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40 ‘Why The Hell Do You Know That’ Facts That People Probably Shouldn’t Have Shared But Did Anyway
We love to learn facts: fun ones, cool ones, strange ones. The internet is a treasure-trove of new facts to discover and share with your friends. On the other hand, it also brings us some things that we wish we didn’t know.
Have you ever heard a fact so weird and specific that it made you ask, “Why the hell do you know that?” Apparently, quite a few people have. A recent thread on r/AskReddit set out to find the strangest facts that people know and the internet has delivered once again.
Tell one of these facts to someone and it will surely bring a look of horror and confusion to their face. So, they’re probably not the best icebreakers to use at a party, but hey, maybe they’ll be useful at some point in the future. Check out part one here for more weird facts.
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#1
A co-worker told me one day “you’ll know when it’s truly the first day of spring because lake water will warm up and make any dead bodies in the lake float to the top surface due to bacteria” he continued with “except for in Lake Superior where the water temperature never gets warm enough to build bacteria in a dead body” and that’s one coworker I’ll never make mad right there
The thread has over 34K upvotes and u/BeefBall1010, the Redditor behind the post, told us they were surprised at the response their question got. “I never expected it to blow up like this,” they said.
There’s a whole slew of random and weird facts shared on the thread. BeefBall1010 told us that the one about rats was a personal favorite of theirs. Most of them are quite memorable ones but trying to remember every single fact you’ve ever heard can be quite a challenge.
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#2
I've been waiting for my time to shine. You have erectile tissue in your nose. Orcas are the biggest natural predators of moose. There is a psychological disorder in which people believe they are a cow and it's called boanthropy. A wood frog can hold it's pee for up to eight months. If you keep a goldfish in the dark, it will lose it's colour and become white. You can actually "dig to China" from Argentina. The Mona Lisa doesn't have eyebrows. There is a kind of psychologist called a "wealth psychologist" that specializes in helping wealthy people deal with immense guilt or not being emotionally able to cope with being rich. A single spaghetti noodle is called a spaghetto. A Polish doctor faked a typhus outbreak in order to prevent nazis. The youngest Pope was only 11 years old. A man once filmed 7 episodes of a soap opera in IKEA without getting caught. (the opera). Pigs will eat the entire human body except for the teeth. When cremating a body, if you don't remove the teeth, they will pop like popcorn.
One way of recounting information is the use of mnemonics. This refers to a system that can help you remember information by tying it to certain patterns. Examples of this can be acronyms (such as ‘Every Good Boy Deserves Football’ that musicians use to remember the lines on a music ledger) or musical methods (like putting the alphabet to the tune of ‘Twinkle-Twinkle Little Star’). Surely a lot of us still recount the alphabet by using this method, I know I do.
An experiment was performed on how mnemonics such as acronyms can make a difference in remembering information and enforcing our work without interruptions. It required the 65 participants to complete a task with multiple different steps. Half of the group were given an acronym to support and remind them of each step and the other half were not.
#3
When Napoleon Bonaparte died in exile, they cut off his reproductive organ and gave it to the local parish priest. The priest later sold it to raise money for his Parish and it's been sold and resold down through the centuries and to this day there are three people who claim to own Napoleon's reproductive organ.
No one knows why this happened, and it's not the important part of the story. The important part is, who the hell do those other two belong to?
Chucky Cheezburger 4 years ago
Oh, so they took Napoleons' "bone apart"...Ok, I'll see myself out...
#4
Dragonflies are the most effective hunter on the planet catching 95% of the prey they go after.
Results from the experiment showed that those with the acronym fared far better than their counterparts at completing the task. It was linked to the participants being able to perform and recover faster after being interrupted as part of the experiment. The sequential steps made it easier to visualize the steps in their minds and reinforce what needed to be completed next.
#5
Cows moo with accents depending on their regions.
Daria B 4 years ago (edited)
I think seagulls have dialects/languages too. I noticed the same species of animal sound different in Korea and in Croatia. In Korea, they produce higher pitch and short sounds, whereas, in Croatia they sound deeper and slower, makes you really feel lazy. In Umag, at least.
Equine_Ravenclaw_Directioner 4 years ago
Crows have these too! Often crows that join a new flock will then try to imitate the accent of the others in order to fit in :)
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Henry Cheves 4 years ago
All animals do this. A crow from Kentucky might not understand a crow from Germany.
