It is said that knowledge is power and with every day people learn more and more by experiencing things or hearing it from others. Some of the information that we hear not only is useful but also draws our interest in a specific topic or field. There is also another type of information that can be not so intriguing and even seem scary. But facts are facts no matter what.
Having this in mind, a Reddit user asked other people online “What are some not so fun facts?” and soon members started sharing things that might be interesting as well as disturbing.
Here are 44 best facts out of 10k replies shared by members of Reddit. Which one of these do you find the most interesting? Don’t forget to leave your thoughts in the comments down below!
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Crows are currently experiencing their stone age, but we will never see cool modern crows because we will be long gone before they reach the next stage.
Basically they have been creating tools which researchers are saying are actually more advanced than ones that early humans made. They also have been studied domesticating wolves! They hunt with them, sleep with them, and individual crows have been seen specifically bonding with individual dogs, like humans do with pets.
On 9/11, firefighters had to hide in the rubble for the rescue dogs to find because they kept getting depressed that they couldn't find anyone alive.
A woman’s cancer cells were preserved and found to be practically immortal. This led to a ton of discoveries and breakthroughs in the medical field. Her family still cannot afford their own medical bills and this was all done without their knowledge or consent.
Her name was Henrietta Lacks. She passed away in 1951 from cancer. She was black and very poor and didn’t get great care in the hospital. A doctor had been looking for cells that lasted longer and harvested her cells, separating the cancerous and healthy cells. The healthy cells died while the cancer cells seemingly never stopped replicating.
Her cells are named HeLa cells and have replicated so many times apparently they’d weigh a total more than 50 million metric tons. A pseudonym for her has been Helen Lane. She didn’t know her cells were taken and neither did her family until way later. The family has been through a lot.
If you want to know more, I highly suggest reading the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. I couldn’t put the book down. There apparently is also a movie about her life.
I'm partly outraged by her mistreatment but I'm finding it difficult resenting medical progress. It's a tough one but I guess her cells, her body, her choice. To take that choice away is wrong.
Absolutely sick and disgusting that a piece of her was stolen and is being used for profit without her consent or benefit. America has a very long history of doing very sick, torturous, and inhumane medical experimentation on black people. And before you downvote me, research the Tuskeegee Syphilis Experiment, the massive radiation doses administered to blacks with cancer with the lie that they were treating their cancer (and then dying of radiation poinsoning) , Gynecological surgeries done to black women WITHOUT anesthesia, and the sterilization of black women without their consent. That's not to forget what the US has done to people in PR, indigenous people, and those at the border (sterilization without consent of refugees). The US has a long history of using the most vulnerable and those whom they deem inferior and dispensible for medical experimentation and selfish profit.
And none of this is taught in school. I was amazed when I stumbled across the Buck vs Bell case in high school. IMO, the way Germany handles the holocaust and nazis should be the standard across the world. Are the current local people to blame? No, but we need to learn from the past to have a better future. Far too easy to bury your head in the sand.
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I have a book about her, it's very depressing to have to read about her treatment, yet still amazing that her cells will never die.
I live by the high school named after her! My friend’s older sister goes.
Yeah, I knew the story. I am actually casually working with these cells. There are a lot of other immortal cell lines that derived from different species, a lot from humans. I often think about her and feel sad. I mean, the cervix carcinom that killed her is still alive while she is dead sinc like almost 100 years....
Adding more info: - The decision was not based on race. Her doctor took samples of cells to test their longevity from all his patients. Noone of them gave consent, because it wasn't required at the time. - Mrs Lacks didn't die due to medical malpractice. Cancer treatment wasn't very far developed in 1950's and her condition was very severe. She had a very slim chance and it wasn't harmed by taking a sample of tumor. - Doctor Gey, who discovered that HeLa cells are immortal, did not patent them or gained any form of revenue from them. He realized that they are going to be a big breakthrough in medical research and considered it unethical to capitalize on it.
And a statue of her is being erected in her home town of Roanoke, VA, to replace the one they just took down of Gen. Robert E. Lee. The statue will be installed in October.
