We love to learn facts: fun ones, cool ones, strange ones. The internet is a treasure-trove of new facts to discover and share with your friends. On the other hand, it also brings us some things that we wish we didn’t know.
Have you ever heard a fact so weird and specific that it made you ask, “Why the hell do you know that?” Apparently, quite a few people have. A recent thread on r/AskReddit set out to find the strangest facts that people know and the internet has delivered once again.
Tell one of these facts to someone and it will surely bring a look of horror and confusion to their face. So, they’re probably not the best icebreakers to use at a party, but hey, maybe they’ll be useful at some point in the future. Check out part one here for more weird facts.
#1
A co-worker told me one day “you’ll know when it’s truly the first day of spring because lake water will warm up and make any dead bodies in the lake float to the top surface due to bacteria” he continued with “except for in Lake Superior where the water temperature never gets warm enough to build bacteria in a dead body” and that’s one coworker I’ll never make mad right there
Image credits: Sensitive_Parking_30
#2
The first known vending machine was created in the 1st century AD and it was located in Egypt. The machine dispensed holy water and it also took coins like ours do today.
Image credits: [deleted]
#3
When Napoleon Bonaparte died in exile, they cut off his reproductive organ and gave it to the local parish priest. The priest later sold it to raise money for his Parish and it's been sold and resold down through the centuries and to this day there are three people who claim to own Napoleon's reproductive organ.No one knows why this happened, and it's not the important part of the story. The important part is, who the hell do those other two belong to?
Image credits: Sparky62075
#4
It was an annual tradition for the pharaoh of Egypt to masturbate into the Nile with an audience.
Image credits: 6th_Kazekage1353
#5
Rats are bisexual by nature and females will have group orgies with each other when in heat.Male's balls can take up 10% of their entire mass!
There was a study where they put females in 'lingerie' and accustomed the males to it to the point they only saw the lingerie wearing rats as suitable mates.
Rats can give into peer pressure and eat things they don't like if everyone else is eating it.
Rats cannot burp or vomit.
With the amount of people killing pest rats by poison, they are creating bigger, smarter, poison resistant mutant rats.
Image credits: StinkyRattie
#6
In Massachusetts, it’s illegal to consume more than 3 sandwiches at a funeral.The most random law I’ve ever heard about
Image credits: Few-Fox-591
#7
The kiwi is a bird closely related to the emu and the ostrich, despite having the size of a chicken. Nature made it small but forgot about the egg, which is about the size of an emu egg.
Image credits: biomessy
#8
Dragonflies are the most effective hunter on the planet catching 95% of the prey they go after.
Image credits: spooniemclovin
#9
The longest word you can make using the top row of a keyboard is typewriter
Image credits: jugglajj
#10
Most ‘sea monster’ sightings are actually a whale sticking its penis out of the water.#11
The longest poop ever recorded was over 8 feet
Image credits: seleven888
#12
If you sneeze when coming from a dark room into sunlight, it is because of a specific gene which is named ACHOO. I know because I have it."Autosomal Dominant Compelling Helioopthalmic Outburst (ACHOO) Syndrome is characterized by uncontrollable sneezing in response to the sudden exposure to bright light, typically intense sunlight"
Image credits: boo_diddly
#13
Your teeth are the only part of your skeleton that you actively clean
Image credits: a_rad_greenlight
#14
You're more likely to be sexually assaulted by a dolphin than eaten by a shark#15
The quickest way to the heart actually IS through the stomach. According to archeological evidence, the Aztecs basically discovered through their years of sacrificing people that it’s way quicker to cut open the stomach and then go up and under the rib cage to cut the heart out, rather than trying to break open the ribs to get through them. They could apparently get someone’s heart out this way in only a few seconds, and there are accounts of sacrifices where multiple thousands of people had their hearts cut out in a single day, which would take forever if they didn’t know the quickest method.
Image credits: bluelion70
#16
Cows moo with accents depending on their regions.
Image credits: Brew-_-
#17
According to Mattel, Barbie's real name is Barbara Milicent Roberts. And Ken's last name is Carson.
Image credits: Tjodleik
#18
I've been waiting for my time to shine.You have erectile tissue in your nose. Orcas are the biggest natural predators of moose. There is a psychological disorder in which people believe they are a cow and it's called boanthropy. A wood frog can hold it's pee for up to eight months. If you keep a goldfish in the dark, it will lose it's colour and become white. You can actually "dig to China" from Argentina. The Mona Lisa doesn't have eyebrows. There is a kind of psychologist called a "wealth psychologist" that specializes in helping wealthy people deal with immense guilt or not being emotionally able to cope with being rich. A single spaghetti noodle is called a spaghetto. A Polish doctor faked a typhus outbreak in order to prevent nazis. The youngest Pope was only 11 years old. A man once filmed 7 episodes of a soap opera in IKEA without getting caught. (the opera). Pigs will eat the entire human body except for the teeth. When cremating a body, if you don't remove the teeth, they will pop like popcorn.
