Random Facts
'Strengths' is the longest word with only one vowel.
Redheads typically need about 20% more anesthesia than people with different hair color.
As of 2024, Madagascar has a larger population than Australia.
The most frequently purchased items on Amazon (2024) are the Apple Air Tags and the Stanley tumbler.
Google Images was inspired after Jennifer Lopez wore a then-scandalous green dress to the 2000 Grammy Awards. Google searches for that image became the most popular search query Google had ever seen, and they realized they needed a way to deliver what people wanted.
The first free public library was founded in Peterborough, New Hampshire in 1833.
Dr. Seuss's book Green Eggs and Ham was banned in China because it was thought to portray Marxism in a negative light with the way the eggs and ham are forced on others.
A single litter of kittens can have more than one father.
After the U.S. president and vice president, the postmaster general is the next highest-paid federal government employee (about $275k starting salary).
Lake Chargo-ggagoggm-anchaug-gagoggcha-ubunagun gamaugg, in the town of Webster, Massachusetts, is the longest place-name in the United State. It is also known as Webster Lake.
Even though the Statue of Liberty is on Liberty Island, which belongs to New York, it is actually located closer to the land mass of New Jersey.
Every time you shuffle a randomized deck of cards, it is very likely that you have created the first ever arrangement of cards in that order in history. Based on 52 cards, there are 8.07x10^67 possible arrangements of cards.
Toilet paper is thought to have first been produced in the late 800's AD in China.
The squid's brain is torus-shaped (ring-shaped), with its esophagus running through it. If it eats anything too large, it can suffer brain damage.
The French surgeon Serge Voronoff is famous for his work in the 1920's of grafting monkey testicle tissue onto the testicles of men. This was thought to have a rejuvenating effect, and around 2,000 men had the procedure done.
The deepest hole ever drilled by man is the Kola Superdeep Borehole (40,226 feet).
Bananas contain potassium, which is an element that decays, making bananas the slightest bit radioactive. But you would probably have to consume ten million bananas worth of potassium in order to die of banana-induced radiation poisoning.
A bear enlisted in the Polish army made it to the rank of Corporal. He also smoked, drank and carried weapons to the front during battles. His name was Wojtek.
The comparative size between an atom and a grain of sand is about the same ratio as that between a grain of sand and planet Earth.
There are only two doubly-landlocked countries in the world, meaning they are a landlocked country surrounded on all sides by landlocked countries. They are Liechtenstein and Uzbekistan.
In 1987, American Airlines saved $40,000 annually by removing one olive from their first class salads.
Before becoming a famous painter, Bob Ross was a military drill sergeant.
There are around 200 corpses on Mount Everest, many of which are used as markers for climbers.
A restaurant in Pensacola, Florida called McGuire Irish Pub has more than $500,000 worth of dollar bills hanging from the walls and ceiling.
The old distress signal "SOS" does not stand for "Save Our Souls" or "Save Our Ships." The letters SOS were chosen because they're the easiest Morse Code letters to remember and use: three dots, three dashes, three dots.
The movie industry relocated from New York to southern California in the 1800's to avoid the numerous patents of Thomas Edison, which included many patents on the technology being used to make movies. Without Edison's influence, Hollywood would not be what it is today.
Beaver anal secretions known as castoreum have been used as a vanilla flavor substitute for certain foods and luxury cosmetics.
Fernando Tatis Sr. is the only MLB player to ever hit two grand slams in a single inning. His son, Fernando Tatis Jr., is one of the brightest stars in the game today.
The hottest temperature ever recorded on Earth was in El Azizia, Libya, in which a temperature of 136 degrees Fahrenheit was reached back in 1922.
There is a very rare condition called Anton syndrome, in which a person becomes blind but is unaware of it and will even deny it. Their brain will generate false visual images, so they continue to believe that they can see.
When taking a warm shower, people exeprience an increased dopamine flow which leads to more creativity.
The region of the Outer Banks off the coast of North Caroline is also known as “The Graveyard of the Atlantic,” since it has caused thousands of shipwrecks due to its low waters, sandbars, and strong currents.
