to his death he yelled YER A MEAN DRUNK SUPERMAN!
Tina Harbour 5 years ago
Wonder how her life turned out,because clearly,the universe had other plans
#14
The fact that nobody knows that if we all see colours the same way
Dorothy Parker 5 years ago
I think about that. It's more than just how you identify a color. There are colors in the aqua family I see as blue and my husband sees as green.
KittyComics 5 years ago
but what if he sees his green as your aqua? what if his green is actually your bright orange? we will never know
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Malakai 5 years ago
Fun fact: language can shape the colors you perceive! There was a study done on people from various societies--one group was from a society with a very limited vocabulary describing colors, and another group was from a society that had a plethora of color names. When tested, the group with the limited vocabulary LITERALLY COULD NOT SEE more nuanced colors such as teal, vermilion, or saffron, while the group with the broader vocabulary was able to identify more colors than the average English speaker (our vocabulary to describe colors is actually quite average, but still pretty varied)
Heather Spears 5 years ago
inuit do not differentiate blue from green, use word - note mixes in their embroidery etc.
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Betsy Caraco 5 years ago
I see colors differently out of each eye.......my left eyes sees colors with a cool tone and my right eye sees things with a warm tone
Val/Malibu/Dante/Bob 5 years ago
That's actually really fascinating! Do you know if there is a reason behind it?
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GirlFriday 5 years ago
This is so frustrating for me. I had a 35 minute argument with our Board of Directors over a design because two of them saw the plum color differently. I had to explain hex codes and Pantone formulas.
Sent From The Slytherin House 5 years ago
I have been wondering about that. If this is true, think about this: we may all have the same favorite color but we have just learned to call it different things.
Annabeth Chase 5 years ago
Just because I'm curious, tell me what colors you see in those markers (I'm guessing). I see (going down from the top): black, red, purple, orange, brown, lime green, yellow, pink, green, and blue.
Doggo Georgia 5 years ago
Same, though in my head I called the purple one lavender.
Load More Replies... Lisa Chambers 5 years ago
Apparently we cannot really see magenta. We trick our minds into thinking we can. I still can't quite get that one.
Kit Tan 5 years ago
Also, how you can never tell if someone is colour blind and you'll never truly know how they see the world...
Xan Maranya 4 years ago
Internal eye examinations can show if the 'rods', which detect color, are functional.
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#15
That there are people in the world who don't like music. Not one specific type, but music as a whole.
That both blows my mind and disturbs me
Madison Feehan 5 years ago
Hope I don't run into any of these people, because we wouldn't be vibin'!
GirlFriday 5 years ago
There is music that actually triggers anger in the listener, too. It is called Christmas music and it makes me violent.
earringnut 5 years ago
Not only can people be tone deaf, they can be note deaf. That beautiful piano concerto we all hear sounds like random noise and is extremely disconcerting to them.
Samantha Lomb 5 years ago
I'm one. I mostly find it noisy or just ignore it. The only music collection I have is for my classroom lessons and I can go months or years without voluntarily turning on music. Visual arts are far more interesting to me.
Quinn Parker 5 years ago
I don't have inner voices and music triggers extremely emotional responses for me. I'm no scientist but it might be the opposite.
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Stannous Flouride 5 years ago
I could live without it. I don't dislike it but I'll go months with only hearing it in the background of TV shows or movies and just don't miss it.
Lily Mae Kitty 5 years ago
I met someone like that once. we had a first and only date b/c he seemed like he wasn't quite right to me.
Eglė Bukauskaitė 5 years ago
Persoanlly i find it fascinating, how we have music easily accessible for us in a reach of a hand, and just 120 years ago - it was a luxury only for the wealthy.
Samantha Lomb 5 years ago
120 years ago peasants and working people played instruments and sang quite often. Thats what "folk" music is
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#16
I still can’t get over the fact that teddy roosevelt got shot and continued to give a three hour speech
Hunter 5 years ago
i remember learning about that i think it went like I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose
Thinairgal 5 years ago
I can't get over the fact that anybody would sit through a three hour speech
Meyer Weinstock 5 years ago (edited)
Lamentably, we are now stuck with the 8-second sound bite... -Rev Dr M, retired historian & former politician
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Hello it Smee 5 years ago (edited)
To the person that down voted this comment educate yourself. Teddy Roosevelt used the word "Bully" as in "good for you". Words change meaning all the time.
Load More Replies... Gwinevere von Ludwig 5 years ago
The speech is what saved him. He had it in his suit jacket and the bullet hit it... it was so thick that the bullet was slowed considerably.
MiraiJack 5 years ago
How boring was his speech that someone had to shoot him to make it stop?
Luisa Vasconcelos 5 years ago
And never the less he continue with it. Probably person give up and kill himself insted.
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BingeFest1 5 years ago
He was saved by his 50 page speech and eyeglass holder. The bullet put a dime sized hole in his chest but it didn't reach his heart
#17
Ant biologists still don't know the maximum life span of most ant queens. They just live too long to keep track, and they're not too easy to keep in captivity. The longest one on record is like 30 years old, and there could easily be species that live longer than that
#18
There is a termite colony in the Amazon Rain Forest that is the size of Great Britain and is almost 4,000 years old. There are also hundreds of millions of termite mounds
Aunt Messy 5 years ago
The largest living organism on the planet is a poplar grove. It covers hundreds of acres and all of the trees are genetically identical, joined by their roots.
#19
The U.S government has an official for a Zombie apocalypse. CONPLAN 8888 also known as Counter-Zombie Dominance was written in 2011. And just in case you think it's weird bureaucratic humor, the first line reads, 'This plan was not actually designed as a joke.'
Lynda Momalo 5 years ago
There WAS a plan for a pandemic -- Trump threw it out. Obama's team even ran through an in person scenario of how to handle a pandemic -- but everyone who went to it either forgot it or were fired or quit.
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Laugh or not 5 years ago
Does the plan take into consideration the people who will walk right into zombies' arms because it is their freedom?
Bizianka 5 years ago
It is publicly available. They said they choose zombie apocalypse on purpose as universal scenario for major emergency with no politics involved.
Brent Hollett 5 years ago
And yet, in a real zombie apocalypse, people would be demanding to be able to go to the beach and calling zombies a hoax...
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Rare Wubbox 5 years ago
Magic zombies, radioactive zombies, chicken zombies, pathogenic zombies, space zombies, vegetarian zombies and symbiotic zombies are all part of the plan.
