Everybody loves a good fun fact. Did you know that ostriches' eyes are bigger than their brains? What about that most people fall asleep in about 15-20 minutes? Also, everyone’s tongue print is unique! Unfortunately, however, life has a way of balancing things out. So for every amusing and uplifting fact out there, there’s another unsettling, disturbing or disgusting not-so-fun counterpart.
Below, you'll find some of these facts that Reddit users have shared right here and here that might have you immediately wishing you had never read them, pandas. This list may not be the most enjoyable ride, but we hope you still find it fascinating, and don't forget to upvote the information you consider to be the epitome of "not fun"!
This post may include affiliate links.
The legendary science fiction author Isaac Asimov died of AIDS. He caught it through a blood transfusion, before they knew to screen for it. Part of his will was that the cause of his death not be revealed for 10 years (He died in 1992, when AIDS was still very much stigmatized; he didn't want his family to have to contend with allegations while they grieved). Asimov was a forward-thinking guy, and reasoned that the stigma around AIDS would likely have died down by 2002. He was right.
Asimov is one of my favorite authors The R. Daneel Olivaw/Elijah Bailey books are some of the best sci-fi in the world. :( Truly a tragedy to lose Asimov. I also remember many decades ago, my dad was in a car accident and had to have a blood transfusion. He has a rare blood type, so he had to be transfused blood that hadn't been properly screened yet. We lived in fear for a few years of him contracting AIDS or hepatitis or something else from the transfusion. This was back around the time that Asimov died... long before antiretroviral therapy :( Fortunately my dad ended up okay.
Veterinarians that put down sick pets will say that the owner often chooses not to be in the room, leaving the pet frantically searching for its owner in the last minutes of his life.
I've been there for my pets both times. Imho, that's part of your responsibility as a pet owner. Yes, it hurts, but you can walk away afterward.
To learn more about how this not-so-fun conversation started in the first place, we reached out to Reddit user Erikjb12, who posed the question "What are some NOT fun facts?" and was kind enough to have a chat with Bored Panda. "I had seen there were a lot of questions at that time asking for 'Fun facts' about this and that, and some of them were more or less the same," Erikjb12 shared. "Then I thought I might see some actual unique responses if I posed an anti-question, to get people to think of maybe more macabre facts. Ironically, not fun facts are in some ways even more fun. And it piques peoples interest for some reason. Also I just really wanted to know some," they added with a laugh.
For a very long time, beheading was used as a form of execution because it was believed it resulted in instantaneous death. For quite some time, there was suspicion that this wasn't the case, but many rules and regulations governing the use of cadavers limited doctors from thoroughly investigating enough to challenge the practice.
However, at the turn of the 20th Century, a French doctor, Beaurieux, was permitted to make an investigation of a severed head from a criminal named Languille, immediately after guillotining. He notes his observations:
*"Here is what I was able to note immediately after the decapitation: the eyelids and lips of the decapitated man worked in irregularly rhythmic contractions for about 4 or 6 seconds. I waited several seconds longer. The spasmodic movements ceased. The face relaxed, the lids half-closed in the eyeballs, leaving only the white of the conjunctiva visible, exactly as in the dying whom we have occasion to see every day [...] It was then that I called in a strong, sharp, voice: 'Languille!' I then saw the eyelids slowly lift up, without any spasmodic contraction -- I insist advisedly on this pecularity -- but with an even movement, quite distinct and normal, such as happens in everyday life, with people awakened or torn from their thoughts. Next, Languille's eyes very definitely fixed themselves on mine and the pupils focused themselves. I was not, then, dealing with a vague dull look, without any expression that can be observed any day in dying people to whom one speaks: I was dealing with undeniably living eyes which were looking at me."*
Every person who was ever decapitated was most likely aware of their predicament for a short time following their 'death'.
America has 5% of the world's population, but 25% of all prisoners in the world.
Incarceration nation. Something about the national American psyche is seriously off and has been for quite some time. It's not that crime and punishment don't matter, it's the reasoning. So much is about cost and profit not justice in the legal system, in fighting crime in the mental physical wellbeing of the victims and the peeps, everything is skewed by power plays and capitalism..
We were also curious if the OP had ever read any facts that they immediately regretted finding out. "Honestly, I love facts, so I can't really say I wish I didn't know something, but I once saw pictures of bone cancer and that made my skin crawl in the worst way I have ever felt. New pseudo phobia of mine. I wish I hadn't seen that."
