If you want to read some mind-blowing facts & you’re not sure where to look, then check out these 100 awesome facts that will truly make your mind explode!
The chemical used for artificial banana flavoring, isoamyl acetate, was first used as a pear flavoring in Britain long before it was ever associated with bananas.
Australia has over 10,000 beaches. You could visit a new beach every day for over 27 years!
It was Nicholas Cage who first advised Johnny Depp to pursue a career in acting during the mid-1980s.
The national animal of Scotland is the Unicorn.
The directors of the film Despicable Me actually wrote their own language for the Minions called Minionise.
The mayor of the Alaskan town, Talkeetna, is called Stubbs and has been mayor of the town since July 1997. Stubbs is a cat.
The Nazis were the first ever people in modern history to start an anti-smoking and tobacco movement.
Due to the humid and moist conditions that a sloth lives in, moss and other similar plants will sometimes grow in its hair. Sloths also have very bad eyesight. These two factors can sometimes culminate in a sloth grabbing its own arm whilst thinking it is a branch and falling to its death!
Every year in June, a bizarre festival takes place in the village of Castrillo de Murcia near Burgos in Spain, during which men dress up as the devil and then jump over babies born in the previous twelve months of the year! Known as El Colacho, this strange custom is part of the country-wide Corpus Christi celebrations yet only happens in this small village.
Viagra, when dissolved in water, can make cut flowers stay erect for up to a week longer than they usually would. Try it!
There is an uninhabited island in the Bahamas known as Pig Beach, which is populated entirely by swimming pigs.
Catnip is ten times more effective at repelling mosquitoes than DEET, the main substance used in insect repellents.
If eaten in one meal, 30 to 90 grams of polar bear liver is enough to kill a human being.
American microbiologist Maurice Ralph Hilleman is accredited with developing 8 of the 14 routine vaccinations used today, these being; Measles, Mumps, Hepatitis A & B, Chickenpox, Meningitis, Pneumonia, and Hemophilia influenza. He also discovered that Chlamydia was not a virus as it was previously thought to be.
In 2002 alone, more people in the U.S. were killed by dogs than in shark attacks in the past 100 years.
American College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, deems certain students who take courses in Pistol Marksmanship, Archery, Sailing, and Fencing as certified “Pirates.”
It is predicted that the reason why night insects, such as moths, are attracted to lights is that they mistake them for the light of the moon, which they used to navigate the Earth before mankind made artificial lights.
Justin Bieber once held up a sign from his hotel room window saying, “Go to McDonald’s and get me a Big Mac.” He got his Big Mac.
In the early 1900s, Lobster was considered the “cockroach of the ocean” and was synonymous with the poor – often eaten regularly by the homeless, slaves, and prisoners. It wasn’t until after World War II that lobster became considered a delicacy and food associated with the aristocratic classes.
Hares are born with fur and can see whilst rabbits are born “naked” and blind.
Papua New Guinea is home to one of the world’s few poisonous birds, the Hooded Pitohui.
Film producer Jeffrey Katzenberg revived The Walt Disney Studios by producing some of their biggest hits: The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin. After these, he requested a promotion and was then abruptly fired by them. He then swore revenge against Disney and founded DreamWorks Studios.
On Black Friday 2014, Cards Against Humanity was removed from being on sale and replaced with a “Bullsh*t” box, on sale for $6. This box contained “literal feces, from an actual bull,” as the description stated on their site. This was to protest the Black Friday shopping craziness where shoppers will literally buy anything on sale. This special Black Friday edition of Cards Against Humanity sold over 30,000 copies, where all buyers actually received a box of bull poo.
Through the use of optogenetics, scientists were able to create a false memory within a mouse’s brain. This was done by marking the neurons that fired in the mouse’s brain when in one environment, transferring the mouse to a second environment, and making these neurons fire whilst shocking the mouse’s feet, then transferring the mouse back to the first environment. This made the mouse believe it had had an unpleasant experience in the first environment when in fact, it hadn’t.
