I love meeting new people from all different walks of life.
Because they’re usually full of fascinating facts that I’ve never heard before!
And that kind of info is what makes life interesting, my friends!
So, in the spirit of learning about all kinds of cool stuff, enjoy these facts that AskReddit users were nice enough to share!
1. Good to know!
“If you’re within vicinity of a fallen powerline, bunny hop or slide your feet side-to-side to get away from the pole.
This is to counteract “step potential” as lifting your feet off the ground will cause a difference in voltage causing an electrocution.”
2. Wow!
“In the time it takes you to read this sentence, you’ve traveled approximately 2,200 miles through space relative to the cosmic background radiation.”
3. Ouch.
“Splinter free toilet paper was invented in 1935.
Which means before that, toilet paper had splinters.
OUCH.”
4. What’s that smell?
“Most people know that dogs have a really good sense of smell, but I recently did some research into the full extent of it.
40% of the brain goes entirely to their sense of smell. They have a completely different organ that is designed purely to take in the smell, separately from the oxygen they breathe (unlike humans, we process it together).
To put this into perspective, we can taste a teaspoon of sugar in our coffee. They could smell a teaspoon of sugar inside two olympic sized swimming pools.
A cancer alert dog kept marking to one mole on a woman’s arm. They had already tested it and it was negative. They decided to retest due to the dog’s behavior, and found an incredibly small fraction of a cancer cell in the spot.”
5. Wild.
“According to linguistic and genetic evidence, the first settlers of Madagascar came not from Africa, but from what is now Indonesia.
Makes more sense when you look at a map of ocean currents, but yeah.
It’s wild.”
6. I did not know that!
“Apple seeds DO NOT yield the same apple it came from… every apple seed yields a completely unique apple.
If you want the exact same apple, you have to cut a branch off the existing apple tree and graft in onto another tree.”
7. Cool!
“Bookkeeper is the only word in the English language that has three sets of double letters consecutively.”
8. Pretty hot.
“Plasma used to cut steel plate is hotter than the surface of the sun.
Source – I am a plasma system operator, among other things.”
9. Shark fact.
“Sharks are older than trees.
Individual sharks that we have identified are older than the United States.”
10. How?
“John Tyler, the 10th president of the U.S., still has a GRANDSON that is alive.
Not a great grandson, not a great great grandson. A GRANDSON.”
11. Cat talk.
“Cats don’t meow to talk to other cats they use different language for that.
They meow to talk to us.”
12. Who would’ve guessed?
“In Formula 1, the full grid of 20 cars during all practice, qualifying and race sessions over an entire single season will burn less fuel than one commercial flight from London to New York.”
13. One of the best.
“The 1966-1967 UCLA Bruins Men’s Basketball team went undefeated and won the National Championship. They were ranked number 1 throughout the entire season.
In those days, freshmen weren’t allowed to play on the varsity team, but every year, at the end of the season, the freshmen team played the varsity team in an exhibition game.
UCLA’s freshman team beat the undefeated varsity team by 15 points with a young center named Lew Alcindor, later changing his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.”
14. Impressive.
“The James Webb Space Telescope launching later this week is so insanely sensitive it boggles the mind.
Some of the things it will be looking at will be 20x dimmer than looking at a 5 watt light bulb on the moon.
Even with it’s massive 6 meter (20 foot) diameter main mirror just a single photon of light will be hitting it per second from the target.
To put that into perspective, if you look up at a reasonably bright star, even with your pupil being just 8 mm across, probably upwards of a million photos are striking your eye just from that star every second.”
Do you know some great facts!
If so, share them with us in the comments.
Thanks a lot!