This kinda pissed me off because I found this information out last weekend and I was feeling super special that I knew something y’all might not for once. At least give me a week 😔
We can't judge what happened to Henrietta Lacks by modern standards of patient consent; we just can't. Consent processes and IRB were nonexistent. She was treated by renowned gynecologist Dr. Howard Jones who discovered a large, malignant tumor on her cervix and underwent radium treatments, which was the best medical treatment available at the time. A sample of the cancer cells retrieved during a biopsy were sent to Dr. George Gey's nearby tissue lab. Not only did her cells reproduce, they reproduced at an inordinate rate, The cells, name HeLa were sent free of charge to colleagues all over the world. Dr. Gey and Johns Hopkins made no money from them. There are current efforts to assure the family receives financial payment for Henrietta's contribution to medical research.
We continue to use the cells today. Regardless of your opinion on the past, it's acceptable to judge today by today's standards. The Lacks family is still alive and Henrietta's cells continue to be distributed without their express consent.
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Her cells are still being used world wide and they were basically stolen from her.
No they were not. They removed cancer from her. They decided to do research on the cells. They DID NOT steal anything from her. Normal people would be glad to have cancer cells removed from their body. They wouldn't sue the doctor for any amount of money for using the cells for research.
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The book by Rebecca Skloot is incredible. The story continues as her family is suing now for monetary and emotional closure. The company that harvested the cells has made millions if not billions from the cells.
Ugh. They need to stop using people of color for their scientific experiments and research. They probably gave her cancer too. #notrust
Being a Virus Freak, I'll look that book up. Thanks so much for the post.
There was a Law & Order episode similar to this where a man's cells were harvested and his family harassed because he had a form of cancer that they could use to study cancer drugs on. But the family was so poor, they lived in a shack.
That is an excellent and informative book. I highly recommend reading it.
The number one cause of death for pregnant women worldwide is Murder. Horrific to think about.
Pluto didn't even make a full orbit of the sun from its discovery to its demotion.
Anne Frank and Martin Luther King Jr were born in the same year.
You're more likely to survive being shot in the head than rabies.
From what I have seen and heard, it's A cruel and painful death. My heart goes out to anyone who has lost someone to rabies.
People joke about Australia having dangerous animals of all kinds. However, no. 1 enemy to Australians is the sun.
Australia has the highest skin cancer rate in the world. An average Australian is four times likely to get skin cancer than any other type of cancer, and two thirds of Australians will probably get it by the age of seventy.
At any time, your body could make a mistake while fighting an infection/virus and register a vital type of cell as unwanted for the rest of your life.
Your immune system can also decide that your own cells are enemies, and attack them. (Speaking as someone with multiple autoimmune disorders.)
Vet tech here … most of our older pets don’t die of old age, they die of cancer. It sucks.
There’s no way to prevent cancer. It’s a mutation of cells. However, to keep your good boi or gurl with you longer some things that really make a difference: a quality diet (please don’t feed them the cheapest stuff, it’s like humans eating the cheapest foods; not terribly healthy though it may fill all the nutritional requirements), all the regular vaccines (for the love of Dog, make sure you get your puppies the Parvo vaccine!), and a good flea/tick and heart worm preventative. Exercise and not letting them become overweight, and regular dentals are even better!
Also, screw you if you buy your vaccines for your domestic pets at the feed store or the tractor supply (talking dogs and cats here, not large farm animals). Just because it’s cheaper and has the same chemical name doesn’t mean you’re giving the right dose, amount, at the proper location, or getting the assurance that those vaccines have been treated and stored in the correct manner. You get what you pay for.
Our vet (who is also a top surgeon) actually recommended that we buy our pet drugs online as they work out way cheaper. This was partly due to the fact that our pup was born with a bad liver and because of that we couldn't get insurance. So she was helping us out. If you buy your drugs from a reputable pharmacy then there is no reason to suspect that they are any less effective than vet-supplied medicines.