On one of the islands off the West Coast of Australia lies Lake Hillier. A bright, bubble-gum pink lake! Despite not being the only colored lake in the world, it is unique because it is the only colored lake where scientists have not yet determined what causes it to be such a bright pink.
In 2005, Iraqi insurgents tried to convince American officials that they were holding an American soldier hostage and meant to kill him if Iraqi prisoners were not released. However, their supposed hostage turned out to be a military action figure, not an actual soldier.
In 2014, Netflix spent $0 on marketing its DVD rental business, but over 6 million people still used it.
There is a German technique of swordsmanship known as “Mordhau,” which consists of gripping the sword inverted with both hands and using brute force to incapacitate your enemy with the pommel or cross-guard!
In 1969, a musician named Jim Sullivan recorded an album called “U.F.O.,” which featured strange lyrics about leaving his family and being abducted by aliens. Sullivan disappeared six years later without a trace, the only piece of evidence being his abandoned car found on a desert road.
In the film Star Wars Episode Three: Revenge of the Sith, every single one of the clone troopers was produced using CGI effects.
There is now technology built into some guns in America that allow a gun’s owner to control the safety-catch using their smartphone or tablet.
In China, in 2013, scientists were able to grow a human tooth from scratch using stem cells taken from urine.
Thomes-Alexander Dumas, the father of famed French author Alexander Dumas (The Three Musketeers), was promoted to General by age 31 – making him the first Afro-Antilles person to reach that rank in the French army.
Spiked and studded dog collars derive from the days of the Ancient Greeks, who would give their sheep-dogs sharply spiked collars to protect their necks from wolves whilst they watched over a Sheppard’s flock at night.
The world record for the largest pineapple was grown in 2011 by Christine McCallum from Bakewell, Australia. The pineapple measured 32cm long and weighed an incredible 8.28kg!
A study has shown that a male zebra finch is less likely to court a female zebra finch if he did not form any social friendships with female zebra finches when younger.
Artist Salvador Dalà would often get out of paying for drinks and meals by drawing on the checks, making them priceless works of art and, therefore, un-cashable.
The MMORPG Eve Online hosted the world’s largest-ever online battle in space on July 28, 2013. It lasted over five hours and was fought between four thousand players!
Hawaii’s state flag is the only US state flag to feature the Union Jack upon it.
Originally, Marge Simpson’s hairstyle was designed that way because the creator, Matt Groening, wanted to hide her rabbit ears.
The first computer for business use was developed and pioneered by a British tea shop called Lyons in the 1950s. The LEO (Lyons Electronic Office) contained 6,000 valves and was built by Cambridge mathematician John Simmons to add up the receipts of iced buns!
Surgeons who play video games at least 3 hours a week perform 27% faster and make 37% fewer errors.
The word “quarantine” derives from the Venetian dialect of Italian and the words “quaranta giorni,” meaning “forty days.” This is because when it was discovered that ships were infested with plague-carrying rats, they were made to sit at anchor outside Venice’s city walls for forty days before coming ashore.
There is a blind man in America, Daniel Kish, who uses echolocation to navigate in the same way as a bat! He does this by producing a clicking sound with his tongue and then listening intently for the sound waves to bounce back.
Approximately 1,000,000 dogs in the U.S. are named as the heirs of their owners’ wills.
In an interview with Taylor Swift in 2005, she was told, “If music doesn’t work out, you could be a hair model.” Seven years later, the same woman interviewed her again and apologized for what she said.
In a survival situation, if you were to drink seawater, it would rapidly dehydrate you and soon lead to your death. However, it is vastly less harmful to eat frozen seawater. This is because it contains a tenth of the amount of salt in its liquid form due to the fact that the salt is separated from the water when freezing as it does not fit into the crystalline structure of ice.
