1. A group of flamingos is called a flamboyance.
2. If you fake laugh long enough you’ll start to really laugh, really, really hard.
3. The book cover to the prize winning short story collection, Spellbound, was chosen because author, Joel Willans, bought his wife’s engagement ring with poker winnings.
4. The Beatles used the word “love” 613 times throughout their career.
5. These websites exist.
6. Every year, millions of trees grow thanks to squirrels forgetting where they buried their nuts.
7. On the day of his assassination, Martin Luther King Jr. had a pillow-fight in his motel room.
8. The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We’re all made of star dust.
9. Cancer death rates are down 20% in past 20 years.
10. The miles travelled by the Apollo 11 crew to the moon were greater than every single exploration mission to the New World combined.
11. Penguins only have one mate their entire life and “propose” by giving their mate a pebble.
12. There’s an animal called a Dik Dik. And it’s the cutest antelope you’ll ever see.
13. Despite high infant mortality rates and lower life expectancies, not one of your direct ancestors died childless.
14. Cuddling releases Oxytocin which helps speed healing and recovery from physical wounds.
15. Otters hold hands when sleeping so they don’t drift away from each other.
16. Apollo 17 astronaut Gene Cernan, the last man to walk on the Moon, wrote his daughter initials there. They’ll last at least 50,000 years.
17. There’s a type of jellyfish that lives forever.
18. Wayne Allwine (the voice of Mickey Mouse) and Russi Taylor (the voice of Minnie Mouse) were married in real life.
19. We now have less crime, a lower death rate and longer life expectancy than at any other time in human history.
20. The clitoris has 8000 nerve fibres, double that of the penis, and is the only organ in the body, which has evolved purely for pleasure.
21. Butterflies can taste with their feet.
22. For someone, somewhere in the world, today is the most amazing day of their life.
23. When you die, your body decomposes, and the atoms that contained “you” are recycled into Earth to be used again.
24. Every year the Netherlands sends 20,000 tulip bulbs to Canada to thank them for their aid in the Second World War.
25. Rats giggle when you tickle them. Their voices are so high-pitched you need special equipment to hear them, but when you do, their laughs are immediately evident.
26. Sea horses mate for life, are completely faithful and travel together by holding on to each others tails.
27. The guy in this video was born.
28. If you say “my cocaine” you sound like Michael Caine saying his own name.
29. Male puppies, when playing with female puppies, will intentionally let the female win.
30. The next Star Wars will not be directed by George Lucas.
31. It takes seventeen muscles to smile and forty-three to frown.
32.The kingdom of Bhutan use ‘gross national happiness’ as a key national indicator.
33. The majority of European children born in 2013 will live to see the year 2100.
34. Cows have best friends.
35. Neurologically speaking, seeing somebody else smile actually makes you happier.
36. Every human being spent about half an hour as a single cell.
37. There are people, ombrophiles, who have a passionate love for rain.
38. Once your brain realizes that you’re dying, it releases DMT, one of the most powerful known psychedelics. This dilates your perception of time and allowing you to live inside your own mind for hours or even days.
39. No matter how long you live there will always be an amazing new food for you try.
40. A group of porcupines is called a prickle.
41. Aside from a sample in a lab, Smallpox is completely extinct. No one else will ever die from it again.
42. A pig’s orgasms last thirty minutes.
43. We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born.
44. Sloths only leave their tree once a week, to pee and poo.
45. Spinner dolphins sleep in pairs, one with the left hemisphere asleep, the other with the right. They each keep watch with one eye and half a brain. They are known to sleep-mate for life.
46. At the time of your birth, you were, for a few seconds, the youngest person on the planet.
47. Cows produce the most milk when listening to the song Everybody Hurts by REM.
48. Somewhere, someone is losing their virginity right now.
49. If you spell out numbers in order, the first time you get to the letter “a” is at one-thousand.
50. We’ve all been here forever. Every bit of matter we see has been here since the beginning of time and it always will be.
51. A monkey was once tried and convicted for smoking a cigarette in South Bend, Indiana.
52. Happiness is a skill. You can learn it and it’s not hard.
53. Except when breeding, the Common Swift spend their entire lives in the air, living on the insects they catch in flight. They drink, feed, and often mate and sleep on the wing
54. Baby rabbits are called kittens.
55. Baby puffins are called pufflings.
56. Costa Rica is statistically the happiest nation on Earth.
57. Worms communicate by snuggling.
58. 2013 is the first year since 1987 that consists for four different digits.
59. With our horseless carriages, flying robots, space travel, long-distance communication at the speed of light, cloning, lasers, connection to people all over the world, we are living in the future people dreamed of.
60. If you blend a sea sponge, it will re-form back into a sea sponge.
Bonus fact: You’ll get an even bigger smile from our second collection of the world’s happiest facts.
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Thanks for this, it was a real jewel to find. It made me smile and laugh lots.
It made me smile too. I loved it!!!!!!!!
Which is short for kitten. Look it up 🙂
Tell Kit Marlowe that.
What a fab way to spread some happinesss 🙂
Jennifer- you COMPLETELY missed the point of this list. I hope your day gets better.
I’m pretty sure MLK’s pillow fight was with a hooker. Good times!
nope, not a hooker, nice try http://seattletimes.com/special/mlk/perspectives/reflections/pillow.html
“one hundred And one”
Still an interestint factoid. Bonus points for #30
Nope. The proper way of saying “101” is “one hundred one”. Inserting an “and” is one of the most common grammatical mistakes.
The And equates to a decimal point.
Almost – it equates to a placemarker, similar to what was in use before the figure Zero was invented. Therefore it is right to say both ‘One hundred and One’ or ‘One thousand and forty three’. US english differs from the rest of the world, saying ‘One hundred one’ sounds very odd outside the US…
Perhaps if you’re North American. The rest of the English-speaking world uses “and” for the first nine numbers after each hundred.
