40 astonishing facts you’d never believe are true
The world is stranger than it looks. Most people assume they understand the basic mechanics of reality. They are usually wrong. These facts are verified and entirely true.
Some of these details are biological. Others are historical or mathematical. All of them suggest that common sense is a poor tool for understanding the universe.
Space and physics
There are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on earth. Conversely, there are more atoms in a single grain of sand than there are grains of sand in the whole world.
Astronauts cannot cry in space because gravity is required for tears to fall. Those in orbit feel weightless because they are constantly falling, not because gravity has ceased to exist.
If you stretched out all the DNA in your body and placed it end to end, it would reach Pluto and back six times. If you shuffle a deck of 52 cards, that specific permutation has almost certainly never existed before in human history.
Nature and biology
The Western Lowland Gorilla is scientifically named Gorilla gorilla gorilla. Wombats produce cube shaped droppings. Cockroaches can live for weeks without their heads, eventually dying only because they cannot eat.
Mosquitoes are the deadliest animal on Earth. Falling coconuts kill more people annually than sharks. Humans in peak condition can outrun any animal on earth in a marathon distance. The total weight of all ants on earth exceeds the total weight of all humans.
Horses cannot breathe through their mouths. Giraffes can survive without water for longer than camels. Eagles mate while airborne. There is a species of jellyfish that is biologically immortal.
A starfish can grow into a new individual from a single piece of its center disc. A loofa is a vegetable, not a sea creature.
Botany and food
Botanical classifications are often misunderstood. Tomatoes are a fruit. Bananas are a type of berry. A strawberry is not a berry and technically not even a fruit.
Honey does not spoil. Archaeologists have found 2000 year old jars of honey in Egyptian tombs that remain edible.
History and culture
The American accent is more closely related to older English speech than the modern British accent. High heels were originally designed for cavalrymen to keep their feet in stirrups. They only later became a fashion accessory.
Walt Disney suffered from a fear of mice. Salvador Dali designed the Chupa Chups logo. Ralph Lauren was born Ralph Lifshitz. Ke$ha’s “Tik Tok” sold more copies than any single by The Beatles.
Google’s PageRank algorithm is named after co-founder Larry Page rather than web pages. Most humans alive today have never made a phone call.
Geography and wealth
The name Canada comes from the native American word Kanata, which means big village. In Lesotho, the people are Basotho and the language is Sesotho. Saudi Arabia imports its camels from Australia.
Wealth distribution in the United States is heavily skewed. The top 1% of Americans own 42% of the nation’s wealth. The bottom 80% own 7%.
Legal and absurd
In Texas, it is illegal to shoot a buffalo from a hotel room. It is illegal to tickle a woman in Virginia. Richard Nixon’s Vice President, Spiro Agnew, has a name that is an anagram for “grow a penis”.
Popeye has four identical quadruplet nephews. Their names are Pipeye, Pupeye, Poopeye and Peepeye. Alcohol kills more people than all illegal drugs combined.
“37. If you shuffle a deck of cards and deal all 52 it’s 100% certain that that permutation of cards has never ever been dealt before.”
Not a fact and not a certainty.
You would never ever get a deck of cards in the same order. The odds of doing so would be 80,658,175,170,943,878,571,660,636,856,403,766,975,289,505,440,883,277,824,000,000,000,000. This is done by 52 factorial!
The chances of a particular sequence occurring is so small that it can never happen in the life of the universe. Therefore you cannot get the cards in a particular sequence. This is the argument for the existance of God. Note to self = It’s just as daft.
Just because the odds are really small. Like, really freaking small, doesn’t mean that it “can never happen in the lifetime of the universe.” It just means that it probably won’t happen in the lifetime of the universe.
So, by your statement “the argument for the existance of God. Note to self = It’s just as daft.” you don’t believe in God.
Therefore, you must believe in this fairy tale: First there was nothing and then it exploded.
Bless you.
aaah, you’re a funny one. Thanks for the laugh, we don’t have enough people like you here.
Wait …
At least we are following empirical evidence. We prefer that over that talking snake and generation over generation of incest. Also I am sure that he did not sneeze.
Damn Barry O. you beat me to it!
awesome post, good to know
Thanks. Stumbled upon. I enjoyed reading. 25 is just wrong though. In England the counties have distinct dialects ,even towns have differing accents. There is no British accent. Who cares? Somebody. In Lancashire – Accrington. Not Burnley :)
they mean what we consider english, and what we consider american. Post revolution, everyone (britain and america) spoke in a dialect similar to ours now, only later did Britain switch over.
36. Is false. Running in the rain will get you just as wet as walking but you’re in the rain for less amount of time
http://youtu.be/3MqYE2UuN24
You’re half way there
Lemon and a pear
A Loofa is a fruit not a vegetable
No. 15 almost made me weep
I tickle my wife in the Virginia all the time. She loves it!
“27. Humans in peak condition can outrun any animal on earth in a marathon.”
A reason, believe palaeontologists, why the human primate took to walking upright – it didn’t make them go faster, but they could simply run down their prey.
Number 8 is false: you can cry in space, the tears just don’t fall
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P36xhtpw0Lg
37. Because the probability is non-zero, it cannot be said that it is impossible to happen during the lifetime of the universe.
A non-zero probability means that it could happen the very next time you do the shuffling and dealing. Only probability equal to zero means 100% certainty of it not happening. The lifetime of the universe has nothing to do with it.
The lifetime of the universe is only relevant to probability. It is not relevant to certainty.
It’s true about honey never going bad. In some traditional african culture they used to preserve cooked meat in honey for months and it never became bad. However this was done by chopping the meat in small pieces and putting it in a pot then they pour honey in it and leave it for months. It’s a good preservative.
The reason why giraffes can go long without water is because they mostly feed on leaves which contain water.
Regarding #10
Indigenous people living in what is now Canada are/were not American Indians
Canada is part of North America.
Benson you are wrong. You say the reason why giraffes dont get thirsty is because they do eat leaves a lot. But even goats do eat a lot of leaves
The one thing my mind resists to take is the immortal jellyfish
For the banana being a berry, how is this true??? How is it a berry? It grows on a tree! Its not circle! You cant eat the outside of it! A banana ain’t a berry!
33 is just weird
banana is botanically a berry