As the internet has gotten more popular and populated, you’ll often see a post that’s prefaced by the phrase (or hashtag) “Fun Fact!”
We love fun facts. At least I do, and if you’re here on our site, you probably do, too.
These aren’t fun at all, but they are facts – and these 15 people love them all the same.
15. People will do anything for white teeth.
Urine was used for teeth whitening and bleaching of clothes in Ancient Rome. Yes, they rinsed their mouth with human AND animal urine.
They definitely wash it out with water but there’s gotta be that remaining sour smell.
14. I guess that’s helpful to know? In the apocalypse?
If you eat a polar bear liver, you will die. Humans can’t handle that much vitamin A.
13. That would be…something.
Spider – Rain (you read that right) is a real and naturally occurring phenomenon.
As Adele once said, “set fire to the rain”
12. I’m sure it will emerge again, like all of the worst diseases do.
There is a mysterious illness called the ‘sweating sickness’ that hit in multiple small epidemics in the early modern era. It was incredibly contagious and massively deadly, with about a 50% average death rate, but it could be higher. It began with an ominous sense of apprehension, followed by severe pains in the neck and giddiness.
They then abruptly stopped and switched to heavy sweating, headaches and delirium. Finally, the person was hit with an extreme urge to sleep, and it was thought to be fatal if you fell to it.
We know almost nothing about it, nothing about how it spread, how it was caused, only that if you got it you were either surviving or dead within 24hrs. There are horror stories of people leaving town on hunting trips and returning the same day to find almost everybody in the village dead, with only a few scattered survivors.
The worst thing was, you did not gain immunity. You could live through the sweating sickness once, and then get it a few days later and die. Or live through it two or three times, and then get it and die. It was horrific, and we don’t know why it disappeared and we don’t know if it will ever return.
11. I think I can smell it behind my mask.
You can smell your own lungs. Your brain just filters out the smell.
10. It’s not really improving the response time.
Live Chat support agents can see what you type before you send it, so they can reply quicker.
9. I guess we…like it?
Some Perfumes, or more specifically, musks you use come from the anal and secretion glands of musk deers and civet cats.
And wait till you learn about ambergris.
8. Why are people?
The lemmings are not s**cidal and the documentary what filmed it was actually showing lemmings getting thrown down a cliff because they needed the scene but couldn’t make the animals do it.
It’s a Disney documentary called “White Wilderness” from the 50’s.
7. Those hooligan males.
Penguins r**e the hell out of anything that looks vaguely penguin like or doesn’t move. In fact it was so rampant, that the 1910-13 Scott Antarctic Expedition decided it was best not to bring it up so society wouldn’t have to deal with the issue it would bring up.
Scientists witnessed males having s*x with other males and also with dead females, including several that had died the previous year. He also saw them s*xually coerce females and chicks and occasionally kill them.
The scientists blamed this “astonishing depravity” on “hooligan males” and wrote down his observations in Greek so that only an educated gentleman would understand the *horrors* he had witnessed.
6. I wish this was harder to believe.
In 2017, 10,000 people died awaiting their disability decision.
5. Watch out for this guy.
A blue ringed octopus, found in the Pacific, is a tiny and cute little guy, but one painless bite gives enough venom to kill 25 male adults
Also note, as long as you are given medical attention within an hour of you receiving the bite, you’ll be fine.
These live everywhere on the coast where I live! I remember it being drilled into us really young not to stick our hand under rocks or into rock pools on the shore, because once you realised something had happened it would be too late.
…Australia. I live in Australia.
4. What happens to your brain, though?
There is a (genetic) disease called FOP where your muscles and tissue turn to bone. Often called “human statue disease”
Eventually people may have to decide whether they want to become “frozen” in a sitting or flat/standing position.
I have a good friend with this. He’s already past the usual life expectancy for the condition and still manages to live a (somewhat) normal life.
He has to have his second spine broken every year now, which doesn’t sound nice. Also any injury heals as bone for him, so as he gets older he’s covered in more and more lumps from the various shenanigans we’ve got up to over the years.
3. You have to give them living success.
The search and rescue dogs on 9/11 were getting so sad from finding only dead bodies, the human helpers buried themselves in the rubble so that the dogs could find them and be happy.
Same with bomb and drug sniffing dogs, they have to let them “find” something occasionally or they get discouraged.
The trainers will carry something the right shape and smell and hide it here or there.
2. Hope you led a cautious life.
People with extreme scurvy start to have ALL of their old wounds open up.
Everything with a scar is held together via an active process with collagen and without vitamin c just sort of…stop.
1. Horses are so dramatic.
In Australia there is a plant called the Gympie-Gympie which has such a severe sting that horses who brush against it throw themselves off cliffs because they’d rather die than continue to experience the pain.
I’m so uncomfortable, so I guess that was the point.
What’s your favorite awful fact? Share it with us in the comments!
