While some of the things we learn don't necessarily make us smarter, they can definitely arouse our desire to learn more. Or at least help us continue our stalling conversations. And Twitter account WTF Facts is dedicated to collecting and sharing these random tidbits of information. From celebrity lifestyle to international relations, the project covers a wide range of topics, which is probably the reason why its feed remains so fresh and interesting. Continue scrolling and check out some of the most popular tweets WTF Facts have ever released!
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Knowing obscure facts isn't just fun. It's also good for our mental health. For example, experts say that playing trivia games can provide a dopamine rush much like gambling, but without the negative effects.
Even if our trivia games differ, the benefits are there. Whether we're playing Trivial Pursuit at home or attending a pub trivia night, the basic premise remains the same: we experience the thrill of providing correct answers to questions about lesser-known facts.
"You get a rush or a neuroreward signal or a dopamine burst from winning,” John Kounios, Ph.D., professor of psychology and director of the doctoral program in applied cognitive and brain sciences at Drexel University in Pennsylvania, told Healthline. “I think whenever you’re challenged with a trivia question and you happen to know it, you get a rush. It’s sort of like gambling.”
Kounios said the benefits can also be similar to those of playing a video game.
However, unlike gambling and even video games, Kounios said trivia is generally not a problematic habit.
“I don’t think there are any pitfalls,” he said. “Like anything else that’s fun, it takes up time.”
A librarian from California, Sarah Kishler, loves trivia games and enjoys attending a monthly pub trivia night in which a team of librarians participates.
"Learning facts so that I can get better at trivia is definitely a passion of mine," she told Healthline. "Getting a question right is definitely very satisfying to me."
Same in Italy... You're allowed to disobey an order that you think is illegal...
Over the past decade or so, pub trivia nights that are popular in the United Kingdom appear to have grown in other parts of Europe and the United States.
Enthusiasts like Kishler enjoy getting to interact with people at these events, especially compared to electronic trivia games.
She has learned that doing well at these social trivia games gives her "a feeling of validation" and increases her self-esteem.
yeah Disney often adapts its stories to be appropriate for children, eventually leading everybody to only remember the Disney version and not the original
In the original the step-sisters chop of bits of their feet to try and make the slipper fit.
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Parents need to policy their children, not expect that everything is made safe by the society. We need fairy tales for adults and parents who know to stop their children. Deadpool is a perfect example of this.
But then they went and did The Hobbit films. Disney could not have done much worse
Nah. They just make different versions of it. It has absolutely no effect on the stories you know and love.
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Also, as he was a Professor of Anglo Saxon history at Oxford University , he pretty much lifted the whole of the story from the Norse and Icelandic Sagas ..... without bothering to change many of the names - Gandalf for example is a Dvergr who appears in the epic Völuspá ..... amongst many, many others .... read up, it's interesting !!
No one needs Disney's usual corruption of just about anything it touches.
Yo that new movie of Disney's I think its called "Raya the lost dragon or something is legit
Who says Disney movies are just for kids? I'm an adult and I love Disney movies
So many really good stories have been dumbed down by Disney. Cases in point: Alice in Wonderland, The Secret Garden, Tales of Narnia....
But it didn't affect the original stories. Those are still out there, they're not hidden away.
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I agree he did the right thing. I discovered Tolkien as a sophomore in high school, when friends asked what I was reading and tried to explain, the response was “fairy tales”. Aren’t you to old for that kind of stuff? How do you explain this was about anything other than war, environmental damages and that even the smallest can fight for right.
Great move. Disney is screwing up some great stories due to real life politics.
Intelligent and perceptive man, Tolkien. Did not want an epic story about the struggle against Evil to be watered-down, sugar-coated and colored in pink by the Disney machine!
Lesson learned from the experience of P. L. Travers, author of "Mary Poppins"?
I'm surprised Disney didn't just steal it. But unlike the Japanese, the Brits are willing to sue.
