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We all have different life experiences, and because of that, we all have a unique set of knowledge floating around in our brains. You might know off the top of your head that Vigdís Finnbogadóttir was the first woman in the world to be elected president of a nation, or you might be able to list the capital cities of every single country without having to pause and think.
Some of us also have interesting information living rent free in our brains that might immediately lead to some follow-up questions. Reddit users have recently been sharing their “don’t ask how I know” fun facts, so we’ve gathered their most bizarre responses below. Enjoy reading through this list, and be sure to upvote the information that makes you wonder why in the world anyone would know that!
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#1
If your cat chews on fresh eucalyptus, they might start hallucinating and fall over repeatedly, leading to a $400 emergency vet bill just to be told she’s just kinda high.
RELATED:
#2
A pigeon will only eat a Starburst if you chew it up a little bit first. Just to clarify chew the Starburst not the pigeon.
#3
TV shows and movies go out of their way to make military/intelligence officers look bad a*s. Real life “spies”, by design and training, are boring. Regular house, standard 2nd hand cars, dress down, have vague boring”-job titles (accounts receivable) as cover and do not draw attention to themselves. Most come from specialized academia.
#4
The German guy who sought to meet men on the internet so he could cut of their genitals, with their permission, and fry them up and eat them. When asked by the judge why he rejected other ‘applicants’, he replied: There was a guy from Italy who wanted to be electrocuted first. I thought he was a bit weird.
#5
There's a guy in Germany who has a 1 year waiting list and makes 6 figures making leather harnesses and masks for people who like to roleplay as horses.
#6
If you overfill a fast food gravy cup then put a lid on, it will create a pressurized gravy stream that sprays all over your face and uniform while your coworker looks on in horror.
#7
Everyone here with the creepy crime stuff and I'm just "A soft-furred rat has 22 nipples".
Lavern Defazio 1 year ago
great.now some fool is gonna make bikini tops for a taxidermized rat.
#8
When a drowning victim is revived, get them to a hospital as soon as possible. Drowning is the leading cause of death of kids from the age of 1 to 7 and is ruled as accidental drowning when it comes to secondary drowning or dry drowning. Basically your lungs are full of water despite being revived. Your lungs will absorb the liquid, but not before your body acidifies from high levels of carbon dioxide. The only chance to survive is to have the lungs pumped with oxygen via cpap machine and time.
Also drowning is extremely quiet. You don’t hear the victim go under. And if you see flailing, do not attempt to save the victim otherwise you’ll become another drowning victim. Throw them a life line and hope their amygdala realizes that there’s a rope or something floating near them and grabs on it.
Stephanie Did It 1 year ago
It always annoys me when, in a movie, an unconscious "drowning" person is pulled from the water, hurks up a splash, coughs and wakes up and is smiling and carrying on moments later. Cue the passionate kiss. I wouldn't want to be the kissee!
#9
Old human bones are very porous so if you lick them, they’ll stick to your tongue.
#10
Chlorine gas in ww1 was made industrially by running an electric current through salt water.
The more worrying one: bacon grease mixed with lye makes glycerine. Glycerine with nitric and sulfuric acid makes nitroglycerine. Nitroglycerine with wood pulp makes dynamite.
Katy McMouse 1 year ago
Oh, goodie! A party! [ATF just gate crashed your event]
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Ace 1 year ago
Not sure why you'd want to start with grease, and particularly highlight bacon at that. Nothing special about bacon fat. Anyway, glycerin is readily available to buy and in no way controlled. The rest of the process effectively rules out the idea of making it at home for most people, other than Darwin Award candidates, that is.
Bouche and Audi and Shyla, Oh My! 1 year ago
Bacon fat is the best thing for frying eggs. That's special enough for me!
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DE Ray 1 year ago
Neither of these are accurate. If you electrolyze water (it has to have salt to conduct electricity), it splits into hydrogen and oxygen. Maybe a tiny amount of chlorine could be split off the salt molecules, but it certainly wouldn't be enough to be dangerous to humans. As for making dynamite from that description - it would explode before you finished step 2. Nitroglycerin is very unstable and unless it is made at freezing temperatures can easily self-detonate. It then needs a buffering/stabilizing compound to make it safe enough to make dynamite with. Wood pulp would be burned by the nitroglycerin (because it's very unstable), which could make a kaboom. Not saying it couldn't work, just that it wouldn't be the best option and could be dangerous. Fine clay or some other non-reactive, absorbent material would be better.
