30 Useless Facts That Will Just Take Up Space In Your Head, Unless You’re A Random Trivia Fanatic

We learn many different things throughout our lives. But while some of this knowledge might serve a very real purpose in our lives, there are those pieces of information that we know just because we do, and we have no idea what to do with it.

But despite being useless in the practical sense, some of these facts can actually be quite thought-provoking, interesting to ponder, and fun to share with others. That’s why, when one Redditor asked people online about the most useless pieces of information that they know, then answers came pouring in. Scroll down to read what they said!

More info: Reddit

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30 Useless Facts That Will Just Take Up Space In Your Head, Unless You’re A Random Trivia Fanatic The difference between a nook and a cranny is that a nook is a corner and a cranny is like an narrow opening.

The_Living_Theater , Alisa Anton Report

Final score:

121points

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Fussy1 8 months ago

A nook is comforting, a cranny is causes anxiety.

48points

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30 Useless Facts That Will Just Take Up Space In Your Head, Unless You’re A Random Trivia Fanatic If the Sun was the size of a white blood cell swimming through your veins, the Milky Way would be the size of the continental United States. (Really puts into perspective just how small we are.).

manafahayp , Arnie Chou Report

Final score:

116points

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Ryan Mercer 8 months ago

And our galaxy is one of about a trillion galaxies in the observable universe. There's literally no knowing what lies beyond that, and everything we know about science says we will never know. But the observable universe could itself be a speck in a vast sea. To call it big kind of misses the point. It is well, well, well beyond imagining,

53points

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30 Useless Facts That Will Just Take Up Space In Your Head, Unless You’re A Random Trivia Fanatic Otters hold paws while sleeping so they don't drift away, and can form some pretty impressive structures called "rafts" when they're in a large group.

MerryMelody-Symphony , Volker Kaes Report

Final score:

114points

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Cosmikid 8 months ago

Sea otters ONLY. Fresh water otters almost always sleep on land, where drifting is less common.

97points

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We loved reading through all the answers that the question of this thread brought out, and so we wanted to learn what the original inspiration that ignited this discussion was. To do that, Bored Panda reached out to LoneVentriloquistSFW, who loved our interest and was glad to answer our questions.

The OP shared that he decided to ask this question minutes after learning that E is the most used letter in the alphabet, which he also shared in the comments of his thread. “It just sparked my interest in knowing a ton of useless information from people,” said the author, adding that he didn’t find any other use for it yet.

The success of his post caught the OP by surprise. “To be honest, I didn’t expect my post to blow up like that,” said the poster, talking about how this was probably the highest interaction he has ever gotten from Reddit. “It felt awesome. It felt like I was a celebrity for a moment *lol*.”

30 Useless Facts That Will Just Take Up Space In Your Head, Unless You’re A Random Trivia Fanatic A jiffy is an actual unit of time. It's 1/100th of a second.

thrumplewart , Pixabay Report

Final score:

98points

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Mimi La Souris 8 months ago

here, we call it "week end"

129points

MaximumKarmaSaint 8 months ago

In some other places, it's called "vacation".

3points

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Bouche and Audi and Shyla, Oh My! 8 months ago

It's also a popcorn container/popper thingy.

4points

Phil 8 months ago (edited)

'Shake' is an informal unit of measuring time in physics and is equal to 10 nanoseconds. It comes from the expression 'two shakes of a lamb's tail'.

2points

Zaach 8 months ago

Computer geeks invented a unit of time of micro-fortnight = to 1.2096 seconds

1point

Marie Clear 8 months ago

So I've lied every time I said I'd be back in a jiffy. Sad now.

0points

Steve Hall 8 months ago

It actually means a moment, the definition above was created by the computer animation companies.

0points

Lotekguy 8 months ago

Wait a moment. I need to write that down.

0points

Timbob 8 months ago

Tell that to my wife !

0points

Brian Droste 8 months ago

I. don know if it is really a saying but if somebody ask you to do something and you say in a jiffy, are you saying that you will do it in 1/1000 of a second? And is this where this saying came from?

0points

The Original Bruno 8 months ago

I was double-checking whether it's 1/60th or 1/100th, and I discovered that it's mostly BS. The word predated the measurement BY A LOT. There have been SEVERAL proposals for how long a jiffy is, the first actually being that it's the distance that takes light one second to travel. None of them is official in any way, as millisecond (1/1000th of a second) is a standard unit.

