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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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.
This began at the Oklahoma bombing. I had a friend go. He came back so traumatized that he did not speak for years. People love to over generalize and rag on police officers and other first responders. There are more good cops than bad ones, some have witnessed some truly horrific scenes in the line of duty
There are more deaths 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.”
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.
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.
I had the honor of taking care of several people who had been in concentration camps(they had the tattooed numbers) and this is very true. One guy with dementia could only get baths, no showers because just the word shower sent him into a horrible memory sequence. Their stories were heartbreaking to say the least.
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.
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.
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.
Also, bones that have broken and healed come apart at the site of the break. It's an amazingly horrific disease.
Quokkas, the worlds happiest animal, will throw their babies at attackers if threatened.
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.”
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.
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.
I honestly find the whole "the body is sacrosanct" idea to be ridiculous. When we die, it's a bag of meat and bones. That's it. If someone else can use some of that meat to stay alive longer, then have at er. I'm not using it any more. My family has no use of it any more. All it's gonna do is turn into worm food anyway.
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You said it, bud. I love the idea that there might still be something useful for another person when I’m done. ❤️
Load More Replies... Having seen both sides I can tell you its amazing. A friend of mine has received two liver transplants due to a hereditary condition and has been able to watch her son grow. In 2016 my partner suddenly passed away, he was a registered donor and saved the lives of four people, including a seven year old. Its amazing to think that a tick in a box, a simple yes, (to give something that you're not going to use/need again) can give someone else the opportunity to live a long life. Ticking no is just selfish.
I'm so sorry for your loss - but it's a wonderful legacy that your partner has left. *gentle hugs*
Load More Replies... The U.S. won’t change to opt-out. Like most of the paranoia proliferating here, this is another example of it. Many people believe doctors will not work as hard to save them if they know they are an organ donor. 🤦🏼♀️We live in an ignorant, irrational, depressing dystopic novel right now.
We've also lived through the Tuskegee Experiment, forced sterilizations, and other atrocities. Is it paranoia or the understanding that the US has worse medical outcomes for those who don't look like your emoji.
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Don't forget the possibility of living donation. Lots of leukemia patients are waiting for a bone marrow donor match and you don't have to die to give someone that gift.
unfortunately, when I tried to donate bone marrow, I was unable to because I couldn't afford all the testing required. My insurance wouldn't pay for the medical tests required to donate, and it was very expensive.
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I am proud to say I am an organ donor. Why not save the life of another if you can. IMO, its inhuman to let needed organs die when you no longer need them.
I've been an organ donor since I got my driver's license. Take whatever you need when I'm gone.
Me too... and don't just take organs. If my dead body can teach someone to save lives, or shooting it out of a cannon or crashing it in a car will help science, by all means...I'm not using it anymore.
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After a few years of preparation we (The Netherlands) are now officially an opt-out country :D
I'm happy to donate my organs, but they must be taken as-is. No warranty is expressed or implied.
Opt-out should be the policy for lots of things ... organ donors, voter registration, garbage recycling bins and so many other things.
This one makes sense to me - people don't want to think about their death, so they actively choose not to look at their organ donation status. If it's assumed that someone will donate organs unless they specifically say no, most people won't actively think about saying no.
One of the many things that need revision in this country
I live in an opt-out country and it makes a difference. Before we just talked about intentions of becomimg a donor, so most people wouldn't go through the bureauceacy, now just some extremists have to face the papers to avoid being a donor.
Besides my kids, donating my kidney to my friend was the greatest thing I've ever done/will ever do in this life. I like to tell people that not only did I get to save my friend's life but now I get to watch her live her life. That's the greatest gift of all. Please consider living organ donation.
My father in law passed in 1999 waiting for a kidney. My nephew got a new kidney in 2004. Unfortunately nobody in the family was a match. He's doing great. I make my wishes known to my family because even if you opt-in, in CA it's still up to the family. Even if you opt in elsewhere. Please opt in.
My grandparents tried to get me not to register for it because they thought a doctor may not chose to save me as hard or some weird s**t and I'm like "Sorry I'm not a stupid selfish c**t gonna do it anyways."
I’ve heard that argument before it’s just so spine-tingleingly ridiculous (well, in my country it is). An emergency team (cos it WONT just be one doctor) trying to save a trauma case that’s come in from a car accident is NOT going to go “yeah - I’m ready to call this and go and have some lunch. Time of death…”. They have nothing to do with the organ harvesting or the recipient. They just won’t. Nor do they get any kind of incentive or financial gain (unless you call the faint glimmer of hope in the knowledge that the organs *might* save someone else’s life after the emotional and physical toll of working on a trauma case and still losing can be considered an incentive). In fact, they probably wouldn’t get a break that shift due to all the extra consulting and paperwork for get the organ people in and then breaking the news to the deceased family. Stupidest argument in the cosmos. I’m glad you stuck it to them, Raven.
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This a very interesting ethical dilemma. If you were an organ donor from birth, you never really consented to it in the first place, so is it right or wrong to "steal" your organs when you die?
No, when you get to 18, then you have to opt out if that's what you want. Baby and child donors are authorised by parents, that hasn't changed
Load More Replies... I opted in. Im not the most healthy person so I guarantee nothing BUT if theres stuff worth taking, have at! Im not using it anymore
I'm an opt-in participant but with my age, ailments, and cabinet full of prescriptions I have to to take daily, I'm uncertain just how valued my donation could be 🤔
That is to be evaluated once you're actually donating them (not necessarily when you're dead like I initially wanted to write, as you can donate a kidney for example while still walking around, lol). But you're giving people the *chance* to do so, and it's absolutely worth it, even if they ultimately decide that your organs won't do good after all.