HTakeover 1 year ago (edited)
Both are correct, just missing a little key info/ingredient so not a step-by-step guide. In the first, a titanium electrode does cause the saltwater to produce HCL gas. You then collect and separate the gasses produced, which isn't hard. Remember the knowledge of chemistry was pretty advanced at that time. You can buy them off the shelf these days. You provided the missing steps for the second.
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Roxy222uk 1 year ago (edited)
(licks end of pencil) and how do I make nitric and sulphuric acid?
Miliukov Oleksandr 1 year ago
entire world of wonders awaits those skipped chemistry at school
ColdSteelRonin 1 year ago
All well and good. However do you know how to make undetectable hand grenades with plastic balls and tempered glass?
Sarah Kathrin Matsoukis 1 year ago
Can you give me the exact recipes so I can make sure not to accidentally make these things
Geoffrey Scott 1 year ago
Chlorine gas is also made by spraying even as little as a 50% solution of bleach/water on urine puddles in middle school bathrooms. Seems the ammonia in the urine does not mix well.
H.J. carlson 1 year ago
Killing with toxic gas was reality during WW1.( Mustard gas, etc..). Check out the weapons of the WW 2 & WW2.
Duuuuuuude 1 year ago
That's why everyone would save their bacon grease during ww 2 and take it somewhere (can't remember) for donation to the war effort.
RajunCajun 1 year ago
nitroglycerine is VERY unstable, do not even try to do this at home, and if you find dynamite don't pick it up, call the fire department they will have it removed for you.
J 1 year ago
Until you add the saw dust step. Once you get to TNT it’s fairly shelf stable.
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Blondie23 1 year ago
My father is almost 70 now so when he was a kid it was the early 60's. He made dynamite one day and the bomb squad had to be called to his house to get rid of it. Because my father read that the ingredients were as simple as stated above! It is the funniest story my dad has of his childhood and it's not even the worst thing he did, just the funniest! He was a bit unhinged as a kid!!!!
Javelina Poppers 1 year ago
You had me at BACON and then proceeded to destroy my breakfast fantasy. You monster!
Pieter LeGrande 1 year ago
Standard high school physics for the first and chemistry for the second ( though we were not allowed to get right through to the nitro- stage.🙁
Jaguarundi 1 year ago
We actually learned this in my first year high school science class. On paper, not in practice. This was on a test as a bonus point question.
sofacushionfort 1 year ago
Lye and lard heated on the stove is called an Alabama Pancake by Chicago cops, who’ve sometimes had them flung at them
Russell Bowman 1 year ago
Anyone else remember a book from the early 70's called "The Anarchist Cookbook"
Ben Stubbs 1 year ago
Posting methods of creating explosives is OK, yet still, we can't say bum, fu** or titties on BP
Šimon Špaček 1 year ago
Basically any fat and lye will make glycerine (and soap). And there are many, many things that go boom after mixing with nitric acid (or nitric and sulfuric acid, but the nitric is the important part). Pretty much all nitro-something explosives, like nitro-cellulose (guncotton) or tri-nitro-toluene (TNT)... the tricky part is getting nitric acid, here it is controlled substance.
J 1 year ago
Easiest thing is fined high nitrate fertilizer and save yourself the trouble
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Michael None 1 year ago (edited)
If you try this you likely won't get to the "add the wood pulp" stage. Nitroglycerine alone is very unstable.
Christof Irran 1 year ago
Not to worry. No one is going to make nitroglycerin. Or, at least not for very long. It's extremely difficult to make. You need to, at all times, keep the glycerin at 5 degrees Celsius while SLOWLY (meaning over hours) nitrating it while at the same time taping off the nitrated product. Let the temperature go above 5 degrees and the reaction becomes VERY volatile; let it go below 5 degrees and no reaction will take place.
Jojo on the Gogo 1 year ago
I learned this from Fight Club, but I'm not suppose to talk about it
#11
The antidote if you drink antifreeze (ethylene glycol) is whisky (or any hard alcohol).
#12
Doctors, or surgeons more specifically, that make too many mistakes during surgery, ie, leaving instruments in patients, frequently gets ‘quietly traded’ to other hospitals where they continue their path of destruction with the patients not being aware of their past record. Hospitals tend to keep quiet about the matter to avoid lawsuits.
#13
Bleach alone doesn’t get rid of blood from a UV light however hydrogen peroxide does for the most part. If you need to clean out a large amount of blood pour hydrogen peroxide on it, wait about 5 mins scrub it then use bleach. After cover the smell with candles or if it’s in the bathroom open a window and turn on the shower for about 10-20 mins.
Multa Nocte 1 year ago
Just in case one of us here on Bored Panda needs to make use of that knowledge later.