Iapetos 5 years ago
Vegetarian zombies aren't even a problem. You can integrate them into the normal population and never worry about their eating habits. "GRAAAAIINS!"
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tuzdayschild 5 years ago
Sooooo, the U.S. government has a plan for zombies but not for a pandemic. Sounds about right.
#20
There are more trees on Earth then there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Confirmed by NASA.
Onion rings like to make your breath smelly 5 years ago
but, who really counts every tree on the planet???
Bill 5 years ago
out of the destruction comes rebirth in nutrient enriched soil.
Load More Replies... Brent Hollett 5 years ago
Number stars in the Milky Way: 250 billion +/- 150 billion. Number of trees on earth: Approximately 3 trillion. Enough that inaccuracies in precision are irrelevant for the claim.
#21
A neutron star is so dense that a teaspoon of material from one would weigh around 10 million tons
Paul K. Johnson 5 years ago
Where can I get one of these teaspoons that can hold that kind of weight?
K.Kobayashi 5 years ago
A teaspoon of neutron star material would explode instantly. It's only stable under the extreme gravitational force of the neutron star.
Esca Sav 5 years ago
Easiest way to put it, there is an equation to calculate the densities of stars. The types of stars are determined by a number of observational factors like color, luminosity, size, distance, etc. When taking all of these into consideration, we have a rough estimate for the calculation.
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Cozette DeVirgilio 5 years ago
Or approximately what I will weigh after self isolation is done ☹️
MiraiJack 5 years ago (edited)
Man, Mr. Norris goes to the gym down there.
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Stephen Lyford 5 years ago
This re-affirms my position that most people are just nothing but empty space.
#22
If the timeline of the universe (up to now) was compressed into a year starting on new year's day, Homo sapiens would appear at 11:54 pm on December 31st
Doggo Georgia 5 years ago
Sorry I don't have it. Calling all PC BoredPanda users!
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Karen Lyon 5 years ago
Yep. We are such a blip. Last fall my sister and I celebrated my birthday in NYC. We went to the Museum of Natural History to see the exhibit that Neil deGrasse Tyson helped put together. Mind blown.
Jonathan Schoonbroodt 5 years ago
OKAY OKAY I THINK NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON MENTIONED THIS ENOUGH....LIKE, IN EVERYYYYYY FREAKIN' EPISODE!!!!
MrOwlAteMyMetalWorm. 5 years ago
Show us the rough work, I need the calculations to be done neatly to understand.
#23
Mitochondria is only passed down by mother so there's a concept of mitochondrial eve, all humans today have their mitochondrial dna derived from her
Dorothy Parker 5 years ago
Hold onto your hats if you're a white supremacist. The place or origin is believed to be East Africa.
Lauren Caswell 5 years ago
They think the human race went through a massive bottleneck, meaning there were few survivors, and the human races entire gene pool is limited to what genes those few had. It's why other creatures ie rabbits etc can interbreed with related creatures but humans cannot without severe genetic consequence: we really are all already related. (I definitely support the "out of africa" theory of our evolution the multiple places coincidence one is just too far fetched and not really logical)
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Terri Altman-Hollister 5 years ago (edited)
AND there were other people besides Adam & Eve...that's why their children were able to find mates. I've asked for an explanation of all this but never got a good one.
Aragorn II Elessar 5 years ago
I took it as Adam and Eve had daughters that weren’t mentioned in scripture
Load More Replies... María Hermida 5 years ago
There's a very good book called "The seven daughters of Eve", by Bryan Sykes, which explains this concept in detail. It's very interesting..
Dynein 5 years ago
There's also a "Y Adam", for similar reasons. No relation, and different points in time. A misconception I've come across is that line of descendants of all other men in Y Adam's time, and of all other women in mitochondrial Eve's time, therefore must not have made it into the present day - which is wrong. The specific Y chromosome of a father with only daughters is forever lost, but he still contributes to the gene pool of the rest of the genome!
Shawn McQuaid 5 years ago
I dont know why people wouldn't be proud to have originated from Africa. all of the stigmatism about the continent is within the last 100 years. Almost all of it can be blamed on the media. People need to appreciate things before they are gone.
Steve Cruz 5 years ago
Perhaps Eve is considered "the mother of all" because the bible creation story begins with INCEST (Eve bore the children of her sons) and goes for the peak with the story of the Ark, in which that incest formula is spread to every creature aboard.
Thomas Ewing 5 years ago
Sure it wasn't 6th and toity-tiod in da Bronx? What about those zombie space aliens that interbred some 15,000 years ago? Our genes have been modified--I saw it on the Internet!
Lefi Cyflymder 5 years ago
The place of origin has been proven to be in Europe not Africa as previously thought. Just saying.
#24
Strawberries aren’t berries.
But bananas are
#25
The Fermi Paradox. With the number of potentially habitable Earth-like planets in our galaxy alone, it’s very strange that we haven’t detected alien signals of any kind so far. There’s lots of theories as to why that is, but my favorite is called the great silenceDark Forest (which sounds way cooler). Basically everyone else out there is being quiet and not transmitting because they know of some danger that we are unaware of, and they don’t want it to find them. Gives me chills. Edit: It’s interesting that most of the replies here, joking or serious, correspond to legitimate theories on the Fermi Paradox.
M O'Connell 5 years ago
That's the rather interesting part of modern digital broadcasting. Without a decoding algorithm, digital broadcasts just look like noise. Our signals certainly could be making it to another form of life, but without a proper decoding algorithm, the 1s and 0s just appear to be background noise. The Drake Equation includes variables for (among other things) the length of time any extra-terrestrial society would be actively using or listening for analog signals.
Load More Replies... Mama Panda 5 years ago
Maybe we are the danger and they don't want us to find them and come take over their planet.
Robert Deitrich 5 years ago
Maybe they don’t want us to find them. As a species we destroyed this planet and inhabitants.
DforDorothy 5 years ago
We are limited to our resources, including transmitters and receivers. Their signals might be out of our range of capacity to observe.
Kathy Baylis 5 years ago
We haven’t yet earned our place at the Cool Kids’ table in the school cafeteria.
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Jerod Baker 5 years ago (edited)
It is entirely plausible that if there are earth like worlds out there, that their evolutionary path is far before intelligent species, before technological advancement or are so far advanced to our own that we don't know what to look for.....
