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As absurd as it can sound on paper, the truth is that facts are just fun, the more obscure, weird and random, the better. After all, everyone needs a handful of interesting trivia to pull out at parties or during very awkward silences.
Someone asked “What is the most unusual fact you know?” and thousands of netizens answered the call, sharing the bizarre and fascinating parts of the world that most people don’t even know about. So get comfortable as you scroll through, upvote your favorites and if you have your own “fun facts,” be sure to share them in the comments below.
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#1
Otters carry around their favorite clam-opening rock in their armpit, and mothers will even pass on their favorite rock to their baby.
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#2
When a caterpillar enters a chrysalis and becomes a butterfly, it doesn't just sprout wings and legs. It essentially disintegrates into goo, and a new butterfly is built from that.
But that's not the weirdest part. The weirdest part is that it's possible to teach something to that caterpillar, and after it becomes goo and then re-forms as a butterfly, it still remembers what you taught it.
#3
I noticed this when visiting museums, looking at old paintings: hands are often ‘hidden’, covered by flowers, clothing or they disappear in the shadows. I researched it later and learned it is true. Even the best painters struggled with drawing and painting hands. I look for hands in every painting now.
T'Mar of Vulcan 1 day ago
Apparently that's one reason why Da Vinci is so highly regarded - he could paint hands properly.
#4
Chickens have the DNA for teeth, it’s just not turned on.
#5
That divider at grocery stores that separates stuff on the conveyor belt is called a spratchet.
#6
A weird fact is that honey never spoils; archaeologists have found pots of honey in ancient Egyptian tombs that are over 3,000 years old and still perfectly good to eat!
LaurieAnnaT 1 day ago
Medical-grade honey is used by medical professionals for wound care. I know because honey was just used on my sister’s terrible fracture blisters. After 9 weeks they are healed. Never any infections. (Fracture blisters are pretty much like 2nd degree burns and honey is used in those cases too.)
#8
Pelicans have three stomachs and one of them is just for bones.
#9
The minimum number of humans required for the species survival is about two hundred. The minimum number required for *any* level of survival is fifty. Below that, the inbreeding becomes a problem in the long term.
Regina Holt 3 minutes ago
And speaking of Adam and Eve and inbreeding, when I told my mom about being abused by my grandfather, her response was "well the world started with only two people, so there had to have been . . . " I can't even finish the sentence, I think my hearing died when my jaw dropped to the floor.
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Helen Rohrlach 1 day ago
The New Zealand Black Robin are all descended from a single female as are cheetahs. So inbreeding isn't a good thing but nature can work around it.
Remi (He/Him) 1 day ago
Cheetah have problems with inbred genetic issues because the population was too low at one point
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Roythomass@hotmail.com 1 day ago
Tell that to the Jesus freaks and they'll start quoting biblical verses
Janissary35680 1 day ago
Omitting all the verses about where Cain, Able, Shem, Ham, and Japeth got their wives from so they could "go forth and be fruitful and multiply". Oh wait, I'm being told there aren't any verses.
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keyboardtek 20 hours ago
A study of communal living was done and they concluded that 100 was the maximum number of humans that could live closely together in harmony without someone being greedy and power hungry and ruining it all. But inbreeding was never mentioned.
Parmeisan 15 hours ago
Interesting. I suppose the ideal situation is small communities with continuing migration between them, then. Not sure how often exactly but 1 person or a family occasionally moving somewhere else.
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VeryDarkMatter 19 hours ago
Great! So we destroy our planet and have not to change a thing. As long as 200 people survive when planet earth finally goes down the dumpster, everything will be good
Parmeisan 15 hours ago
Not to be a downer, but if only 200 people survive then I assume a great many things will change. The wi-fi will be sh*t, for starters.
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martymcmatrix 1 day ago (edited)
Isn't it then, with regard to the 50s model, very complicated at some point with the relationship... so if I decide to court Shania, the great-niece of the Millers (on my mother's side), aren't the other Millers (on my father's side) not directly related to me, even though I once carried on a romance with Buddy Miller's cousin in which more than just glances were exchanged, and the resulting twins Jack and Jill, together with their brother-and-sister-in-law of the local animal keeper's great-granddaughter once outside the community could allegedly hear the banjos chirp??? 🤔 🪕 🤷🏽
Uncle Schmickle 9 hours ago
The human race nearly died out long ago. See "Civilisation" by Lord Kenneth Clark.
Cynthia Christie 17 hours ago
I think there must have been a population bottleneck of about 10 somewhere back there.
A̷͇̘̓͜l̷̼͇̣͒̌ͅȩ̷͍͙͗̅̀͊̏̾͘x̶̋̍ 1 day ago
Technically, you could start with two. But you'd just have to get out of that genetic bottleneck, and then the species would survive.
Dragons Exist 1 day ago
What? If you start with two people (I assume you're talking about Adam & Eve) then inbreeding will very quickly become a problem, so any bottleneck would only let inbred people through, if any. The point of a species's bottleneck is to kill of the ones who won't survive and let the ones who can survive repopulate, so a bottleneck to remove inbreds won't work if everyone is inbred, you'd only get the least deformed inbreds
Load More Replies... #10
If you eat polar bear liver it will kill a human and if a polar bear eats your liver it will too.
