Someone Asked People “What Is A True Fact That Sounds Fake?” And 40 Delivered Illuminating Responses
In this modern world, where the amount of fake news, alternative facts, scams, and quasi-claims seem to be off the charts, it’s easy to doubt things. But despite our suspicions, many of us still enjoy and seek out good "truth is stranger than fiction" stories. Because life is weird. Science is crazy. Evolution is wild. And there are so many staggering or downright surreal things happening right under our noses we don't even notice.
Chances are, you've stumbled upon at least one piece of trivia that is so weird, it sounds totally made up. And you’re definitely not the only one. There’s an entire thread on 'Ask Reddit' where this subject matter takes center stage. "What is a true fact that sounds fake?" asked user TheMemeing and inspired hundreds of members to share their intriguing tidbits of knowledge immediately.
From snails having 14,000 teeth to Mantis shrimp generating light, just because something sounds a little bogus, it doesn’t mean it’s not real. We've gathered some of the most illuminating responses from the thread, so continue scrolling! Although remember that a little healthy skepticism goes a long way, so put your thinking caps on and take everything you read online with a pinch of salt. Then upvote the facts that surprised you most, and be sure to share your own nuggets of information with us in the comments.
Psst! When you've finished this list, take a look at our previous post filled with fake-sounding facts here.
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The oldest hotel in the world is The Nishiyama Onsen Keiunkan in Japan and has been in business since 705AD. The crazy thing is that it’s still a family business. For 52 generations
Female dragonflies drop out the sky and pretend to be dead to avoid unwanted male advances.
Donald Trump was actually the US President at one time.
In 1895 there were 2 cars out of the entire state of Ohio and they still managed to crash into each other
There’s a penguin named Brigadier Sir Nils Olav III who is the ceremonial head of the Norwegian Royal Guard
Nestle intentionally created a famine by giving put free formula in African countries and pushed a campaign that said it was healthier than breast milk. Then when most of the population had converted and dwindled the number of mothers capable of nursing, they began charging exorbitant prices for formula. this caused thousands of children to starve to death and they got away with it.
There are more slaves today than in any point in history
And there are still slaves in the United States. The 13th Amendment to the US Constitution allows "slavery or forced labor" as punishment for a crime. At this time, there are approximately 800,000 prisoners who are forced to work - including many who do manufacturing work for the 4,200 corporations that utilize prison labor. Source: American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Captive Labor: Exploitation of Incarcerated Workers, June, 2022
Oxford University predates the Aztec Empire by 3.5 centuries.
Humans can smell geosmin (the chemical released when it rains or snows) at 5 parts per trillion. Which means that humans are 200,000 times more sensitive to smelling geosmin than sharks are at smelling blood.
Dinosaurs were around for so long that there were already dinosaur fossils while they were still alive.
Basically, as T-Rex was munching away on Triceratop steaks, Stegosaurus had already been dead and underground for millions of years by that point.
People were on the moon before they put wheels on suitcases.
In the Pompeii eruption, the extreme heat caused some victims' brain tissue to turn to glass.
Well then. That's a dark fact I'll be thinking about for a while now...
The Mantis shrimp punches so hard it generates light.
Johnny Cash was the first westerner to learn of Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953. He was a morse code operator at the time
From 1912 to 1948, the Olympics awarded official medals for painting, sculpture, architecture, literature and music, alongside those for the athletic competitions.
The greenland shark, has a life expectancy of between 250-500 years. That means there could be a greenland shark swimming around, that swam the oceans when the Spanish conquistadors went to search Mexico for gold, which at that time, were inhabited by the Aztecs.
Bananas are berries and strawberries aren't.
TF... I think I've been lied to my whole life.... I think I need some time to think about this....
Koalas are so dumb that they can't recognise a eucalyptus leaf if it isn't attached to a tree.
More people drown in the desert than die of dehydration.
Alligators will give manatees the right of way if they are swimming near each other
Placebo medicine is more effective if patient is told it's expensive.
The ancient Egyptian empire lasted more than 3000 years. It has been less time since the empire fell.
Snails have 14,000 teeth and eat bones and meat not just vegetables.
A fully loaded Amazon Kindle is a billionth of a billionth of a gram heavier than an empty one.
Here’s an 8-minute video on the mass of very small and very large things: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VYvM70MLiZY
Butterflies are fond of cow s**t, fresh blood, and corpses.
I have no right to judge the butterflies, but this is overwhelming. I thought they would love flowers and cotton candy.
There’s a type of mold that, as a single celled organism, can move around by itself, learn, recognise colours and solve mazes. there are many species of slime mold that can come in all colours such as banana yellow, hazard-jacket orange and, fittingly, slime green.
Australia has the largest amount of wild camels in the world.
There are more pet tigers in Texas than there are in the wild of the entire planet.
The one about Oz is understandable: we also have more sheep than people over here (3.3 sheep to every person- weird fact, right?), but the Texas one is slightly concerning...
Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia is the fear of big words.
Hot water freezes faster than cold water. Mpemba effect. The guy who discovered it (in modern times, since Aristotle wrote about it) was ridiculed by everybody including his own teacher, but 6 years later the results were published and is considered fact.
The creation of sticky notes was a result of glue that wasn’t sticky and deemed a failure( 3M)
The formula was put in the records as a failure and later a scientist found it to be useful to stick notes to his workbench.
Then we got sticky notes
King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia of Sweden were turned away from a German restaurant in 2011 since there were no free tables and they didn't have a reservation.
Cheetahs don't roar, they meow.
The chainsaw was invented to aid in childbirth. It was used and invented in the 1700s to cut through the woman's pelvic bone before C-sections became the commonplace way to deliver babies.
