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Not everything that you read on the internet is true. In a similar vein, far from everything that sounds made up is fake. Fact is often stranger than fiction, and some truly bizarre things about life on Planet Earth are closer to reality than myth.
Reddit user u/Mmemyo sparked an interesting discussion on r/AskReddit. They invited everyone to share the “stupid facts” they knew which might sound suspicious and weird but are actually correct. We’ve collected the most intriguing ones to share with you, Pandas. Scroll down to check them out! Hopefully, you'll learn something new.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
The vikings, who came from Scandinavia, used iron as their main ingredient for forging weaponry, but it was also common practice to add the bones of dead animals to the mix. The belief was that it would infuse the weapon with the spirit of the creature, making it stronger, but they ended up making a primitive version of steel because of the carbon in the bones mixing with the iron making the weapon stronger, just as they thought it would.
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#2
Cows have best friends and can become stressed when they're separated from them.
Misinformation can spread just as quickly as—if not faster than!—legitimate info. So before you go sharing any random factoids or news snippets that you found in a dimly-lit corner of the digital realm, slow down and think about the claims. Double-checking every tiny little piece of info would be exhausting, so you need to consider the (un)reliability of the source.
Legitimate news sources that employ fact-checkers and editors, and have high journalistic standards are far more trustworthy than those that don’t. So you’re better off relying on sources like AP, the BBC, Reuters, and The New York Times, rather than random tabloids that survive on gossip and manufactured drama. You should consider what the goal of an outlet is, whether it’s to report on the news or to generate outrage (and clicks!).
In the meantime, you can consult fact-checking websites like Snopes which do most of the heavy lifting for you when it comes to outlandish claims.
#4
When basketball was first invented, at every game, they would have a man who would go up a ladder to retrieve the ball after every basket. It took them around 20 years to figure out maybe it would be a good idea to cut the bottom of the basket out to make retrieving the ball a lot easier. 20 years!!!
Pedantic Panda 1 year ago
I believe they first cut a down hole in the bottom so it could be poked out with a stick, the full hole only came later.
#6
For every single human being on Earth, there are 2.5 MILLION ants.
Yes, this means that there are about 20 QUADRILLION ants on this planet.
If the ants decide to take over, are you strong enough to handle the 2.5 million that you'll be responsible for killing? If you've got kids, you might have to kill more because a 2 year old isn't going to accomplish a god damn thing if millions of ants are marching towards them.
The core idea is that nobody should blindly accept anything as “fact” without a pinch of salt. According to the Macdonald-Kelce Library at the University of Tampa, readers should also check the author’s credentials. Not only should the author be well-versed in the topic they’re writing about but they should also have a history of legitimate reporting.
Of course, everyone makes factual mistakes from time to time. The best journalists admit theirs and correct them. The worst of the bunch, however, report on semi-legitimate hearsay with impunity and don’t bother to provide a broader context for their news stories.
#7
Bald eagles are not actually bald. Balde is old english for white.
#9
Honey never spoils
Mycroft1967 1 year ago
Honey has anti-oxidant, anti-bacterial and anti-inflammatory properties as well. Ancient Egyptians used to put on wounds.
The more dramatic and emotionally charged a fact, claim, or topic, the more careful you should be. If the author leans heavily toward a particular point of view, it’s likely that they’re biased and ignoring some of the nuances. Life is rarely black and white, and most stories have at least two sides.
A good rule of thumb is that you should be very skeptical about sensational news. Try to build a broader picture of what’s going on by reading a wide range of sources from outlets with different leanings. And if your gut tells you that something is far too good or bad to be true, then it probably is.
#10
Male rhesus macaques will pay to see pictures of female monkey butts. Payment is in the form of trading their juice rewards.
#11
A man named Wilmer McLean owned a farm in Manassas, Virginia USA where the very first battle of the US Civil War was fought. After the battle he's like "I'm outta here" and bought a farm way out in the country at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia...where Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered to Gen. Ulysses Grant in McLeans living room four years later.
#13
The original name for the color orange was "geoluhread," which means "yellow-red" in Old English
#14
If you open your eyes in a completely dark room, the name of the color you will see is eigengrau, a kind of dark grey shade
#15
A lot of averages.
Example: The average number of legs humans have is less than 2.
#16
Some invader (don't remember specifics) sent a letter to sparta saying that "If I invade Lakonia you will be destroyed, never to rise again" and the Spartans sent a letter back with a single word in it. "If"
troufaki13 1 year ago
It was Philip II of Macedon. And Spartans were known for their laconic answers (Laconia is the region that Sparta is in)
#17
Bananas are berries, but strawberries are not true berries (in botanical terms berries are defined by their structure, and bananas fit the bill while strawberries don't)
Littlemiss 1 year ago
Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
#18
The Eiffel Tower can be 15 centimeters taller during the summer due to thermal expansion.