Truth Monster 5 years ago
If you hold evolution true, then the likelihood that life exists at all is insane. Just the mechanics of our planet alone are crucial to our development as a specie. The planet-wide disasters and the climate changes over the course of our evolution have led and shaped our evolution in drastic ways that could have easily veered another way just as easily. The chances of it happening again elsewhere, again, insane. The chances those lifeforms are higher lifeforms capable of recognizing each other as lifeforms are like the end digits to pi.
serge 5 years ago
Holding evolution true on our planet does not exclude the probability of certain forms of inteligent life evolving somewhere else under different circumstances. Look at life on earth that is alien to us, so why not the opposite somewhere else in this vast universe?
Load More Replies... #26
That the biggest bacteria species known, Thiomargarita namibiensis, can have a maximum diameter of 0.7 millimeters, which is big enough for you to see it without a microscope.
That's insane if you consider that your average bacteria species has a diameter of 0.001 millimeters.
Genevieve Warner 5 years ago
When I was like, 7 I used to think what would happen if a bunch of bacteria all piled onto one another, like if you could see it or not :p
#27
How a computer does what it does. Blows my mind how 1's and 0's can do so much. Maybe I'm uneducated, but still mind blowing
Johnny 5 years ago
The 1's and 0's aren't so amazing, binary math is easily understood -- the amazing thing to me is the timing, the fastest CPU's can reach 5Ghz, that's so fast that light can only travel around 2 inches with every CPU clock tick.
Quinn Parker 5 years ago
If you don't think it's amazing that binary math can display a movie on your laptop screen you're out of touch with reality. It's incredible no matter how much you know about it.
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YupItsMe1234 5 years ago
You can also breakdown the life to a 4 digits. A, T, C, G. Those 4 code everything we see living around us.
M O'Connell 5 years ago
There are only so many specific details of electronic circuitry that one person can understand. As things have become more complex, generationally, each new batch of engineers pushing the envelope further knows less and less about the most basic units of circuitry. If you were tasked with building a radio receiver 90 years ago, you would be able to learn about and understand each and every one of the fundamental components which make up such a receiver. As technology grew and circuitry became smaller and more complex, more and more of it became hidden within the proverbial 'black box' Knowing how it functions is not important, only how to persuade it to give you the output you desire. Try and understand what's going on inside an OP-AMP. Not how to get the output you want, but understand what's actually going on in there. You'll get a headache.
TheDuchessofSpiders 5 years ago
Yes, it also reflects in abstraction in coding which is pretty cool.
Load More Replies... Shawn L O'Connell 5 years ago
Ones and zeroes or in other words perhaps, Yes or No. Quantum computing ~ adds the dimension of “maybe”. That’s tough for me to conceptualize.
Marie Grevil 5 years ago
That's exactly why I went into electronics, and it still amazes me. I love every bit of it (pun not intended)
#28
A pig will eat a whole human body except for the teeth
lara 5 years ago
Regardless, I will inform you anyway. After WWI, when there were so many bodies from battles, wild hogs would "consume" the bodies, all that were left, when they found any remains were teeth.
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Billy The Kid 5 years ago
Brick Top: You're always gonna have problems lifting a body in one piece. Apparently the best thing to do is cut up a corpse into six pieces and pile it all together. Sol: Would someone mind telling me, who are you? Brick Top: And when you got your six pieces, you gotta get rid of them, because it's no good leaving it in the deep freeze for your mum to discover, now is it? Then I hear the best thing to do is feed them to pigs. You got to starve the pigs for a few days, then the sight of a chopped-up body will look like curry to a pisshead. You gotta shave the heads of your victims, and pull the teeth out for the sake of the piggies' digestion. You could do this afterwards, of course, but you don't want to go sievin' through pig s**t, now do you? They will go through bone like butter. You need at least sixteen pigs to finish the job in one sitting, so be wary of any man who keeps a pig farm. They will go through a body that weighs 200 pounds in about eight minutes. That means that a single pig can consume two pounds of uncooked flesh every minute. Hence the expression, "as greedy as a pig."
JuJu 5 years ago
Where they find several pairs of shoes on that pig farm?
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CrunChewy McSandybutt 5 years ago
Robert Pickton was a serial killer in Canada that disposed of his victims in this way. He confessed to 49 murders to an undercover officer posing as his cellmate.
Chris Arlott 5 years ago
You got to starve the pigs for a few days, then the sight of a chopped-up body will look like curry to a pisshead. You gotta shave the heads of your victims, and pull the teeth out for the sake of the piggies' digestion. You could do this afterwards, of course, but you don't want to go sievin' through pig s**t, now do you? They will go through bone like butter. You need at least sixteen pigs to finish the job in one sitting, so be wary of any man who keeps a pig farm. They will go through a body that weighs 200 pounds in about eight minutes. That means that a single pig can consume two pounds of uncooked flesh every minute. Hence the expression, "as greedy as a pig."
Ivana 5 years ago
Every year at our county fair a 4-H kid would get killed by a pig. My great uncle showed me where a pig ripped off most of his calf when I tried to jump into the pig pin because 5 year old me heard kittens under the platform and the only way to get to them was to cut through the pin.
#29
The way the human brain works. These cells that are powered by tiny jolts of electricity are collectively having conscious thoughts, coming up with morals and empathy and every human behavior
Courtney LeDroit 5 years ago
Never self-wax. Always ask a friend for help.
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Evil Little Thing 5 years ago
This is wrong. There are not "tiny jolts of electricity" but differences in electric potential that are used to shift ions down a concentration gradient in order to initiate a cellular messaging system. Jolts of electricity would be proton transfer.
Alessa Rivers 5 years ago
if you consider that even thoughts are energy, then perhaps our brains are just the mechanisms that allow our true essence, which is energy to manifest in a 3 dimensional world. if that's so, then it connotes some kind of universal consciousness that we are all a part of. i'm not pushing the standard idea of God, but rather like heard once that 'God' is the universe aware of itself. and we are literally part of it.
Lauren Caswell 5 years ago
That's actually how I've made peace in my mind with my firm scientific belief and agnostic leanings! That we exist as a charge differential that is supported by our brain, in turn supported by the rest of our body. Helps me unify such contrasting concepts as my love of biological anthropology vs uncertainty about whether there's more (after all science throughout the centuries has been wrong before many times, who knows)
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Iapetos 5 years ago
Of course, your consciousness and feelings don't come from your brain alone. It is all interconnected in your body. Inside your guts, their is a brain-like structure of neurons controlling your digestion quite independently, and only tangentially speaking to your brain about it (because all the biochemical sensors, nerves and tiny muscles in your intestines deliver too much data for your brain to handle).
Anton Kider 5 years ago
No way... Some people don't feel empathy or have morals, and we all know somebody...
