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Today, you can learn anything on the internet. Whether it’s historical, psychological or just plain weird bites of information, people can’t seem to get enough of the tantalizing trivia being shared online. But if you want to see the whole picture, some knowledge might be as interesting as it is disturbing. However, facts are facts, no matter how uneasy they might make us feel.
So when someone on r/AskReddit asked what is a not fun fact, redditors quickly rolled up their sleeves. The thread went viral, amassing more than 82.4K upvotes and 35.1K comments full of the most strangely fascinating pieces of information.
We collected some of the best answers this thread had to offer, so continue scrolling! And after you’re done, don’t forget to share your thoughts and feelings in the comments section below.
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#1
The search and rescue dogs on 9/11 were getting so sad from finding only deceased bodies, the human helpers buried themselves in the rubble so that the dogs could find them and be happy.
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#2
There are more mortality due to mental health issues than all forms of violence combined. People are struggling.
Bored Panda reached out to Daniel T. Willingham, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia and author, most recently, of Outsmart Your Brain: Why Learning is Hard and How You Can Make It Easy. He was kind enough to share some insights about why humans are so drawn to learning new facts and how we benefit from them.
According to the professor, one reason why we find facts interesting is that they are very context-specific. “For example, if I said ‘Would you like to know how guitars are made?’ you wouldn’t necessarily say ‘Yes!’ immediately. You’d more likely say ’Uh … maybe. Is it interesting?’”
“What’s odd about facts is that the content matters less to whether or not you’d like to learn about it than you’d think,” he explained. Being a psychologist, Willingham is absolutely fascinated by human memory but sometimes it happens that when he goes “to professional meetings and attend talks about human memory that I find boring.”
“And then sometimes, I watch a documentary on something—for example, making guitars—that I didn’t think I’d find interesting in the least and find myself fascinated.”
#3
That your brain erases your nose from your vision, until you actively think about it. You nose is obstructing your vision 100% of the time, but your brain interrupts it as useless information, and removes it. When you start thinking about it, or close one eye, you can see your nose again. This might seem harmless until you realize the implications. Your brain, without asking, erases something very real from your awareness. Imagine the possibilities of other things it's doing on it's own like that. There could be a literal 2nd world right in front of us, and it might just be being erased as useless information.
#4
People who survived the Holocaust and get Alzheimer's often think they are back in the camps. So they escape one of humanity's greatest horrors only to die in it 50 years later.
Curiosity is an innate drive we share with many other species, he told us. It prompts us to learn about our environment, which obviously helps individuals to survive: “We are not curious about everything—we are curious when we think a little exploration will lead to a lot of learning.”
Still, what we gain from learning new information depends on what we already know: “Suppose you say to me: ‘Would you like to know which, of all the bottled sauces made in Kenya, is the most popular?’ I can’t name even one … so if you tell me, that fact isn’t very informative.”
“But suppose I knew a lot about African cuisine. Now that information would be informative, because I have some context to put it in, some existing knowledge to connect it to,” Daniel T. Willingham explained.
#5
If 2 male flat worms meet, they will sword fight with their penises until one loses. The loser will become female and they will mate.
#6
People with extreme scurvy start to have ALL of their old wounds open up. Everything with a scar is held together via an active process with collagen and without vitamin c just sort of...stop.
However, some say that taking the time and energy to learn interesting facts is a waste of time since this information is accessible with a few Google searches and quick clicks on the links. The professor disagrees, saying that factual knowledge is a really important driver of reading comprehension and other high-level thinking skills, like problem-solving.
“Think about how much easier it is to read a passage if you’re familiar with the general topic—I don’t care how ‘skilled’ a reader you are, if (like most Americans) you’re unfamiliar with the game of cricket, you will not be able to make sense of a newspaper account of the game,” Willingham elaborated.
On the other hand, “a ten-year cricket fan in India or other cricket-mad country would have no problem.”
#8
A blue ringed octopus, found in the Pacific, is a tiny and cute little guy, but one painless bite gives enough venom to take the lives of 25 male adults.
#9
In countries that require you to opt-in to organ donation, fewer than 15% of people register. In the US (an opt-in country), 18 people die every day waiting for an organ transplant. “Opt-out” countries see over 90% of their population registered for organ donation.