Lake Superior has a larger land mass than the entire country of Scotland.
The mathematical symbol for division (÷) is called an obelus.
Abraham Lincoln was a local wrestling champion before his political career took off. He wrestled in close to 300 contests and only lost once.
There’s a place in the Pacific known as Point Nemo. At certain times of the day it’s closer to the International Space Station than to any land mass.
The "Hollywood" sign on the hills in Los Angeles originally read "Hollywoodland."
The English words "raise" and "raze" are both homophones (sounding the same) and antonyms (having the opposite meaning).
Twister was the first movie released on DVD.
After a woman told him his shoes were too expensive for kids, Shaquille O'Neal walked away from a $40 million deal with Reebok in order to sign one with Wal-Mart. Shaq brought in designers from Reebok to make his Wal-Mart shoes nicer than their price tag.
Andre Agassi won 10 of 11 tennis matches against Boris Becker after noticing a "tick" in Becker's serve. Becker would stick his tongue out a certain direction, thus unknowingly indicating where his serve would go and giving Agassi an advantage. There is a similar concept in baseball known as "tipping pitches."
The Spanish word for "wives" (esposas) is the same word for "handcuffs." Hm…
In the 1920 and 1927 seasons, Babe Ruth hit more home runs as an individual player than any other TEAM hit among all of their players.
The voice actors who played Mickey and Minnie Mouse (Wayne Allwine and Russi Taylor) actually got married in real life in 1991.
Spread across their entire lifetime, the average person spends about one full year sitting on the toilet.
The Mauna Kea mountain in Hawaii is actually taller than Mt. Everest when measured from its base (on the ocean floor) to its height. However, Mauna Kea extends less than 14,000 feet above sea level, whereas Everest extends more than 29,000 feet above sea level.
The seven successive Tour de Frances from 1999 to 2005 have been declared without winners because not only Lance Armstrong, but also many of the riders who finished behind him, have been associated with doping offenses.
Except for the tiny muscles around hair follicles, you actually have no muscles in your fingers. The muscles that control your fingers are in your palm and forearm.
A few contemporary names such as Jessica, Olivia, and Miranda are credited as to having been created by William Shakespeare.
The space between your eyebrows is called your glabella.
Even though in baseball a team only has to get 3 outs in an inning, the record for strikeouts by a pitcher in a single inning is 4. This happens when a pitcher gets a strikeout but the catcher does not catch the ball. In this case, the runner is able to advance to first base if he can beat the throw. The pitcher is still credited with a strikeout, but no actual "out" is recorded.
You can hear a blue whale's heartbeat from over 2 miles away. Their hearts alone can weigh close to 400 lbs.
Potatoes were the first vegetable to be grown in space.
Benin, a country in central Africa, has the highest birth rate of twins around the world. The world average is around 1.3% twins, but the rate in Benin is more than double that, at 3%.
Pepsi gets its name from "pepsin," the digestive enzyme found in such products as Pepcid AC. The inventor of the Pepsi drink, Caleb Bradham, believed it was a healthy drink that helped with digestion.
J.K. Rowling’s original Harry Potter pitch was rejected by 12 different publishers before Bloomsbury accepted it.
Over 2000 years ago, Eratosthenes estimated the Earth’s circumference using math. Without ever leaving Egypt, he was accurate to within 2%.
A bowler named James Blackstone once received a score of 299.5 after a pin cracked in half on the last frame. The bottom half of the pin fell remained standing, while the top half fell over.
The year 46 BC, known as the "year of confusion," was a whopping 445 days long. Julius Caesar added three extra months in order to make his Julian calendar line up with the seasonal year.
The movie The Shawshank Redemption has the highest user rating out of any film of all time on IMDB. The movie is actually an adaption of a Stephen King novella titled "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption."
The hippopotamus has two different auditory systems. They use their little ears (above water) to receive sound waves in the air. They also use their large jawbones to conduct waves underwater, and can judge distances based on the latencies in the arrivals of these sounds which helps them navigate underwater.
The most expensive book ever purchased was Leonardo Da Vinci's "Codex Leicester," which was sold to Bill Gates for $30.8 million.