We also asked Erikjb12 if any of the replies to their question surprised them. "Babies can die after consuming honey," they told Bored Panda. "The botulinum toxin (like the one in Botox) will paralyze their muscles causing 'Floppy baby syndrome'. I'm glad I read this one, but it sure as heck surprised me. I'm a sucker for honey, so I'm glad I got to know before I had any children. Now I feel so prepared."
Homosexuals in concentration camp during WWII weren't recognised as victims after the war ended, and some of them were even re-arrested with their years in camps during the war only subtracted form their sentence.
The Nobel Peace Prize was only invented by Alfred Nobel to undo the bad PR done after he invented dynamite.
He did not want to be remembered for inventing something that killed people, and for the most part, his plan worked.
He may not have liked what Dynamite ended up being used for (Conflict/Violence etc) but in creating it he did reduce the amount of casualties and accidents with explosives due to stabilizing it and allowing for controlled Demolition/Excavation.
And when it comes to why we're so interested in these not-so-fun facts, the OP says, "I think we seek out unsettling information in order to prepare ourselves for mishaps or accidents. In some way, I also think it gives one a sense of power being able to observe danger from above, like watching a horror film or seeing live wild animals in a cage. It makes people feel a rush of power and security, paradoxically. I always found that stuff odd, but personally I can not recall any fact I regret knowing."
Over 300 people are believed to have jumped from the World Trade Center on 9/11. One of the falling bodies killed a fireman at the scene.
On top of that, there are still over 1000 victims whose remains have not been found.
Almost all autoimmune diseases include ongoing pain as one of their symptoms.
Most people with one autoimmune disease have several more.
More women than men get certain autoimmune diseases, but men get them, too.
It takes an average of seven years to get a valid diagnosis; in the meantime, the patient may be suffering on and on, feeling hopeless. Patients are often told that it's all in their heads.
I know this one from personal experience. I have four autoimmune diseases.
In Australia, there is a plant called the gympie gympie, otherwise known as the s*icide plant. When touched, it delivers multiple stings with a long-lasting neurotoxin that is so painful that people would rather kill themselves than live through a few days of excruciating pain, and then a further several years of lesser pain, or full reoccurrence in the correct conditions. If the tiny hairs that deliver the stings are not removed, or are buried, the pain will continue for years. The pain, which has been described as feeling like being doused in hot acid and being electrocuted simultaneously, is so bad the people have been driven mad by it. Horses who have been stung by this plant have literally thrown themselves off cliffs. An ex-serviceman names Cyril Bromley is known to have fallen into one of the plants during WWII. Driven mad by it, he had to be strapped to a bed to prevent himself from committing suicide. Another rather unfortunate officer is known to have shot himself in the head after using one of the plant’s leaves as toilet paper. Rather than live with the pain in his rear end, he chose to end his life.
From an older comment of mine that fits this question:
The Challenger astronauts didn't die when the shuttle "exploded". The stack actually just broke apart under aerodynamic stress and the explosion you thought you saw was just the expanding cloud of hydrogen from the external tank burning. The forces involved in the breakup were very survivable.
The crew cabin was left intact after it separated from the rest of the orbiter and may not have depressurized. There's evidence to suggest some or all of them were conscious at least part of the way down, if not the entire time. And photography of the disaster shows the cabin falling without spinning in a nose down attitude, meaning no excessive forces to knock them out.
The impact with the ocean was what actually killed them. It took two minutes and forty-five seconds from breakup to impact. It's possible that some or all of them were conscious and aware the whole time.
There is a whale that has been searching for a mate for the last 5 year. It has been wholly unsuccessful because its voice is a different frequency than other whales. So much so that whales run from it.
If you show symptoms of rabies, your chances of dying are nearly 100%.
There is a disorder that causes your body to replace your muscle tissue with bone over time.
For those who are wondering, it's called fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP). And currently there is no cure for it
If you're attacked by a bear, it won't necessarily try to kill you like other predators would. It just starts eating.
There are more prisons in the United states than there are colleges. And prisons have inmate quotas to meet.
Not all prisons have quotas, only the privately owned ones do. And it's not in the entire USA. The state I live in does not have any privately owned prisons and therefore no inmate quotas. However, in the states that do have privately owned prisons this is true.
