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It can be surprisingly easy to forget that there are a lot of curiosities around the world that you would miss if you never traveled or interacted with other people. 

Someone asked “What's a crazy fact about your country?” and people from across the globe shared their best examples. We got in touch with veteran traveler Jayne Gorman to discuss learning more about the world. So get comfortable as you read through, upvote your favorites, and be sure to comment your own thoughts and opinions below. 

More info: Ourtravelhome

This post may include affiliate links.

#1

People Share Bizarre True Facts About Their Countries, Here Are The 45 Most Interesting Ones UK.
During the ad breaks on certain TV shows, (such as Corrie), we have what we call the TV pick up, when the British National Grid gives an extra boost of power to manage the sudden influx of people getting up to switch on their kettles to make themselves a cup of tea. There are people whose jobs are to predict exactly when these pick ups will occur.

Rovia2323 , Nathan Dumlao Report

Final score:
259points
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#2

People Share Bizarre True Facts About Their Countries, Here Are The 45 Most Interesting Ones We've had a war with Denmark for the past 25 years over ownership of some random island. It's fought by exchanging alcoholic beverages and exchanging flags being planted on the island every once in a while.


unfortunately the war just ended this year.. :( we split the island down the middle... So disappointing of an ending to an epic war.

bobbi21 , Toubletap - Own work Report

Final score:
224points
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#3

People Share Bizarre True Facts About Their Countries, Here Are The 45 Most Interesting Ones Belgium went 594 days without goverment and didn't become a crime ridden dystopia.

Noideamanbro , Aron Marinelli Report

Final score:
211points
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Bored Panda got in touch with Jayne Gorman, from the travel blog Ourtravelhome to learn more about exploring the world and the things you might discover. First and foremost, we wanted to know, after years of traveling, what she would tell her younger self.

“Don’t overthink it, just do it. When I was younger I had a habit of turning things down if it wasn’t the right time or might have been complicated. I distinctly remember backpacking in Asia and deciding not to include Laos on the itinerary as I could always come back another time. Well, guess what, 15 years later an opportunity to pop into Laos has not presented itself! Now, as a 38-year-old mum with a 4-year-old and a mortgage, I look back at the freedom I had then and think I probably could have done a little bit more with it.”
#4

People Share Bizarre True Facts About Their Countries, Here Are The 45 Most Interesting Ones In Finland we have 5.5 million people and 3.2 million saunas.

HeidiSJ , HUUM Report

Final score:
171points
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#5

People Share Bizarre True Facts About Their Countries, Here Are The 45 Most Interesting Ones After we put the Indigenous people on reserves we allegedly wanted them to become farmers, but we didn't just teach them to farm the way White folks farmed with the 19th century technology that was current at the time. We had a "peasant farm" policy where we gave them rudimentary tools and made them farm with old timey techniques, ostensibly due to the belief that they had to "evolve" toward modern farming on their own, but actually so that they could not compete with White farmers and basically stayed farming at a subsistence level or failed at it altogether.

(Canada, if you're wondering.)

smuffleupagus , GreenForce Staffing Report

Final score:
171points
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#6

People Share Bizarre True Facts About Their Countries, Here Are The 45 Most Interesting Ones Believe it or not, Kazakhstan is the number one exporter of potassium in the world. All of your potassium supplements come from here. I would know, I own a potassium factory.

Plumbus90 , Elsa Olofsson Report

Final score:
160points
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When it comes to traveling, spending money sometimes isn’t a matter of convenience, it can actually affect your safety! So we asked Jayne Gorman to talk a bit about when it’s worth spending that little bit extra. “I think it’s all about working within your budget and making smart choices! Personally, I’ve always favored a mix of high/low travel. I’ll often fly with a budget airline on a short-haul flight so I can splurge on a boutique hotel in my destination. I’d definitely pay a premium for transport if it gives me more time at the destination. But I might self-cater my lunch that day to make up for it!”
#7

People Share Bizarre True Facts About Their Countries, Here Are The 45 Most Interesting Ones The Unicorn is our national animal.

anon , Juliana Araujo the artist Report

Final score:
160points
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#8

People Share Bizarre True Facts About Their Countries, Here Are The 45 Most Interesting Ones Still my favourite fact is the fact one of our prime ministers probably drowned and to remember him we named a pool after him.

