27/10/2023
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Did you know that New York City has its own indigenous species of ant and that it's called the ManhattAnt? Did you also know that history's most successful pirate wasn't a bearded, eyepatch-wearing man but a woman? And did you know that humans actually have the power to smell rainfall before it arrives? If you answered "no" to any of those, then congratulations! You're in for a huge treat, because here we've compiled 100 totally random and fascinating facts that will leave you feeling astonished. So read on, and remember that not one but two golf balls have been hit on the moon wit a makeshift six iron.
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1Victorians once used leeches to predict the weather.
Leech in a jar
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George Merryweather was a Victorian doctor and a fan of poetry. In fact, it was in a poem that he found the inspiration to build the Tempest Prognosticator, a kind of barometer powered by leeches. The three-foot-tall contraption was as beautiful as it was intended to be useful. The brass and mahogany structure held 12 glass vials in place, each of which contained a single leech. If it was going to rain soon, the leeches would slither to the top of the vial. By the end of his project, Merryweather had grown so attached to his leeches, he swore that they had befriended him. Unfortunately, only a few of them were actually successful at predicting the weather. Others, he wrote, were "absolutely stupid."
2Your funny bone is actually a nerve.
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The name "funny bone" comes from the humerus bone, which connects the shoulder to the elbow. However, that's not the source of the tingling sensation you feel when you bump your elbow just right. It's actually the result of the humerus bone coming into contact with the ulnar nerve, which is responsible for telling the brain about feelings in the ring and pinky fingers.
3The chief translator of the European Parliament speaks 32 languages fluently.
Translatior Ioannis Ikonomou
TedxTalks/YouTube
Since 2002, the Greek translator Ioannis Ikonomou has been the chief translator of the European Parliament. With 32 languages under his belt, he merits the position. He initially moved to Brussels to be an interpreter, a valuable position in the EU capital, but after he learned all 12 official languages of the EU, he kept going and now speaks even more, including Bengali, Swahili, and Turkish.
4The most requested funeral song in England is by Monty Python.
Woman at coffin with roses
Syda Productions
A survey of funeral directors by Co-operative Funeralcare (per the BBC) found that the most frequently requested song to play at funerals in the United Kingdom is "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" by Monty Python, from their irreverent comedy classic Life of Brian. It beat out Frank Sinatra's "My Way."
5Research shows that all blue-eyed people may be related.
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At least, they may share the same distant ancestor. After studying the DNA of blue-eyed individuals from Scandinavia, Turkey, Jordan, and India, Danish researchers found that they all had identical gene sequences for eye color. They believe this trait comes from a single individual, called the "founder," whose genes mutated between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago. Before that, everyone had varying shades of brown eyes.
6Charles Darwin's personal pet tortoise didn't die until recently.
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Okay, technically she wasn't his pet, but after his tour of the Galapagos Islands, Charles Darwin brought back a five-year-old tortoise he named Harriet. She outlived her adopter by 124 years, ultimately making it to a whopping 176 years old. Harriet lived out her final years as part of the family of Steve "Crocodile Hunter" Irwin in Australia, until she passed away in 2006.
7The average person will spend six months of their life waiting for red lights to turn green.
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Driving can be a fun and liberating activity—until you get stuck at a red light, that is. The National Association of City Transportation Officials says that the average time spent waiting at a red light is 75 seconds, accounting for approximately 20% of all driving time. That's a whole lot of time doing nothing and just another reason to switch to public transportation.
8A bolt of lightning contains enough energy to toast 100,000 slices of bread.
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If you consider that each bolt of lightning contains more than 5 billion Joules of energy, then the average 1,000-watt, two-slice toaster could be powered for 84,000 minutes with just one strike. That's just enough time to toast about 100,000 slices of bread, bagels, English muffins—whatever you prefer.
9President Lyndon B. Johnson owned a water-surfing car.
President Lyndon B. Johnson drives his Amphicar with Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Paul Glynn at the Haywood Ranch
White House Photo / Alamy
Always the joker, Lyndon B. Johnson would surprise guests at his Texas ranch by driving them down the hill in his Amphicar, claiming the brakes had gone out. Once it hit the lake, their panic would subside when they realized the car had been designed to function in water.
10David Bowie helped topple the Berlin Wall.
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Ruins of Berlin Wall
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While David Bowie's trio of albums recorded in Berlin are considered among his best work, it's not the only legacy he has in the German city. In 1987, his performance of "Heroes" in front of the Reichstag as part of the Concert for Berlin, was loud enough and close enough to the wall to be heard in East Berlin (where such music was forbidden). It sparked a police crackdown, and, according to The Guardian, "Many of the eyewitnesses claim that the violent police crackdown on the third night of the concerts… were crucial in changing the mood against the state."
11Cherophobia is the word for the irrational fear of being happy.
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No, it's not the fear of Cher, as the name might lead you to believe. It comes from the Greek word "chero," which means "to rejoice." People who suffer from cherophobia are often afraid, cripplingly so, of doing anything that might lead to happiness. This includes participating in fun activities and rejecting opportunities that may lead to positive outcomes.
12You can hear a blue whale's heartbeat from two miles away.
