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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!

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.”

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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.”

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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."

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Guido Pisano
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Same in Italy... You're allowed to disobey an order that you think is illegal...

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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.

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River Webb
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

yeah Disney often adapts its stories to be appropriate for children, eventually leading everybody to only remember the Disney version and not the original

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"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.

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“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.

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Láďa Durchánek
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I can barely draw a stick figure and if instructions have more than one step it is safer to write them down.

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"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."

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"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."

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.

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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)."

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Michelle M
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Here's another fact. Marilyn Monroe and Queen Elizabeth were born in the same year.

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Bill
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Except 21 payouts and Non Disclosure agreements. No innocent person would pay out that many times

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QuokkaVibes
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

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.

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Daria B
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I'd suggest using the photo of then leader Kim Il-sung, for accuracy purposes. Current leader Kim Jong-un (here depicted) wasn't even born in the 1970s....

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WilvanderHeijden
Community Member
3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

You really must be next level stupid when you ship 1000 cars to a murdering dictator without payment in advance.

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Maxi
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Is this where trump learned his business skills?

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Wil Thibodeau
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

That doesn’t even make sense. How are you enjoying the hiking costs of living and fuel? Plastics up 30% since January....

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CatWoman312
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Never deliver until payment is made first. Also the rest of the world should not send anything at all to NK until the regime is disbanded and the people liberated

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M Kate McCulloch
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

So this is where trump learned his appalling business behavior. I thought it was his jackass father.

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Polly Culberson
Community Member
3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Just like tRUMP; don't pay your bills and nobody wins the lawsuit against you.

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Nevits Yibble
Community Member
3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Trump is probably the kind of guy who slapped his own ass instead of Kim Jong-un's ass whenever they had sex.

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danielw
Community Member
3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The most expensive bill for a tow was sent to N.A. Rockwell by Grumman, after the LM was used to boost Apollo 13's CSM back around the moon, and was used as a life boat. it was never paid... but then, the bill was mostly just a joke between rival companies.

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El Dee
Community Member
3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

They do this a fair bit. China has sent them train loads of aid and they kept the trains..

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Ben_tenyson
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

North Korea sucks, fact:- the male North Korean soldiers sexually harras the female ones and the female have no one to complain

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Anne Blake
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

sounds like something trump does......gets the bills and ignores them then shrugs and says " so, sue me...I've got buildings full of lawyers " what a piece of s**t.

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backatya
Community Member
3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

They should have went to war and got the money from them damn psycho

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Suzanne Haigh
Community Member
3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Last time that country would be able to buy foreign cars though

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Vicki Perizzolo
Community Member
3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

and they didn't demand at least half up front? that's just stupid

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Thomas Turnbull
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

One of the worst dictators in history and his family are no better (what’s left of them)

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Cybele Spanjaard
Community Member
3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Wow did not know that..with all the bluster lies pretence and sheer violence that family enjoys, I wonder if they live under debts owed to many who provided excessive orders too?

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Dixie sunshine
Community Member
3 years ago

This comment has been deleted.

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Dixie sunshine
Community Member
3 years ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Look at that despicable face and you know why. Communists cannot play fair and will always cheat.

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Marisa Caputo
Community Member
3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

They weren't stolen. Volvo didn't have to ship them. No one coerced them.

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JD Lee
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Their fist mistake was accepting the order from North Korea. They should have known better.

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lara
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Color Sweden stupid for not demanding payment first.

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enjoyinglife
Community Member
3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

That's nothing America's elected government officials have been stealing from us since the beginning only to get worse in time.

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German Gargicevich
Community Member
3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Argentina sold 1500 "Dodge 1500" (based on the British Hillman Avenger) and other products, to Cuba around 1973. By 2016 the two governments hoped to reach an agreement on Cuba's outstanding debt to Argentina of US$11 billion from its original debt of US$1.3 billion which Cuba borrowed in 1973 (plus unpaid interest). Survivor-D...eda00d.jpg Survivor-Dodge-1500-in-Varadero-Cuba-60594cdeda00d.jpg

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Panda Kicki
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I can add that the the debt caused swedish governent to act and it led to sweden getting a embassy there, one of the first western nation to have one. Twice a year they remind Kim about the debt. Usually without reply...

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KT
Community Member
3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

what a jack@ss. Smug picture added to invoke anger?

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Kimberley Stone
Community Member
3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Yeah but I bet no-one answers his requests for cars to be shipped to him anymore.

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Brandi VanSteenwyk
Community Member
3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I must give props to the OP who chose the pic on the right side. So darned appropo!!

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MAX THOMPSON
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3 years ago

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KIM JONG UN! ( his parents after they found out he got in trouble like this.)

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Mary Rose Kent
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I assume that this photo is all of the lazy culprits and, of course, the one who actually did the deed

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Note: this post originally had 122 images. It’s been shortened to the top 50 images based on user votes.

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