What is it with the human brain and its propensity to remember the useless and shun the actually useful info? Is it because weird facts are seemingly that much more interesting than something related to your work? Or is it because brains are their own sentient being and like to make fun of us sometimes? Who knows, but we bet you'll definitely remember some of these weird facts we've gathered here after you're done reading them!
Some of these pieces of info can absolutely be categorized as useless facts. You really don't need to know how fast ketchup squirts out of a bottle or that there's a place on the Earth that hasn't had any rain in 400 years. Yet, although totally random and seemingly worthless facts, they somehow find a place in your memory, only to be stuck there forever. And, of course, remembered in the most awkward situations. Maybe that is the real charm of these random facts.
Anyhoo, it seems to us that it is interesting facts o'clock already, isn't it? If your clock is on the same spot as ours, you should probably head down and read the cool facts! After you are done with them, show these funny weird facts some love by upvoting the most useless ones to the top of this list. And lastly, share this article with your friends!
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Crying makes you feel better. It releases oxytocin and endorphins, which can help ease both physical and emotional pain.
The tea bag was an accidental invention. A New York tea merchant sent samples of tea to his customers in small silken bags. Some recipients mistakenly placed the silken bags directly into a teapot instead of emptying out the contents.
Roller coasters were invented to distract Americans from Satan’s temptations.
Just read the Smithsonian magazine article at the link and I’d definitely recommend it! Here’s the bit about the rollercoaster as a wholesome distraction: “In 1884, disgusted with the uprise of hedonistic amusements like saloons and brothels, LaMarcus Adna Thompson invented the Switchback Gravity Railway, a patented coaster that visitors to Brooklyn’s Coney Island could ride for just five cents. ... His initial invention, however, isn’t like the thrill-inducers we know today. These were gravity-powered, slow-moving cars that faced outward, rather than forward, so one could enjoy a constructed scene as the car coasted at less than six miles per hour. These scenes would often be built to emulate beautiful landscapes around the world; Thompson constructed one of the Swiss Alps, for instance, and another of Venetian canals.”
McDonald's introduced drive-through service due to the military, because some soldiers were not permitted to get out of their cars off-post.
Please stop down voting comments just because you disagree. Down voting is for inappropriate comments or trolls.
The King owns all unclaimed swans in England and Wales.
That's why if a swan decides to just sit down in the middle of a UK road, the police have to direct traffic around it.
There's a company based in Florida that turns dead bodies into an ocean reef. The permanent memorials placed on the ocean floor create new marine habitats for fish and other forms of sea life.
In 2006 a man in Australia tried to sell New Zealand on eBay. The auction jumped to $3,000 before eBay pulled the plug on the auction.
Well thats a bit insulting. I know it's a small country but it's definitely worth alot more; you can hardly get a used car for that amount
The children of two pairs of identical twins are legally cousins, but genetically more similar to siblings.
A woman with two uteruses gave birth to twins less than a month after having a baby.
A full-size human could swim through a blue whale's arteries.
There is a town called Calama that once went without a single drop of rain for 400 years.
From Conte Nast: “It's hard to overstate just how arid the Atacama, a plateau on the coast of northern Chile, really is. The Andes Mountains work like a 13,000-foot-high wall, completely blocking systems of moist air that might otherwise wander down from the Amazon Basin. As a result, the entire Atacama, a strip of land 1,000 miles wide, is virtually rainless. Arica, one of the desert's largest cities, receives an average annual rainfall of 0.76 millimeters, about the height of a flea egg. There are weather stations in the Atacama that have never recorded any rain. The town of Calama went without a single drop of rain from 1570 to 1971—more than 400 years! There are river beds that have been dry for 120,000 years, and scientists think that the Atacama has been a desert for over three million years, which would make it the oldest dry spot on Earth.“
There is a garden in England filled exclusively with around 100 toxic, intoxicating, and narcotic plants.
The Poison Garden at Alnwick Castle, Northumberland. Really interesting place.
Humans did not come from monkeys. But we do share a common ape ancestor with chimpanzees. It lived between 8 and 6 million years ago.
A Canadian woman who lost her wedding ring found it 13 years later on a carrot in her garden. Also, the same thing happened to a Swedish woman, but she found her ring 16 years after losing it.
A picture of the carrot ring made the rounds on social media when she found it
Usain Bolt has scoliosis. It curved his spine to the right and made his right leg half an inch shorter than his left.
Well damn. Just goes to show athletes really aren't fine tuned perfect machines; they're human with human defects. This is actually pretty awesome that a person with a medical issue can still kick áss and beat people on steroids; set a few world records, get a few medals, no illegal drugs needed.
Michelangelo wrote a poem about how much he hated painting the Sistine Chapel.