Thank God he did that, otherwise ... Let it gooooo, Gimley, let it goooooo
Wise move as Disney is not the only wondrous fantasyland of ideas.
Good move on his part- Disney would have 'fluffed' and nurture the battle scenes.
Every Disney movie ever: Girl is desperate for husband who her father forbids she marry. Mother figure is either dead, evil, or nonexistent. Girl gets her man & lives “happily ever after”. Which is where they have to end it. They never show girl giving up her career, becoming a brood mare, or regretting the fact that to the world she ceased to exist once he put a ring on it. - Girl needed her mother to insist she go to university & be somebody. .. but where’s the Patriarchal Disney magic in that? - miright.
Also maybe because Disney was racist & antisemite while Tolkien hated Nazi
Good for Tolkien. Even IF Disney did a live action, they would have messed it all up by adding unnecessary political correct commentary, etc to what was already a beautiful story about togetherness, faithfulness, strength, courage and love. Not to mention the environment.
Can you imagine the horror of a Disney version of The Lord of the Rings?
if only George Lucas had been as wise as J R R Tolkien images-605...65104.jpeg 
LOVE Peter Jackson's vision for these stories (primarily LOTR) and how beautifully he did them. I know there are diehard Tolkien fans who don't like them because of the changes he had to make in order to sort-of "translate" them to film, but when you consider the volume of material he had to deal with, PJ did a fantastic job of bringing the world, the characters and the story to life.
So, uh, I guess all you cranky children in the comments are just ignoring the animated movies of Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit - two of which were musicals.
Good on him. For the same reason the author of Mary Poppins put a real fight. Albeit it eventually gave in. Can't all be sickly sweet and happy!
P.L. Travers was really pissy about how the movie portrayed Mary Poppins as all sweet and kind, and like, what movie was she watching? Mary Poppins was really harsh.
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Same with cartoons, they used to be for all ages and they were way better then; Tex Avery!, Fleisher Brothers!
You have to understand what Tolkien meant by "fairy story" -- you can read about it here, if you're interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Fairy-Stories
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pochahontas👀🤮 cut out the whole ¨White guy takes child, kills her people, and marries her¨ part out. They should not have made that movie, it does not educate people. I only learned the truth in 7th grade lol
I never assume any cartoon is meant to educate. If it sparked my interest - I could go read more, and watch more movies, and expand my knowledge. I knew when I went in that there weren't talking animals/trees, so it wasn't meant to be educational.
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Most fairy tales aren’t kid friendly anyway. I really wish we would get an adult/real version
Sadly, when it was put on film, Jackson buggered it up more than JRRT could ever have imagined!
"I love general knowledge, geography, literature, music, science trivia," Kishler explained. "I just love to accumulate knowledge. I like the exercise that it gives my brain and memory."
She doesn't think of herself as a competitive person but nevertheless enjoys getting a bit amped up at trivia games.
“People really like to have some expertise on something and the brain is very good at focusing on things that you’re interested in,” Deborah Stokes, Ph.D., L.P.C., B.C.N., a psychologist in Virginia, who focuses on neurotherapy, told Healthline.
According to Stokes, learning large bodies of knowledge can often start with trivia. And people who are interested in trivia can be brainy, have a high IQ, and be smart on a lot of levels.
However, Kounios said that people aren’t necessarily better at trivia games just because they’re more educated.
I can barely draw a stick figure and if instructions have more than one step it is safer to write them down.
"Some people soak up facts,” Kounios added. "Plenty of people with a lot more education may not remember what they had for breakfast yesterday morning."
"In typical people, my observation, not backed up by any research, is that their interest in trivia is confined to topics that they are generally interested in. So if a person is very interested in history, then they may either seek out history trivia, or they might just naturally pick it up in the course of learning about nontrivial aspects of history."
I love Dave Grohl, but he isn't the only artist to have done this....
Stokes pointed out that trying to retain information about things we're interested in can be like a good exercise for the frontal cortex as the brain ages.