Krisztina Hegedüs 5 years ago
Unfortunately not everybody's brain is coming up with morals, let alone empathy!
#30
That Neutrinos have mass and every second of every day about a billion of them are going through every square inch of your body - but the space between your atoms is so huge there's pretty much a 0% chance they will ever hit you
Jus 5 years ago
I'm more amazed that we consist of atoms with huge spaces in between and we are still in one piece. Wow.
Imperfekt 5 years ago
Except if you really think about we aren't in just one piece. We're in many many many...... pieces.
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My O My 5 years ago (edited)
I like to think if they hit it will come to spontaneous human combustion
Karyn Hutchinson 5 years ago
"we don't serve faster than light particles in here." so, this neutrino walks into a bar...
Mark Howell 5 years ago
And inside the atoms thety is empty space equivalent to the solar system
Ann O'Riley 5 years ago
And protons, electrons, and neutrons are just energy fields anyway.
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#31
One million seconds = approx 12 days One billion seconds = 32 years One trillion seconds = 32,000 years Seeing as people are currently throwing the word 'trillion' around a lot lately (as in pounds or dollars) this really highlights the truly massive differences between these sums. One quadrillion seconds = 32 million years.
Whatshername 5 years ago
Fun fact; the difference between an English "billion" and the Dutch "biljoen" is 3 zeroes. And for "trillion" vs. "triljoen" it's even 6 zeroes.
David Butler 5 years ago
Is that a proper billion (1,000,000,000,000) or just an American "billion" (1,000,000,000)?
#32
Every 2 years there's a convention that reunites all the cities called newcastle in any language, this convention is called Newcastles Of The World, it even has his own website
Brittania Douglas 5 years ago (edited)
My Choir sang at one in Newcastle Upon Tyne, England. It was very interesting.
Binxyminxem 5 years ago
I'm from Newcastle-under-lyme and my dad's family are from around Newcastle upon Tyne! I've never heard of this convention though.
Mimi777 5 years ago
My dad’s family lives in Newcastle too! We live in America.
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SanchaTheSeeker 5 years ago
I've only ever known of the Newcastle in Aus and the 2 in the UK, never knew there would be so many
Luisa Vasconcelos 5 years ago
I want to make a meeting with everybody that born on my bday April fool Day (01 of April) but probably everybody would thing is a Just a joke ir a prank.
#33
Several thousand years ago, the Sahara was actually grassland with massive lakes that rivalled the Great Lakes of North America.
Also, at one point the Straight of Gibraltar was closed. This meant that the Mediterranean Sea almost completely evaporated.
Daria B 5 years ago
Depends what's at stake.... If a great flood needs to happen, well, my hometown is on the coast.... so... please, no.
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Lorraine R 5 years ago
Wow, I just spent about 45 min. looking up the Strait of Gibraltar, and how it originated and when, and why Europe's rivers flowing into the Mediterranean wouldn't keep it from drying up if the Strait closed up (because the rate of evaporation from the sea is greater than the inflow), and when the Zanclean Flood created the Mediterranean in the first place, and what a sverdrup is. Fascinating!
#34
There is a world war between ants
ElusiveIntrovert 5 years ago
Details, details. Who is winning? Do they need help from human allies?
Johnny 5 years ago
World War? I'm pretty sure that the ants of the USA aren't fighting with the ants of Australia.
#35
Took more time to go from bronze swords to steel swords than steel swords to nuclear weapons and less time from nukes to melting lasers that literally MELT metal is seconds
Truth Monster 5 years ago
The advent od science as a discipline facilitated a wider knowledge base which led to faster development of technologies. Polymaths have existed for thousands of years, but often they were a bright blip on history and then their knowledge was lost.
CatWoman312 5 years ago
Because aliens shared their technology with us. Don’t know why the government still hides that obvious truth
#36
Ounce for ounce, bone density is stronger than steel.
Hello it Smee 5 years ago
Another fun fact: It would creep everyone our if we make bridges out of dead people's bones.
Evil Little Thing 5 years ago
Additional fun fact: bones require a lot of upkeep to stay good, so dead bones exposed to elements quickly become brittle and fall apart.
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Troux 5 years ago
"Strength" is a relative term in materials and can be oversimplified to confuse laymen/the public like this. There's different materials for different applications. For the details: There's strength in compression vs tension vs shear, bending and buckling failures, plus the elasticity (how far something can be deformed) and plasticity (how much it can deform and return to shape), as well as how age, wear and the environment affects the material. Consider how cinderblocks can support a house on top but be sliced by a karate chop to the side; how a sheet of paper bends easily but is hard to pull directly apart; how thin steel can easily be bent to new shapes and then bent back, and how bamboo can form a multi-floor building, but still be sliced through by hand.
Indra Servo 5 years ago
And that why steel is better to build things. When facing great force steel just bend instead shatter like bone
somnomania 5 years ago
this is why i'm consistently amazed whenever i hear about someone managing to break their femur
Mark Serbian 5 years ago
Lots of WOOD is - pound for pound - stronger than steel. Steel is better because it's denser.
#37
Kleopatra was born closer in time to the launch of the first iphone than to the construction of the piramids
Qrama Sörensen 5 years ago (edited)
They wrote in emoji so maybe they had phones.
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Meyer Weinstock 5 years ago
Yet, many Americans still think that, as accordingly shown in Hollywood films, the pyramids were built by the Hebrews around 1600 bce until Moses took them away. How many times have I said..."The pyramids (including step-pyramids and mastabas) were already 1,000 - 2,000 years old before the time of the exodus...*smh* -Rev Dr M, retired history professor
#38
You are outnumbered in your own body. The bacteria present in/on your body outnumber your own cells. We wouldn't even be able to survive without most of them
#39
Your brain automatically translates wtf but not lol
Lynda Momalo 5 years ago
I'm fairly sure it's because LOL with its consonant, vowel, consonant construction reads like a word -- while WTF is clearly not a word and, what's more, has more syllables to pronounce if you say the letters instead of the words (5 vs. 3).
Johnny 5 years ago
My brain reads LOL as the letters L-O-L, I don't pronounce it as "lol". When I see WTF, I read that as "What the F", never using the full word.
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Jeff Christensen 4 years ago
Because everybody knows the names of the standard Christmas carols, when labelling they we use abbreviations such as O Come AYF [all ye faithful] or O Little TOB [town of Bethlehem]. This leads, naturally enough, to While Shepherds WTF [watched their flocks].