0points

LeProudDork(She/They/Xe) 8 months ago

a moment is 90 seconds

0points

Fussy1 8 months ago

I'd delight in hearing, "...and it's Golden-ring-a-doodle by a jiffy for the win!" at the Kentucky derby.

0points

Cosmikid 8 months ago

Pretty sure the "jiffy" existed before being snagged as a definition by a humorous grad student...

0points

PFD 8 months ago

By 250 years or so.

0points

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30 Useless Facts That Will Just Take Up Space In Your Head, Unless You’re A Random Trivia Fanatic Ants can’t take fall damage because their terminal velocity isn’t fast enough to break their exoskeleton.

Small_Homework3971 , Egor Kamelev Report

Final score:

95points

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Surenu 8 months ago

On Earth. Bring 'em on a neutron star and see that smug smile leave their ant faces on the quantum level.

144points

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30 Useless Facts That Will Just Take Up Space In Your Head, Unless You’re A Random Trivia Fanatic Velociraptors were about the size of a turkey.

-MarilynMonroe- , Apple TV Report

Final score:

90points

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just me 8 months ago

Turkeys are scary. Not Canada Goose level, but still...

76points

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There is a certain type of knowledge that we define as useless. But when you stop and think about it, no kind of information is ever truly and completely without any use, is it?

While you may not be able to practically apply some of the knowledge you come in contact with, and if you’re forced to learn it anyway, it might feel like a waste of precious time, as Brian Tomasik wrote in his blog, there are many other ways in which it can be valuable.

And we don’t look as deep to find that value. Learning in itself is a fun thing that can bring a lot of enjoyment. For example, you can learn by reading books or watching films, and while the stuff you come across there will rarely find practical application in your life, few would argue that it’s not entertaining. Plus, any kind of learning can come with some unexpected discoveries, as it can often be difficult to predict just what kind of information you’re lacking or what thing you don’t know you might like.

Vomiting can ease the migraine but dehydration and muscle flex caused by vomiting can cause the migraine….

Capable-Island8499 Report

Final score:

85points

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MaybeAlive 8 months ago

an ouch-22

78points

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30 Useless Facts That Will Just Take Up Space In Your Head, Unless You’re A Random Trivia Fanatic You have to stick your finger inside an alligator to find out its gender.

pitpulkrew , Adriaan Greyling Report

Final score:

77points

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Cosmikid 8 months ago

LOL!! Thank you for the new pictures inside my head.. Never went there before!

41points

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30 Useless Facts That Will Just Take Up Space In Your Head, Unless You’re A Random Trivia Fanatic The back of tigers ears have a white spot to resemble eyes so they scare off things that look at them from behind, sort of like a peacock.

YesImKian , Mika Brandt Report

Final score:

74points

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Apatheist Account2 8 months ago

Tigers don't need to be scared of anything.

43points

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At the same time, learning new things plays a big role in shaping your worldview. Our brains change with every experience. While we might forget a lot of the stuff that we learn, we retain the wisdom we gain from it. Moreover, it also improves our intuition and pattern-recognition abilities, as well as our general understanding of how the world functions.

Acquiring new information and skills also works as an intellectual exercise that can be compared to a professional athlete going to the gym. Even if the stuff you’re learning doesn’t seem to matter at the moment, it can help you get into a habit of learning and prepare you for when you need to learn something actually important.

#10

30 Useless Facts That Will Just Take Up Space In Your Head, Unless You’re A Random Trivia Fanatic Sometimes pandas are too lazy to have [intercourse]. And in order to reproduce them, there is a special person who infuses the female with ejaculate.

Sea0wl , Diana Silaraja Report

Final score:

69points

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Cosmikid 8 months ago

Pandas, you will be amazed to learn, are not humans. Nor are they "bears". In the fairly short period of time humans have studied pandas there have been multiple points where - they did not behave like humans, nor bears- therefore the panda students declared "pandas are deficient in..." Only to learn later, that pandas are NOT deficient in anything (Oh, look- pandas living in the woods without us...) - they are just, um; not humans, and not bears. Too lazy for sex? Um. I'll bet they just don't wanna, whey YOU wanna. But they manage to have babies all by themselves. Somehow.