Insect populations have decreased by 80% since the 1980's.
When it comes to heart disease, the VERY FIRST symptom in roughly 1/3 of all cases is sudden death. Meaning you could be perfectly healthy and drop dead because you had heart disease and didn’t know it.
Check your family history people.
There once lived a man known as Tararre who is known as "the hungriest man in history." Despite being average to below-average weight, he lived his whole life with a nearly endless, insanely ravenous hunger. He would eat anything and everything he could find. Since his family couldn't accommodate him, he took to the streets where he'd eat all the raw meat, rotting fruit, live rodents, and other small animals he could find. He used this horrific "skill" to become a street performer where people would give him barrels full of cork, huge baskets of apples, more live animals, and sometimes rocks just to witness him swallow it all with ease. There are other disgusting aspects of tarrare's life that are worth reading about. I think the least fun fact about him is that he was caught several times trying to eat bodies from a hospital morgue, he was also suspected to have consumed a toddler at the same hospital. It's one of the most disgusting yet fascinating stories I've ever read.
The youngest girl to ever give birth was 5 years, 7 months, and 21 days old.
This was in or near Peru. Sadly, child sexual abuse can bring on early onset puberty. And in this case, and many similar, the family members are not sanctioned and the child is made to endure a natural birth - consider- a real life sized baby coming out of a 5 year olds small birth canal. So tue good likely would have severe a**l fissures for life. They are all so evil and should rot in hell.
The first five people who stopped applauding at Stalin’s 1938 presidium were sent to the Gulag for ten years; their crime was that they stopped applauding.
Rabbits eat their babies if stressed enough.
We should give mummy rabbits some red wine instead for those particularly hard days...
You can die from Alzheimer’s due to the brain forgetting how to swallow or breathe.
Brain activity has been recorded for up to ten minutes after death. What is that person experiencing during those last minutes of life?
It'd be the woman in my head cleaning up files, throwing stuff out, and turning the lights out..
There once was a person that had a 300% mortality rate when he did his surgery.
TL;DR- He did an amputation with an unsterilized saw, and was WAY too wild with it.
Another user added:
He cut his assistant's finger off. Both that assistant and the patient died of infection. He also cut the coat of a present elderly doctor. With the blood spurting everywhere the doctor thought he was cut and died of a panic-induced heart attack.
Whales and Dolphins die by not having enough energy to surface for air, so they slowly sink into the depths of the ocean and suffocate.
It was legal to mail children in packages via the USPS from 1913 to 1920.
Every year, 150 people die from a coconut falling on their head in the US alone.
Probably only fun for the coconut.
Yeah, and your more likely to die from a coconut then get killed by a shark. Sharks are so misunderstood and the killing needs to stop. 😡
Criminals that are considered unattractive usually receive a 50% longer jail time than attractive criminals.
Note to self : after committing crime, tape attractive person's picture over face.
human flesh is not flammable, however if it gets too hot it boils and emits a gas that is flammable. which, if ignited, will melt through you like a candle through wax.
This is why people have been thought to have spontaneously combusted. It's the candle wick effect. People fall asleep or unconscious near a source of heat, their clothes catch fire, they die from smoke inhalation or shock, their flesh boils emitting the flammable gas which is helped by the clothing and they burn leaving almost everything else around them unburned.
The laughing tracks I’m movies/ tv shows were all recorded in the 1950’s so pretty much you are just hearing dead people laughing.
The chances of you waking up tomorrow is less than 100%.
93% of humans are dead, and almost all of them were forgotten within 3 generations.
More people get conquered by Mt Everest than the people that conquered Mt Everest.
If a person swallows a single rosary pea, they will be dead within 3 days. A single rosary pea has enough abrin to shut down the human respiratory system
Edit: “It [abrin, the toxin within a rosary pea] has a median toxic dose of 0.7 micrograms per kilogram of body mass when given to mice intravenously (approximately 31.4 times more toxic than ricin, being 22 micrograms per kilogram). The median toxic dose for humans ranges from 10 to 1000 micrograms per kilogram when ingested and is 3.3 micrograms per kilogram when inhaled.”
Edit 2: In case the FBI comes knocking after this, I only know this cause this is one of the ways I kill off characters in my stories
Japanese used to use prisoners to test how many "bodies" their sword was (they would stack prisoners on top of each other and however many the sword went through was how many bodies the sword was)
Goats apparently have the most human-like vaginas of all animals.