Star quarterback Brett Favre's first career completion in the NFL was to himself for a loss of 7 yards.
A wood frog species in Alaska is known to be able to hold its bladder for 8 months at a time. The urine actually keeps it alive while it hibernates.
Every minute the human body sheds over 30,000 dead skin cells.
The US has a perpetual lease for Guantanamo Bay and sends Cuba an annual check for about $4500, but the Cuban government has refused to accept the check since 1953. However, one time in 1959 the check was accidentally deposited due to confusion.
It would require close to 2,000,000 mosquito bites in order to lose two liters, a life-threatening amount of blood.
MLB catcher Harry Chiti was the first player to ever be traded for himself. He was traded from the Indians to the Mets for a "player to be named later," but after only 15 awful games, he was sent back to the Indians as that player to be named. Oof.
Scientific studies suggest that procrastination is less a result of laziness or poor time management, and more likely a result of poor "mood management."
There was a period during the 18th century in which the British referred to cucumbers as "cowcumbers" because they were only thought to be good for animal food.
Kool-Aid was invented in Hastings, Nebraska in the year 1927.
The word LEGO is formed from the Danish word “Leg Godt” which means 'play well' in English. In Latin, it means ‘putting together’.
Venus is the only planet in our solar system that rotates clockwise.
The 1912 Olympics was the last time that gold medals were actually solid gold. Since then, they are silver medals with a gold plating.
By 1955, forty-nine of the U.S. states agreed that state highways should have a white stripe down the middle between cars going in different directions. The lone holdout was Oregon, who believed that a yellow line was safer. Sixteen years later, the government mandated these white lanes be painted yellow, proving Oregon right.
The world’s shortest tree is the dwarf willow, which lives in cold regions such as the arctic tundra. It rarely grows more than a few inches high.
The first living creature in space was a monkey named Albert I. NASA wanted to send Albert to see if he would be able to survive before they attempted to send any humans. Albert ended up suffocating and did not make it back home alive.
In Switzerland it is illegal to own just one guinea pig. This is because they are highly social, and it's considered animal abuse to only have one.
The best estimates suggest that around 205,000 tons of gold have been mined throughout history. This means that if you were to take all of the gold ever mined and press it into a cube, the resulting cube would only be about 22 meters wide on each side.
Heart attacks are more likely to happen on a Monday compared to other days of the week (20% more likely for men, 15% more likely for women).
Excluding free throws, Shaquille O'Neal made more than 11,000 shots in his NBA career. Only one of them was a 3 point shot.
There was a NASA scientist during Apollo 13 who went into labor. Before going to the hospital, she printed out one of the problems they couldn't figure out and ended up solving it while at the hospital. This solution ended up being crucial to the safe return of the astronauts. She also successfully delivered her baby, who we know today as Jack Black.
"Fox Tossing" was a popular sport in 17th and 18th century England. As you might guess, it involves throwing a fox as far and high as you can.
Outback Steakhouse was founded by four Americans, none of whom had ever been to Australia.
The IRS does not accept checks for more than 100 million dollars. If you happen to owe more than that, you either need to spread the payment over multiple checks, or consider a form of electronic payment.
The "mystery" flavored Dum Dums were originally made from the mixed material that formed between two different batches of flavor. Since this was not a pure flavor but a mixture, they found a way to sell it as a mystery! Apparently this is no longer true today.
The Wright Brothers only flew together on the same flight one time. They promised their father, Milton, they would never fly together to avoid the possibility of both dying in a crash; this also ensured that one brother would remain alive to carry on their experiments.
"Home field advantage" is thought to be a factor in many major sports, but the 2019 World Series between the Houston Astros and Washington Nationals saw the home team lose each of the 7 games (4 games in Houston and 3 games in Washington, D.C.).
After President James Garfield was shot, his doctors were so negligent and gave him such a bad infection, that his assassin openly confessed to the shooting at his trial, arguing that while he had done the shooting, it was the doctors who had done the killing. However, the jury was not impressed by his insane antics, and he was found guilty and publicly executed.