In 2012, an Afghan Taliban Commander, Mohammed Ashan, turned himself into local authorities, trying to claim the $100 reward prize he had seen on a poster for his arrest.
The organization “Cult Awareness Network” once listed Scientology as its #1 Most Dangerous Cult. Scientology then sued the Cult Awareness Network and bought them out in a hostile takeover.
Due to the extremely warm weather in the summer of 2013, several nuclear power plants across the world, including ones in Japan, Israel, and Scotland, were forced to close down because of a sudden increase in the population of Jellyfish. The mass amounts of Jellyfish clogged the filters that draw seawater into the power plants in order to cool down their reactors!
When written down, the word ‘almost’ is the longest word in the English language to have all of its letters in alphabetical order.
In Canada, in 2012, doctors were able to communicate with a man in a vegetative state. Coma patient Scott Routley was able to tell doctors by using his thoughts that he was not in any pain.
The country of Lichtenstein has an extremely low crime rate, and according to one member of their police, there hasn’t been a murder in Lichtenstein since the late 1990s! Lichtenstein’s entire Police Force consists of 91 officers and 34 civilian staff just – 125 in total.
A study was conducted that showed customers in a bookstore were 3.48 times more likely to peruse romantic books if the store smelt of chocolate and 5.93 times more likely to buy them!
Sonic the Hedgehog has registered itself in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the fastest gaming character ever.
France has conducted 210 nuclear weapon tests, more than the United Kingdom, China, India, and North Korea combined! This is scarcely a fifth of the amount conducted by the United States, however, which has conducted roughly 1,054 tests.
Iran carries out more gender-change operations than any other country in the world. According to official statistics, Iran has somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 transsexuals inhabiting it, although unofficial statistics place that number at approximately 150,000!
There is an Australian man, James Harrison, who has a singularly unique blood plasma composition that has been used to cure Rhesus disease, a hemolytic disease that affects newborn babies. He has donated his blood plasma over 1000 times.
In 2011, Chinese surgeons were able to remove the rusty, 4-inch end of a broken blade from the skull of a man who claimed it had been stuck in there for four years! The man had been stabbed in the lower jaw by a thief four years previously, and the blade had snapped off, getting stuck in his head.
Put A Pillow on Your Fridge Day is celebrated on May 29th in Europe & USA and supposedly brings good luck and wealth to the household.
When people are struck by lightning, the mark that appears on their afflicted area afterward looks like an intricately detailed silhouette of a fern tree and is known as a “lightning tree” or sometimes a “lightning flower.” This occurs due to delicate capillaries rupturing beneath the skin from the shock of the electrical discharge.
In Bordeaux, France, in 1940, Portuguese diplomat Aristides de Sousa Mendes issued an estimated 30,000 Portuguese travel visas in order to Jewish families fleeing persecution from the Nazis. Once his superiors had learned of his actions, he was ordered back to Portugal, dismissed from office, and denied his pension benefits. Sousa Mendes went on to die in 1954, impoverished and unsung.
Household cleaner Cillit Bang was used to clean plutonium stains away in a defunct nuclear power plant in Scotland as it was being dismantled. Bang, and the radiation is gone!
On May 23, 2012, the American nuclear submarine USS Miami was damaged beyond repair by a fire whilst it was docked up in a Naval Shipyard. Although the start of this fire was unclear at first, civilian employee Casey J. Fury later admitted to starting the fire in order to “get out of work early.” For this, he was sentenced to 17 years in federal prison and ordered to pay $400 million in recompense.
The tea bag was an accidental invention. This occurred in 1908 when tea merchant Thomas Sullivan distributed his tea samples in small, silken bags. His customers, not understanding that these were samples, dunked them, and suddenly Sullivan was swamped with orders for his “tea bags!”
As of May 2015, 2.3 Million Americans still subscribed to AOL Dial-Up Internet.
Nokia was originally founded in 1865 as a paper printing company. Apt to say, when it was founded, the paper was one of the world’s most used methods of long-distance communication!
