It seems as if it should go without saying, but the fact is there is a lot to know about this world, how it works, and all of the people who have ever inhabited it.
Some people know tons of information about a few things, some know a little bit about a lot of things, and others, well… acquiring random bits of knowledge isn’t everyone’s thing.
If you’re curious about some common knowledge-type things that are not common knowledge at all, here are 20 facts that might surprise you.
20. And it doesn’t follow English grammar.
ASL (American Sign Language) is a natural language.
It wasn’t made up any more than English or Taiwanese is made up.
It arose naturally.
19. It’s all on purpose.
The McDonalds’ hot coffee case. People totally misunderstand that!
Not misunderstood, but misinformed on purpose. McDonald’s strategically made a campaign to make people believe that the woman made a big fuss to get filthy rich.
Thing is, it really worked.
On the news, movies and TV shows they used that story as jokes on how to get rich easily. McFck McDonald’s.
18. Just not all at the same time.
We use 100% of our brain.
Saying we use 10% of our brain is like saying we only use 33% of a traffic light.
17. A Bug’s Life taught me that.
Locust are grasshoppers.
16. You’re pulling my leg.
That a singular spaghetti is called spaghetto.
15. There are mnemonic devices.
The order of the planets.
14. Suddenly relevant.
The difference between Quarantine and Medical Isolation.
13. Why would I need to know how to do this?
Apparently, I was the only one in my office who knew that CTRL SHIFT + rotates your document 90 degrees.
12. Important knowledge.
Idk about other people but the people around me didn’t know that the sword in the stone king arthur pulled out isn’t excalibur it’s caliburn and he gets excalibur later on.
11. I did not know that.
Light years isn’t a measurement of time, it’s a measurement of length, so many people don’t know this but so many people do.
Likewise a parsec is a length, not a time. Just admit that Han Solo got it wrong because the script got it wrong and stop trying to retcon it.
10. That’s a bi*ch.
Cows can climb up ladders and stairs, but can’t climb back down.
9. I was so happy when I figured this out!
Category: Useful
Useless knowledge: Most cars have a little gas pump symbol next to the fuel gauge with a little arrow that shows you on which side of your car the gas cap is.
At least in my home country, lmk if you’ve seen it!
8. English doesn’t have to make sense.
Its spelled paid not payed.
I really don’t understand how it was so rarely misspelled a few years ago but now I see it spelled incorrectly every day.
7. I mean…he’s not wrong.
The sign that say “Slower Traffic Keep Right” is usually in some kind of hieroglyphics to the people I share the road with.
6. Put that in your back pocket.
If you’re pluralizing a word such as, for example, “sister-in-law,” you pluralize the root word; so it would be “sisters-in-law.”
Similarly, if you have two guys named Mister Johnson, you’d say “the Misters Johnson” not “the Mister Johnsons”
5. Driving and reading are hard.
Our highway has signs that read
“keep right except to pass”
“move to the right lane and let others past you”
“Slower traffic keep right”
I wish reading comprehension was tested regularly
4. It’s not all in your tummy.
Influenza is an upper-respiratory virus.
Plenty of people know this, but absolutely no one did in my entire radiography class, Including the instructor. We all had to take Anatomy and Physiology 1&2 before being accepted into the program.
Everyone in the classroom thought it was a GI virus or what people refer to as the ‘Stomach flu’.
3. A joke that falls flat.
I once joked to co-workers (U.S., avg age 50) that “I speak Esperanto like a native” and was met with silence; nobody had ever heard of Esperanto.
Note 1: This was a number years before the appearance of the excellent Saga graphic novels, in which the inhabitants of Wreath are all shown speaking it.
Note 2: I learned years later that there are a few native speakers, mostly in multilingual households where Esperanto is the only common language.
2. It’s all very confusing.
That you don’t freeze in space.
The amount of people that think you’ll freeze or even explode in space is crazy.
1. Bless.
Holding the the space bar and moving your finger on an iPhone moves the cursor anywhere you want it, while typing.
Some of these were definitely (very cool) news to me.
What else would fit on this list? Share with us in the comments!