Ozacoter 4 years ago
Chimpanzees have also dialects depending on their region. Macaques have different "languages" depending on the species (idk about region) but they can elarn each others gestures (i saw them communicating with each other). There was a study done with chinese and european bees (who also have different "languages") and they could also learn to perform the other ones dances (they communicate by dancing)
Peggy Teach 4 years ago
I knew this already. Find it interesting. Kinda makes me want to quit eating beef. Like the time I looked into the big innocent eyes of a heifer my father in law was going to butcher for our winter's meat.
Fred Zankowsky 4 years ago
During the mating season for wild turkeys, I can frequently get an answering response from turkeys when I imitate their gobbling (not a big surprise - I was a construction inspector, talked to turkeys all the time). But if I gobble at turkeys in other areas of the state, I get no gobbling response, only the stink eye. My wife thinks they gobble in a different dialect, and can tell I'm not one of their kind.
Riley Quinn 4 years ago
I knew the milk tasted differently depending on the grasses, but I didn't know they had accents.
#6
Rats are bisexual by nature and females will have group orgies with each other when in heat.
Male's balls can take up 10% of their entire mass!
There was a study where they put females in 'lingerie' and accustomed the males to it to the point they only saw the lingerie wearing rats as suitable mates.
Rats can give into peer pressure and eat things they don't like if everyone else is eating it.
Rats cannot burp or vomit.
With the amount of people killing pest rats by poison, they are creating bigger, smarter, poison resistant mutant rats.
Another more visual way of memorizing information is the 'method of loci' or the use of a ‘memory palace’. This was used to effect in Benedict Cumberbatch’s modern portrayal of Sherlock Holmes, where he closes his eyes and imagines a virtual space that stores all of the most useful information in his memory. All he had to do was walk through the space led by certain cues and pluck out memories from wherever he had filed them, helping him to solve cases in a jiffy.
#7
In Massachusetts, it’s illegal to consume more than 3 sandwiches at a funeral.
The most random law I’ve ever heard about
Diana Eriksson 4 years ago
Another random law: If a Swede crosses over the frozen sea between Denmark and Sweden, Danes are allowed to beat them up. It's a relic of when Denmark and Sweden were constantly at war, so if a group of Swedes crossed over the ice they probably didn't have good intentions, thus this law allowing the Danes to defend themselves. As far as I know, it was never changed.
#8
Koala's are the most alien of all mammals on the planet. They have two thumbs on each hand, three vaginas, spend most of their lives asleep, and evolved to only eat one plant that has no nutritional value. They also eat their mother's poop.
Rabbit Carrot 4 years ago
Koala’s also have fingerprints that are almost indistinguishable from human fingerprints so the next time you’re thinking of robbing a bank, take a furry friend.
#9
The distance a squirrel would need to fall in order to die is 4,800 miles. This is because squirrels cannot die from a terminal velocity fall; they would have to fall far enough to die from starvation.
This is far from fictitious and it’s used most often by people competing in the World Memory Championships. That’s right, there’s a competition for the brainiest person out there that can memorize and recount enormous amounts of information within a certain timeframe. It’s been going on since 1991 with people from all over the world competing for the title.
#10
Most ‘sea monster’ sightings are actually a whale sticking its reproductive organ out of the water.
#11
The kiwi is a bird closely related to the emu and the ostrich, despite having the size of a chicken. Nature made it small but forgot about the egg, which is about the size of an emu egg.
#12
When bears hibernate they generate a mucous wax to cover their buttholes so that nothing can get in
Cheri Aline Sydney 4 years ago
What a relief to finally know.... I have been worrying about this for years!
Perhaps the most outstanding champion of the competition is Dominic O’Brien. Having won it a staggering eight times, he’s gone on to write about memorization techniques and even developed his own system.
O’Brien spoke with The Daily Mail about his use of 'loci' and how it helped him to win the titles so many times. He said, “This is undoubtedly the key to my success at the World Memory Championships. Placing each piece of data that I had to absorb in a particular place that I had already set aside in my mind made it easier for me to recall them.”
#13
The first Pong machine was dropped off at a local tavern owned by friends of one of the developers for a test run. After a few days, the game started to malfunction. The tavern owner called one of the Devs, Allan Alcorn, to come fix it, and when Alcorn got there it was discovered that it was malfunctioning because it was too full of quarters.