A crocodiles stomach can melt down bones due to its powerful gastric juice.
Might be pedantic but it should say dissolve, not melt, as bone won't melt until over 1600 degrees Celsius.
There are worms that can live in almost every part of the body.
Even your eyes, or brain...
And they eat you.
The British East India Company took over Bengal, India and their policies caused the Great Bengal Famine of 1770. It caused the death of ten million- a third of the population.
And they did it for a second time during the Second World War. F**k Winston Churchill.
There's a literal mountain of poop and a literal mountain of trash on Mt. Everest, because once it freezes to the mountain, it becomes part of the mountain, and people wont stop coming in droves to Mt. Everest to prove they're some sort of hotshot that can climb it.
At Harvard University, there is a book bound in human skin.
There are many such books in many libraries all around the world- this is not so uncommon.
Horses can't throw up. If they need to throw up, they'll die.
When running through a government test, the TSA failed to find 95% of weapons that entered planes through the airport scanner system.
There are more tigers kept inhumanely in the backyards of America than there are tigers left in the wild (4000 approx in wild, 6000 approx in captivity)
The Mongolians, to ensure everyone showed up for a war, would issue a proclamation saying that the last person who showed up to training camp would be tortured and murdered in front of everyone.
Josef Mengele kept a collection of children’s eyes pinned to the wall in his office.
The reason you shouldn't eat raw cookie dough isn't because of getting sick from eating raw eggs; you're pretty unlikely to get sick from eating a raw egg these days. The real reason is because you shouldn't eat raw flour, as it contains fecal matter from all the birds that pooped on the wheat while it was growing in the field, and there's no practical way to remove it during processing
If you want to eat cookie dough raw, then sterilise the flour in the oven first. Instructions on how to do so are readily available online.
Cysticercosis is when a tapeworm manages to lodge itself inside your brain causing big cysts to form in your head causing headaches and seizures.
Whiskey distiller Jack Daniel couldn't remember his safe combination and kicked the safe in frustration. Got a infection in his toe that killed him.
Been thinking about this one a lot lately: you will watch most of the people you love die, and the rest will watch you die. it's guaranteed to happen.
The Great Molasses Flood, sometimes referred to locally as the Boston Molassacre, occurred on January 15, 1919, in the North End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. 21 people drowned in a wave of hot molasses.
Shoebill mother's will only raise one chick. So when 2 eggs are laid, the mother will leave the nest to let them hatch. When those eggs hatch one is always aggressive and violent, and the other chick is always the timid and sensitive one.
The violent one immediately rushes out of the egg to assault the timid one on sight. When the mother comes back to see the aftermath, the timid one limps to its mother for comfort and protection. The mother then takes her time beating the timid one to death with her bill, until it's nothing but a mangled lump of meat and bones, and raises the aggressive chick.
I saw this in a netflix documentary on the animals of Africa. David Attenborough actually had to manifest into corporeal form, after the end of that particular scene, to console the viewer and remind us that nature can be scary as f**k sometimes.
This is a poor retelling of the story and has some major details wrong. No bird lays two eggs if there is no chance of rearing two chicks. In good years they will absolutely raise two chicks. The mother also does not "beat the chick to death", that's straight up nonsense. The reality is more like this. The parents will always feed the chick that manages to fight its way to the front. If the smaller chick can fight its way to the food often enough then it will survive. The larger chick will attempt to bully its sibling out of the nest (which is on the ground). The parents will not feed or help any chick that is not inside the nest, but they don't attack it, they give it a chance to fight its own way back.
The smell of vomit comes from butyric acid, as does the smell of parmesan cheese. When given a sample of butyric acid to smell, test subjects were disgusted or pleased depending on whether they were told it was puke or parm.
It requires roughly eight pounds of force to remove a human ear.
If you get a roach infestation bad enough, they will eat your skin while you sleep.
They will also crawl into your ear, which is a horrible, horrible experience.
Banana Republics were coined in the book Cabbages and Kings, about small countries based around single exports that were taken advantage of by large corporations. That company taking advantage of them for the book rebranded and is now called Chiquita.
Brain aneurysms can happen at any time in your life and you won’t know until it’s too late or if a doctor accidentally finds it.