"That’s the first thing to go with injury or with age if we don’t use it," she said.
Of course, it's completely understandable if the pandemic has drained your brain of the desire to learn and flooded it with boredom and tiredness instead. In an earlier Bored Panda interview, Lenore Skenazy, the president of Let Grow and the founder of the Free-Range-Kids movement, said that before we can become curious again, we have to do the hard part: get off the couch. Force yourself out the door. Why? Because beyond your four walls, things are never exactly the same. Weather, animals, people, sounds, smells, clouds—they’re all swirling about."
Lenore continued: "Ask yourself to start noticing new things. I did that this morning with a friend. We took a walk around our neighborhood and started looking for interesting details in the homes and buildings we passed. It went from a walk down streets we’d seen a million times to a sort of treasure hunt. And the big thing we were really hunting for? Curiosity! When you’re curious you’re alive again—noticing, thinking, making connections. You can’t do that if there’s no new information coming in. So your first step is to force yourself out of a rut by leaving the house (harder during the pandemic, but not impossible)."
I always like to image what stories such old structure might have to tell
Here's another fact. Marilyn Monroe and Queen Elizabeth were born in the same year.
As an Italian (but this is my personal belief, everyone is entitled to it's own) this is exactly something Mafia would do. It's something I know occurs in Italy on a daily basis. You see a quite common modus operandi is mobster would do something nice for the community or for specific people, so that the community in the area feels dependable. One well known method of recruiting in the mafia is: you have a problem, we send to you someone you know (and you don't know he works for us). Maybe a friend of a friend. He'll fix your problem for you. After time is passed this person asks for a little innocent thing like let's say "I'm sick can you bring this box to this adress? I can't move". After that he asks for more pressuring you on the favor he did awhile back and tells you that box you delivered was full of drugs/handguns so you're an accomplice. And that's it you're in a system you can't escape without hurting family and friends.
I assume that this photo is all of the lazy culprits and, of course, the one who actually did the deed
Note: this post originally had 122 images. It’s been shortened to the top 50 images based on user votes.
Many of these are incorrect or unproven. The article should be named "fantastic things a random twitter account claims without evidence but that would be slightly interesting if they were true"
Anyone else think WTF Facts needs to be turned into a Twilight Zone-style TV show telling some of these more incredible stories?
No? Like you’re gonna tune in and have Rod Serling be all “submitted for your approval, koalas sleep 22 hours a day, also here’s a closeup of a pyramid” and then wonder what’s the sociopolitical point it’s trying to make like the classic Twilight Zone.
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Woooooow! I did not know almost any of these facts! Thanks for sharing!
This person is standing at the roots of a redwood tree that fell in a windstorm. The proven source is me (although I'm not the one in the picture). root-605ff...e7eeaf.jpg 
The author was either from the Netherlands or just read a book about them but I'm not believing everything that's coming out in this post. Some of the facts were mostly just opinion (the clearest water, most breathtaking sight)
Click the three dots and delete it. It will then be hidden.
Load More Replies... Many of these are incorrect or unproven. The article should be named "fantastic things a random twitter account claims without evidence but that would be slightly interesting if they were true"
Anyone else think WTF Facts needs to be turned into a Twilight Zone-style TV show telling some of these more incredible stories?
No? Like you’re gonna tune in and have Rod Serling be all “submitted for your approval, koalas sleep 22 hours a day, also here’s a closeup of a pyramid” and then wonder what’s the sociopolitical point it’s trying to make like the classic Twilight Zone.
Load More Replies... Woooooow! I did not know almost any of these facts! Thanks for sharing!
This person is standing at the roots of a redwood tree that fell in a windstorm. The proven source is me (although I'm not the one in the picture). root-605ff...e7eeaf.jpg
The author was either from the Netherlands or just read a book about them but I'm not believing everything that's coming out in this post. Some of the facts were mostly just opinion (the clearest water, most breathtaking sight)
Click the three dots and delete it. It will then be hidden.
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