Another contender is the fact that in one of the world wars the game plan for if we were invaded (and lost) was to lead them into wildlife.

lolucorngaming , Pixabay Report

Final score:
138points
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#9

People Share Bizarre True Facts About Their Countries, Here Are The 45 Most Interesting Ones In Bulgaria shaking your head means "yes" and nodding means "no". My country is the only one in the world which has reverse meaning behind the shaking and nodding. So if you happen to spend your holiday in Bulgaria be prepared to not get confused by this. :D

Moon_falcon , Priscilla Du Preez Report

Final score:
133points
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“Always research the options for airport transfers. In some destinations, Marrakech and Lisbon, for example, a taxi is much faster and just as affordable as public transport. But in Luxembourg, where I’m headed next, all public transport is free. Pre-planning your arrival saves time, money, and stress.” Indeed, Americans might be surprised that in most places there is dedicated transport to and from the airport. 

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#10

I live in the only industrialized nation without universal healthcare and 14% of working age adults don't have health insurance.

Exact_Roll_4048 Report

Final score:
133points
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#11

People Share Bizarre True Facts About Their Countries, Here Are The 45 Most Interesting Ones Most of us stopped using the flags of our country in public or wearing the jerseys of our National team because nowadaya those things translate to supporting the president, who is f*****g stupid.


That's Brazil for ya

danillaosg , Ramon Buçard Report

Final score:
127points
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#12

People Share Bizarre True Facts About Their Countries, Here Are The 45 Most Interesting Ones We made a commercial openly admitting we misunderstood a native word and ended up naming our country "village".

NomadClad , Jonathan Velasquez Report

Final score:
122points
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We also wanted to hear if she had any extra advice for traveling somewhere completely new in general. “Start a collection on Instagram and save posts with top tips and things you’d like to do at your destination. Save points of interest to a Google map. I create a new list for every destination I visit and will save my hotel, popular restaurants, attractions, etc to a map in advance so it’s easier to plan my days and navigate the destination,” she shared with Bored Panda. 

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#13

People Share Bizarre True Facts About Their Countries, Here Are The 45 Most Interesting Ones Our landmass looks like a boot and I think it must've kicked our biggest island at some point, because it's moving away from us by 1cm a year.

thathorsegamingguy , Anders Jildén Report

Final score:
121points
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#14

People Share Bizarre True Facts About Their Countries, Here Are The 45 Most Interesting Ones We ate our prime minister. Oh and we also ate his brother

Dazzling_Run_5519 , Ngân Dương Report

Final score:
111points
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#15

People Share Bizarre True Facts About Their Countries, Here Are The 45 Most Interesting Ones We have more bikes than people

p_anime , Héctor Martínez Report

Final score:
107points
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“As data roaming with your own network provider can be very expensive, I recommend downloading an eSIM before traveling. I use a company called Airalo to buy a local eSIM and load it up with a cheap data package as I would literally be lost without my phone.” You can find more on her website or on her Instagram, and if you want to learn more about life in some countries, check out our article on people confirming or denying stereotypes. 

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#16

People Share Bizarre True Facts About Their Countries, Here Are The 45 Most Interesting Ones The first King of England made a law that everyone had to be in bed by 8pm.

Buddleia01 , Quin Stevenson Report

Final score:
96points
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#17

One of the many is, Denmark is the first country to legalize porn and the porn industry along with sex work such as prostitution/escorts (As long as you’re turned 18)

Its-a-strange-life Report

Final score:
91points
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#18

People Share Bizarre True Facts About Their Countries, Here Are The 45 Most Interesting Ones It’s illegal to handle salmon suspiciously

Lopsided-Alps3853 , Abstral Official Report

Final score:
88points
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#19

People Share Bizarre True Facts About Their Countries, Here Are The 45 Most Interesting Ones Our country has the most number of vegetarians yet our chicken dishes are widely popular.

anushkagarg00 , Priscilla Du Preez Report

Final score:
82points
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#20

France.

We have the longest domestic flights : The first one is from French Polynesia to Paris ; The second one is from Reunion Island to Paris, their duration is respectively 16h and 12h.