#10
Men's belts are the dirtiest item of clothing. Touched after pooping and before washing hands, never washed, and worn daily for years.
While many blame the internet for overloading our brains with tons of information, we are the ones putting the knowledge into context. When the time is right, we can connect the dots and come up with brilliant ideas. So if you catch yourself wondering if you're ever going to use this stuff, just remember—someday you actually might.
#11
If you are an identical twin it is possible that you and your siblings identity’s were swapped and your parents never caught it.
#15
Vasily Arkhipov was a Soviet navy officer who was the second in command of a B-59 submarine equipped with nuclear weapons at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. When the ships commander was told to launch the entire nuclear arsenal onboard, Arkhipov refused to authorize the attack, after realizing that the launch from the US was an error in their system. If he wasnt on that submarine, the United States and Russia would be a big, grey spot on the globe.
#16
Your intestines will “wriggle” themselves back into the correct position. Doctors who do any type of intestinal surgery don’t have to worry (too much) about how they put the intestines back in.
#17
Horses can't throw up. So if they eat something bad or get a bad gas bubble, they just lay down and die.
#18
Between 10 and 20% of US adults are functionally illiterate (this does not mean they can't read or write at all, but that they cannot comprehend what they are reading at a high enough level to do many basic tasks, like filling out a form). To make matters worse a very large proportion of these people do not realize they have a problem with literacy and self report as being fine at reading and writing.
#19
Migraines and strokes carry a lot of the same symptoms so if you suffer regular migraines you may not notice you're actually dying one day.
#20
The reason you’re supposed to contact a doctor if you have an erection lasting longer than four hours is because prolonged priapism can lead to gangrene of the [private part]. Blood goes in, deoxygenates, but can’t leave, so there’s no way for fresh oxygenated blood to come in, causing the tissue to turn black and die. Don’t worry, though! This can be treated by using a big syringe to [be bad] the trapped blood out.
#22
A third of the world's population live in areas that are projected to suffer extended periods of unsurvivable heat by 2070.
#24
Bed bugs procreate by traumatic insemination. Males literally stab females with their [private parts]. So, just another reason to hate them then.
#25
There is a mysterious illness called the 'sweating sickness' that hit in multiple small epidemics in the early modern era. It was incredibly contagious and massively dangerous, with about a 50% average mortality rate, but it could be higher. It began with an ominous sense of apprehension, followed by severe pains in the neck and giddiness. They then abruptly stopped and switched to heavy sweating, headaches and delirium. Finally, the person was hit with an extreme urge to sleep, and it was thought to be fatal if you fell to it. We know almost nothing about it, nothing about how it spread, how it was caused, only that if you got it you were either surviving or lost within 24hrs. There are horror stories of people leaving town on hunting trips and returning the same day to find almost everybody in the village passed away, with only a few scattered survivors. The worst thing was, you did not gain immunity. You could live through the sweating sickness once, and then get it a few days later and die. Or live through it two or three times, and then get it and die. It was horrific, and we don't know why it disappeared and we don't know if it will ever return.
#26
The glaciers of the Antarctica shelves have melted (and continue to melt) at so fast a rate that even if we enacted radical and worldwide climate change laws today, it's going to take hundreds of years to recover them to their pre-industrial levels.
#27
It was once thought for birds (parrots, magpies) to learn to talk, you had to release their tongue. This was done by cutting their tongue completely or partly off, of course without any anesthesia or pain killers. The tongue release plays absolutely no role in the birds' ability to talk.
#28
There is a non-zero maximum threshold for the amount of cockroach that can be present in ground coffee because it is literally impossible to keep them out entirely.
#29
In Australia there is a plant called the Gympie-Gympie which has such a severe sting that horses who brush against it throw themselves off cliffs because they’d rather die than continue to experience the pain
#30
The threat of a deadly bird flu spreading to humans is always there. It takes just a little bit of negligence in screening chickens for this to happen.
#31
A man once had a tapeworm get cancer. That cancer metastasized, and the man passed away from tumors of tapeworm throughout his entire body.
#32
Live Chat support agents can see what you type before you send it, so they can reply quicker.
You might also like: 49 funny photos of people just trying to survive the summer heat
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