#19
In the 1700s they used to rent out pineapples for hundreds of dollars, people would parade their pineapple around the streets flexing on the peasants that couldn't afford to rent a pineapple
Image credits: watsgarnorn
#20
Clown fish will change genders if their mate dies and then mate with their children
Image credits: FlyingShark_92_
#21
Cannibalism is only illegal in one state of the United States (Idaho)#22
The main legal consideration between grave robbery and archeology is age and if the deceased has any living relatives.Where I live (ymmv), if the deceased has been dead over a century and has no living descendants, it's not considered grave robbery and you can claim any valuables found (jewellery, coins, artifacts, etc).
#23
Mosquitoes have 47 teeth.
Image credits: DeathAero12123
#24
If people were otherwise immortal and nobody had anymore children, and you shot someone every second, it would take around 230 years to kill off the human race.
Image credits: Latvia
#25
There's a type of slug that has penises on its head.
Image credits: Woke_Stroke
#26
Dolphins can fall deeply in love and develop relationships just like humans can.It has been recorded multiple times that when a human and dolphin - who have formed a strong relationship between them over a long period of time are separated:
the dolphin becomes so depressed that they willfully commit suicide by sinking to the bottom of their pool/lagoon and refuse to come up for air until they drown to death.
Image credits: DaoMuShin
#27
You can legally marry your first cousin in Georgia.
Image credits: GreenOnionCrusader
#28
Shrimp live in the canopies of the Redwood Forests. They get there via literal seagull poop, and the lush coastal ecosystem forms little puddles on the branches in which they grow and live.#29
The distance a squirrel would need to fall in order to die is 4,800 miles. This is because squirrels cannot die from a terminal velocity fall; they would have to fall far enough to die from starvation.#30
The first Pong machine was dropped off at a local tavern owned by friends of one of the developers for a test run. After a few days, the game started to malfunction. The tavern owner called one of the Devs, Allan Alcorn, to come fix it, and when Alcorn got there it was discovered that it was malfunctioning because it was too full of quarters.
Image credits: shanster925
#31
The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems.#32
If humans wanted to have the same eyesight as an owl we would have to have eyes the size of a grapefruit
Image credits: Lye90
#33
Pineapples contain enzymes that break down proteins, which is why your mouth goes tingley when you eat lots of it.Given this, theoretically you could dissolve a body in pineapple juice
#34
You can’t cross Minnesota state lines with a duck on your head, it’s illegal. I learned that the hard way.#35
50% of sloth deaths happen while they are pooping. Most sloths climb down from trees to poop and tend to die to predators at this time.#36
The annual migration of birds was only discovered in 1822 when a stork turned up in Germany with a 30-inch African spear through its neck. Before that, we seriously thought migratory birds slept at the bottom of ponds or flew to the moon for the winter.Google: Pfeilstorch
#37
Koala's are the most alien of all mammals on the planet. They have two thumbs on each hand, three vaginas, spend most of their lives asleep, and evolved to only eat one plant that has no nutritional value. They also eat their mother's poop.#38
Cheetah meow like a house cat.#39
The cheetah is the only cat without retractable claws.#40
Two-thirds of U.S. civil war deaths were caused by disease.#41
In order to snap someone's neck like in movies or video games, you need to be strong enough to apply roughly 100-115% of the victim's bodyweight in rotational force. Much more difficult than Hollywood would make you believe.#42
A botfly egg can land on your skin and implant within a fraction of a second. If one hits you in the eye, it is possible that it can implant the egg under your eyelid so your eye incubates and subsequently feeds the growing larva. I know this because I have removed one from the underside of an eyelid before from a patient with a recalcitrant “eyelid infection”#43
The US is one of the few countries that allows "strike anywhere" matches to be sold. Do NOT bring them on a plane. For example, you're going on a camping trip and put them in your checked luggage. You'll be fined several thousand dollars. There's no exemption from the fine. But the FAA will work out a payment plan with you.#44
Your chances of being struck by lightning are the same as seeing an albino raccoon. 1 in 750,000. Considering an albino raccoon chance is 1 in 10,000.I'm waiting for the lightning strike any day now since I've seen an albino raccoon in the wild.
