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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!
This post may include affiliate links.
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.
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"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.”
#5
Rick 4 years ago
Not too dissimilar: Julia Roberts’ parents used to run an acting class which Martin Luther King’s children used to attend as it was one of the first integrated acting classes. When Julia was born, MLK and his wife, Coretta, paid the hospital bills when Julia was born to thank the couple.
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."
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Guido Pisano 4 years ago
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.
#13
Freya the Wanderer 4 years ago
Read more about her here: https://www.rejectedprincesses.com/princesses/mariya-oktyabrskaya
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Virgil Blue 4 years ago
Why do we get so many bad movies when real life bad ass stories exist like this I sometimes wonder.
RoseTheMad 4 years ago
I'm learning so much about awesome badass women throughout history on BP, though makes me sad to know that I didn't previously know of these awesome heroes beforehand.
Anon Anon 4 years ago
Hey, a scorned woman is terrifying and quite the force to be reckoned with.
blugeagua 4 years ago (edited)
Scorned men exist too. Why is the ridiculous stereotype always about women?. Also doesn't that only apply to women who have been dumped? Why use the term here? Her actions were clearly justified.
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Son of Philosoraptor 4 years ago
My grandfather escaped but both my great aunts were killed horribly. We can never back down against fascists, never give up, never be "polite" in the face of this savage insult to humanity.
fuggnuggins 4 years ago
Or communists. That is, afterall, what started it all. Millions died from starvation and forced slavery, and the "good guys" allow it. But we're told that they tried to prevent it, and tearing the world apart in that effort was a necessity. Can you honestly say that the right choice was made in teaming up with the communists rather than against them, as many would have preferred? Can you honestly say that there was a right side to be on? Can you even tell me which participating nation didn't commit war crimes? I find it alarming and appalling that propaganda that was used almost one hundred years ago to incite such frenzy that millions murdered millions is still, today, effective and vastly proliferate. The stuff of nightmares.
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Xan Maranya 4 years ago
After she died of wounds from battle in 1944, she was posthumously made a Hero of the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union's highest honor for bravery during combat. She was the first of only two female tank drivers to be awarded the title.
Saulius Karčiauskas 4 years ago
Bought a tank? In Soviet Union? In the middle of the war? How naive you should be to believe such bullshit? You couldn't own something bigger than a passenger car up until collapse of USSR. You think someone in USSR could go to some tank dealership and buy one? You think you could go to army unit and they sell you a tank in the middle of the war? This story is fine example of recent Russian propoganda, then they try to idolise everything related to WWI victory because it is the main source of keeping soviet nostalgia alive.
Tangee Wilson 4 years ago
This should be higher! “Fighting Girlfriend”. I’d love to know the rest of the story. I hope she got a lot of them!
Jack Candy 4 years ago
What? A private tank in a communist army? I hope she survived Stalin's purges after the war.
Jane Moore 4 years ago
sad that her response to her husband being killed by conscripts was to kill other conscripts
Dave Chapman 4 years ago
Try saying THAT last name 5 times fast.... How about even ONCE!! lol Great story, brave young lady!!
Adas S 4 years ago
When I was kid ( I was born in USSR) there were plenty fairy tales about WW2 soviet heros. All of them were written by comunist propangandists. They wrote such stories during the war and published them in newspapers. After the war some of them became "historical facts".
Stannous Flouride 4 years ago
She rose to the rank of sergeant. Unfortunately, she did not survive the war but was posthumously awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union medal.
Dahamada Jamawas 4 years ago
Well somehow incredible - indeed - but I don't like these kind of stories to be glorified. What if she were German? Then we would consider it as an evidence how radical militaristic people were. Same motivation same action. This is just an example of the end justifies the means. Reduce it to facts, it was a women, that had gone radical for her wish of revenge. I assume that world would be better if these kinds of people wouldn't have existed on both sides.
