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

only not completely true. According to Stephen Hawking for Beginners by J P McEvoy, he took IQ test several times (scoring between 200 and 250), e.g. after falling from stairs to be sure his cognitive performance was not damaged. This IQ range is not really measurable precisely, so he was right that he did not know

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

Especially when IQ isn't necessarily a link to being smart. It doesn't measure practical intelligence, creativity, curiosity, or anything else. IQ is a measure of HOW you use your intelligence to solve problems and answer questions, so it's really not always a good measure of how much intelligence one may actually have.

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

My brother (supposedly) has a high IQ. He IS a wiz about some things like Astronomy, Battles & War history (& a lot of other things) for example. But I SWEAR he is going to get hit by a bus some day because he doesn't have a lick of COMMON SENSE!!!

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

My adorable husband (who I met while working with him) had no idea what his IQ was. I worked in the office, and was privvy to the tests they required us to take. One was for IQ. His was 142. I told him several years later after we got together, and he just shrugged, said "so what" and went along being a plumber. But a really good one. And he loves his job.

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

And the orange stain in the White House was so convinced it made him look like a winner..... He even boasted how tremendous wonderful he did on his "tremendous difficult" dementia test. ( He could repeat "person, woman, man, camera, TV" without making any mistake.)

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

Notice how Trump was repeatedly saying how smart he was? Just saying!

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

A brilliant mind in a broken body. I can only imagine how many other discoveries might have come about had Hawking been able to easier access the abilities we all take for granted. Obviously a higher power knew that the world just wasn't ready for that kind of brilliance.

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

There should be a "common sense" quotient. Some "high IQ" people I know didn't have any sense at all

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

They really, really are. Aside from that; there are several different types of IQ measurements ranging from arithmetic to verbal intelligence to motor functions to emotional intelligence. Average IQ is a p!ss poor measurement of a person’s cognitive abilities.

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Niffler_13
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Especially true because of how skewed and biased IQ tests are

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Mandy Delaforce (PC Girl)
Community Member
3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

IQ is a construst to pigeon hole people. High IQ doesn't mean you're intelligent, just means that you are able to problem solve well. Anyone can train for IQ tests, like any other test. I know a lot of idiot "smart" people. Lol

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

But wasn’t that answer in itself implying he had a very high IQ & was boastful

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

It's actually frowned upon even inside Mensa. You don't tell your number, end of.

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

first nasty thing i ever heard quoted from SH....shame....you can know and discuss IQ without 'boasting', and it doesnt make you a loser. i wonder if this one is actually true.....

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

Someone asked Albert Einstein his phone number. He said he didn't know, but they could look it up. He said he never cluttered his mind with things he could look up.

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

I've read so many stories that say he had a wicked sense of humor;)

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

exactly - same with people who boast about their money and possessions!

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

I had a problem with my brain transplant ++++ The brain rejected me.

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

His IQ measures exactly 0 now. We all end up with a zero IQ,

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

Since there doesn't seem to be a valid, repeatable way to measure IQ over 100, if you brag about having one well over 100 it shows your ignorance more than it shows your intelligence.

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

It’s measurable up to 160. If you brag about your IQ, though, it’s rather pathetic. All the IQ tests measure is your ability to do IQ tests. They’ve been proven to be culturally biased and limited in measurement. They fail to take into account multiple intelligences. My mother had a friend who was highly intelligent, and a physicist in an age where few women were, who always scored well below 100 because her brain simply functioned differently. There’s a reason we don’t use them as a form of measurement in education.

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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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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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