35points

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#11

30 Useless Facts That Will Just Take Up Space In Your Head, Unless You’re A Random Trivia Fanatic Some people have voluntary control of their Tensor Tympani muscle in their inner ear. They can make a rumbling noise in their ears at will by tensing it.

Hand when there is loud noise around to kinda reduce it as you walk past.

BloodSteyn , Franco Antonio Giovanella Report

Final score:

68points

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Cam 8 months ago

Is this rare? I just kind of assumed most people could do it, like winking.

91points

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#12

30 Useless Facts That Will Just Take Up Space In Your Head, Unless You’re A Random Trivia Fanatic Fish don't fart.

They continuously secrete waste gasses through their skin.

tributarygoldman , Andreas L Report

Final score:

66points

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A James 8 months ago

Is that why the ocean smells?

29points

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Johnny Briones of Medium further expands on this subject, writing about how memory techniques that can help to recall and retain information are best learned using so-called useless information.

Memory techniques sound and are quite wonderful. However, the problem is that people sometimes don’t realize that these, too, have to be learned first and you can’t just jump right in, learning everything that you want with ease.

#13

30 Useless Facts That Will Just Take Up Space In Your Head, Unless You’re A Random Trivia Fanatic The spikes at the end of a stegosaurus tail is named after a character from the Far Side cartoon.

SixicusTheSixth , Lucas George Wendt Report

Final score:

65points

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Bouche and Audi and Shyla, Oh My! 8 months ago

The Thagomizer, named after the late Thag Simmons.

98points

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#14

30 Useless Facts That Will Just Take Up Space In Your Head, Unless You’re A Random Trivia Fanatic As a child of the 80's (born 1983), I still remember my mother and my grandmother's landline phone number.
My mom moved at least twice since then and don't even use a landline anymore.
My grandmother died like 10 years ago.

GussDeBlod , Annie Spratt Report

Final score:

64points

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Bouche and Audi and Shyla, Oh My! 8 months ago

My parents' and grandma's last four digits are my numerical passwords. Totally random numbers to anyone else, but very easy to remember for me.

33points

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#15

30 Useless Facts That Will Just Take Up Space In Your Head, Unless You’re A Random Trivia Fanatic Morphologies of onomatopeias are written differently according to the language and I appreciate how to say "meow" in different languages.

AffectionateGap1071 , cottonbro studio Report

Final score:

64points

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Bouche and Audi and Shyla, Oh My! 8 months ago

We meow in American English, but then, we're American shorthairs, so there you go.

29points

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Running into problems at first is expected, and when you do, you’ll likely spend more time looking for solutions than actually learning what you set out to learn. This can be frustrating and make it seem like the techniques you’re using are not working.

However, if you first practice these methods using useless information, you won’t feel the pressure if you can’t remember something that doesn’t really matter to you. Thus, you will be able to easily identify problems you run into and find ways to solve them.

#16

In 16th century Italy duels often took place where the chosen weapon was very hard maths questions.

Panorpa Report

Final score:

62points

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Kat 8 months ago

Sounds like an episode from The IT Crowd

37points

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#17

30 Useless Facts That Will Just Take Up Space In Your Head, Unless You’re A Random Trivia Fanatic Ohio is the only state in the US that doesn't share a letter with the word mackerel.

roguerose , Matthew Bornhorst Report

Final score:

57points

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Cosmikid 8 months ago

Think how long you could spend checking this out-

41points

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#18

30 Useless Facts That Will Just Take Up Space In Your Head, Unless You’re A Random Trivia Fanatic That most car horns play an F4 on the first space of the treble clef.

TheGodlyTank6493 , William Bayreuther Report

Final score:

54points

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Steve Hall 8 months ago

My horn goes beep.

27points

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In conclusion, we can confidently say that while not all information is equally important, no information is ever truly useless, even if it may seem that way at first glance. So read up because you never know when some random fact you encounter in Reddit threads like these might prove to be a lot more valuable than you thought.

What did you think of these facts? Do you have anything you’d like to add? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

#19

30 Useless Facts That Will Just Take Up Space In Your Head, Unless You’re A Random Trivia Fanatic Male swallowtail butterflies have eyes on their [male genital] so they can position themselves correctly when mating.

Shannon_Casey , Kush Dwivedi Report

Final score:

52points

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Cosmikid 8 months ago

I think the (male genital) of swallowtails is known to Entomologists as the "winkie.". Technically; and the ejaculation is about 3 jiffys.