Oh and our longest land border is with Brazil.

Matrozi Report

Final score:
80points
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#21

People Share Bizarre True Facts About Their Countries, Here Are The 45 Most Interesting Ones The amount of dialects, compared to it's size. I am talking about Switzerland.

There is no exact number. Strictly speaking, differences can be found in every village compared to the surrounding villages, so that one could also say with some justification that there are at least as many dialects as there are villages, which is a huge amount.

Switzerland has always been shaped by conquests and immigration, and so very different languages have been able to coexist over the centuries. Even before the 6th century, groups with alemannic dialects immigrated to Switzerland, breaking up the nationwide spread of romance languages. Since 1848, German, French and Italian have been considered the national languages of the Confoederatio Helvetica.

Trackmaniac , Tim Trad Report

Final score:
73points
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#22

We were the first country to legalize same-sex unions in 1989 🏳️‍🌈

bjoerkismylove Report

Final score:
72points
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#23

People Share Bizarre True Facts About Their Countries, Here Are The 45 Most Interesting Ones My country's whole economic system relied on families of 10 children supporting the 2 parents. And that's the reason it totally failed, along with heavy corruption and nobody paying taxes, left us with being a country in debt for the last 13 years. Right now, the economic power relies only on tourism and nautical commerce.

mastro1741 , Charlein Gracia Report

Final score:
68points
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#24

Women health care is practically non existent
You can't go to a gynecologist without being bullied by your doctor or their assistant. They will judge you before you even try to explain what the problem is. There is no education on period or cramps or anything. No sex ed.

Eitch_Bee Report

Final score:
68points
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#25

People Share Bizarre True Facts About Their Countries, Here Are The 45 Most Interesting Ones It has no official national language but many of its citizens think it's English.

hobbiesaremygame , Aaron Burden Report

Final score:
67points
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#26

The full name of our capital which roughly translates to city of the gods is Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Ayuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit

VicBulbon Report

Final score:
65points
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#27

People Share Bizarre True Facts About Their Countries, Here Are The 45 Most Interesting Ones the age of sexual consent used to be 12. yes, you heard that right, 12. it wasn’t even that long ago that this was changed, it was changed to 16 just back in march.

jdwasnottaken , AnnaStills Report

Final score:
61points
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#28

People Share Bizarre True Facts About Their Countries, Here Are The 45 Most Interesting Ones We are most invaded country on earth. Scoring first with whooping 200+ times.

anon , RDNE Stock project Report

Final score:
56points
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#29

we have 11 time zones and it's so big that from our capital to some cities you need to go over 6 days by train.

ritamoren Report

Final score:
53points
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#30

People Share Bizarre True Facts About Their Countries, Here Are The 45 Most Interesting Ones There's an ongoing court case against a man, who entered the church with a hat.
It lasted 4 years and is still going, the procurators once again put it under scrutiny.

anon , Karl Fredrickson Report

Final score:
53points
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#31

People Share Bizarre True Facts About Their Countries, Here Are The 45 Most Interesting Ones The movie The Wolf Of Wall Street was financed with our taxpayers' money. Also we lost a plane.

anonymous_and_ , Alexander Grey Report

Final score:
48points
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#32

People Share Bizarre True Facts About Their Countries, Here Are The 45 Most Interesting Ones Despite being a country with continental proportions, more than 8 million square kilometers, we've got a notorious lack of atypical natural phenomena. No volcanoes, no earthquakes, no hurricanes, no tsunamis, it doesn't even snow anywhere in the entire country. On the other hand, we're in the list of megadiverse countries, with six continental biomes.
.
.[EDIT] Ok people, it does snow in here, kinda rarely and only in a very small part of it, but it does. It was a generalization because the huge majority of us have never experienced it in the country, I'd risk saying more people from here have seen snow while traveling abroad than people have within the country. Sorry for the exclusion, I was just making it practical for the argument. Also, fora bolsonaro.

skywalkerblood , Vadim Bogulov Report

Final score:
47points
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#33

People Share Bizarre True Facts About Their Countries, Here Are The 45 Most Interesting Ones Our navy is the second largest air force in the world

UnconstrictedEmu , James Lewis Report

Final score:
47points
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rayceeyarayceeya avatar
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa)
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa)
Community Member
9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

USA USA USA. Seriously we have the first and second largest air forces in the world. Unless you live here, you have no idea how much money we spend on our military.