Radek Suski 4 years ago
Not really though. According to Wikipedia: "Oktyabrskaya sold her possessions to donate a tank for the war effort, and requested that she be allowed to drive it. She received and drove a T-34 medium tank, which she named "Fighting Girlfriend".
Liu Fuxi 4 years ago
What do you mean not really? The wikipedia article says she did so after she learned of the death of her husband and describes in depth her tank battles against the Germans. "After her husband was killed fighting in 1941, Oktyabrskaya sold her possessions to donate a tank for the war effort, and requested that she be allowed to drive it."
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#15
River Webb 4 years ago
yeah Disney often adapts its stories to be appropriate for children, eventually leading everybody to only remember the Disney version and not the original
"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.
#22
Láďa Durchánek 4 years ago
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."
#25
Monty Is Fiennes 4 years ago
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."
#31
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)."
#44
Michelle M 4 years ago
Here's another fact. Marilyn Monroe and Queen Elizabeth were born in the same year.
#47
QuokkaVibes 4 years ago
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.
#50
Mary Rose Kent 4 years ago
I assume that this photo is all of the lazy culprits and, of course, the one who actually did the deed
#57
Bobert Robertson 4 years ago
Tupac is also the only rapper who can wear a sweater vest knitted by his grandma and still maintain his tough image.
#60
Andy Acceber 4 years ago
That's not that unusual. You already have to be mega wealthy to be president, and presidents have every conceivable opportunity to make however much money they want after their term. In comparison, the salary is a pittance.
#62
Sara Rodrigues 4 years ago
There are several rumours regarding how many languages she can speak, and it was actually confirmed that she can speak all 5 languages, but she's only fluent in spanish, english and portuguese.
#72
Bobert Robertson 4 years ago
I just imagine being one of his teammates... might as well just sit and play in the grass looking for bugs or something
#73
#80
Andy Acceber 4 years ago
If you believe she's a time traveler, you really should be taking her messages about climate change even more seriously.
#81
#90
Monty Is Fiennes 4 years ago
Just one point who is judging his technique, coz I imagine that it would be a difficult job to tell him he wasn't good enough...
#97
PhybreAwptic 4 years ago
And then became Santa Claus where he was around a different kind of snow.
#98
Linus Nilsson 4 years ago
Except he never did... https://checkyourfact.com/2019/10/24/fact-check-bill-gates-microsoft-lazy-person-hard-job-easy-way/
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#100
Linus Nilsson 4 years ago
I like seeing this just after reading Hawkins comment on the other post
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#102
#103
Another Fool on the Hill 4 years ago
So, how many weeks did it take to become as rich as Elon Musk?
#104
Bobert Robertson 4 years ago
But... people still haven't learned how to properly drive their cars...
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#107
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#113
Linus Nilsson 4 years ago
Per capita. Due to the small population, every theft is counted x100.
#115
#116
Linus Nilsson 4 years ago
Good, no 4-year old should die. Also all these stories of Hitler being saved from one death or another, are there ever any sources that they happened?
#118
#121
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What do you think ?
Linus Nilsson 4 years ago
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"
Dagnirath 4 years ago
Anyone else think WTF Facts needs to be turned into a Twilight Zone-style TV show telling some of these more incredible stories?
Yort 4 years ago
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... Dogfan4life 4 years ago
Woooooow! I did not know almost any of these facts! Thanks for sharing!
Jaybird3939 4 years ago
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 
Tati Starks 4 years ago
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)
Leo Domitrix 4 years ago
Click the three dots and delete it. It will then be hidden.
Load More Replies... Linus Nilsson 4 years ago
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"
Dagnirath 4 years ago
Anyone else think WTF Facts needs to be turned into a Twilight Zone-style TV show telling some of these more incredible stories?
Yort 4 years ago
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... Dogfan4life 4 years ago
Woooooow! I did not know almost any of these facts! Thanks for sharing!
Jaybird3939 4 years ago
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
Tati Starks 4 years ago
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)
Leo Domitrix 4 years ago
Click the three dots and delete it. It will then be hidden.
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