#45
There is an entire “rainforest”-esque ecosystem in your belly button.
Image credits: CanaryStorm
#46
A pregnant woman can legally poop on a footpath in Melbourne Australia.#47
If you hold a sheep's nose closed so that it can't breathe it forces the sheep to pee.#48
There are more plastic flamingos in the world than real onesMr. Rogers personally replied to each piece of fan mail he ever received.
It takes a sloth a whole month to travel 1 mile across ground.
#49
Kuru is a neurodegenerative disease that causes loss of muscular control and and other symptoms that may appear as insanity, and is caused by eating human brains.#50
I know the full name of Dom Pedro I, first emperor of Brazil, since I was a child: Pedro de Alcântara Francisco Antônio João Carlos Xavier de Paula Miguel Rafael Joaquim José Gonzaga Pascoal Cipriano Serafim de Bragança e Bourbon.#51
Leap year is every four years but we skip it every century unless that century happens to be a multiple of 400 which is why we did not skip it in 2000 but we will skip it in 2100.#52
Ketchup was basically invented to help cover the flavor of slightly rancid meat in the days before the FDA.#53
Before the Titanic sank a book titled "Futility" came out about a fictional British ocean liner called the Titan that sinks in the North Atlantic after striking an iceberg.#54
Captain Crunch’s full name is Horatio Magellan Crunch and he captains a ship called the Guppy#55
When bears hibernate they generate a mucous wax to cover their buttholes so that nothing can get in#56
There is a place in the female body named after a Scottish doctor. The pouch of Douglas. Have fun looking up where it is, you'll never not know about it from now on.#57
Male giraffes drink female giraffes piss when they're horny, if they like the taste they'll mate.#58
In the U.S. small marshmallows are considered “food,” so they’re exempt from sales tax. Large marshmallows are taxed as candy.#59
Figs are not a fruit but actually an 'inverted flower'. They get pollinated by Fig Wasps, that crawl inside, losing their wings and antennae in the process and dying there. The fig then produces some enzymes that end up 'digesting' the wasp. After it's pollinated, some small fruits grow inside, some little seed-like crunchy things.#60
Your eyes can't track horizontally smoothly. Unless you are tracking a moving object. Then it looks smooth.They move to different points and your brain adds a "motion blur" to reduce the effect. You can see this by trying to smoothly look from side to side on a wall.
You should see little skips. You can see this in other people easier.
Also your eyes roll in your head and stay upright/ stay level to a certain point when you tilt your head.
You can actually go look in a mirror and sorta see the effect.
#61
In India, according to the law, if you commit suicide, and do not die, you are liable to go to prison for up to a year. Basically, if you wanna die, make sure you are dead.#62
The Romans used to paint the insides of their rooms black because the lamps they used for lighting would stain the walls.#63
There’s a parasite that merges to fish tongues. In order to merge itself to the fish’s tongue, it must split the tongue in half before merging.#64
Stalin was shorter than Napoleon at 5'5" and his left arm was shorter with a deformed hand due to blood poisoning#65
Bananas are ever so slightly radioactive but the only way you'll suffer from side effects is if you eat 600 of them in under a second.I also learnt the perfect plot for a murder you can get away with if you studied agriculture and sustainability while I still had the energy to write my book.
#66
Woody's name is Woody PrideMr. Clean is Veritably Clean
Cookie Monster is Sid
yes, those are their real names
#67
The cause of death for most people who die in plane crashes is listed as “massive blunt force trauma.”Also, most plane crashes are survivable.
#68
The fact that if someone doesn’t know if their sunglasses at polarized or not, you can take one pair of polarized glasses, hold them in front of the other and turn the one pair 90° then absolutely no light will come through if they are polarized, and it will shine through if they aren’t.#69
The title of the movie and the novel “Trainspotting” is a reference to an old pastime in which people would keep logs of the unique, named locomotives that passed through their towns. It was very popular in Britain because the trains used to all be fairly unique designs. It’s supposed to be a metaphor for the banality of existence and the things people do to “pass the time.”#70
Chimpanzees can run at 25 miles per hour#71
The world's first commercially produced oil well was drilled in Titusville, Pennsylvania. Col. Drake stuck oil at 69.5 feet and this ushered in the oil boom of the late 1860s.He died penniless because he never patented his method of drilling.
#72
Rats cannot burp, which means if you lay out a mix of sugar water and baking soda (which they are attracted to) it will eventually kill them as they cannot burp#73
Hippos eat each other.Vending machines are more lethal than sharks.
The drawer for food wars used to draw doujins
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