The world’s biggest-ever recorded turtle was a Leatherback Turtle that washed up in Harlech Beach, Wales, in 1988. It was estimated to be 100 years old and was almost 9 feet in length, weighing a tumultuous 2,016 lbs!
Archeologists in London have found a Mesolithic tool-making factory that gives substantial proof human beings were living on the River Thames in 7,000 B.C. That’s over 9,000 years ago!
A Dachshund (a.k.a. a sausage dog) was originally bred to hunt in low, narrow badger burrows. In fact, the term ‘Dachshund’ translates from German as “badger dog!”
In early 2013, guards inside a prison camp in the Komi region of Russia caught a cat climbing over the fence that was being used to smuggle mobile phones, chargers, and batteries into the prison. This was done by people taping the equipment to the cat’s back and then having the cat climb over the fences to reach the prisoners inside!
The word “oxymoron” is itself an oxymoron. This is because it derives from Ancient Greek, where “oxy” means “sharp” and “moros” means “stupid.”
Bruno Mars’s birth name is Peter Gene Bayot Hernandez. His stage name, “Bruno Mars,” was inspired by the wrestler Bruno Samartino. This was because, as a child, Bruno was independent, confident, and strong-willed, like the wrestler. “Mars” came along because he was often told he was “out of this world” by the girls, so he used the planet Mars as his last name.
2013 was the first year since 1987 to feature four different numbers.
The term ‘deadline’ comes from the American Civil War. Prisoners would have lines drawn around them in the dirt, and if they crossed this line, then they would be executed by their guards. Both prisoners and guards soon took to calling this line the “dead line.”
There is an island that sits in the middle of the Bay of Bengal called North Sentinel Island. The indigenous people of this island have never been colonized by the outside world and are extremely hostile, attacking anyone who invades their land without fear. What makes this even more interesting is that, when taken from the island, these people exhibit symptoms of a mystery illness before dying if they are not returned.
In Soviet labor camps, prisoners would ingest a condom attached to a length of rubber tubing, fill it up with raw alcohol then smuggle themselves back into the camp. Once there they would be suspended upside down by the other prisoners and used as a human keg.
During the First World War, so many starving wolves had amassed together in a great pack that opposing German and Russian forces formed a temporary alliance in order to fight them off!
Take Your Houseplants for a Walk Day is celebrated on July 27th. On this bizarre day, people walk their houseplants around, so they can get to know their environment a little more, which supposedly provides the plants with a sense of knowing and familiarization with their surrounding areas.
In 2010 Japan’s government decided to check up on many of the more-aged members of its community. What it found, however, was that many of Japan’s older citizens had died and that their children had hidden their deaths in order to carry on cashing their numerous pension checks!
Murphy beds have been attributed as the cause of people’s deaths before. Most recently, in 2005 when two women were trapped and suffocated to death by their Murphy bed.
The least financially successful Harry Potter film made approximately $90 million more than the most successful Twilight movie.
In late 2013, the first carnivorous mammal to be discovered within the Western hemisphere was found by Dr. Kristofer Helgen. It is called the Olinguito and is a member of the Raccoon family.
In 2002, Brazilian mechanic Alfredo Moser invented a new type of lamp that uses absolutely no electricity whatsoever! The Moser-lamp is created using a plastic bottle filled with water and the smallest bit of bleach (to stop the bottle from turning green with algae) and works through the refraction of natural light – kicking out roughly 40 – 60 watts per lamp! They are becoming popular in many countries where electricity is an expensive commodity and have been fitted in over 140,000 homes in the Philippines. Despite the success of his invention, Alfredo Moser has not become rich from it but has instead a great sense of pride in his altruism.
In August 2013, Michigan man Darryl See was released from intensive care after being hit head-on by a high-speed Amtrak train. Darryl See, who was listening to music and didn’t hear the train’s repeated horn-blows, was reportedly thrown 20 feet from the track by the train that was traveling at 110mph!