#14
Rare af, but sometimes 2 ova are released during ovulation. If you have multiple partners and either very poor (or very good. No judgment) timing, the resulting twins could have different fathers. It's called heteropaternal superfecundation.
#15
You have quite a lot of time, certainly more than ten seconds, to turn back on the main pumps of a nuclear reactor once you have accidentally turned them off.
#16
If you ever trying to survive in the arctic, don’t eat polar bear liver. It is so high in vitamin A it will [end] you.
HelluvaHedgehogAlien 1 year ago
If you see a polar bear in the wild, maybe consider running before it sees you. If it sees you, byebye
#17
During the 1969-71 occupation of Alcatraz by Native American protestors, a drunken Richard Nixon ordered a nuclear strike of the island, but the order was ignored.
#18
[Ending] someone by smothering them is not a foolproof way to commit m**der, as smothering-caused asphyxiation damages a specific capillary in the eye. The pathologist will check the eye and immediately pronounce the corpse a m**der victim, and there are many, many people in jail around the world that did not know this prior to their conviction.
#19
Hershey’s chocolate has the strong smell of vomit or feces to some people (me), and that’s because they use butyric acid as a preservative. Butyric acid is the compound that makes vomit smell so bad.
#20
A severed human head has a strange uneven weight distribution. So you better hold it tight or you will be known as the guy that dropped the head.
#21
Most people put effort into "hiding the body" however what you need to focus on is ANYTHING that can link you TO the dead body.
"I don't know, he was dead when I got here!"
Don't say anything else. It's up to them to link fingerprints, DNA evidence etc. Anything else is just circumstantial evidence.
Of course you should avoid any circumstantial evidence to a dead person obviously if you can.
#22
When Marie Antoinette was awaiting her execution , Her best friend Marie-Thérèse Louise de Savoie Carignan, Princess of Lamballe was taken and tried..They offered her grace only if she swore to Liberty and Equality, and hatred of the King and Queen. She agreed to the first part but refused to claim hatred and denounce her best friend even after her father begged her to in order for her life to be spared..... she was taken to a slaughter yard and a mob brutally m**dered her. Then... the mob decapitated her and crudely impaled her head on a pike... and then placed the pike on front of Marie's cell window so she could see what had become of her best friend and what fate awaited her.
#23
Wikipedia has shockingly accurate nuclear munitions counts for locations and weapon types.
Zaphod 1 year ago
Transparency is good, I guess. Btw, everyone should see, *Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb* It's a 1964 comedy about nuclear war by Stanley Kubrick. It stars Peter Sellers in 3 roles and is super funny! Spoiler alert: this photo looks like the end.
#24
Asbestos tastes like chalk. And if you lick it, it has the texture of extremely gritty sandpaper. Which is actually the feeling of microscopic asbestos needles piercing your flesh!!!
#25
There is a species of turtle that can breathe through its butt.
#26
A significant component to what makes stealth aircraft stealthy comes down to how their parts are painted.
#27
If you are going to dismember a corpse after m**dering them, when pulling the teeth, don't forget the impacted wisdom teeth. They may contain enough mitochondria DNA to allow an ID
#28
If you work 40 hours a week and spend 10 minutes a day pooping it equals a whole week of paid vacation per year.
Ample Aardvark 1 year ago
If you spend 10 min pooping you need a lot more fiber and water in your diet
#29
The smell of a dead body can stick with you for a day or two no matter how many times your wash your hands or shower.
#30
The act of cannibalism is not illegal in the Netherlands. If you were to aquire human flesh in a legal way, you are allowed to eat it.
#31
Male and female beavers have different colored fluids that come out of their anal glands. In males, brown, and in females white or clear. It is one of the main modes of gender identification, as they don't have external genitalia.
#32
The Zoroastrians leave their dead in special towers to be eaten by vultures.
Zaphod 1 year ago (edited)
Zoroastrianism was the first monotheist religion. It also came up with the concept of "Light and Dark", good and evil. In Zoroastrianism, the only true God is Ahura Mazda, the representation of goodness, light, and truth. He is in conflict with the evil spirit Angra Mainyu, the representation of evil, darkness, and deceit. Angru Mainyu's goal is to tempt humans away from Ahura Mazda. Judaism and Christianity "borrowed" heavily from these concepts. (partially stolen from google)
#33
Even if you don't want to, if you sit in the back of the plane, you have a higher chance of surviving a plane crash.
#34
Although never technically illegal, oral sex has officially been legal in England since 1828.
#35
Earthworms, specifically nightcrawlers are way crunchier than you think.