#11
For me it is that the lighter was invented before matches.
#12
Great white sharks have never been seen mating. Ever. By anyone. Zero record made by a human. Strange considering what a mighty presence they have on humans.
#13
LASER is an acronym (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) but in most cases should be LOSER because the light is oscillated, not amplified.
Rhonda Espinosa 1 day ago
"Now playing My Chemical Romance loser ligh show!" Business owners; "Omg! I'm doing another Scrooge McDuuuuuuck dive over here!"
#14
Spiders curl up when they die because the thing that keeps their legs out is blood pressure, which releases when they die.
#15
All cheetahs are genetically cousins. They almost went extinct thousands of years ago, down to like 100 individuals.
#16
Off the top of my head, maybe that fact that the great cats roar, but do not purr; lesser cats purr but do not roar.
#17
Octopuses have three hearts and blue blood so fascinating!
TotallyNOTAFox 1 day ago (edited)
And nine brains - each for every arm and a central dominant one. Going further, one arm serves the purpose as reproduction organ which means that male octopusses really are able to think with their d**k
#18
Your eyes have their own immune system. If your "normal" immune system discovers this it will attack your eyes and you'll go blind.
#19
John Tyler, the 10th US president, was born in 1790 - that is during the first US president George Washington’s first term.
His grandson, Harrison Ruffin Tyler, is still alive - that is the current US president Joe Biden's term.
Think about it - just three generations (father,son and grandson) to cover the entire US presidential history.
Sand Ers 1 day ago
He's 96, so this one isn't going to remain true for too much longer. John Tyler was 63 when Harrison's father was born, and his father was 75 when Harrison was born. While technically correct, this factoid stretches the concept of "generation" pretty tightly. Each of them barely knew their fathers, and were decades away from having been able to meet their grandfathers.
#21
The first public game of basketball was played the same week and less than 100 miles away from the last American vampire hunt.
On March 11, 1892, James Naismith debuted his new game in front of a crowd of 200 spectators at the Armory Hill YMCA in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Meanwhile, on March 17, 1892, in Exeter, Rhode Island, a crowd of concerned villagers dug up the grave of 19 year old Mercy Brown. She had died two months earlier and locals had become convinced that her vampire was feeding on her sickly brother. In an effort to stop the undead Mercy, the crowd exhumed her corpse, burned her heart and liver, and gave the ashes to her brother in a tonic.
Doug the Special one 1 day ago
I think I'd prefer to have the second one done to me instead of watching a game of basketball.
#22
The spinal cord has the consistency of a ripe banana.
I’ve Seen Things 1 day ago
I have recently recovered after crushing mine. Paralysis, wheelchair, learning to walk again, all with more pain than anyone could ever imagine. But I pushed through and I am walking unaided again. 💪
#23
Australia is wider than the moon.
#24
The only animal other than a human that can perform a headstand is an elephant.
#25
The Grand Canyon is so large that you could fit EVERYONE who ever lived inside it and still not fill it.
#26
The mantle plume hotspot that is half the cause of Iceland's intense volcanism (the other half being the Mid-Atlantic Ridge) is believed to have been the cause of the largest mass extinction event in the planet's history, back when it sat under what is now Siberia.
#27
I grew up on a dairy farm1960's. US milk production today is twice what it was then and there are half as many cows. Each cow produces four times as much.
#28
The career that has the most s****des per year is dentist and then serving
Second most is veterinarians.
#29
An average storm cloud weighs about 47,627,199 kilograms.
#30
Most polar bears are left handed.
What do you think ?
Sand Ers 1 day ago
Poll question option 1, addendum answer: especially if more of them are actually factual.
Casey Payne 15 hours ago
More artist collections. More artwork. More exploration of the world around us as chaos wins over order. More creepy. More weird. Fewer articles about generational anxiety. Fewer articles wallowing in nostalgia. Lose the Amazon Shopping Network BS. Quit reprinting Reddit articles. They're interesting, but they belong on Reddit. Fewer bad relationship woes. They can't possibly be shocking when there is 5 or more in a row. Throw some cat pictures in to break up the monotony. Am I missing anything? Oh yeah, your advertising animations are causing your website to freeze up and collapse. I do enjoy BP, but y'all can do better. I've seen you do it.
Ionescu Popa 9 hours ago
more creepy and less life advice? priorities, i guess.
Load More Replies... Sand Ers 1 day ago
Poll question option 1, addendum answer: especially if more of them are actually factual.
Casey Payne 15 hours ago
More artist collections. More artwork. More exploration of the world around us as chaos wins over order. More creepy. More weird. Fewer articles about generational anxiety. Fewer articles wallowing in nostalgia. Lose the Amazon Shopping Network BS. Quit reprinting Reddit articles. They're interesting, but they belong on Reddit. Fewer bad relationship woes. They can't possibly be shocking when there is 5 or more in a row. Throw some cat pictures in to break up the monotony. Am I missing anything? Oh yeah, your advertising animations are causing your website to freeze up and collapse. I do enjoy BP, but y'all can do better. I've seen you do it.
Ionescu Popa 9 hours ago
more creepy and less life advice? priorities, i guess.
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