72points

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#20

When a body was placed in a coffin after being guillotined, they didn't always put the head above the shoulders. Sometimes it would be between the legs, face first into the crotch.

fdtc_skolar Report

Final score:

52points

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Cosmikid 8 months ago

and sometimes... there was soup...

16points

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#21

30 Useless Facts That Will Just Take Up Space In Your Head, Unless You’re A Random Trivia Fanatic Where do I start?

Nepal is the only country in the world whose flag isn't a rectangle

Raptors will sometimes take tortoises to the top of a cliff and drop them from midair, breaking their shell

Earth was uninhabitable for the first few hundred million years of its existence, but life emerged more or less immediately once Earth became inhabitable

You may have heard that the speed of light is 299,792,458 m/s (no matter how fast you're going), but that's actually precisely how much it is, we define a meter to be such that the speed of light is that number, no decimal point

Cleopatra lived between 69-30 BCE and the pyramids were built around 2780 BCE, meaning she lived closer to today than to the building of the pyramids.

The_Ora_Charmander , Arun Ghimire Report

Final score:

46points

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Mimi La Souris 8 months ago

a planet becomes inhabited when it becomes habitable, strange, isn't it ?

49points

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#22

30 Useless Facts That Will Just Take Up Space In Your Head, Unless You’re A Random Trivia Fanatic The a**s is the first part of the body to open up. We develop a**s-first.

airlewe , Ambitious Studio* - Rick Barrett Report

Final score:

45points

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Cosmikid 8 months ago

During embryonic development, that is.

47points

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#23

30 Useless Facts That Will Just Take Up Space In Your Head, Unless You’re A Random Trivia Fanatic The wax/metal tips at the end of shoelaces are called aglets.

PM_ME_YOUR_SIDEB**BZ , Joel Muniz Report

Final score:

44points

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Zedrapazia 8 months ago

Everyone who's seen Fineas and Ferb knows this!

69points

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#24

30 Useless Facts That Will Just Take Up Space In Your Head, Unless You’re A Random Trivia Fanatic I'm an expert with binary. Also- Honey is the only natural food that is made without destroying any kind of life. What about milk you say? A cow has to eat grass to produce milk and grass is living.

Appropriate-Meet1379 , Pixabay Report

Final score:

43points

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Jesha 8 months ago

Salt.

31points

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#25

30 Useless Facts That Will Just Take Up Space In Your Head, Unless You’re A Random Trivia Fanatic You can calculate the circumference of the universe with a margin of error less than the diameter of an atom if you have 60 digits of pi. Thus, any further digits are completely useless. You're welcome to all of you that memorized 100+ digits back in school.
Editor's note: 38 digits of pi is sufficient.

jinoble , Pixabay Report

Final score:

39points

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Apatheist Account2 8 months ago

*visible universe. We don't actually know how big it is, only the bits that we can see.

28points

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#26

30 Useless Facts That Will Just Take Up Space In Your Head, Unless You’re A Random Trivia Fanatic There are 96 bags of human waste on the moon.

Stunning_Move7375 , Ganapathy Kumar Report

Final score:

39points

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sofacushionfort 8 months ago

…take one down, pass it around…

130points

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#27

30 Useless Facts That Will Just Take Up Space In Your Head, Unless You’re A Random Trivia Fanatic By volume, the sun generates heat at the same rate as a compost heap.

TheRichTurner , Jonathan Borba Report

Final score:

37points

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Cosmikid 8 months ago

Oh, I think we need a bit more context and detail for this to be comprehensible.

15points

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#28

I memorized this as a song and I’ve never forgotten it since

Exa Peta Tera Giga Mega Kilo Hecto Deka Deci Centi Milli Micro Nano Pico Femto Atto

I don’t really use it in daily life or anywhere else but you never know.

darcydidwhat Report

Final score:

35points

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Cosmikid 8 months ago

FAIL! This is TOTALLY NOT useless.

22points

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#29

30 Useless Facts That Will Just Take Up Space In Your Head, Unless You’re A Random Trivia Fanatic You can hipnotize chickens by drawing a line on the dirt and made the chicken look at the line.

Atlantic_Nikita , James Wainscoat Report

Final score:

33points

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Apatheist Account2 8 months ago

I applied to study this, but failed the hen trance exam....I'll get my coat.