There's a very good movie from 1965 about it. Staring Charlton Heston as Michaelangelo. The Spirit And The Ecstacy
The five colors on the Olympic flag were carefully selected. They were selected blue, yellow, black, green, and red, because at least one of those five colors occurred in each of the participating nations’ flags.
Shakesphere's grave does not bear his name, merely this warning rhyme: “Good friend, for Jesus’ sake forbear, to dig the dust enclosed here. Blessed be the man that spares these stones, And cursed be he that moves my bones.”
I thought there was some controversy about whether or not he existed? If he has a grave, then why is there a controversy?
Stubbs was a cat that served as mayor of an Alaskan town for 20 years, until his death.
Blood donors in Sweden receive a text when their blood is used. The initiative was meant to emphasize donors’ importance and, presumably, encourage them to come back and give more.
A "moonbow" is a rainbow that happens at night. It is produced by moonlight rather than direct sunlight.
A pineapple plant can only produce one pineapple a year. Then it dies. But before it dies it also produces offspring.
does just it just like poof? and theres the pineapple babies? and theyre like "i will continue the bloodline mother"?
The longest recorded tennis match lasted for 11 hours and 5 minutes. It was contested over three days between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut at 2010 Wimbledon.
I remember this. Was completely nuts. They literally had to update the digital scoreboard multiple times as it only went up to 27 games. The fifth set was won by American John Isner 70-68. He had four opportunities at match point before this and Mahut came back each time. Just the last set was longer than the previous record by a couple of hours. Tennis literally changed the rules after this to prevent such a long match from happening again, so this record will stand forever.
Ashes of man who designed Pringles packaging is now buried in one of the cans.
Lightning strikes the earth 100 times each second. Each bolt contains up to one billion volts of electricity.
Sunglasses were originally designed for Chinese judges to hide their facial expressions in court.
The Russian shooting team was 12 days late to the 1908 Olympics because they were still using an old calendar.
Clouds hold a lot of weight. A 1 cubic kilometer cloud weighs about 1.1 million pounds (about 551 tons).
All international astronauts (the ones going to the International Space Station) must be able to speak Russian.
Flamingos bend their legs at the ankle, not the knee.
The world’s largest waterfall is underwater. It lies beneath the Denmark Strait, which separates Iceland and Greenland.
The world’s smallest wasp is smaller than an amoeba. At a mere 200 micrometers in length is one of the world's smallest animals
Its the Fairy Wasp (Megaphragma mymaripenne) and that's about a fifth of a mm. It's also worth noting that amoeba vary greatly from 2 micrometes to 800micrometers. As crazy as that sounds, 200 micrometers is actually considered large for an amoeba. Per Wikipedia, the Chaos carolinensis amoeba is a giant amoeba and "can reach lengths of 5 mm, although most specimens fall between 1 and 3 mm" also there is "Pelomyxa is a genus of giant flagellar amoebae, usually 500-800 μm but occasionally up to 5 mm in length". So yeah that Wasp is super tiny but you can still see it with the naked eye; amoebas can just reach some crazy sizes. Also note, Syringammina reaches 20 cm and is the largest single-celled organism (looks like coral); just want to give some perspective on these single called organisms
Most lipsticks contain fish scales. To be exact, the byproduct of fish scales, called pearl essence. It's the stuff that makes one's lips shiny.
Your heart beats about 100,000 times per day, and sends over 2,000 gallons of blood throughout your body daily.
Recycling glass jars saves energy. It takes 40% more energy to make glass from scratch compared to recycling it.
Driving to space would only take an hour. But you would have to drive in a straight line upwards into the atmosphere at a speed of 60 mph.
The Apollo 11 crew pre-made autographs for insurance. They signed hundreds of postal covers before they left, on the presumption that they would become highly valuable in the event of their death.
They clearly understood the bureaucratic went of the military pension system.
A lottery winning combination was once foretold in a fortune cookie. A record 110 players were claiming second prizes of either $100,000 or $500,000, and they selected the winning combination because it had been the set of “lucky numbers” given to them in their fortune cookies.
39.4% of world's plants are threatened with extinction.
Lobsters taste with their feet and chew with their stomachs.
Shadows are darker on the Moon because there is no air, no Rayleigh scattering. So shadows are very dark and, where sunlight hits, very bright.
Because there's no atmosphere to spread the light all the shadows on the moon come from a single source, the sun. Subsequently all the shadows on the moon are parallel. This is one of the things that made faking the moon landing impossible because the technology to create that effect was more expensive (if even possible) than just sending people to the moon.
The moon is moving away from the Earth at the rate of 3.78cm (1.48in) per year, at about the same speed at which our fingernails grow.
A couple of British inventors made a flying bicycle. It can travel at speeds of up to 15 miles per hour on the road and 25 miles per hour in the air, reaching altitudes of up to 4,000 feet.