What do you think ?
Multa Nocte 1 year ago
Is one of the Bored Panda staff quietly putting tips together so they can murder someone and get away with it later?
the quickening 1 year ago
it certainly is starting to feel that way lmaao
Load More Replies... Ace 1 year ago
Why are so many of these supposedly random facts all about covering up murders?
Sooploosh MacSchnibble 1 year ago
The Green Lynx Spider is capable of spitting its venom and said venom is extremely bitter. -1000/10 never tasting again omg
Hlon 1 year ago
Another fun fact: when people panic while scuba diving, their initial reaction is to rip out their breathing regulator and take off their mask. I never understood why anyone would do that until it happened to me. Your brain wants things back to normal so you involuntarily remove everything that isn’t “normal”.
Julia Ford 1 year ago
And like my husband, try to swim to the surface. Luckily I was able to stop him.
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David Paterson 1 year ago (edited)
Another don't ask how I know. It takes a lot more poison to kill a person than you think, when taken orally. So long as you have a healthy self-preservation instinct, there are really only three chemical poisons that can kill you when ingested in small doses : these three are ricin, botox and radioactive isotopes. Ricin only in its purified form. And even then almost all of the deadliest poisons can be cured completely or partially by taking a different poison with the opposite effect. Much of this is because the majority of the deadliest poisons act on the operation of the acetylcholine neurotransmitter pathway, and the effects of some are opposite others.
PolymathNecromancer 1 year ago
What about cyanide? I have read that this kills instantly in relatively small doses as well.
Load More Replies... Jaguarundi 1 year ago
Cauterized/seared/burning human flesh smells just like good quality BBQ pork being cooked.
Sky Render 1 year ago
If it were possible to override the prostatic utricle and urinate immediately after sex, the resulting stream of urine would be prone to being released in short, intense bursts. If kept sustained, the stream could easily exceed 6 feet in length.
Sooploosh MacSchnibble 1 year ago
I need to alter my genes so that I can release an extremely pressurized beam of supperheated urine at attackers like Shin Godzilla's Atomic Breath.
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My O My 1 year ago
Mice consuming vast amounts of Epo (the stuff that was used for doping cyclists) get really aggressive
Toothless Feline 1 year ago
So many of these are things I don't want to know about how they were first discovered.
Multa Nocte 1 year ago
Is one of the Bored Panda staff quietly putting tips together so they can murder someone and get away with it later?
the quickening 1 year ago
it certainly is starting to feel that way lmaao
Load More Replies... Ace 1 year ago
Why are so many of these supposedly random facts all about covering up murders?
Sooploosh MacSchnibble 1 year ago
The Green Lynx Spider is capable of spitting its venom and said venom is extremely bitter. -1000/10 never tasting again omg
Hlon 1 year ago
Another fun fact: when people panic while scuba diving, their initial reaction is to rip out their breathing regulator and take off their mask. I never understood why anyone would do that until it happened to me. Your brain wants things back to normal so you involuntarily remove everything that isn’t “normal”.
Julia Ford 1 year ago
And like my husband, try to swim to the surface. Luckily I was able to stop him.
Load More Replies... David Paterson 1 year ago (edited)
Another don't ask how I know. It takes a lot more poison to kill a person than you think, when taken orally. So long as you have a healthy self-preservation instinct, there are really only three chemical poisons that can kill you when ingested in small doses : these three are ricin, botox and radioactive isotopes. Ricin only in its purified form. And even then almost all of the deadliest poisons can be cured completely or partially by taking a different poison with the opposite effect. Much of this is because the majority of the deadliest poisons act on the operation of the acetylcholine neurotransmitter pathway, and the effects of some are opposite others.
PolymathNecromancer 1 year ago
What about cyanide? I have read that this kills instantly in relatively small doses as well.
Load More Replies... Jaguarundi 1 year ago
Cauterized/seared/burning human flesh smells just like good quality BBQ pork being cooked.
Sky Render 1 year ago
If it were possible to override the prostatic utricle and urinate immediately after sex, the resulting stream of urine would be prone to being released in short, intense bursts. If kept sustained, the stream could easily exceed 6 feet in length.
Sooploosh MacSchnibble 1 year ago
I need to alter my genes so that I can release an extremely pressurized beam of supperheated urine at attackers like Shin Godzilla's Atomic Breath.
Load More Replies... My O My 1 year ago
Mice consuming vast amounts of Epo (the stuff that was used for doping cyclists) get really aggressive
Toothless Feline 1 year ago
So many of these are things I don't want to know about how they were first discovered.
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