Whether it happens around the office coffee machine, the BBQ party's grill, or at the bar, running out of things to say is a real possibility when you're having small talk. And depending on the level of your social anxiety, the uncomfortable silence that follows can be pretty deafening. So in order not to end up in such a situation, let's take a look at the Facebook group 'Unique Facts.' From intricate personal stories to fascinating trivia about the animal kingdom, and beyond, these posts will definitely give you some random ideas on how to save your next failing conversation.
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The popularity of this group, together with the Instagram account 'Facts', Facebook page 'Now You Know' and countless others illustrate that people still love trivia.
And while nobody can claim to have invented "knowing random stuff for fun," the trend gained a lot of ground in the '70s.
The original Jeopardy! daytime game show premiered in 1964 and the nighttime syndicated version started airing in 1974, around the time pub trivia began to take off. While these events probably evolved organically, the first formalized version came about in 1976, when Sharon Burns and Tom Porter peddled quizzes to pubs in southern England.
At first, the plan was to just give bars a way to get people in on slow nights, but the concept became a huge hit. In the US, groups like Pub Trivia USA and America’s Pub Quiz organize city- and state-wide competitions, often with serious cash prizes.
“We don’t want people to walk into a bar and feel like they can't contribute for a round,” Cullen Shaw, co-founder of the NYC Trivia League, told GQ about what makes for a good trivia night.
Is not so much for liberating the country (US and Polish troops also played a big part in that) but for keeping the royal family safe during their exile. And temporarily changing part of a hospital Dutch soil so that the princesses were born in the Netherlands.
"If there’s a really difficult 17th-century poetry question, maybe there’s one person in the bar that knows that, but a sports question comes up after that and they let someone else answer. That's what’s fun about team trivia," Shaw explained.
Then again, you don't even need to be on a team to participate—or even leave your home. Hundreds of thousands of people log on to various apps to play every day.
I have a sundial, I attached a light to it so it works at night also.
The draw toward trivia seems to be rooted in our natural curiosity and desire for challenge. "We are a competitive people," said Shaw. "We like games; in general, humankind has gravitated toward them."
People also enjoy alcohol and socializing, so a combination of all three—plus the bragging rights that come with answering a tough question that nobody else did—creates an activity with lasting appeal.
Imagine what my life would have been like if BP had censored the word 'd**g' effectively in the above image. I could have been someone.. I could have made positive change in the world.. I could have lived with purpose. Sadly, my young mind was corrupted in an instant and I am now spiralling into darkness. My once promising mind is corrupted and I shall only know torment until my blackened heart rests at the end of what will surely be a cursed life. Why, BP? WHY? Tell your children what has happened here today, lest they sink into the same deep, dark cavern of woe.
Svalbard, Norway. And it's threatened by climate change, so...
I have A neg. I signed up to donate blood some years ago and I've been donating regularly. It seems to be a rare type (at least in my area), because I am sometimes contacted by someone from the donation center and asked if I could come on day X for an urgent blood request. It's cool to know you're really helping someone. Someday you might be the one in need of blood.
Plus, playing trivia games also gives your brain a workout, as it requires you to recall facts, make connections, and think critically under pressure.
"[Trivia questions] can engage your brain and reward/dopamine responses," said Alan D. Castel, Ph.D., a professor of cognitive psychology at the University of California.
What is the difference between a rabbit lifting weights and a rabbit with a carrot in its ear? Ones a fit bunny, the other is a bit funny.
They're an offshoot of the Chinese Red Delicious; like the majority of apples are cultivated to be this way, not natural. The growing conditions are very specific so incredibly hard to duplicate hence why you don't see others trying to grow them. You can, however, get the Arkansas Black Apple, which is very similar in appearance though tart rather than sweet. Also cultivated of course.