*sigh*, The Yellow Teletubby 5 years ago
well, I'd rather pronounce "l-uh-l" in my head over having to do the work of thinking "L-O-L". And I'd rather mind-say "what the f**k" rather than "wh-t-f", lmao. Plus, lol sounds funny and bubbly and I love it
#40
The v2 rocket killed more people while actually making it than during ww2 when it was used. Also pepsi once had the 6th largest army/navy in the world.
M O'Connell 5 years ago
Pepsi had a deal where they traded Pepsi products to the Soviet Union in exchange for Vodka coming back to PepsiCo. Eventually that trade became somewhat imbalanced due to lack of demand for vodka and the Soviets paid off the debt with scrap metal (in the form of decommissioned obsolete vessels).
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miten sasmita 5 years ago
It's because the Soviet Union liked pepsi so much but the govt didn't want to spend too much money on it so instead they traded their war equipment and ammo for payment. I imagine trading a war submarine for some containers of sodas. Lmao that was wild.
Mshauri Mazuri 5 years ago
Pepsi is actually popular in other countries. Coke is famous here but I prefer rootbeer.
#41
That our galaxy and the Andromeda are going to collide a long, long time from now to form Milkdromeda! That and that our universe will slowly die one day. There'll be no galaxies, no stars, no nebulae, nothing. It will all die out and leave noting but black holes and dwarf stars
Amanita Virosa 5 years ago
I bet if you added a scoop of ice cream it would be delicious.
Load More Replies... lara 5 years ago
If the universe "dies" there will be NOTHING. Black holes are a gravity well and dwarf stars are STARS. The universe, for those of you who are concerned is NOT going to die out. And I thought that when the Milky Way and Andromeda "collide" the new galaxy would be called "Snickers."
Binxyminxem 5 years ago (edited)
Da da da daaaaa daaaaaaaa, da da da daaa daaaaaaaaa! ...
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*sigh*, The Yellow Teletubby 5 years ago
the last part makes me so sad :( nothing to enjoy the gorgeous view, and no gorgeous view to enjoy :(( eventually, nothing will exist, and the concept of anything will become nothing.
*sigh*, The Yellow Teletubby 5 years ago
*cue hour-long existential crisis*
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#42
Russia is bigger than Pluto!
#43
The 10th president of the USA John Tyler, born in 1790 has two living grandsons
Lynda Momalo 5 years ago
This factoid has been floating around for many years. Anyone checked on them recently?
sabocat 5 years ago
Just checked, at least one of them is indeed still alive (92). Think of those poor young girls that had to accomodate old farts in order for this to happen...
Load More Replies... Lorraine R 5 years ago (edited)
I remember reading somewhere that the U.S. government was still paying pensions to some Civil War veterans' widows in the 1970's. Very old husbands, very young brides.
#44
Vacuum decay could completely annihilate the entire universe at any moment and we wouldn't even see it coming. One moment you're doing your thing, the next you and everything else just blips completely out of existence
Andres Tejeda 5 years ago
Don't give 2020 any Ideas. That sounds like the Plan for new years before going into 2021.
Lorraine R 5 years ago
Well, I just tried to look up vacuum decay, but it's quantum, and my brain needs more caffeine before it can make any sense out of it.
Michał Jastrzębski 4 years ago
in short, hypothesis goes that "vacuum" as in empty space with no energy fields/particles is not 100% empty, and could be even more empty. If that is correct, then it could, technically, tunnel down to "true vacuum" state at one point, and that bubble would then grow to encompass the universee, at the speed of light. While obliterating matter and energy as we know them in the process :)
Load More Replies... Michał Jastrzębski 4 years ago
in short, that hypothesis is that our "nothing" / "empty" space as we know/define them in physics currently is not 100% empty, and "true vacuum" is even MORE empty. Dont ask me how, I cant read those damned equations well enough lol
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*sigh*, The Yellow Teletubby 5 years ago
I don't wanna go like this. I want to complete my life. Find love, feel fulfilled and satisfied with myself. I mainly just want someone to hold when we go. If it does happen like this, I wanna be cuddling on the couch with them, feeling loved, safe, and warm. Not in a cubicle on this cursed website lol
#45
It took us about 70,000 years to go from stone tools to settlements
Kate Johnson 5 years ago
Yep, that made me snort water out of my nose. (That's good!)
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Csaba Hegedűs 5 years ago
In this rate it will take way less time till we go back to stone tools...
A Random Panda 5 years ago
Oh yeah, I did this in social studies recently. The reason homo Sapiens was able to settle was because the Neolithic period (Now Stone Age) gave birth to agriculture and domesticating animals.
Lamby the Lamb 5 years ago
I don't believe that the Earth is really that old. There's no way humans could have been around for tens of thousands of years. According to the Bible in Genesis, humans have only been around for about 6,000 years.
El muerto 5 years ago
nope...Bad math and bad history...first stone tools, bout 4 million years ago...first humans 200000 years ago. humans have being using tools from its beginning. we are all human, one spices...70000 years ago some of our ancestors left Africa and spread around the world, with their African roots...12000 years ago some people started to settle in permanent communities...Is way looonger than 70000 years...let square at 4 mil
M O'Connell 5 years ago
It depends on what you consider to be "stone tools." Some modern apes use simple stone tools. I believe they are basing their information off the "beginning" of what is know as the Middle Stone Age (mesolithic period), where the volume and complexity of human tools increased dramatically and there was wide interchange of stone tool technology between various cultural groups. This math sort-of lines up with their statements, but it does ignore stone tool development by other hominid species and the basic pounders and hand-axes that existed long before.
Load More Replies... Truth Monster 5 years ago
*that we know of. Archaeology has had more than a few major "oops" in regards to the history of mankind. Part of this is Archaeology is still ethnocentric, and if it's not from the Levant, Rome, Greece, Egypt or the movement of the German tribes into Celt territory, it is largely ignored. And while I'm on the topic: who is "us"? There are many civilizations that are/were hunter gatherer the entirety of their existence. They are rare and getting rarer, but Archaeology frames the hunter-gatherer civilizations as backward savages (which was part of the justification for the treatment of Native Americans) and as not true civilizations.
M O'Connell 5 years ago
It is shocking how 'hard' archaeologists sometime seem to take radical discoveries about societal complexity during this era. I remember lots of downplaying following the discovery of Ötzi, people refusing to accept the sophistication of his clothing and kit.
Load More Replies... #46
A gram of uranium is roughly 20 billion calories... Mind was BLOWN!
Nagawa (Cofa) Kishiki 5 years ago
You will lose weight so fast you won't believe it. Of course, you won't be alive either.
