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If you, like us, adore dealing in random, interesting, and sure, occasionally useless facts, then you probably have a short list of your own favorites.
You’re also probably always on the lookout for more useless and amazing facts, too, which is where this list comes in – see if you can use it to add to yours!
16. I don’t know why, but this tracks.
There are about 72 metal bands per 100.000 people in Finland.
Finland is the most metal country in the world.
15. They had to do something.
Flowers arrangements at funerals originally served to mask the stench of rotting corpse.
14. I bet it has been. It’s just instinct!
The first documented instance of the “high five” occurred during the 1977 World Series.
I would’ve guessed the high five would’ve been around since the beginning of time.
13. Weird to think about, for sure.
At the busiest times of the day there can be as many as a million people in the air in airplanes at a given time.
There’s more of a chance you can die by getting hit by lightning then there is dying in a plane crash. And yet I’m still terrified to get on one.
12. An American started it.
The Watermelon Riot occurred on the evening of April 15, 1856, in Panama City, then the capital of Panama State in the Republic of New Granada. After an American took a slice of watermelon from a street vendor and refused to pay for it, a verbal altercation ensued and then quickly escalated when shots were fired.
An angry mob of locals converged on the site and began fighting with the Americans. Before order could be restored, at least fifteen Americans and two Panamanians were killed.
American businesses, including the railroad station were extensively damaged or destroyed.
11. This is a lot of information to take in at once.
Scooby-Doo has 3 brothers:
- Yabba-Doo
- Skippy-Doo
- Howdy-Doo
One sister:
- Ruby-Doo
Her son:
- Scrappy-Doo
His parents are:
- Momsy-Doo
- Dada-Doo
He also has 5 cousins:
- Scooby-Dum
- Scooby-Dee
- Dooby-Doo
- Whoopsy-Doo
- Dixie-Doo
Thank you for your attention
10. Completely chilling.
The Purple Heart medals being issued today are from the stock ordered in preparation for the ground invasion of Japan in WW2.
Military strategists estimated there would possibly be over a million casualties in the proposed invasion.
9. History is so cool (in retrospect).
The Hindenburg was only the 5th most deadly airship disaster. 2/3 of the people onboard survived. It just happened to take place just outside of NYC and was photographed, recorded on video, and broadcast live on radio.
Of the other 4 crashes, 2 were over water (USS Akron and Dixmude). These and 1 other (R101) took place at night. R101 was a civilian vessel and still a major press event. Its loss did cause the end of the program to knit the British Empire together with a fleet of airships, but major LTA programs still existed in Germany and America. The remaining crash (R38/ZR2) did take place in daylight in front of thousands of witnesses. It, though (as with Akron and Dixmude) were military ships, the loss of which just doesn’t have the same impact on the general public as civilian vessels such as Hindenburg and R101.
There’s a good chance that Hindenburg was lost because of the inexperience of her politically-reliable (Nazi) crew. Dr. Hugo Eckener, the President of the Zeppelin Company, was an ardent anti-Nazi and the greatest airshipman ever to live. He never took an unnecessary or uncalculated risk. He was, though, forced to make more and more concessions to the government as the 30’s went on.
It is likely that the fire was ultimately caused by unnecessarily-rough handling on a pre-landing sightseeing jaunt over Manhattan. This caused a structural wire to snap, cutting a hole in a gasbag, and allowing the hydrogen to mix with air, forming a combustible mixture that ignited when the ship’s mooring lines touched ground and the charge between the ship and the earth was equalized.
8. This just makes me laugh.
Lego is the biggest tyre manufacturer in the world.
7. Kinda blows my mind.
“Helicopter” isn’t heli + copter; it’s helico (spiral) + pter (wing)
Because of this, TIL pterodactyl means wing finger
6. That’s something I never want to see.
During mating season, groups of male whales basically run a train on females. While one male has his turn, the others float around upside down just under the surface, which leaves their giant d%*ks waving around in the air.
This is one of the main explanations for the old stories of sea monsters.
5. Salmon are delicious.
It is estimated that bears kill over two million salmon a year.
Attacks by salmon on bears are much more rare.
4. Why do we need to know this?
Due to the shape of the North American Elk’s Esophagus, even if it could talk, it would be unable to pronounce the word Lasagna.
A friend in college who just loved animals randomly told me one day and I had the same question but now it’s the only thing I can think of when someone mentions useless facts.
3. Are we sure, though?
There is a specific word in the English language for the egg of a hen.
That word is CACKLEBERRY.
No relation to dingleberry.
2. Brains are wild.
There’s an illusion many will have experienced known as “the stopped clock” illusion, where you’ll flick your eyes onto a clock face and then look away without observing any movement in the second hand, despite it feeling like you were looking for longer than one second.
This happens because when we look between objects, our brains edit out the blur, but instead of filling it in with what we were looking at, it fills it in with what we will be looking at.
Which is possible because of the “lag” in our body’s processing speed, from received light, to image generation.
So you actually were looking at the clock for longer than a second, but some of that time was actually the (now) past, posed as the present.
All these edited out “flicks” amount to around 40 minutes per day.
1. I have questions.
Nobody would see you get sucked into a black hole. To them, you’d just stop at the event horizon and proceed to become more and more redshifted until you disappeared.
Useless now, but maybe not so useless in the future.
I’m putting some of these in the bank right away.
If your favorite useless fact isn’t on this list, share it with us in the comments!