New research provided suggests that NASA craft, Voyager 1, has left our solar system – making it the first man-made object to leave the solar system! Launched in 1977, the Voyager 1 probe is not set to run out of propellant energy until 2025, meaning by then, it could have delved even deeper into interstellar space.
In mid-2013, an earthquake-proof church was constructed in Christchurch, New Zealand, using mainly cardboard as the primary building material! Constructed from 98 giant cardboard tubes coated in multiple layers of waterproof polyurethane, the ‘cardboard cathedral’ cost $6 million to build and is designed to last for up to 50 years!
In 1995, strange 7-foot circular patterns were discovered on the ocean’s floor. Deemed the “crop circles of the sea,” these mysterious patterns went unanswered until early 2011 when it was discovered that 5-inch-long male puffer-fish were the culprits. After studying these animals, scientists have discovered that the meticulous creation and upkeep of these patterns by the pufferfish serve as an attraction for the opposite sex as well as a nest for the female pufferfish’s eggs.
In the bioengineering department of the University of Illinois, researchers have created small “biobots,” partly out of the synthetic gel and partly out of muscle cells, that can move on their own. Whilst only a small scientific step, this is the building block for “nanotechnology” – tiny devices that could exist within the human body, freely detecting illness and administering medication.
In the Vietnam War, American soldiers believed the playing card The Ace of Spades to be a symbol of superstition and fear amongst the Viet Cong soldiers. So much so that Charlie Company of the army’s 2nd battalion ordered crates of this single card in bulk so they could scatter it in Viet Cong terrain and litter the bodies of dead Viet Cong soldiers with it. The Ace of Spades was not feared by the Viet Cong.
The bumblebee bat is not only the world’s smallest bat, but it is also the world’s smallest mammal. These cute little creatures weigh only 2 grams. They are 29 to 33mm in length, with a wingspan of approximately 170mm!
In 2007, a 1000-gallon inflatable swimming pool was stolen from someone’s back garden without a single drop of water being found!
You are three times more likely to get a virus on your computer from a Religious website than from a Porn website.
The wild boar was once thought to be extinct within Ireland, but over 50 of them have been found and caught roaming the country in 2013 alone! They are thought to have been re-introduced to the country illegally by poachers.
Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar kept four Hippos in his estate before his death in 1993. Deemed too much hassle to move by authorities, his Hippos were left there and have since bred and escaped becoming an invasive species of Colombia.
It is estimated that in the Amazon Rainforest alone, there are between 20-40 million different species of animals, most of which are insects, as well as over 40,000 species of plant!
There is a hybrid sport birthed from the comic book of a French artist and filmmaker called Chess Boxing. This consists of six four-minute chess rounds interposed with five three-minute boxing rounds. A contestant wins when they get a knock-out or technical stoppage within the boxing round or through a check-mate or forfeit within the chess rounds.
On August 20, 2013, the world record for the world’s biggest Lego tower was smashed by a group of students from Delaware, USA. Their tower measured 112 feet in height and was constructed using more than 500,000 pieces of Lego!
An Egyptian necklace dated 5,000 years old has been found to have been made out of meteoritic metals. The nine beads were found to contain high levels of nickel, cobalt, prosperous, and germanium – all characteristic metals of a meteorite. Even more interesting is how the beads were made. They were rolled from thin sheets of metal, which contradicts what historians believed about the smithing abilities of Ancient Egyptians, having previously believed the beads to have holes drilled through them.
American photographer Harry Whittier Frees dressed his cats – as well as the cats and dogs of his neighbors – in small, people-like clothing and gave them props before photographing them. The black-and-white pictures of these cats and dogs were often given witty captions by Frees, making them the (unknowingly) first LOLcat memes!
I don’t know about you, but the majority of these facts have left me a bit like, “wait, what?”
But we hope you enjoyed this list of 100 absolutely mind-blowing facts!
