Weird Facts
Dedicated to keeping you informed about all the interesting, strange and cool facts from around the world.
- Icelanders have no family names. Instead, their surname is just their father’s name plus “son” or “dottir”. Source
- The Nobel Peace Prize medal depicts 3 naked men with their hands on each others shoulders. Verified
- Fortune cookies were actually invented in America, not China! Verified
- Of the 17k+ words Shakespeare used, over 1700 are recorded there for the first time. Verified
- There are three things that your brain cannot naturally ignore: food, attractive people, and danger. Source
- The United States has more bagpipe bands than Scotland does. To be verified But would appear to be true since Scotland has a population of only 5,000,000, compared to the U.S. at 304,059,724
- 10 percent of electricity in the US comes from "dismantled nuclear bombs, including Russian ones." Read More
- In the 1940s, the FCC assigned television's Channel 1 to mobile Services (two-way radios in taxicabs, for instance) but did not Pre-number the other channel assignments. That is why your TV set has channels 2 and up, but no channel 1. Verified
- The San Francisco Cable cars are the only mobile National Monuments, in the United States. False But they are a National Monument.
- The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days when the fire engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and soon figured out how to walk up straight staircases. Verified
- On average, 100 people choke to death on ballpoint pens every year. To be verified
- When blindfolded, people often can’t tell the difference between the smell of Parmesan cheese and vomit. Source
- A man single-handedly planted a 1,360-acre forest at 16. He now lives in his own forest at the age of 47, with rhino, elephants and tigers. Source
- There is a Royal Navy superstition that whistling on a ship can summon strong winds. Traditionally, the only person allowed to whistle is the ship's cook, as it means he's not eating the food. Source
- A hurricane releases more energy in 10 minutes, than all the world's nuclear weapons combined. Verified
- Dinosaurs may have become extinct, thanks in part to their own powerful farts. Source
- The cigarette lighter was invented before the match. Verified
- According to one study, 24% of homes with lawns have some sort of lawn ornament in their yard.
- There is a girl named Zara Hartshorn who suffers from a rare disease called lipodystrophy. She is only 15 but looks like she is in her 40s or 50s. Source
- Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history: Spades - King David; Clubs - Alexander the Great;Hearts-Charlemagne and Diamonds - Julius Caesar. Verified
- A Russian family took a few possessions/seeds, fled into the forest as political refugees and were cut off from all human contact for 40 years until they were discovered by a group of geologists who accidentally saw their settlement from a helicopter. Source
- Terry Fox a Canadian amputee ran a marathon every day for 143 days straight, before dying of cancer at age 21. As a result, $500M has been raised in his name for cancer awareness. Source
- During World War II, allied fighter pilots frequently observed glowing balls of moving fire while on combat missions over Europe. Named foo fighters, there are a number of theories on the source of the fireballs, including UFOs and ball lightning. One explanation is that they were the air equivalent of land mines, launched into the skies by the Nazis to disrupt the pilots’ plans and even interfere with the planes electronics. Source
- There’s an act called the “Read the Bills Act,” which requires U.S. Congress to read the legislation before they vote on it. It has been in limbo since 2006. Source
- A woman in Mexico performed a successful Caesarean section on herself without any medical training. Source
- Saturn’s moon Titan has riverine valleys like Earth, except they are formed by flowing liquid methane. Of course, it also rains methane, but the drops are twice as large as rain on earth and fall at a fifth of the speed. It also has volcanoes that spew a “magma” that is water and ammonia, and at -100C has the same viscosity as molten rock. Also, the atmosphere is so thick, and the gravity so weak, if you were to strap wings to your arms like Daedalus you could fly. Source 1 2 3
- Children have been sent to the emergency room after eating too many Flamin' Hot Cheetos and appearing to have bloody poops. It was just the chemicals turning it red. Source
- Mars Candy corp, makers of Snickers, Three Musketeers, Milky Way, Twix ect., cut the size of their candy bars by 11%. They referred to it not as cutting size but “cutting calories”. Source
- The first official US coin said, “Mind your business.” Source
- Every purple heart awarded by the military since 1945 is one of the 500,000 purple hearts manufactured in anticipation of U.S. casualties resulting from the invasion of Japan. There 120,000 left. Source
Stay tuned for more Fun Facts coming soon!
Weird Facts has been updated daily since 1999.
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