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Neuropotathy
Neuropotathy
Community Member
9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Less than 3% of your military budget helped Ukraine to kick putin's wrinkled butt. Thanks a lot, for real.

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Trisec Tebeakesse
Trisec Tebeakesse
Community Member
9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The army also flies more helicopters than the air force. And they have considerable fixed-wing assets as well.

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George D
George D
Community Member
8 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Problem is, to what end? We have more aircraft carriers than the next 8 countries combined. Ukraine/Russia war has shown that tactics have changed. I say we eliminate a branch altogether, like the Marines, and start getting smart about how to spend that absurd budget wisely. We spend approx $2000 per capita while China spends roughly $200. Just sayin'.

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Perry Downing
Perry Downing
Community Member
8 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

If we tried to eliminate the marines they would completely lose their minds and party like it’s 1861. Well, try to, at least.

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Phil
Phil
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8 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Ok, I'll be that guy. Those are Air Force airplanes. Thunderbirds!

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EvilNob
EvilNob
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9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

😹 You guys have a navy?

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Perry Downing
Perry Downing
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8 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

It’s worth noting that only Navy pilots are trained to land on air carriers.

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Fynne
Fynne
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9 months ago

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Money well spent! I got a brother in the US Navy

jessicasarmiento avatar
E.V.
E.V.
Community Member
9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

My husband is a Navy war vet. Even he thinks our military budget is over bloated! You'd be shocked to see how much of it is going in the pockets of defense contractors and so little towards the soldiers. He can't even go to the VA hospital without having to wait months for a simple appointment. Good thing we have private insurance.

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#34

People Share Bizarre True Facts About Their Countries, Here Are The 45 Most Interesting Ones you can marry a dead person (with presidential agreement and under special conditions)

chinchenping , HONG SON Report

Final score:
46points
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#35

We have a quarter of the world’s drinkable water.

CheeseburgerBrown Report

Final score:
44points
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#36

We have the highest density of castles in the world, if the same rate were to be applied to New York, Manhattan alone would have two of them. If you were to apply our castles per capita (roughly 1/5000), New York would have 13,000, the US would have 514,000.

CymroCam Report

Final score:
43points
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#37

People Share Bizarre True Facts About Their Countries, Here Are The 45 Most Interesting Ones We are fourth in alcohol consumption, somewhere in top 10 tobacco use, #1's in beer per capita and over 30% of people here are obese

anon , BENCE BOROS Report

Final score:
39points
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#38

People Share Bizarre True Facts About Their Countries, Here Are The 45 Most Interesting Ones We have the highest number of porn stars per 1 million inhabitants....wow.

your-creepy_uncle-69 , 2H Media Report

Final score:
38points
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#39

Our country declared war to the US sometime during WWI (or WWII? Can't remember), which to this day hasn't been ended with a piece treaty or anything. So we've technically been in war with the US for the last 100 (80?) years.

Wotah_Bottle_86 Report

Final score:
38points
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#40

On one end of the country, there’s a cocktail where people drink whiskey with a real cut off human toe inside. On the other end, you get a certificate for drinking whiskey and kissing a dead fish.

a_supportive_bra Report

Final score:
38points
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#41

They say there are more guns than there are people

BlackbeanMaster Report

Final score:
36points
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#42

People Share Bizarre True Facts About Their Countries, Here Are The 45 Most Interesting Ones Our financial system just made the world commit securities fraud

WiseKibbles , Scott Graham Report

Final score:
35points
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#43

People Share Bizarre True Facts About Their Countries, Here Are The 45 Most Interesting Ones Do people even know where Slovakia is

OneNo7285 , Anthony Beck Report

Final score:
29points
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#44

We haven't been hit hard or at all by any of the current world economic disasters.

anon Report

Final score:
28points
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#45

We have the world's highest number of ministers per capita (excluding microstates) with one minister per 10.000 people.

Mr_Curious_ Report

Final score:
22points
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