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Nia Loves Art 5 years ago
What happens if you eat it (purely in terms of calories assuming you are immune to any toxic properties)?
JMil 2 years ago
True, but somewhat misleading, this is E=MC^2, mass to energy content. This fact measures the nuclear binding energy (the energy required to separate all the protons and neutrons), not energy in, say, chemical bonds. A gram of iron has more energy content than uranium due to its greater binding energy per nucleon. And, in nuclear physics it is most common to measure energy in eV's (electron-volts).
#47
Some animal abilities are truly amazing to me. There's a type of lizard called the axolotl that can regenerate lost limbs in a matter of months. And there's also a jellyfish called the immortal jellyfish that is, well, immortal. When they are attacked or when they get old, they can somehow revert to when they were babies and start growing up again. Also, some animals can live without a head. A chicken once lived 18 headless months. And a turtle (tortoise? what's the difference?) lived 1.
Wubbleyew 5 years ago
Turtle, amphibious, spend most of their time in water. Tortoise, land dwelling, doesn't swim
*sigh*, The Yellow Teletubby 5 years ago
turtle- splash n' float tortoise- splash n' sink
Load More Replies... Johnny 5 years ago
That chicken wasn't completely headless, he was mostly headless with much of his brain stem intact "Although most of his head was severed, most of his brain stem and one ear were left on his body"
Rick Seiden 5 years ago
What about the fact that some primates (other than us) can learn sign language and can communicate original thoughts to us. I find it really sad that every zoo doesn't try to teach their primates sign language. Maybe if they did, they'd stop keeping the primates in the zoos.
QueenoftheSquids 5 years ago
My brother has an axolotl but we've never had to see him regenerate limbs. He's a bit more responsible than that..
Noel Benavente 4 years ago
i believe Teenage Mutant Ninja Tortoises didn't sound that cacthy...
Lamby the Lamb 5 years ago
Yes, God's creatures are amazing. God made every animal in His Glory.
#48
France is the only country that has recorded a successful cavalry charge against boats
Guy MacGregor 5 years ago
Winter 1795, during the night. The water was frozen and the boats were tilted.
Andres Tejeda 5 years ago
It had to be insane for the commander to order the Calvary charge. and imagine reporting back saying to Napoleon yes sir we captured the Dutch fleet, using calvary.
Load More Replies... M O'Connell 5 years ago
In much the same way, the United States is the only country to have successfully attacked a train with a submarine.
F. H. 5 years ago
Well, on ice. Cavalry charges on ice are rather common in history, I'm sure you can find another one where boats of some kind where included.
Guy MacGregor 5 years ago
José Antonio Páez's cavalry attack across the Apure River in 1818, for exemple. But these events are really rare.
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Gonzalo Terán 5 years ago
Nop. In 1806 in Argentina, a calvary charge took several english war boats when the low tide stuck them in the mud.
Linus Nilsson 5 years ago
No, after listening to Mike Duncans "Revolutions", I know this to not be true
Guy MacGregor 5 years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capture_of_the_Dutch_fleet_at_Den_Helder And still...
Load More Replies... #49
That scientist was able to figure out what a girl looked like, where she was from and even her last meal from just a piece of chewing gum
rainforest 5 years ago
Wow I guess you do that sort of analysis on a daily basis? It's still amazing and mind-blowing that this is possible
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Lamby the Lamb 5 years ago
Yep, I heard about this. I read the story. The discovery happened just a few months back.
Khloe Ness 5 years ago
its like dr robotnik from the new sonic movie figuring out the size weight ect. about sonic with a footprint
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Aldhissla VargTimmen 5 years ago
I'm actually amazed that there whas such a thing as chewing gum 6000 years ago!
#50
Charles Darwin is considered to be the Father of Evolution. But he never once used the word "evolution" in his masterpiece book "On the Origin of Species".
Samantha Lomb 5 years ago
So did Queen Victoria. Cousin marriage was a lot more common than you think when the goal of marriage was economic.Kept property in the family
Load More Replies... #51
When something is in orbit, that essentially means it is perpetually falling
Becca Gizmo the Squirrel 5 years ago
I heard it like the space station is non stop falling around the earth.
Nevits Yibble 5 years ago
Here’s another way to explain it. Throw a ball. It travels a curved path as gravity pulls it to the ground. Throw it harder/faster, the curve is more shallow, ball goes farther, still hits the ground. Throw it fast enough (say, around 7km per second) and gravity still pulls it in a curved path, but the curve matches the curvature of the earth - so it “falls” around the globe. Remove the atmosphere to keep it going.
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Truth Monster 5 years ago
...this doesn't seem right. the moon orbits earth. Is the moon falling? are we falling into the sun?
Evil Little Thing 5 years ago
Yes. That's how orbits work. But if you move forward fast enough you can slow your descent so much it's negligible. Imagine swinging a soap on a rope (or any weight on twine) until it spins so fast your fingers don't feel the weight anymore and it appears to float beside you in a whirl. Kinda like that.
Load More Replies... #52
The 52 factorial story (52 factorial being the number of possible combinations of a deck of cards. If you haven’t read this before here. It still hurts my brain every time I read it. “This number is beyond astronomically large. I say beyond astronomically large because most numbers that we already consider to be astronomically large are mere infinitesimal fractions of this number. So, just how large is it? Let's try to wrap our puny human brains around the magnitude of this number with a fun little theoretical exercise. Start a timer that will count down the number of seconds from 52! to 0. We're going to see how much fun we can have before the timer counts down all the way. Start by picking your favorite spot on the equator. You're going to walk around the world along the equator, but take a very leisurely pace of one step every billion years. The equatorial circumference of the Earth is 40,075,017 meters. Make sure to pack a deck of playing cards, so you can get in a few trillion hands of solitaire between steps. After you complete your round the world trip, remove one drop of water from the Pacific Ocean. Now do the same thing again: walk around the world at one billion years per step, removing one drop of water from the Pacific Ocean each time you circle the globe. The Pacific Ocean contains 707.6 million cubic kilometers of water. Continue until the ocean is empty. When it is, take one sheet of paper and place it flat on the ground. Now, fill the ocean back up and start the entire process all over again, adding a sheet of paper to the stack each time you’ve emptied the ocean. Do this until the stack of paper reaches from the Earth to the Sun. Take a glance at the timer, you will see that the three left-most digits haven’t even changed. You still have 8.063e67 more seconds to go. 1 Astronomical Unit, the distance from the Earth to the Sun, is defined as 149,597,870.691 kilometers. So, take the stack of papers down and do it all over again. One thousand times more. Unfortunately, that still won’t do it. There are still more than 5.385e67 seconds remaining. You’re just about a third of the way done. To pass the remaining time, start shuffling your deck of cards. Every billion years deal yourself a 5-card poker hand. Each time you get a royal flush, buy yourself a lottery ticket. A royal flush occurs in one out of every 649,740 hands. If that ticket wins the jackpot, throw a grain of sand into the Grand Canyon. Keep going and when you’ve filled up the canyon with sand, remove one ounce of rock from Mt. Everest. Now empty the canyon and start all over again. When you’ve leveled Mt. Everest, look at the timer, you still have 5.364e67 seconds remaining. Mt. Everest weighs about 357 trillion pounds. You barely made a dent. If you were to repeat this 255 times, you would still be looking at 3.024e64 seconds. The timer would finally reach zero sometime during your 256th attempt. “
DforDorothy 5 years ago
The statement 'it hurts my brain' is indeed true in this case.I admire the person who had a brain capacity and time to come up with this way of explaining this, but I doubt that there are many people who can comprehend this.