#19
Pink is really just a light shade of red, but we think of it as a distinct color because we have a word for it that stuck. Not all languages have that. In Italian, they have a similar word for light blue, called “azzurro,” and it’s so common they actually think of it as a separate color from blue. We have the word “azure” in English, but it isn’t nearly as common, so we tend to think of that color as just a shade of blue.
#20
Coffee is not a bean it is the pit of the coffee plant which is a fruit.
Sue Denham 1 year ago
Fruit, vegetable, aardvark . . . I don't really care, as long as I have a cup or two of it a day we're all good.
#22
A man named John Young brought a corned beef sandwich to space illegally and shared it with his colleague on board and he would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for the recording of them talking about the sandwich.
#23
Our planet will exist long after humans go extinct
Mimi La Souris 1 year ago
as Agent Smith said "Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet"
#25
- [ ] Of the few people who have top secret clearance at the White House one of them is the person who writes all of the party invitations.
#27
Pirates wear eye patches to see better in the dark (covered eye doesn't get used to sunlight and is more sensitive after uncovering).
#28
6X9+6+9=69
#29
Someone named the fear of long words hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia.
#30
Less than 40% of great white sharks have filed their 2022 tax returns
#32
There are 5.87 Popes per square mile in the Vatican City.
Pieter LeGrande 1 year ago
A year ago it was 11.74 per sq mile if you include pope's emeritus.
#33
We thought to put wheels on luggage after we got to the moon.
The lighter the Roast the more caffeine coffee has.
A new car costs less than it's equal weight in Hamburgers.
#34
You have to kill about 400 people to get enough iron from their blood to make a sword
#35
The longest place name in the world is Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu
#36
Im always seeing my nose ..its just that my brain ignores it
#37
There are clouds of alcohol floating around in space.
Katie Lutesinger 1 year ago
Time to launch the shipload of cocktail onions and olives on sticks. The crew will be a band specialising in light jazz.
#38
There are more Hydrogen atoms in a single molecule of water than there are stars in the entire Solar System.
#39
Cleopatra is closer to the invention of the iPhone than the building of the Giza pyramids.
troufaki13 1 year ago (edited)
That's not Cleopatra though, that's Nefertiti. (edit: they changed the picture and now I look like a fool 🤣)
#40
The Atari 2600's release date and the last execution by guillotine happened less than 24 hours apart.
#41
The average number of skeletons in a human body is more than 1.
Daniela Lavanza 1 year ago
For those who wonder: because of pregnancy, when a human has two skeletons for nine months.
#42
18% of adult Americans claim they have seen or been in the presence of a ghost.
Katie Lutesinger 1 year ago
A friend of mine died suddenly and I saw his ghost several times - in dreams and the odd occasion when I saw a guy vaguely resembling him and briefly thought it was him. Ghosts are your mind processing the trauma of losing someone you loved.
#43
The plural of cul-de-sac is culs-de-sac
Daniela Lavanza 1 year ago
Even in French, we often wonder what's the plural for such expressions. :)
#44
Sloths are most vulnerable to predators when pooping. They have to climb down to the trees to the floors floor, and it is a bit of a process for them to actually poop leaving them at risk of predators.
#45
A species of frog, the African clawed frog, was the most reliable pregnancy test for a few decades before at-home tests were widely affordable and accessible.
Kendra Felix 1 year ago
"The experimental zoologist found that injecting the urine of a pregnant human into the frog's hind leg worked as an effective pregnancy test. If the woman who supplied the urine was pregnant, the frog would ovulate and produce eggs."
Apple Jakes 1 year ago (edited)
So he was just going around injecting urine into animals? What a terrible zoologist.
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scag$y 1 year ago
His name was Richard and I think they just asked him for his opinion. Like a consultant, I suppose.
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The Scout 1 year ago
Ancient Egyptians used barley instead. The woman's urine was applied, and if she was pregnant, the barley would sprout in about two or three days, hurried by the hormones.
R.A. Haley 1 year ago
That method was determined to be reasonably accurate too.
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Aubrie Allen 1 year ago
Imagine running after a frog, peeing on it, and waiting for either 1 or 2 pink lines to show up on it.
kraftmacaroniandbeez 1 year ago
the only thing i'm interested in is which strain of weed inspired this experiment
Xenon 1 year ago (edited)
The origen of the phrase the rabbit died to mean a woman was pregnant is that to test for pregnancy, the the doc would inject the woman's urine into a female rabbit. A few days later, the rabbit would be killed and it's reproductive system examined. If the woman was pregnant, the hormones would cause reaction in the rabbit. So, you see, the rabbit died either way but the phrase stuck.
R.A. Haley 1 year ago
"You can't catch me 'cause the rabbit done died". - Sweet Emotion, Aerosmith.
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Whitefox 1 year ago
I'm just confounded at the thought process that led someone to think lets inject pregnant womans urine into this particular frogs leg to see what happens?