Calling it a diamond mine is a bit like calling a mountain stream a gold mine just because panning for gold can actually produce a modest amount of gold. The place is Crater of Diamonds State Park, and park statistics say that about 1 of every 200 visitors finds a diamond. A few very valuable diamonds have been found, but the park says that most aren't even appraised. I'm sure it can be fun, but it would be a mistake t think there's a good financial reason for a visit.
"Some research has shown that people are in fact willing to gamble, and even subject themselves to electric shocks to satisfy their curiosity for trivial knowledge that carries no apparent value, and may share neural mechanisms with that of hunger for food—showing the almost primal power of curiosity," Castel added.
I know in my brain it's an octopus, however, doesn't that look like my man's carrying a 8 armed Alien through the water?!?!?
People who work with pineapples, cutting them up for processing etc, lose their fingerprints, the acids in the pineapples eat the ridges away.
Copying my comment from below. I watched several architect videos stating that such buildings were absolutely unsustainable and an absurdity (issues with constantly having to care for the trees, inc roots growing, flats being infested with bugs (inc mosquitoes) to the point where inhabitants don't open their windows) massive use of water etc. Several people in the comments who lived in such buildings seemed to validate these points...If you have some further feedback i'm interested
Or maybe just plant a tree? In the US, these tanks would be vandalized and broken in no time at all.
Really cool to eat a lemon afterwards, but the sweet-taste is little bit different than ordinary sugar.
No, thank you. My dreams are really weird, usually involve strange architecture and not enough bathrooms, and watching them once in my sleep is quite enough.
Last night I dreamt I was in Russia to buy new windowsills, and a few very kind Russian men performed their folk dance for me before vanishing into thin air and leaving me with a comic book and a grocery store.
Load More Replies...I’m going to need something more authoritative than a facebook post before I buy that.
Sand, The Snopes link below is a good start for an overview. TLDR is interesting research happened but the post above grossly overstates it for clicks. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mri-record-dreams-japanese-scientists/
Load More Replies...NO, they LITERALLY did NOT. But BS gets more clicks than reality I guess. The actual researh is interesting, but this post twists the 'facts'. Summary - MRI type device attached to three test subjects. They were shown various objects (chair, female, whatever) and they recorded the patterns from their brains. They also recorded them while sleeping - waking them up to ask what they saw in their dreams, to build up a set of 200 known items. What they found was, for a given person, the waking and dreaming pattern for an object matched. So, they might be able to tell a test subject dreamed about a person or a tree, but they definitely could not "literally play back your dreams". ALSO - they found the patterns varied by person so each individual would have to be trained to the machine. Your MRI pattern for seeing a chair might be different than mine. TLDR: Nobody can drag you into a room, slap a sci-fi helmet on your head and record your dreams. Still, it is interesting.
Absolutely! Like when you’re with a famous person you really like & you wake up when you are just about to kiss….
Load More Replies...I very much doubt that. With the help of an EEG it might be possible to interpret whether someone is having a good dream or a nightmare. But a video sequence to play back‽ I need more than a few flimsy words to believe that.
I don't believe it. Fact check? There's no logical way to do that...yet...
I'm sure I must dream, but I never remember them. Considering the thoughts I have while awake, that's probably a good thing.
I frequently wake up with absolutely no memory of whatever dreams I have, but other times I'll wake up and know that I dreamt vividly and extensively, even though I may not remember much detail. As it happens, I had some interesting dreams a couple of nights ago, woke up remembering and thought about it a bit with the intention of sharing some details with my wife. I couldn't remember a single detail later in the day.
Load More Replies...No! Why? No! I don’t believe they can but why would you want to?
Please tell me it comes with a little button to put the ending on the ones interrupted due to awakening
I don’t want to relive having to pee in technicolor multiple times. The first time was good thanks
"In 2013, Japanese researchers published a study describing a method for "recording dreams" by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to record brain activity associated with particular objects when a subject is both awake and asleep. The resulting recordings consist of flashes of images of objects that correlate with this brain activity (not a direct-to-video recording in the usual sense, or a narrative record)." -snopes
I need this. I'm tired of telling how I managed to scream in a dream where I was chased by a scooter. Or when I could control the world. Plis give me this
i would love this! my dreams are like watching sci-fi movies. plus some are in b&w, some i'm watching in the audience, sometimes there's a narrator, a few where I was a male (i'm a female) which were odd. i can even jump characters or change things. i used to write alot of the dreams down. still have the notebook they're in.