#14
According to Mattel, Barbie's real name is Barbara Milicent Roberts. And Ken's last name is Carson.
Rabbit Carrot 4 years ago
Ken Carson sounds like he should be on Fox News espousing terrible vaccine advice and generally being a Trump supporting Chad.
#15
In the 1700s they used to rent out pineapples for hundreds of dollars, people would parade their pineapple around the streets flexing on the peasants that couldn't afford to rent a pineapple
O’Brien explained how we already use loci: “An excellent everyday example of the art of location is the solution to the common problem of finding a set of misplaced keys. What we do is retrace our steps (logically or figuratively).”
“We check the hall where we hung up our coat when we first came home, the study where we went to check phone messages, and so we continue through the house until we eventually arrive at the place we put down our keys.”
#16
If you sneeze when coming from a dark room into sunlight, it is because of a specific gene which is named ACHOO. I know because I have it.
"Autosomal Dominant Compelling Helioopthalmic Outburst (ACHOO) Syndrome is characterized by uncontrollable sneezing in response to the sudden exposure to bright light, typically intense sunlight"
#17
Shrimp live in the canopies of the Redwood Forests. They get there via literal seagull poop, and the lush coastal ecosystem forms little puddles on the branches in which they grow and live.
#18
You're more likely to be sexually assaulted by a dolphin than eaten by a shark
#19
The first known vending machine was created in the 1st century AD and it was located in Egypt. The machine dispensed holy water and it also took coins like ours do today.
#20
You can legally marry your first cousin in Georgia.
#21
You can’t cross Minnesota state lines with a duck on your head, it’s illegal. I learned that the hard way.
#22
Dolphins can fall deeply in love and develop relationships just like humans can.
It has been recorded multiple times that when a human and dolphin - who have formed a strong relationship between them over a long period of time are separated:
the dolphin becomes so depressed that they willfully commit suicide by sinking to the bottom of their pool/lagoon and refuse to come up for air until they drown to death.
#23
The annual migration of birds was only discovered in 1822 when a stork turned up in Germany with a 30-inch African spear through its neck. Before that, we seriously thought migratory birds slept at the bottom of ponds or flew to the moon for the winter. Google: Pfeilstorch
#24
The longest word you can make using the top row of a keyboard is typewriter
#25
It was an annual tradition for the pharaoh of Egypt to masturbate into the Nile with an audience.
#26
If people were otherwise immortal and nobody had anymore children, and you shot someone every second, it would take around 230 years to kill off the human race.
#27
There are more plastic flamingos in the world than real ones Mr. Rogers personally replied to each piece of fan mail he ever received. It takes a sloth a whole month to travel 1 mile across ground.
#28
The main legal consideration between grave robbery and archeology is age and if the deceased has any living relatives. Where I live (ymmv), if the deceased has been dead over a century and has no living descendants, it's not considered grave robbery and you can claim any valuables found (jewellery, coins, artifacts, etc).
#29
Clown fish will change genders if their mate dies and then mate with their children
#30
Pineapples contain enzymes that break down proteins, which is why your mouth goes tingley when you eat lots of it. Given this, theoretically you could dissolve a body in pineapple juice
Jo Johannsen 4 years ago
FRESH pineapple juice. Once "cooked" by canning, the enzymes are destroyed. Same reason you can't use fresh pineapple in Jello - the enzymes will prevent the Jello from setting.
#31
Before the Titanic sank a book titled "Futility" came out about a fictional British ocean liner called the Titan that sinks in the North Atlantic after striking an iceberg.
Rabbit Carrot 4 years ago (edited)
It’s by Morgan Robertson and is actually a decent read. Give it a read, you won’t be disappointed.
#34
A botfly egg can land on your skin and implant within a fraction of a second. If one hits you in the eye, it is possible that it can implant the egg under your eyelid so your eye incubates and subsequently feeds the growing larva. I know this because I have removed one from the underside of an eyelid before from a patient with a recalcitrant “eyelid infection”
#35
The quickest way to the heart actually IS through the stomach. According to archeological evidence, the Aztecs basically discovered through their years of sacrificing people that it’s way quicker to cut open the stomach and then go up and under the rib cage to cut the heart out, rather than trying to break open the ribs to get through them. They could apparently get someone’s heart out this way in only a few seconds, and there are accounts of sacrifices where multiple thousands of people had their hearts cut out in a single day, which would take forever if they didn’t know the quickest method.