Jessica Nametz 5 years ago
I saw the length of the entry and went, "nope, not today."
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*sigh*, The Yellow Teletubby 5 years ago
"but take a very leisurely pace of one step every billion years" yes much leisure. very pace.
Muskular Chicken 5 years ago
Vsauce has a video on exactly this explanation. It's easy when you have visual aids
M O'Connell 5 years ago
A deck of cards has 52 cards. The possible number of different orders that deck could be in is 52! (read: 52-factorial), which is calcualted by 52x51x50x49... etc. The discussion merely highlights how many that actually is.
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#53
I recently got my cat some catnip treats and as I was googling what to buy, I found that catnip actually works as an insect repellent. In fact, catnip is 10X more republican than DEET!
Lynda Momalo 5 years ago
More REPUBLICAN? Maybe you're trying to say repellent? (Which Republicans generally are anyway.)
Malakai 5 years ago
Catnip, and most members of the mint family, in fact (which catnip is!) make for great repellent. Take 6oz distilled water, 2oz isopropyl alcohol, add about 30-50 drops of mint essential oil (or steep a lot of catnip in it for a few days), and you have a very effective, safe for most bugspray. Just don't be surprised if you suddenly become besties with all the neighborbood strays if you use catnip 😂
Michael Sauerwein 5 years ago
So you get rid of all the insects at your picnic but now you are surrounded by all the cats in the neighborhood?
#54
A concept more than a fact but how the whole body functions. Like, even just your heart beating in order to get blood round your body, let alone everything else working in sync. And most of it is done without us even noticing. It's no wonder some are flawed.
2WheelTravlr 5 years ago
I feel like I just walked by someone having a conversation and heard this short unintelligible part of the whole.
#55
There used to be nine different species of humans. At least that is... Homo Sapiens (aka us) Homo Neanderthalensis Homo Floresiensis (sometimes called Hobbits) Denisovans Homo Erectus Homo Habilis Homo Heidelbergensis Homo Rudolfensis Homo Rhodesiensis Homo Ergaster Those are all the members of the Homo family I can think of right know. However it is important to remeber that there are almost certainly some that I forgot to mention and there might be some that we haven't discovert yet. Furthermore it is surprisingly difficult to find out if the groups I've listed are distinct species or different groups of the same species (the fact that our definition of species is kinda arbitrary doesn't help). This is actually a surprisingly interesting topic I would recommend you look into.
sabocat 5 years ago
There was a time when Sapiens and Neanderthals lived side by side. Both human, but one more developed than the other. There is proof of interaction like trade, bullying and sex. That moment in time would be one of my time travelling destinations.
F. H. 5 years ago
It's not true that Neanderthals where "less developed" than humans. Furthermore, not only modern humans and Neanderthals existed together, but also Denisovans and homo florensis.
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Lamby the Lamb 5 years ago
I don't believe in multiple human species. God only created one type of human, us. It says so in the Bible.
F. H. 5 years ago
I think the poster mixed some things up. The interesting thing is that there was a time where three other species of humans existed together with modern humans and interacted in many ways. The other homo types are vastly different from modern humans and were long extinct by then.
Robert Bailey 5 years ago (edited)
And right now some idiot is fixating on the homo part of those words without knowing that it just means man.
Lizz Lor 5 years ago
Brain size, skull shape (protruding brows, jaw sizes), bone ratios (femur)...then there is how various species used tools or socialized. Neanderthals were shorter and stronger than humans while humans were taller and had brains that developed language better.
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Tiffany Marie 5 years ago (edited)
And they all f*cked each other. They would if they could!! Hahaha
Garrincha 5 years ago
Yeah they were all just humans. Considering an animal takes millions of years to evolve there should be more remains of the 'evolving' animals than there are the finished evolved animal. Which is why the theory of evolution is a theory and is not fact. Even Darwin himself said in his biography that he is a theist rather that an atheist.
M O'Connell 5 years ago
If animal remains did not decompose fully, the soil would consist of nothing but animal parts. The rarity of climatic and geologic conditions necessary to preserve remains over the time scales involved are the reason for the rarity of such remains. It would help if you understood the level of scientific scrutiny involved for something to be called a "theory." It is not a matter of some jerk saying "I have a theory." Hell, Gravitational Theory is still a theory. Just because all the mechanisms are not perfectly understood does not mean it is "just a wild idea."
Load More Replies... #56
A now-closed cave in Utah still holds the body of a man who died in 2009
Hello it Smee 5 years ago
He was cave exploring with his family and got wedged in and couldn't be removed. Very sad way to go.
regi stra 5 years ago
there is several on Hymalaian mountains, cause A: its difficult to recovered B: for most of them was "cool" to rest in peace in that mountains
Julia Atkinson 5 years ago
Back in the sixties a couple of my uncle's friends died when the Yorkshire cave they were exploring flooded suddenly. The bodies were never recovered.
Mama Panda 5 years ago
Here is one of the news stories about him. May he rest in peace: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/utah-man-trapped-in-cave-dies/
Jus 5 years ago
Amazing how people feel like masters of the world, so wise and able to do anything. But we cannot rescue people from caves or high mountains. We can't really search the bottom of the oceans. We can't count insects. We don't understand our brains with which we think and understand things, as if our brains were wiser done than we can comprehend. We don't understand time and we can't stop evil in us.
