Most of us have a small Ravenclaw inside of us, and we adore learning new things about the world, especially if they’re random facts that completely blow our minds. A lot of us are still spending loads of time working and studying from home, which leaves plenty of time for random browsing—so we’re picking up semi-useless but fun new facts about the world every day.
Like the fact the American Gothic painting shows a farmer and his daughter, not his wife. Or how Gandalf carries his pipe in his staff.
You’re probably aware of the ‘I was today years old’ jokes that people post online when they want to share something weird that they just learned with everyone. Well, these jokes have made a resurgence during the coronavirus lockdown, and there are plenty of new ones to make our jaws drop.
Bored Panda has collected some of the best ‘I was today years old’ moments for you to enjoy (and to have random cool facts to drop during your next Zoom cocktail party), so scroll down for some truly weird facts that are true and don’t forget to upvote your faves.
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I read about it years ago, but didn't know they sent him a painting. That's cool and sweet too!
New Fact For Dog Lovers
So, since we’re talking about random facts today, let’s share some other cool ones, shall we? For instance, did you know that one study found that dogs prefer to align themselves “along the North-South axis under calm magnetic field conditions” when they have to go number two? Researchers studied 70 dogs over two years, and this was the first time that magnetic sensitivity was proven in dogs. Science is weird and wonderful.
Measles targets memory cells?? Thanks to every scientist who ever put an ounce of thought into creating that life-saving vaccine.
Old Weird Fact That Is True
Another brain-melting fact is that there were fewer than 1.5k people living in Central Europe for significant periods of time during the Stone Age. Yeah, that sounds unbelievable. IFL Science made a great analogy about how you could fit all those people on a modern mid-sized cruise ship.
Oh god, they really should talk to the people making cartoons. I have been gravely misinformed in my youth...
A Modern, But Random, Cool Fact
Speaking of modern times, if you’ve ever complained about TV ads being too long, just wait until you realize that Old Spice made a 14-hour promo. Their ad ran on December 18, 2018, in São Paulo, Brazil, and won the Guinness World Record for the longest TV ad ever. You can find the abridged version right here (don’t worry, it’s just over 3 minutes, not 3 hours long).
The painter's sister Nan who modelled as the woman in the paintintg, perhaps embarrassed about being depicted as the wife of a man twice her age (modelled by a dentist), started telling people that Wood had envisioned the couple as father and daughter, not husband and wife. The painter Grant Wood himself remained vague on this point.
A Source for More Daily Fun Facts
The internet continually proves that there are still things for us to learn. Luckily, someone took the ‘I was today years old’ concept and created a whole project around it. This initiative regularly shares new facts on social media, mainly Facebook and X (formerly Twitter), and their dedicated website.
However, you can always check out Reddit for a daily dose of ‘I was today years old’ moments. Two groups, r/IWasTodayYearsOld and r/TodayYearsOld, are full of weird but true facts you might want to know about.
Sponges are animals from the ocean (phylum Porifera), but not all of sponges can be used btw, most have too much silica. That's probably what made you confused, between sponges and loofahs
Load More Replies...Actually it's a vegetable. It is quite common in India. In rural India loofas are used from very long time. I come from a village when I showed people that our useless vegetable is being sold online they where are astonished and laughing too.
Fruit. Every “vegetable” we eat that is a reproductive organ (has seeds) is a fruit. A vegetable is when the parts of the plant we eat are the body of the plant.
Load More Replies...My dad had an entire vine of these in his garden when I was a kid. I loved it, because they attracted lady-bugs. <3
They kind of absorb the liquid you cook them and since they tend to be bland, salt, pepper, some garlic would go a long way in giving them flavor. They're kinda spongy before cooking. We call them "patola".
We moved to the beach for a few years once. The landlord had what I thought were squash growing on the fence. THEY WERE LOOFAHS
Growing loofahs just sounds incredibly weird.
Load More Replies...What do they taste like? What's the texture? Common cooking methods? I'm seriously curious.
Load More Replies...How big can they grow before they're only good for drying?
Load More Replies...Oh my God. In India village people have been using this for long time. Its a tendril and hangs down from trees. It's free and we used to just throw it away. Even now nobody's cares about it. It is used as a vegetable very healthy vegetable.
Wow...I'm sure i'm not the only one who thought until today that they were sponges!
I go to a very small high school, about one hundred students (25 students per grade level, because I constantly have to clarify this. We do have a very tiny school, no real lunch room, a very tiny cafeteria, and 6 classrooms, a library that's smaller than most bedrooms, (terrible) with an extra room for our school's equivalent of lockers, which are desks. Apparently, the whole building is about the size of my mom's cafeteria in her k-12 high school, and I think she had about 20,000 students at her school... or 2,000. We don't direct most of our money towards the building, as we're a STEM school, and instead spend most of it on technology, which we usually are the first to get the most recently made computers, and on classes.) Anyways, one of my classes was horticulture, which involved a lot of greenhouse work, and we were supposed to get the plant that made loofahs, and have some experiments with them, but something went wrong while we were getting them, and didn't get to do it :(. I didn't realize that they were a fruit, or that they were called loofahs.
Huh, and I've avoided them all these years thinking they were dead animals, like sponges are. Seriously, stop rubbing dead animals around your body in the name of cleanliness.
I was today years old when I learned what a loofah was….Mind you I am French so that might explain why lol
Yep, Chinese cucumber and man do they grow like wild flower? Spread like a a watermelon plant
Dude what? I had literally no idea this was a thing, I'm going straight to amazon to buy some loofah seeds lol
Got Your Own Fact to Share?
Here at Bored Panda, we are always eager to learn. Have you ever had an 'I was today years old' moment? Share it with other Panda users and us. Whether it’s funny, cool, or downright strange, if you find it interesting, share it in the comments below!
How old were you when you realized Bikini Bottom is under Bikini Atoll, where the US tested hundreds of nuclear weapons? Spongebob is a nuclear mutation
I have known this for ages but forget to do it and always ended up cooking more pasta than needed.
Jesus Luke, aren't you supposed to be able to sense these things??
Note: this post originally had 51 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
I was exactly today years old when I learned of at least half of these... One of my own aha moments, that this reminds me of, is much older... : The "romantic" tradition for a dad to hand over the bride is basically a symbol of how ownership of the woman is passed from father to husband. (No wonder I'm not married, huh? :P)
yup... it was a literal exchange of property. It's why women took on a man's name: as an indication of ownership (& therefore "protection" from other "suiters"). It's still within living memory, where it was ILLEGAL for a married woman to work. This "marriage bar" was only stopped in the mid-60's. If a woman got married, she got fired. :(
Load More Replies...These were all awesome but the one I can't get over is the fact that LOOFAHS ARE PLANTS????
I admit I am less than enamored with this post. Not much was that new.
I was exactly today years old when I learned of at least half of these... One of my own aha moments, that this reminds me of, is much older... : The "romantic" tradition for a dad to hand over the bride is basically a symbol of how ownership of the woman is passed from father to husband. (No wonder I'm not married, huh? :P)
yup... it was a literal exchange of property. It's why women took on a man's name: as an indication of ownership (& therefore "protection" from other "suiters"). It's still within living memory, where it was ILLEGAL for a married woman to work. This "marriage bar" was only stopped in the mid-60's. If a woman got married, she got fired. :(
Load More Replies...These were all awesome but the one I can't get over is the fact that LOOFAHS ARE PLANTS????
I admit I am less than enamored with this post. Not much was that new.