Have you ever learned a fact that, despite being totally random and objectively useless, just really stuck with you?
I mean, maybe it was just niche enough to pique your interest, or maybe it was just too weird to forget – but whatever it was, now it’s the fact that earns you funny looks when you pull it out at parties.
These people definitely know what I’m talking about, because these are truly some amazingly odd facts.
15. Well I can never un-read that.
Lee Harvey Oswald had straight pubic hair.
Edit: here’s why I know: it’s in the Warren Commission hearings. If you scroll about 2/5ths of the way through this testimony, you can read all about it.
14. That’s not really comforting.
A few days ago somebody told me that Swiss cheese and plastic explosives look the same under a TSA radar.
13. That is not a name.
Donald Duck’s middle name is Fauntleroy.
Mickey’s full name is Micheal Theodore mouse!
12. To “safety.”
Suicide bombers can be easily identified after blowing themselves up since the pressure from the explosion fractures the neck and sends the head flying away to safety from the explosion.
11. People gotta people.
I love this one: red phosphorus was discovered by a scientist after he boiled his urine for months on end, trying to harvest the “gold” in his pee.
After months of boiling this urine, it dried up and turned into red phosphorus. He won a nobel prize for this discovery.
10. My worst nightmare.
Only reason we know about a lot of drowning victims is because new shoes float better.
9. Directly? Or…
In 1985 a Serbian farmer stuck a beer bottle up his ass, broad side first. This sparked a chain of events that eventually led to the collapse of Yugoslavia.
I’m torn between the fact that people were hurt over this – but this is so ridiculous I just can’t.
So dude got a bottle broken in his butt. Goes to the doc’s and claims 2 Albanians did this to him while he was working in his fields. This leads to an interrogation by an army colonel (what?) where he recanted his claim and said it was a form of ‘self-pleasure’ gone wrong.
Poor dude at this point gets referred to a prestigious military medical academy, where a team of doctors (representing 4/6 of Yugoslavia’s republics) pored over this and concluded that his injuries could NOT have been self-inflicted.
Bro then gets upgraded to an investigation by a special commission, created to get to the bottom of this, that works out the mechanics of penetration in great detail, and concludes that it could’ve been self inflicted (slip and body-weight). Worth noting that Yugoslav secret police and military intelligence concurred with the special commissions findings.
Dorde then proceeds to recant his confession (self-pleasure), says that it was coerced in a 3 hour interrogation and his kids were promised work.
Story picks up steam.
__
What’s amazing is this story hits media and starts and causes a flood of already bubbling nationalist and anti-albanian sentiment to boil-over, pretty much repurposing this incident in various ways to whip up the public.
His particular story was well-suited to fan the flames, as analogies (lol) were made with the Ottoman Turks, who brutally ruled Serbia and Kosovo until till the early 20th century and had used impalement as a means of torture and execution.
They basically used this incident to get the public to associate Albanians with the Turks.
8. Definitely going to try these.
If you curl your toes, your gag reflex will sort of minimize.
I’ve heard squeezing your thumb has the same effect.
7. In case you ever need to murder someone.
Inject enough potassium under the tongue, it will look like a heart attack on an autopsy.
Not to mention the injection site will heal. Most toxicologists don’t check for potassium levels either.
6. Everyone’s worst nightmare.
Locked-In Syndrome is a scary condition where you are conscious while in a coma.
My mom developed this after a stroke in 2020.
She could blink once for yes and twice for no but wasn’t truly aware of herself or her surroundings so we ended up taking her off the machines and letting her pass comfortably.
5. Why am I not surprised?
The Guinness Book of World Records was created to settle bar bets.
And Michelin stars were created to get people to drive to restaurants.
But Dove soap and Dove chocolate are unrelated brands.
4. I need to Google.
A Freemartin is a female cow with a twin brother. Always barren. I don’t know how or why I know this, as I am not at all agriculturally inclined.
3. Some morbid truths.
You can’t explode C4 by shooting it… Or by lighting it on fire… But you can by lighting it on fire and then shooting it. Actually if it’s on fire, you could hit it with a hammer and explode it… Though only once for obvious reasons.
A sharp enough sword can decapitate with no pain. Sort of like how razors sometimes cut you and you don’t notice until it’s bleeding and then it starts hurting, but in this case you would be dead before your brain catches up… On the topic of decapitation, it’s common for people to have time to make weird expressions between the time they lose their head and the part where they actually die.
For this reason it was a common practice for most of human history for people to grab the newly disembodied head and show it its own decapitated corpse to see if it would react… The things people did before memes.
2. What mad science is this?
A cow is more aerodynamic than a Jeep Wrangler.
If I recall correctly the scientific study that proved this won an Ig Nobel Prize.
1. That cannot be a great way to go.
Being skinned alive doesn’t kill nearly as quickly as you’d think. When done carefully the victim may not die of blood loss, or shock, but rather hypothermia. Some account record that people have survived for several days
Edit: Bonus fact! Couldn’t remember it earlier, but supposedly saint Bartholomew was skinned alive for converting a king to Christianity. He is often depicted with exposed musculature, and carrying his own severed skin. He is also the patron saint of many different things such as butchers, leather workers, tanners, and dermatology.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not sorry I learned a single one of these today.
What’s a fact that always earns you weird looks at parties? Please share it with us in the comments!