I’m pretty sure that saying “one hundred and one” is not a common grammatical mistake. Both versions are acceptable verbal representations of that figure. “One hundred one” is an abbreviation that came afterwards.
Just tell my 3rd Grade Teacher that it’s “not a grammatical mistake”. All of us poor little kids spent an entire class period trying to guess what we were doing wrong [mispronouncing 1,101 over & over & over again] until someone got it right. But, hey, the lesson stuck with me!! 🙂
That may be so in the USA but not everywhere – in the UK one hundred AND one is correct and one hundred one is never used.
This really is the happiest list of awesome facts I’ve seen yet! Thank you for sharing the love!
Great! I love it!
#13 My great great great great grandfather died childless. His only son was born after his death.
Uh, that doesn’t figure. He may have died before the birth, but he didn’t die childless. Otherwise, you aren’t writing that response OR he wasn’t your real grandfather.
True that @Rex
Thank you. My favourite article. Really needed this.
Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful! I should start every day with a a happy fact. 🙂
Not to be that guy, but #38 is more speculation than fact.
Maybe that’s why people say their lives flash before their eyes when they think they’re going to die. Maybe when we do die, the effect is continued and amplified. But you’re right, it IS more speculation than fact.
I guess we’ll find out eventually, won’t we 😉
Apparently your life is supposed to flash before your eyes as your brain compares all the senarios you’ve been in before to see if there’s one which suggests a way to escape the current situation of dying.
i was just about give up giving up smoking, then i stumbled upon this list and i’m safe for another day at least. thanks.
I am from South Bend! I never knew that fun fact. This post made my day better! Thank you!
Fantastic list!
But #31 is incorrect 😛
Actually , the foreskin has more nerve endings than the clitoris- about 20,000! That should make all the guys who still have theirs (80% of the men in the world) very happy!
The only thing better than this list is the people who argue it’s inaccuracy. THAT is so funny.
Great!
“1 in 40 million”
Thanks to this, I came to appreciate having a chance to meet my girl once again.
🙂
sweet
“20. The clitoris has 8000 nerve fibres, double that of the penis, and is the only organ in the body, which has evolved purely for pleasure.” Sorry, but your USA ethnocentrism is showing. In places where males retain the whole penis for life (for example Europe which has higher life expectancy and better male genital health than the US), the foreskin has several tens of thousands of such nerve fibres, which benefit women as well as the men in their lives. http://www.cirp.org , search “Taylor” and see Christiane Northrup, MD, Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom.
One…two…three…four………….. dammit life is too short, but I REALLY loved that anecdote. Now lets see if I have a thousand fingers to counts:-)
I am that pig;-)
Lol I didn’t knew that there are so many trees growing each year because of squirrels. Thanks for this information
How much more of a list this would be if it had citations other that from blogs and Wikipedia or wherever the author frequents. Good stuff, but I just hope I never get caught using any of it. I’ll have to make up a reference other than “they.”
Half of these are stupidly obvious.
Also “Every bit of matter we see has been here since the beginning of time and it always will be.” is false. It disregards any time matter is converted into energy, or energy is converted into matter.
are you kidding me dude, no it is a law, the Law of Conservation. matter CANNOT be created nor destroyed. energy is matter, infact there is a rather famous equation for it E=mc^2 energy= mass * speed of light squared. light is made of photons. protons and neutrons make up atoms and can be broken down even further to make quarks. in the arctic we are studying nutrinos that are emitted from intersteller space. i may just be a kid in high school, but this is basic stuff….
Dear Sir,
Are you retarded? Your post is EXACTLY what the dude above you is trying to say. Also what is currently deemed to be a “law” can be proven false with the next experiment. You sure are one ignorant highschool kid.
Yours sincerely
Buddy
The point of this blog is to be happy. You don’t need to correct him because it puts a damper on things. Sheesh.
Anyone who skipped over the video #27 needs to go back and watch. Kids like him make the world a better place.
Fun and interesting factoids! Not sure about #30.
#30 sticks out of this list like a sore thumb. It’s been years since the prequel trilogy came out and people are still going: “Waah, damn you George Lucas”? That fact alone makes me unhappy. There are more important things to worry about, than directors who made supposedly bad movies. Especially when there are many people all over the world, who enjoy these movies anyway.
(Apart from that: Good list.)
What exactly is wrong with being childless?
Nothing wrong but the point is. If your direct ancestor died childless. Then you wouldn’t be in existence. Get it?
Awesommmmmmmmmmmme u made my dayyyyy
30. The next Star Wars will not be directed by George Lucas.
one of the world’s happiest facts? that’s plain rude. star wars are great movies! loads of people all over the world love it..
Awesome facts!
love it! So many interesting facts here
I actually tried to do a report on the dik dik when I was in third grade, I couldn’t find much about it but you are right they are very cute 🙂
I think they missed one, 61.There is always a person almost exactly the same as you,but a different gender.You just have to know where to find him/her
Most of these aren’t facts.
But why let something like reality spoil a good fairy tale?
Not sure about #41 – http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/could-climate-change-bring-back-smallpox/story-fn5fsgyc-1226851404396
Thank you, you made my day so much nicer. I feel absolutely grateful and calm.
this is the best and thanks
I want to know why Star Wars not being directed by George Lucas is a happy fact!!!
“Pluviophile” – (n) a lover of rain; someone who finds joy and peace of mind during rainy days
ombrophile Noun. (botany) Any plant that flourishes in a rainy environment
So cool! Loved it
Reposting from 4 years ago today. Still happy! https://t.co/PnAb1lQRAc
Why is the next Star Wars movie not being directed by George Lucas a happy fact?