133points

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#30

30 Useless Facts That Will Just Take Up Space In Your Head, Unless You’re A Random Trivia Fanatic I just learned today that E is the most used letter in the alphabet.

LoneVentriloquistSFW , Greg Rosenke Report

Final score:

27points

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Cosmikid 8 months ago

Congratulations, and welcome to 1742....

52points

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#31

30 Useless Facts That Will Just Take Up Space In Your Head, Unless You’re A Random Trivia Fanatic You can fit a lightbulb into your mouth, but will likely have a f**k of a time getting it out.

angelita-j , Anthony Indraus Report

Final score:

16points

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Cosmikid 8 months ago

Oh, it's easy after you bite down really hard an shatter it- just spit all the blood out.

15points

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#32

30 Useless Facts That Will Just Take Up Space In Your Head, Unless You’re A Random Trivia Fanatic When Wizards of the Coast tried to expand Magic the Gathering to appeal to the Chinese market they released a set of cards based on Chinese mythology and introduced a new mechanic called horsemanship. It is functionally similar to flying, in that flying creatures are blockable only by other creatures with flying (or if they have reach), except that creatures with horsemanship can *only* be blocked by other creatures with horsemanship.
The cards never really took off and the horsemanship mechanic was buried, so the horsemanship skill was limited to this one set of cards which are quite uncommon these days.
What this means is that if you build a deck specifically around abusing the horsemanship mechanic, 99% of opponents won’t really be able to do anything about your barrage of attacks. Of course there are plenty of ways around this like removing the creatures directly or boardwipes that remove all creatures, and there are a handful of new cards that reintroduced it, but there’s a good chance you’ll get quite a lot of damage in before they can get their strategies to fire off.

kermi42 , mistystep Report

Final score:

16points

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TheGoodBoi 8 months ago

I zoned out halfway through reading this.. Sorry

50points

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#33

A Chow Chow’s tongue must be dark blue/dark purple (as close as possible to black) for the dog to be up to breed standard. A Chow Chow with any red or pink on its tongue cannot win a best in breed, group, or show competition. .

Great1948 Report

Final score:

16points

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Khavrinen 8 months ago

I would assume that people who run the competitions have rules about training your Chow Chow to eat grape popsicles...

14points

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#34

30 Useless Facts That Will Just Take Up Space In Your Head, Unless You’re A Random Trivia Fanatic The sticks on modern game controllers are called "analog sticks," not "joysticks.".

TimAppleC*ckProMax69 , Florian Gagnepain Report

Final score:

15points

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Bouche and Audi and Shyla, Oh My! 8 months ago

I call them Fred.

19points

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#35

30 Useless Facts That Will Just Take Up Space In Your Head, Unless You’re A Random Trivia Fanatic I learned abour elephants although it’s not useless in a sense could save somebody. It about how to determine if elephant charge is real or fake. If it’s ears are fanned wide and are upward it’s a fake charge. If its ear are tucked behind its a real charge. Whatever the case just get out of there.

Latter_Exam4121 , Nam Anh Report

Final score:

12points

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Donkey boi 8 months ago

Having actually been charged at by a bull elephant, I can confirm that this is BS.

20points

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#36

Germany used Messerschmitt Bf 109 attack planes during World War Two. They were very fast. Uk on the other hand used supermarine spitfires which weren’t as fast, but could turn more sharp. They were used to attack each other.

I also know a lot about the Mitsubishi A6M Zero planes that Japan used. They were very light because they missed a lot of protecting shields, but because of that they were very fast. They were also the first attack planes where you didn’t use gas masks. Instead you sat in a pressure chamber.

The planes that dropped the nuclear bomb over Hiroshima and Nagasaki were B-29 Superfortress and were called Enola Gay and Bockscar.

ConstantChemical1213 Report

Final score:

12points

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Apatheist Account2 8 months ago

The Mosquito was faster than any of the early war fighters, and could carry 2/3 the load of a Lancaster bomber. It was also made of wood.

4points

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#37

30 Useless Facts That Will Just Take Up Space In Your Head, Unless You’re A Random Trivia Fanatic When we first switched from old, cheap coffins to new, sealed coffins they kept blowing up. It was later discovered that a decomposing body releases gases, ~~and the problem was fixed by installing valves in the coffins~~.

Edit:
So it turns out that the sealed coffin is just a scam that some people can fall into, not an improved coffin. Also the valve thing is BS, I misunderstood.