#36
Your teeth are the only part of your skeleton that you actively clean
#37
I know the full name of Dom Pedro I, first emperor of Brazil, since I was a child: Pedro de Alcântara Francisco Antônio João Carlos Xavier de Paula Miguel Rafael Joaquim José Gonzaga Pascoal Cipriano Serafim de Bragança e Bourbon.
#40
If humans wanted to have the same eyesight as an owl we would have to have eyes the size of a grapefruit
#41
The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems.
#43
In India, according to the law, if you commit suicide, and do not die, you are liable to go to prison for up to a year. Basically, if you wanna die, make sure you are dead.
#44
There's a type of slug that has penises on its head.
#46
50% of sloth deaths happen while they are pooping. Most sloths climb down from trees to poop and tend to die to predators at this time.
#47
Leap year is every four years but we skip it every century unless that century happens to be a multiple of 400 which is why we did not skip it in 2000 but we will skip it in 2100.
#48
In order to snap someone's neck like in movies or video games, you need to be strong enough to apply roughly 100-115% of the victim's bodyweight in rotational force. Much more difficult than Hollywood would make you believe.
Mazer 4 years ago
Unless of course you just crush their trachea. The vertebral arteries will collapse under 18 to 66 pounds of pressure. The trachea will collapse under 33 pounds of pressure. The cricoid cartilage will fracture under 45 pounds of pressure. And an arm can be snapped with less than 20 pounds of rotating force. People are fragile
#49
Your chances of being struck by lightning are the same as seeing an albino raccoon. 1 in 750,000. Considering an albino raccoon chance is 1 in 10,000. I'm waiting for the lightning strike any day now since I've seen an albino raccoon in the wild.
#50
Figs are not a fruit but actually an 'inverted flower'. They get pollinated by Fig Wasps, that crawl inside, losing their wings and antennae in the process and dying there. The fig then produces some enzymes that end up 'digesting' the wasp. After it's pollinated, some small fruits grow inside, some little seed-like crunchy things.
#52
Stalin was shorter than Napoleon at 5'5" and his left arm was shorter with a deformed hand due to blood poisoning
Katie Lutesinger 4 years ago
And he died lying on his bedroom floor in a puddle of urine because he'd had a stroke and his personal doctor had been sent to the Gulag while his immediate underlings were all too afraid to go in without permission, so nobody was there to help. Possibly one of the most ironic deaths of all time.
#53
Kuru is a neurodegenerative disease that causes loss of muscular control and and other symptoms that may appear as insanity, and is caused by eating human brains.
#54
In the U.S. small marshmallows are considered “food,” so they’re exempt from sales tax. Large marshmallows are taxed as candy.
WilvanderHeijden 4 years ago
In Europe a lot of American food products are banned as "Not fit for human consumption."
#55
The US is one of the few countries that allows "strike anywhere" matches to be sold. Do NOT bring them on a plane. For example, you're going on a camping trip and put them in your checked luggage. You'll be fined several thousand dollars. There's no exemption from the fine. But the FAA will work out a payment plan with you.
#56
Bananas are ever so slightly radioactive but the only way you'll suffer from side effects is if you eat 600 of them in under a second. I also learnt the perfect plot for a murder you can get away with if you studied agriculture and sustainability while I still had the energy to write my book.
#57
Male giraffes drink female giraffes piss when they're horny, if they like the taste they'll mate.
#58
Captain Crunch’s full name is Horatio Magellan Crunch and he captains a ship called the Guppy
Rabbit Carrot 4 years ago
Cap’n Crunch and the SS Guppy. He’s from Crunch Island, a magical island off the coast of Ohio and in the Sea of Milk which has talking trees, crazy creatures and a mountain (Mt. Crunchmore).
#59
Ketchup was basically invented to help cover the flavor of slightly rancid meat in the days before the FDA.
Brandy Grote 4 years ago
It was made at home. People had their own favorite recipes, some sweet, some with more vinegar.
#60
Your eyes can't track horizontally smoothly. Unless you are tracking a moving object. Then it looks smooth. They move to different points and your brain adds a "motion blur" to reduce the effect. You can see this by trying to smoothly look from side to side on a wall. You should see little skips. You can see this in other people easier. Also your eyes roll in your head and stay upright/ stay level to a certain point when you tilt your head. You can actually go look in a mirror and sorta see the effect.