Modern medicine is one of the most important advances in human history. (which makes it even dumber to act against it)
When Joe Biden was born, he was closer to Abraham Lincoln's presidency than his own.
The day Michael Jackson's hair caught fire while filming a Pepsi commercial was the exact middle of his life.
Born: August 29, 1958
(9,281 days)
Pepsi incident: January 27, 1984
(9,281 days)
Died: June 25, 2009
I can hear some kid going, " he caught on fire doing a Pepsi commercial?" Yep. Thanks to fireworks plus hair products.
The Michelin Star system was developed by Michelin tires.
To encourage people to drive to the south of France and wear out their tyres. Seriously!
We are closer to the last ever dinosaur than the last dinosaur was to the first ever dinosaur.
Cleopatra only had 2 pairs of great grandparents.
President Jimmy Carter is a badass who once dove Into an active nuclear reactor to prevent a meltdown.
Attila the Hun died from a nose bleed on his wedding night
The universe’s resources are finite and eventually the processes making new stars will be unable to continue. The universe will become a dark void intermittently filled with stellar bodies.
We live in a glorious time where we can see beautiful pictures of the stars and enjoy them from our backyards. Count yourself lucky.
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on the same day, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence being signed. Both of their last words were along the lines of “My friend Adams/Jefferson still lives”. They shared almost the same last words but had no idea one of them were already dead.
A spider called the banana spider, can bite you and cause a painful Erection that last hours
Apple seeds contain a substance that releases cyanide into your bloodstream
Unrelated to apples, but the same applies to all seeds (pits) of the genus "prunus" (cherries, plums, peaches, almonds). The almond (specifically, the sweet almond), which contains minute traces of cyanide, is the only edible seed in the entire genus. The bitter almond, which looks virtually identical, is deadly. Eating 10 bitter almonds is lethal to a child.
Sharks who hang out on sandbars a lot can get a sun tan.
Most common houseplants thrive on neglect.
Most people kill their house plants by paying too much attention to them, by overwatering them or over fertilizing them.
Neglected them for couple of weeks . This theory is not correct i am afraid :(
Betty White (1922) is older than packaged sliced bread (1928 in the USA and 1937 in the UK).
Pineapple actually tries to eat you while you eat it.
Bromelain extract is a mixture of protein-digesting (proteolytic) enzymes and several other substances in smaller quantities.
The burning you feel when eating pineapple is its liquids trying to digest you. That's also the reason for the lingering feeling after eating it.
Can you believe if a person who can completely see is blind almost 40 mins to an hour per day? This phenomenon is called Saccadic Masking and also known as (visual) Saccadic suppression. It is a visual illusion where the brain selectively blocks visual processing during our eye movements.
A saccade is a quick, simultaneous movement of both eyes between two or more phases of fixation points in the same direction. Humans become effectively blind during a saccade.
Hillary Clinton won a Grammy.
Shaving your cat in the summer heat is bad and can actually cause overheating.
If you tried to shave my cat you'd die of overheating from trying to catch it.
Over 30 million people in china live in caves!
And occasionally an earthquake happens like the one in Haiyuan in 1920 that killed more than 200,000.
Breathing out one nostril at a time naturally.
Randomly decided to self-check this one while sitting here on the sofa... and it ended up sounding like I let out a big sigh. My APBT (American Pit Bull Terrier) - who I thought was "sleeping" on my lap - immediately let out a loud empathy sigh in response. While it may be entirely unrelated to this fact, it was definitely adorable.
Insurance companies most years pay out more dollars in claims and loss expenses than they collect in premium dollars. They make all their money by investing the premium dollars before they have to pay them out.
Edit: I’m talking about car and home insurance. Health insurance works differently and I never worked in that field so I don’t know.
They’ll do everything they can to avoid paying the claims first too, though.
Killer Whales love Great White Shark liver. They are capable of extracting it with surgical precision, leaving the Great White to bleed out and die.
It's not really surgical precision if the patient bleeds to death, is it?
“Tiffany” is a name from the Middle Ages
Solid matter is made up of mostly empty space.
I think Quantum physics say otherwise. The electrons occupy ALL the space between the nucleus and their orbit at the same time.
The last official execution by guillotine was 1977 September 10th at Baumetes Prison in Marseille, France.
Both Stalin and Hitler were briefly in the same city as each other (Vienna) before they met (or knew about each other, at least).
Abraham Lincoln died before the Samurai were abolished as a caste.
For one hour every year a part of Oregon and Florida will have the same time of day
Explanation: In fall, when the clocks are set back an hour, the switch happens at 2am. So at that time, when the part of Florida (like Pensacola) on Central time switches an hour back to 1am, but Oregon's part on Mountain time (like Ontario, OR) will not yet for another hour, the parts of those 2 states have indeed the same time.
Salvador Dali was alive when the first Predator movie came out, so he might have watched it in the cinema
The role of John McClane in Die Hard was originally offered to Frank Sinatra.
3 of my grandparents have the same birthday and two of them on the same year
I've read that in a group of 30 people there is a fifty-fifty chance that 2 will have the same birthday.
I once read that if you keep a goldfish in a dark room, it will eventually turn white.
Dear BP, we all know this list is going to get shortened to ~50. Why don't you just do that from the onset, and have TWO shorter lists?
Color photography was invented in the 1840s. But it didn’t become popular until the 1970s.
The camera was invented about 2,500 years ago. It required about 2,300 years of experimentation before cameras were able to record images.
Dear BP, we all know this list is going to get shortened to ~50. Why don't you just do that from the onset, and have TWO shorter lists?
Color photography was invented in the 1840s. But it didn’t become popular until the 1970s.
The camera was invented about 2,500 years ago. It required about 2,300 years of experimentation before cameras were able to record images.