Xenon 1 year ago
Old timey medicine was often bizarre.. I'm sure future generations will look back at ours and think the same thing.
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similarly 1 year ago
The African clawed frog is also implicated in the current decimation of frog species from chytrid fungus (chytridiamycosis), as the African clawed frog can carry the fungus but is essentially immune to its effects. There's currently a rescue project ongoing called The Amphibian Ark to deal with the problem by harboring uninfected frogs in zoos, aquariums and botanical gardens.
Jennifer Clark 1 year ago
Recap of Kendra's explanation: The guy would inject a woman's urine into the frog's leg. If the woman was pregnant, the hormones from her urine would cause the frog to ovulate and produce eggs.
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Sans Serif (Sans) 1 year ago
Beginning in the 1930s: "Rabbits were used for all manner of research, the “rabbit test” became synonymous with pregnancy screenings, and the phrase “the rabbit died” entered common usage as a euphemistic way of saying someone was pregnant (even though the rabbit always died during the test)." 8-(
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Debby Keir 1 year ago
Then how come my mum told me that every time you have a pregnancy test, a frog dies.....
#46
New Mexico (the state) got its name before Mexico (the country)
Daniel Gómez 1 year ago
Yes and no. New Spain was unofficially called Mexico since before its independence from Spain in 1821, and the name itself was given to the Mexica capital: Mexico-Tenochtitlán by the Mexicas themselves, calling it sometimes just Mexico (obviously not the country which did not exist back then).
#47
You are constantly clapping, but the claps are just spaced differently.
#49
Chip Wilson, the founder of Lululemon
created the name (Lululemon) to have many L's so that it would sound western to Japanese buyers, who often have difficulty pronouncing the letter. He later remarked that he found it "funny to watch (Japanese speakers) try and say it" and that "it was the only reason behind the name"
#50
A bone “break” is the same as a “fracture.” Fracture is just the medical term. It does not have any correlation with the severity.
What do you think ?
DramaDoc 1 year ago
My favorite is that octopuses will sometimes randomly and arbitrarily punch passing fish...for no apparent reason other than to be a d*ck. Makes me laugh every time.
Lene 1 year ago
My fav fact about octopuses and squids is that the ink they produce and use to get dangers to go away, is actually poisonous to them. I learned this at an aquarium where a guest told one of the guys working there that the octopus just inked in the aquarium and the worker looked horrified and called for backup and ppl came running with equipment to catch the ink and get it out of the water. Never seen so much action at an aquarium before. Lol. In nature it's not a big deal because the animal just swims away. But in a closed fish tank they can't flea far.
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CPooh 1 year ago
Wtf is the one from the cover photo on the main page? “Pirates are why the US isn’t on the metric system” ???
BW Gibson 1 year ago
Scroll up from this post, before the 50th fact, and look for underlinex ohrase that says something lol me 67 more posts - click on that. You'll find it as #56. Sometimes BP only shows you the most popular posts by votes, and the rest are hidden. Spoiler alert; you might be disappointed by the post, I'm abt to read comments for more info
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Michael Largey 1 year ago
All facts, stupid or otherwise, are correct. Otherwise, they wouldn't be facts.
General Anaesthesia 1 year ago
But here and elsewhere on the internet, not every "fact" is factually correct.
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DramaDoc 1 year ago
My favorite is that octopuses will sometimes randomly and arbitrarily punch passing fish...for no apparent reason other than to be a d*ck. Makes me laugh every time.
Lene 1 year ago
My fav fact about octopuses and squids is that the ink they produce and use to get dangers to go away, is actually poisonous to them. I learned this at an aquarium where a guest told one of the guys working there that the octopus just inked in the aquarium and the worker looked horrified and called for backup and ppl came running with equipment to catch the ink and get it out of the water. Never seen so much action at an aquarium before. Lol. In nature it's not a big deal because the animal just swims away. But in a closed fish tank they can't flea far.
Load More Replies... CPooh 1 year ago
Wtf is the one from the cover photo on the main page? “Pirates are why the US isn’t on the metric system” ???
BW Gibson 1 year ago
Scroll up from this post, before the 50th fact, and look for underlinex ohrase that says something lol me 67 more posts - click on that. You'll find it as #56. Sometimes BP only shows you the most popular posts by votes, and the rest are hidden. Spoiler alert; you might be disappointed by the post, I'm abt to read comments for more info
Load More Replies... Michael Largey 1 year ago
All facts, stupid or otherwise, are correct. Otherwise, they wouldn't be facts.
General Anaesthesia 1 year ago
But here and elsewhere on the internet, not every "fact" is factually correct.
Load More Replies... You May Like This Instagram Account Shares Weird Facts And Here Are The 50 Of The Creepiest Ones 50 Interesting Facts And Curiosities To Take Your Mind Off The Stress Of The Holiday Season 30 Times Police Were Called on People For The Dumbest Reasons
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