Pamda Panda 5 years ago
There are mountains around the world (not just Everest) where bodies are used as waypoints. Recovery isn't always possible.
#57
There are about 100 times as many cells in a human body than there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy
#58
How MASSIVE the solar system is compared to Earth. Not even regarding any other part of space, just the solar system. It's insane. There's this website that shows the entire solar system lengthwise - If the Moon Were Only 1 Pixel - take the time to read everything in it while you scroll through and just take in the massive expansiveness of space
Nathan Seddon 5 years ago
You can fit all the planets in the solar system in the gap between the earth and the moon.
Astrid Nineor 5 years ago
https://www.joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html
Load More Replies... Noel Benavente 4 years ago
Visit that website or watch this video of a scaled model in the desert, it's amazing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zR3Igc3Rhfg
Marina Bailey 5 years ago
I've been to that website. My finger got tired from scrolling. That's when I truly appreciated how much "nothing" there is between the planets.
Jennifer Gould 5 years ago
The website is great! Pretty cool someone took the time to make that! https://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html
Esca Sav 5 years ago
My Professor showed us a nice example of the distance. He brought a bunch of balls that were relative sizes to the planets just at a smaller scale and gave one to each student (this should also show you just how small the physics department is at universities). He then told us to go a number of paces from our initial position. So the first student would be the Sun, the second student would be Mercury and would walk a certain number of paces away, the third student as Venus would walk even a further number of paces away, etc. etc. By the time we got to Pluto (since my Prof still liked including it), we had to wave to that student because he could no longer hear us from the distance we were separated by. Highly recommend families to try this, it is interesting to see it from that perspective.
Becca Gizmo the Squirrel 5 years ago
Can't be right. If earth were the size of a marble the sun (tennis ball?) Would be miles away. Right?
Load More Replies... #59
The biggest thunderbolt ever recorded in the universe was 150 000 Ly long. Our galaxy the milky way is 100 000 Ly long. And it came from a blasar which is a frikinn insanely big blackhole : M87. And yes this is the black hole we took in photo. It is way way bigger than our milky way's super massive one
Johnny 5 years ago
Is it really a thunderbolt if it's in the vacuum of space where it makes no sound? Seems like it'd be more accurately labeled a lightning bolt.
Juririn 5 years ago
Not even lightning bolt, if it is in vacuum. Rather, a "burst" of radiation.
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What do you think ?
Dynein 5 years ago
I already wrote this in a comment above, but I'm kinda worried it'll get lost in all the other comments and never be read... The most mind-blowing fact I can think of is from university (animal physiology lecture, topic visual sense). There's a small experiment that shows you how crazy much your visual input is curated before it ever reaches your consciousness, in a way not other experiment ever made that clear to me: Take a flashlight, point it sideways at your eye (as in, hold it by the side of your head and point it at the nose so you eye is hit sideways), then wave it about. Then sit in stunned silence. The sensory cells don't actually detect light as such, but a CHANGE from dark to light, so cells behind blood vessels never report anything. Until you wave a light about from sideways, that is... (my other favorite weird fact from that lecture is that "penis fencing" is an actual zoological term. Flatworm mating.)
Esca Sav 5 years ago
I tried it out, it's so weird O-o. There's another cool thing worth mentioning is that everything we see is in the past. It takes time for light to travel from our eye to an object and then back while also processing the image so even if that time is minimal, we only see what has already been. Same with sound. When someone speaks, it takes time for the sound the travel so we never really hear a person speak in the present, but what they said in the past. AND this includes interactions. There is a concept of space-time where each person, wherever they are standing, is their own form of "present." When I am speaking and looking at someone right in front of them, I am actually communicating with their past selves, not the present. The only way for us to be in the same "present" is when we hug :3 (amongst other touchy interactions)
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MrTree1779 5 years ago
There are 7.5 Billion humans on earth. -- But there are 24 Billion CHICKENS. -- This is a magnitude larger than all other birds on Earth, combined. -- This is also enough for every two people to own 7 chickens.
Jack O'reilly 5 years ago
The total weight of ants in the world adds up to the total weight of humans...
Steve Ewing 5 years ago
How long did it take you to count those suckers Jack?
Load More Replies... Richard Davis 5 years ago
I’m amazed the math works this way. If you wrapped a belt around the equator, how much length would you need to add so the belt would be 12 inches off the ground for you to crawl underneath? The answer is 6 feet would need to be added, yes just 6 feet. 25,000 miles around and only 6 feet make that big a difference.
Dynein 5 years ago
I already wrote this in a comment above, but I'm kinda worried it'll get lost in all the other comments and never be read... The most mind-blowing fact I can think of is from university (animal physiology lecture, topic visual sense). There's a small experiment that shows you how crazy much your visual input is curated before it ever reaches your consciousness, in a way not other experiment ever made that clear to me: Take a flashlight, point it sideways at your eye (as in, hold it by the side of your head and point it at the nose so you eye is hit sideways), then wave it about. Then sit in stunned silence. The sensory cells don't actually detect light as such, but a CHANGE from dark to light, so cells behind blood vessels never report anything. Until you wave a light about from sideways, that is... (my other favorite weird fact from that lecture is that "penis fencing" is an actual zoological term. Flatworm mating.)
Esca Sav 5 years ago
I tried it out, it's so weird O-o. There's another cool thing worth mentioning is that everything we see is in the past. It takes time for light to travel from our eye to an object and then back while also processing the image so even if that time is minimal, we only see what has already been. Same with sound. When someone speaks, it takes time for the sound the travel so we never really hear a person speak in the present, but what they said in the past. AND this includes interactions. There is a concept of space-time where each person, wherever they are standing, is their own form of "present." When I am speaking and looking at someone right in front of them, I am actually communicating with their past selves, not the present. The only way for us to be in the same "present" is when we hug :3 (amongst other touchy interactions)
Load More Replies... MrTree1779 5 years ago
There are 7.5 Billion humans on earth. -- But there are 24 Billion CHICKENS. -- This is a magnitude larger than all other birds on Earth, combined. -- This is also enough for every two people to own 7 chickens.
Jack O'reilly 5 years ago
The total weight of ants in the world adds up to the total weight of humans...
Steve Ewing 5 years ago
How long did it take you to count those suckers Jack?
Load More Replies... Richard Davis 5 years ago
I’m amazed the math works this way. If you wrapped a belt around the equator, how much length would you need to add so the belt would be 12 inches off the ground for you to crawl underneath? The answer is 6 feet would need to be added, yes just 6 feet. 25,000 miles around and only 6 feet make that big a difference.
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