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The blue whale is the largest animal on the planet, weighing up to 150 tons and measuring up to 90 feet long. Naturally, an animal this massive would have an equally huge heart. Roughly the size of a small car, the blue whale's heart weighs about 1,300 pounds. To move blood through its colossal body and arteries, its heart beats so powerfully, you can hear it from two miles away. You just might miss it, though, as its heart only beats eight to 10 times per minute.
13Nearly 30,000 rubber ducks were lost at sea in 1992 and are still being discovered today.
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Over 25 years ago, a cargo ship traveling from Hong Kong to the United States accidentally lost a shipping crate in the Pacific Ocean. Inside that crate were 28,000 rubber ducks unwittingly about to embark on many long journeys across the globe. As rubber ducks continue to pop up on shores from Australia to Alaska, they've enlightened our understanding of ocean currents. Some have made it all the way to the Atlantic Ocean while others have been found frozen in Arctic ice.
14There's a Manhattan-specific ant.
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On Broadway medians between 63rd and 76th streets, biologists discovered a new species of ant. They named it ManhattAnt, naturally. Hey, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.
15The inventor of the frisbee was turned into a frisbee after he died.
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"Steady Ed" Headrick invented the frisbee in the 1950s, then went on to create the sport of disc golf in the 1970s. When he died in 2002, his final wish was to have his ashes turned into—what else?—a frisbee. His son said it was his father's dream that they play with him after death and that he might even accidentally end up on someone's roof.
16There's a bridge exclusively for squirrels.
Fox squirrel in tree
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To provide safe passage to squirrels attempting to cross the N44 motorway, Netherlands officials built a rodent-only bridge. While it may have been a kind-hearted gesture, it might not have been the most economically sensible one: costing £120,000, over a two-year span the bridge was used by just five squirrels in two years. "In 2014 three squirrels, and in 2015 two squirrels, were spotted on the bridge," the government said in a statement.
17Subway footlongs aren't always a foot long.
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The New York Post measured the actual length of Subway footlongs in New York City and found they averaged 11 inches, not 12. The sandwich chain commented, "With regards to the size of the bread and calling it a footlong, 'SUBWAY FOOTLONG' is a registered trademark as a descriptive name for the sub sold in Subway Restaurants and not intended to be a measurement of length."
The controversial issue was even taken to court, where the judge ruled in Subway's favor, saying most sandwiches are in fact one foot long, but "due to perfectly natural and unavoidable vagaries in the baking process, a very small fraction of sandwiches fell about a quarter-inch shy of 12 inches."
18Marie Curie's notebooks are still radioactive.
Marie Curie
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The mother of modern physics was known for her work with radioactive materials and the discovery of elements like polonium and radium. Unfortunately, her research took a hefty toll on her health, leading to aplastic anemia, which caused her death. The exposure to radioactivity didn't just affect her, it also affected most of her belongings, including her clothes, furniture, and books. Now, more than a century later, Marie Curie's notebooks have to be stored in a lead box, as they are still radioactive (and will be for another 1,500 years!).
19One in three divorce filings include the word "Facebook."
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That was the case in 2011, according to the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, though that number has likely risen since. "We've had instances where they pull up Facebook in the course of a deposition," divorce lawyer Marian Rosen told ABC News. "Once it's out there for the world, it's very difficult … to erase from the past. There are going to be trails that can be followed."
20Blood banks in Sweden notify donors when blood is used.
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Blood donors receive a text message when their blood is used to help a patient. "We get a lot of visibility in social media and traditional media thanks to the SMS," Karolina Blom Wilberg, a communications manager at the Stockholm blood service, told HuffPo. "But above all we believe it makes our donors come back to us, and donate again."
21Instead of saying "cheese" before taking a picture, Victorians said "prunes."
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We say "cheese" because the word leaves us with a big smile on our faces, but if Victorian-era folk were to see our gleeful expressions, they'd scoff. Once upon a time, smiling in photos was considered undignified and reserved for the poor and the drunk. To retain a more serious look in their photos, they would say "prunes," a word so dull, the chances of it inciting a smile were slim to none.
22Roosters have built-in earplugs.
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Considering a rooster's call can reach 140 decibels or louder, it might leave one to wonder how the rooster itself keeps from going deaf when that noise is coming right out of its beak. It turns out, the farm fowl have built-in earplugs. Researchers found that when a rooster opens its beak to crow, its external auditory canals close off, preventing sound from coming in and doing any damage.
23The Netherlands is so safe, it imports criminals to fill jails.
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The Netherlands has enjoyed a steady drop in crime since 2004, and has become so safe that it's closed down one jail after another—23 prisons shut their doors since 2014. To help mitigate the job losses that this has created, the country has taken to importing prisoners from other countries, bringing 242 inmates from Norway in 2015.
24One journal published a fake paper about Star Trek.
William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy in Star Trek
CBS Television Distribution
To help expose how easily false or flawed research could make its way into supposedly peer-reviewed journals, an anonymous biologist managed to get a paper about one of Star Trek's most infamously silly elements accepted by four journals and published in the American Research Journal of Biosciences. The biologist explained that he did so "to expose predatory journals that claim to offer peer-reviewed open-access publications but will publish anything for a fee."
25The world's largest pyramid isn't in Egypt.
The Great Pyramid of Cholula
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The Great Pyramid of Cholula, located in Cholula, Puebla, Mexico, is the largest pyramid in the world and—with a base four times the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza—also happens to be the largest monument ever constructed. Part of the reason it's not better known is that it's partially buried under a