Or purposefully finds it. My Dad had one a few years ago and managed to survive and thrive after, but my sisters and I were all recommended CT’s to check our brains for blips. All clear so far!
For the average adult, there are about ten pounds of organisms living in, and on you that are exclusively not you.
Babies can die after consuming honey, the botulinum toxin (like the one in Botox) will paralyze their muscles causing “Floppy baby syndrome”.
Edit: to clarify the bacterial SPORES (basically a super resistant sleepy form of the microbe) are in the honey, not the actual toxin. After going into the human they start the party and produce the toxin.
And people inject that stuff into their faces in order to reduce wrinkles. Cripes.
The Japanese giant hornet’s venom is so powerful that it can actually dissolve human flesh.
There are most likely people that are stranded at sea or in the desert right now that will probably never be found.
Or in the mountains. Julian Sands (actor) went missing somewhere on Mt. Baldy in January.
If you can smell something, this means that tiny particles of the substance you smell made their way into your nose. "Smelling" is chemical detection. You cannot do that from afar.
This is true for stuff like delicious food as well as poo and whatever.
Each day, people drive drunk more than 300,000 times, but only about 2,800 are arrested.
Edit: In the United States
About one-third of car crash fatalities in the U.S. involve drunk drivers, according to the NHTSA. I'm not advocating drunk driving, but that means the other 2/3rds of us were worse at driving than a drunk.
There are more bacteria on your body than there are people on earth.
The world's oldest living creature was a clam named Ming (I forgot exactly how old, I think like 900), and I'm saying "was" because scientists killed it by accident.
The song that plays at the beginning of the movie Ratatouille was written about a Russian Victory over France.
Up until the 1980s, babies weren’t put on painkillers during surgery, it was believed they didn’t feel pain.
This factoid comes up on BP every single week and it is simply not true. It’s not. People always knew babies felt pain, but we have lacked, in the past, effective technology and pharmaceuticals to safely manage it which led to, unfortunately, many babies having less pain relief than what would be achieved now. I have worked in a NICU, which neonatologists and nurses who worked in this era.
If you live at sea level there are probably millions of bodies buried above you...
America's first baseball star, Jim Creighton, died at 21 from a rupture he got from hitting a home run.
This has been refuted and was never proven. He did not hit a home run in his final game. That was a fictionalized and sensationalized story. He died of what was likely a rupture of an inguinal hernia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Creighton
Years ago I saw an episode of Monsters Inside Me where this guy was doing something outside and a fly flew into his eye. It only made contact for about a millisecond, but it was enough for it to lay eggs. After they hatched they started eating his eye from the inside and he was starting to go blind until a doctor figured out what was wrong.
Since then I get super paranoid whenever a fly goes anywhere near my face because of the not so fun fact that something like this can possibly happen to me.
Addiction cost Americans roughly 740 billion.
(Estimated)
Can't put a value on loved ones lost.
Per what? Per year? Which year? As calculated by who? This is meaningless.
When you die every muscle relaxes, so you poop your pants.
This isn’t always true. I work in healthcare and I’ve prepped bodies to go to the morgue. Not everyone poops.
after spending about a year wasting time here, i am beginning to see more repeat than new stuff i think.
Welcome to BP. Every once in a while you'll see something new. And every once in a while, you'll see a list that's been fact-checked.
Load More Replies...
I'm going to create a 'Fake Facts BP Continues to Repeat Despite the Fact Everyone Knows They're Wrong' post. It's going to be the longest list on here. The title is a work in progress.
After reading this I think I'm a sad masochist. Why did I think I could read these without being both disgusted and distressed? Plus: angry. Ugh. 🤢🤬
I feel awful upvoting any of these, let alone the upvote at the end.
after spending about a year wasting time here, i am beginning to see more repeat than new stuff i think.
Welcome to BP. Every once in a while you'll see something new. And every once in a while, you'll see a list that's been fact-checked.
Load More Replies... I'm going to create a 'Fake Facts BP Continues to Repeat Despite the Fact Everyone Knows They're Wrong' post. It's going to be the longest list on here. The title is a work in progress.
After reading this I think I'm a sad masochist. Why did I think I could read these without being both disgusted and distressed? Plus: angry. Ugh. 🤢🤬
I feel awful upvoting any of these, let alone the upvote at the end.