Did they store the blueprints in a puzzle? (Only Czech people will get the reference.)
Grooves in the road on Route 66 play "America the Beautiful" as you drive on the side.
Froot Loops loops are all the same flavor. It's an orange-lemon-cherry-raspberry-apple-blueberry-lime flavor throughout. Same flavor, different colors.
In the Philippines, McDonald’s serves spaghetti. Its called, obviously, McSpaghetti.
Despite its name, the strawberry isn't a true berry. Neither is the raspberry or the blackberry. But the banana is a berry, scientifically speaking, as are eggplants, grapes and oranges.
A giant tortoise that was believed to be extinct was found in the Galapagos.
You can sell almost anything on the internet nowadays, including specifically shaped cornflakes. A cornflake in the shape of Illinois was once sold on eBay for a total of $1,350.
Ketchup was once used as medicine. It was even made into an extract of tomato pills.
Alfred Hitchcock was frightened of eggs. Especially the egg yolk.
Spider webs were used as bandages in ancient Greece and Rome. They supposedly have natural antiseptic and anti-fungal properties, which can help keep wounds clean and prevent infection.
James Cameron sold the rights to "The Terminator" back in the '80s for $1 — and it's one of his biggest regrets.
Guinness drinkers with moustaches are unknowingly wasting almost 163,000 pints every year by trapping it in their facial hair.
Bubble wrap was originally intended to be 3D wallpaper.
The Empire State Building has its own ZIP code. It's 10118.
So does the USAA building in San Antonio, TX. But the Pentagon has SIX ZIP codes!
The shortest war in history lasted between 38 and 45 minutes. It was the Anglo-Zanzibar War fought between the United Kingdom and the Zanzibar Sultanate on 27 August 1896.
i think the longest was like 738 years? i forget which war though
The Goodyear Blimp (one of a fleet of airships) is the official bird of Redondo Beach.
The average American spends $1,097 on coffee each year.
A meteor exploded over Earth in 2018 with the force of 10 times the energy released by the Hiroshima atomic bomb and everyone missed it.
There are bubblegum pink color lakes in Australia. Red and purple microbes give the lake its hue.
It’s impossible to hum while holding your nose. It is because when you hum, you are actually exhaling, so if both your mouth and your nose is closed, the air can’t escape.
Most wasabi served in sushi restaurants is fake. When you grate real wasabi, the volatile compounds that give it its distinguished taste begin to break down within minutes. Wasabi is also considered difficult to grow and that makes it an expensive plant. The fake wasabi paste on the other hand is cheap and has a long expiration date.
The inventor of the Internet, Tim Berners-Lee, regrets the URL setup. The “//” after “https:” in a web address didn’t serve any real purpose.
Opossums don’t actually play dead. Instead, they involuntarily enter a catatonic state.
Peas are one of the oldest vegetables.
In 1916, four years before the 1920 Nineteenth Amendment guaranteed the right of women to vote, Jeannette Rankin of Montana became the first woman elected to the United States Congress. “I may be the first woman member of Congress,” Rankin observed in 1917. “But I won’t be the last.”
This just tells me that people who want to "make America great again" are looking at before 1916.
Octopuses have three hearts. One heart circulates blood around the body, while the other two pump it past the gills, to pick up oxygen.
NASA uses countdowns because of a sci-fi film. They got the idea from the 1929 German science fiction movie Frau im Mond (English: Woman in the Moon), directed by Fritz Lang.
Fancy riding on bikes is illegal in Illinois. “No rider of a bicycle shall remove both hands from the handlebars, or feet from the pedals, or practice any acrobatic or fancy riding on any street.”
The Eiffel Tower was originally intended for Barcelona. But the city rejected Gustave Eiffel's plans, and he was forced to repitch the project elsewhere. As we all know, Eiffel found a home for his idea in Paris.
It was planned to stay only for 2 years, but due to the cost it got a special permit for 10 years to recover the cost. The citizens of Paris were furious, as they hated it. But after the 10 years, noticing how much money visitors brought to the city, they had to convince the council to let it standing. There were actually riots to stop the demolition
According to Forbes, Michael Jordan already made an estimated $1.3 billion from his Nike deal. It is the richest athlete endorsement deal ever.
"Most lucrative", not "richest". The deal itself doesn't own the money.
Coast redwoods are the tallest living trees on Earth, reaching up to 115.9 m (380.1 ft) in height (without the roots) and up to 8.9 m (29 ft) in diameter.
Umbrellas were once only used by women. Roman women are believed to be the ones who came up with the notion of oiling their parasols so they would be waterproof.
There is an annual baby crying festival held in Japan. Student sumo wrestlers hold the babies in their arms. When the babies begin to cry, the student sumos raise the babies higher in the air, which is believed to strengthen the blessing endowed on each crying child.