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That's because, in a country like the US, some of us do NOT trust we will get maximum rescue or care efforts if we are donors. Not when there are uber-wealthy in need. This is just one of many downfalls of capitalism.
Between cancer, COPD, and diabetes I have no usable organs to donate.
Pretty sure we automatically become donors in Britain unless we opt-out or are exempt.
Australia should adopt opt-out. It’s quite ridiculous we don’t have it already.
I'm pretty sure the opt-out country I'm thinking of would start complaining about freedoms and corporations making lots of money if they suddenly became opt-in. When I die, here's my organs, I don't need them. Though I'm not sure any are useful.
This is human nature. If something is mandatory, people refuse. If something is forbidden, people do it. If you want something from the people, use reverse psychology. It also helps with the children. Every time.
It's not mandatory at all. It's just the default setting. If you don't want to be a donor for any reason, you're free.
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People need to realize it's a very personal choice and is no one's business if they want to donate or not. If someone doesn't want to donate and you have a problem with it, it's better off to you that person were never born.
Because people get murdered deliberately for their organs. Not joking.
Idk why you get down voted, doctors do a lot of shady s**t
Load More Replies... There are these smart people called doctors who specialize in exactly that type of thing.
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Well, why don't YOU start it today by opting in? You can save lifes, maybe even those of your friends or family, by doing so.
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The image that most people have of blobfish is based on a misconception.
people think that’s what they look like all the time but blobfish adapted to live in deep waters, which means the deeper you go, the more water pressurethere is. Their bodies are not meaty like fish but more gelatinous because they adapted to the water pressure. if you accidentally pull them to higher levels but with less water pressure, their bodies don’t handle it well bc there’s nothing keeping their bodies in tact, so their bodies explode.
Basically, every photo you’ve seen of a blobfish where they look big and pink and, of course, blobby is a photo of a dead blobfish.
Merchandise and cartoons designed after what they look like dead. Hell, they’re referred to as what they look like dead.
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.
Men's belts are the dirtiest item of clothing. Touched after pooping and before washing hands, never washed, and worn daily for years.
If you are an identical twin it is possible that you and your siblings identity’s were swapped and your parents never caught it.
There is more slavery in the world right now then at any time in history.
You can smell your own lungs. Your brain just filters out the smell.
If you shine a flashlight/smartphone on a newborn sea turtle for too long (which could be only minutes), it will start crawling around in circles. Known as the "Ring of Death", it means that the turtle's eyesight has been permanently damaged due to mistaking your lights for the moon that guides it to the sea. By doing this, you have doomed the sea turtle to death right after birth.
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.
There is a (genetic) disease called FOP where your muscles and tissue turn to bone. Often called "human statue disease"
Eventually people may have to decide whether they want to become "frozen" in a sitting or flat/standing position.
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.
Horses can't throw up.
So if they eat something bad or get a bad gas bubble, they just lay down and die.
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.
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.
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 penis. 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 suck the trapped blood out.
Spider - Rain (you read that right) is a real and naturally occurring phenomenon.
It’s a rare phenomenon where thousands of spiders use tiny strands of webbing to float thousands of feet into the air, landing several miles away.
A third of the world's population live in areas that are projected to suffer extended periods of unsurvivable heat by 2070.
The reason dogs love squeaky toys is because they sound like small animals dying.
Bed bugs procreate by traumatic insemination. Males literally stab females with their genitals. So, just another reason to hate them then.
Bed bugs can burn for all eternity in the deepest, darkest pits of hell.
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 deadly, with about a 50% average death 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 dead 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 dead, 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.
Happened in the British Isles. a mysterious and contagious disease that struck England and later continental Europe in a series of epidemics beginning in 1485. The last outbreak occurred in 1551, after which the disease apparently vanished. It occurred near the time of The War of the Roses, speculation includes it was linked to the outrageous living conditions and bad sewage disposal or a hantavirus virus type of disease. All very fascinating
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.
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.
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.
The accepted level is apparently 10 mg per pound of ground coffee. Time to get a coffee grinder and switch to whole-bean coffee!
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
It’s the same with trying to explain science to antivaxxers. Several scientists have reportedly jumped off a cliff rather than experiencing the pain. Antivaxxers believe they just fell off the edge of the Earth.
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.
A man once had a tapeworm get cancer. That cancer metastasized, and the man passed away from tumors of tapeworm throughout his entire body.
I heard about that story: the man involved was already immunocompromised from hiv and must have picked up tapeworms. Rather than the worm itself getting cancer, it is thought one of their eggs penetrated the lining of his intestines, mutated and ultimately became cancerous. By the time doctors discovered the cause, he’d become too sick to treat.
Live Chat support agents can see what you type before you send it, so they can reply quicker.
If they could see what I type before I think it, I’d be more impressed
Note: this post originally had 80 images. It’s been shortened to the top 35 images based on user votes.
Jees this isn’t Encyclopaedia Britannica. If you are THAT tired either a) don’t read ‘em or b) head off to one of the thousands of alternatives that are on the internet.
Load More Replies... Jees this isn’t Encyclopaedia Britannica. If you are THAT tired either a) don’t read ‘em or b) head off to one of the thousands of alternatives that are on the internet.
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