The TSA missed 96% of contraband during an inspection in 2015.
Roughly 40% of murders go unsolved.
The creator of Plants vs. Zombies was fired from EA because he hated the idea of microtransactions.
There's a wasp in Australia that hunts spiders.
It doesn't eat them, though. It paralyses them, makes a little mud cocoon for each one, and before sealing it off, lays a single egg on the now trapped spider.
The egg hatches, the larva eats the still alive (and still paralysed) spider, and then breaks out of the cocoon as a wasp.
Turns out they're all over the world, not just Australia. If you see a wasp dragging a spider, that's what's going on.
Wasps also hunt baby catapillars. They puncture the little catapillars and lay thier eggs inside the caterpillar's body. The wasp larvae hatch and begin to eat the caterpillar alive from the inside until they break through the caterpillars skin and start weaving thier cocoons. That's not even the worst part... the poor caterpillar will remain alive just long enough to protect the wasp cocoons until they emerge.
In 2006, a team of scientific researchers in Iceland were gathering clams in order to study the effects of climate change. They froze the clams, which ended up killing them. They ended up killing the oldest known clam still left alive, nicknamed, “Ming”, which was 507 years old.
We're closer to the year 2051 than we are 1991.
Diarrhea kills 2,195 children every day—more than AIDS, malaria, and measles combined.
Persistent hiccups can be stopped with a digital rectal massage (aka finger up the a**)
That in all likelihood your name will be forgotten after 2 generations.
I suspect my name has already been forgotten by most of the people I have ever known. Oh, well, there's always BP. 😁
During the bubonic plague the Mongolians launched infected dead bodies over the walls of different civilizations.
A gamma Ray burst from space could hit us at anytime and we have no way of detecting them before it happens, we'll all just pass away instantly.
In WW2 allied scientists stuffed dead rats with explosives to aid French resistance fighter who would leave them in factories to be thrown in furnaces and detonated.
They also put small bombs on bats that would fall of within a day or two & explode.
A gorillas schlong is on average 2 inches or less. Guess what, human males on average pack 4-5 inches, which is more firepower than a gorilla; congrats.
Everyone celebrates their birthday each year. But we also have a "deathday" we unknowingly pass each year but because it hasnt happened we dont know which day.
YOU may not know your deathday, but are you sure there isn't someone close to you who does?
False Vacuum Decay - the entire universe could blink out of existence in (from our perspective) an instant.
About 50 kids in the US are backed over by cars every week.
The funny T Pose that an anteater does? Yeah that's Mr. Anteater telling you hes seconds away from literally disemboweling you with one swipe. Next time you see an anteater doing the funny pose just remember they are trying to give you a free C-section with one singular claw slash.
i'm sorry? are you guys meeting anteaters every day? maybe i'm more sheltered than i thought.
The average number of arms/legs a human has is less than 2.
That makes sense, considering there are more amputees than there are conjoined twins or those with birth defects resulting in extra limbs.
Orcas can skin penguins.
I think it's more interisting that the orca is a natural enemy of the moose..
Dentists have the highest suicide rate of all doctors.
I thought it was veterinarians? Or do they not count? Or I could be wrong?
There is only one Pokémon that cannot learn any normal type attacks, and that Pokémon is Weedle.
Suicide Squad has won more Academy Awards than The Shawshank Redemption.
Harriet Tubman was a spy for the Union army and gave them lots of good information but she never received a pension or got military burial due to her race and gender.
Not true. Quit lying and quit trying to make everything about race. She did get a pension, $20 a month, and rec'd military honors at her funeral.
Note: this post originally had 44 images. It’s been shortened to the top 40 images based on user votes.
I could spend all day absorbing strange and useless knowledge. Well, technically, I've been doing it for years. Wish there was a career for it.
There is. Apply at BuzzFeed and recycle all of it endlessly.
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I could spend all day absorbing strange and useless knowledge. Well, technically, I've been doing it for years. Wish there was a career for it.
There is. Apply at BuzzFeed and recycle all of it endlessly.
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