A 155-year-old Victorian mousetrap successfully caught a mouse in 2016.
The creator of Comic Sans font has only used it once himself. He "used it to complain about bad service by a company".
I'm gonna say it. I kind of like Comic Sans and will use it when I please.
The U.S. treasury once made $100,000 bills. Printed in 1934, it was not intended for general use, but instead was used as an accounting device between branches of the Federal Reserve. It was illegal for a private individual to own this banknote.
The skin of the potato can have up to 12 times more antioxidants than its core. Also, the more color in the potato, the more antioxidants it contains.
Paper bags may be worse for the environment than plastic ones. Manufacturing a paper bag takes about four times as much energy as it takes to produce a plastic bag, plus the chemicals and fertilizers used in producing paper bags create additional harm to the environment.
Yes, but a paper bag will decompose in a month. The plastic bag will still be decomposing a millennium from now, seeding the ground, water, and air with micro plastics.
Ice pops were invented by an 11-year-old by accident. He had mixed some sugary soda powder with water and left it out overnight. It was a cold night, and the mixture froze.
Ice pops are a good thing to keep in your car for emergencies. They're basically sugar water and can sustain you if you break down. They're freezable so winter won't make them inedible.
A flock of ravens is called an “unkindness”, because back in the 19th century, many people believed that these birds weren't all that caring when it came to their young.
lovely, we have an 'unkindness' and then the 'murders' of birds, whats next, why do we judge these birds so
Researchers once turned a live cat into a telephone. In 1929 Professor Ernest Glen Wever and his research assistant Charles William Bray took an unconscious, but alive, cat and transformed it into a working telephone to test how sound is perceived by the auditory nerve.
Being left-handed is a particular advantage in interactive sports where time pressures are particularly severe, such as table tennis and cricket.
...but WHY is it a particular advantage? Do you get a time extension or...
You can buy a toupee for your dog in Tokyo.
Approximately 25% of the bones in the body are found in our feet.
A baseball has a lifespan. The average lifespan of a baseball in a major league game is seven pitches.
San Francisco's cable cars are listed on the National Register of Historic Places and are designated as a National Historic Landmark.
China is the world’s largest silk producer. The country alone produces more than 60 % of world's silk.
And more than 60% of all the rest of the crappy junk that's made in the world.
Machine-spun cotton candy was invented in 1897 by a dentist.
It is physically impossible for you to lick your elbow. Unless you are a physiological anomaly.
Wine is made from grapes, but that does not necessarily make it vegetarian or vegan. Some winemaking methods make surprising use of animal-derived products.
You could argue that vegetables grown with manure aren't vegan because it uses animal-derived products
There is an annual Coffee Break Festival happening in Wisconsin.
Pigs do not sweat. But they are able to rid themselves of heat in other ways.
That's why they roll in mud. The wet mud evaporates like sweat, with the same cooling effect.
Louisiana's lake is home to a rare pink bottlenose dolphin.
Better worded “Louisiana’s one and only lake in the entire state is home to…”
Ohio DUI offenders must drive with yellow license plates. If you fail to use the plates, you will face a $100 penalty and your restricted driving privileges will be revoked.
Some sea cucumbers fight with their guts (literally). But don't worry, they grow them back in a couple of weeks.
A jiffy is an actual unit of time. The term is often used to describe a very short but unspecified period of time, for example: "I'll have it sorted out in a jiffy!"
Babe Ruth out-homered every American league team. He homered off 35 different pitchers.
Kind of creepy that he hit on all those people. (I'll see myself out, now.)
The largest padlock in the world was created by Russian students and teachers, and it weighs 415.5 kg (916 lb).
Before toilet paper was invented, Americans used to use corn cobs, while Romans used a more inventive way of cleaning up.
A person is unable to detect smells when they suffer from anosmia.
Ketchup leaves the bottle at a measured speed. It exits the glass bottle at 0.028 miles per hour.
You haven't tried whipping an open bottle around the room then, have you?
About 2 to 3 out of every 1,000 children in the United States are born with a detectable level of hearing loss in one or both ears.
The name "bonobo" is thought to derive from a misspelling on a shipping crate from the town of Bolobo on the Congo River.
The common greeting “O hello bonobo lleho” is actually a palindrome.
Dolphins sleep with one eye open. One side of their brain stays awake and the opposite eye stays open to watch for danger and rise to the surface to breathe. Meanwhile, the other half of brain sleeps and the opposite eye is closed.
A Costa Rican worker that makes baseballs earns $2,750 annually.
This means nothing without a cost of living comparison. It appears to be quite a low income but if they only pay 15% in living costs and leasing a Ferrari costs $1 per month, then they could be a lot better off than most of us. Or they may live in a sewer and eat rats. Funny old world.
Antares is 700 times larger than our Sun, and around 60,000 times more luminous.