I don't know if this is a good idea or not. My dreams aren't usually scary, more confusing, people I recognise but in the wrong setting (schoolteacher in the office at my work). But sometimes it would be nice to know why I was standing on the roof of a house, waving the flag of another country but don't know which country.
Great! I would love to relive my nightmares of teaching middle schoolers without a shirt on!!!
I wanna know what goes on in there while I'm sleeping, like all of it!
Yeah, not sure I want that. I'd be locked up for some of them. They even freak me out.
No thanks, I'm always lost somewhere in a large city trying to find my car, and a bathroom.
Lllsheep. Your dreams sound exactly like mine. Except there are plenty of bathrooms in my dreams, but none of them work lol
That would be awesome! Dreams are like a movie every night. Or even numerous ones. We could actually put them in a library, or better yet, a video store.
No they haven't. They've developed something that can identify parts of it. You're dreaming about a door. But it can't see what kind of door or what it looks like. So the door you see won't be the same one in your dreams. It's pretty cool and a neat advancement but we should be accurate with what it is and does.
Yeah no thanks, going through them once is more than enough. I dont dream often but when I do it's usually a nightmare. I've always had terrifying, bizarre and extremely creepy dreams even as a young child. I blame anxiety, PTSD and a very overactive imagination.
I always wondered what the whole dream with Larry Hagman, in nothing but a towel, was all about.
I wonder if that could be tweaked to figure out if it could play back memories? Not just for reminiscing but more importantly could you imagine if we could play back memories of people dead, see a murder victims last sight and stuff like that?!
i would like to see my dreams. i never remember them so it would be cool.
Love/hate depending on whether I went to be with dessert or not lol
Heh y'all think you're weird? I had a dream that I had an extra closet in my room and it was full of overalls. I really want to buy overalls.....😢
I dreamt that every time I tried to eat the food turned into ants… so no thanks to this
No, thank you. Mine are like an endless game of Wolfenstein, just without the Germans.
and thousands of square miles of rainforest are destroyed to make place for sugarcane plantations (one article said 16.3 thousand km2) So it is very bad for the environment
SUBARU is Japanese for a cluster of six stars, which the Greeks called the Pleiades – part of the Taurus constellation.
Interesting factoids, but the multicolor fonts are annoying as hell.
As usual, these come direct from another source with no changes other than any censorship B considers necessary. In this case, the post come from a Facebook group, and, well, Facebook.
Load More Replies...These factoid collection is just so full of BS that scrolling through is frustrating. BP once again shines for its utter and complete lack of editorial effort or fact checking.
And once again, those pointing this out are downvoted. Frustrating is definitely the right word.
Load More Replies...I mean some of these where nice but BP used to be so much better a few years ago. It's sort of the reason to why I created an account in the first place.
Why bother? Their unions would only cover it up and the customer will lose every time!
That was great. Only a few repeats . Can we please have bored panda go back to these.
Interesting factoids, but the multicolor fonts are annoying as hell.
As usual, these come direct from another source with no changes other than any censorship B considers necessary. In this case, the post come from a Facebook group, and, well, Facebook.
Load More Replies...These factoid collection is just so full of BS that scrolling through is frustrating. BP once again shines for its utter and complete lack of editorial effort or fact checking.
And once again, those pointing this out are downvoted. Frustrating is definitely the right word.
Load More Replies...I mean some of these where nice but BP used to be so much better a few years ago. It's sort of the reason to why I created an account in the first place.
Why bother? Their unions would only cover it up and the customer will lose every time!
That was great. Only a few repeats . Can we please have bored panda go back to these.