Tiny Dynamine 4 years ago
I've noticed that, but also just worked out that you can do it if you cross your eyes then look to each side. I think it's because you're not focusing on anything, whereas you can't stop yourself doing that when your eyes are in focus.
#61
There is a place in the female body named after a Scottish doctor. The pouch of Douglas. Have fun looking up where it is, you'll never not know about it from now on.
#62
The title of the movie and the novel “Trainspotting” is a reference to an old pastime in which people would keep logs of the unique, named locomotives that passed through their towns. It was very popular in Britain because the trains used to all be fairly unique designs. It’s supposed to be a metaphor for the banality of existence and the things people do to “pass the time.”
#63
The world's first commercially produced oil well was drilled in Titusville, Pennsylvania. Col. Drake stuck oil at 69.5 feet and this ushered in the oil boom of the late 1860s. He died penniless because he never patented his method of drilling.
Brandy Grote 4 years ago
Drake well was drilled in 1859. There were many wells drilled in California in the 1860s, but were less financially viable than eastern well. Until the 1870s... see Mentryville, and the story of Well No. 4, which was capped in 1990, making it the longest producing oil well in the world.
#64
Woody's name is Woody Pride Mr. Clean is Veritably Clean Cookie Monster is Sid yes, those are their real names
#65
There’s a parasite that merges to fish tongues. In order to merge itself to the fish’s tongue, it must split the tongue in half before merging.
#66
The cause of death for most people who die in plane crashes is listed as “massive blunt force trauma.” Also, most plane crashes are survivable.
Mazer 4 years ago
You have less than two minutes to get out a crashed plane before it catches on fire and engulfs the entire plane, chances are you will die due to the toxic smoke created by the plastics that are burning in the plane. Hence Airline crews are taught to efficiently empty a plane in less than two minute
#67
The longest poop ever recorded was over 8 feet
Thomas Turnbull 4 years ago
After searching. All I found was this The coprolite was found in 1972 beneath the site of what was to become the York branch of Lloyds Bank and may be the largest example of fossilised human faeces ever found, measuring 20 centimetres (8 in) long and 5 centimetres (2 in) wide. Material: Human excrement Present location: Jorvik Viking Centre
#69
The fact that if someone doesn’t know if their sunglasses at polarized or not, you can take one pair of polarized glasses, hold them in front of the other and turn the one pair 90° then absolutely no light will come through if they are polarized, and it will shine through if they aren’t.
CrunChewy McSandybutt 4 years ago
Just look at a window. If you see dark spots, your glasses are polarized.
#70
Hippos eat each other. Vending machines are more lethal than sharks. The drawer for food wars used to draw doujins
#71
Rats cannot burp, which means if you lay out a mix of sugar water and baking soda (which they are attracted to) it will eventually kill them as they cannot burp
#72
The Romans used to paint the insides of their rooms black because the lamps they used for lighting would stain the walls.
Yvonne Dauwalder Balsiger 4 years ago
Absolutely not true, sorry. The rich had colorful wall paintings and the poor sure as hell didn't have money to waste on paint (if they even owed a place and were not just renting a room somewhere).
What do you think ?
ƒιѕн 4 years ago
I mean seriously, alot of this is bs, it comes from that swamp called reddit...
Nikki Sevven 4 years ago
Only parts of reddit are swamps. Other parts are lush rainforests of information. You must choose your subs wisely.
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Leo Domitrix 4 years ago
Please read further before passing information on to friends. Thank you.
~hUmMuS vIbEs~ 4 years ago
Another disturbing fact no one asked for: There's an Aussie marsupial called the Antechinus, which mate for two weeks straight until they internally bleed, go blind and die.
ƒιѕн 4 years ago
I mean seriously, alot of this is bs, it comes from that swamp called reddit...
Nikki Sevven 4 years ago
Only parts of reddit are swamps. Other parts are lush rainforests of information. You must choose your subs wisely.
Load More Replies... Leo Domitrix 4 years ago
Please read further before passing information on to friends. Thank you.
~hUmMuS vIbEs~ 4 years ago
Another disturbing fact no one asked for: There's an Aussie marsupial called the Antechinus, which mate for two weeks straight until they internally bleed, go blind and die.
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