The pistol shrimp can create a bubble underwater that can get as hot as 4800 degrees Celsius, which is on the same magnitude as the heat on the surface of the sun (5600 degrees Celsisus).
"Ultracrepidarian" is the name for a person who tries to offer opinions or expertise on topics which they are not actually knowledgable about.
The blue bird in the original Twitter logo is named Larry.
Facebook's color scheme is blue because owner Mark Zuckerberg suffers from red-green color-blindness.
The grizzly bear is the state animal of California, even though one hasn't been spotted there since 1922.
It takes around 3,000 cows to supply enough leather for a full season's worth of NFL footballs.
The temperature -40 °C is equal to -40 °F, and this number represents the only temperature that is the same in both Celsius and Fahrenheit.
John Phillips, an underachieving Princeton student in 1976, used publicly available books and papers to write a report on how to create a nuclear bomb. He received an A, but his paper was promptly confiscated by the FBI because it was so accurate.
Ostrich farms sometimes have difficulty getting their male ostriches to breed, since the male ostriches are more attracted to their human caretakers than to female ostriches.
In the early 1990's, rapper LL Cool J confided to his grandmother that he could not survive as a rapper much longer with the emergence of "gangsta rap." She responded, "Oh baby, just knock them out," and inspired the Grammy Award winning song, "Mama Said Knock You Out."
The Mali Emperor Mansa Musa was so rich that while on a pilgrimage to Mecca, he gave away so much gold it caused an economic crisis. Today, Mali itself is one of the poorest nations in the world.
A ‘jiffy’ is an actual unit of time, referring to 1/100th of a second.
Jamie Siminoff appeared on Shark Tank in 2013 seeking a $700k investment in his company Doorbot, but ended up turning down an offer from investor Kevin O'Leary. After Shark Tank, he changed the name to Ring, and ended up selling the company to Amazon for more than $1 billion in 2018.
A howler monkey's tail is about five times as long as the length of his body, and his howls can be heard from up to 3 miles away.
The tree with the largest trunk is the African Baobab, which can grow close to 50 feet in diameter (a circumference of 155 feet).
Alaska has a longer coastline than the other 49 states put together.
In the early 2000's, several companies such as Google, Apple, Intel, and Adobe came to an agreement not to hire each other's employees in an effort to keep salaries low. This eventually led to a $400 million class action lawsuit.
In the 1930's, a map-making company put a "phantom settlement" called Agloe on their map, a location that didn't really exist, but was included as a trap to catch anyone plagiarizing their work. Two decades later, Rand McNally put out a map that included Agloe as well, and the original company sought to sue them for plagiarism. However, to their astonishment, a tiny settlement had actually come together at that location and named themselves Agloe after seeing that name on the map.
The average life span of a pet cat has more than doubled from the 1980s to 2021, increasing from 7 years to 15 years.
The first book ever written with a typewriter was "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer."
Ken Jennings is, unsurprisingly, the highest-earning American game show contest, with winnings totaling more than $4.5 million over his 74 game win streak and additional tournaments. During his 74 game streak, he ran out of interesting facts to share about himself during the interview at the beginning of the contest, and simply began making them up.
The last letter added to the English alphabet was "j" in 1524. Prior to that, the "j" sound was represented by the letter "i."
Since tomatoes are native to the Americas, there was no tomato sauce in Italy until the 16th century. The same is true of potatoes in Ireland.
Gary Oldman is actually 13 days younger than Gary Numan.
Animal Planet had a successful reality series called "River Monsters," but had to end the show when star Jeremy Wade ended up catching just about every exceptionally large freshwater fish species known on earth, leaving no remaining content for the show.
The word "pothole" is a redundant term. "Pot" comes from the middle English word "pit," meaning hole. Thus, a pothole is a "hole-hole."
In ancient Egypt, all ships visiting Alexandria were obliged to surrender their books to the Royal Library and be copied. The original would be kept in the library and the copy given back to the owner.
Roughly 14% of the caucasian population is missing a tendon in their arm known as the palmaris longus.
“Forty” is the only number that is spelt with letters arranged in alphabetical order.
"Four" is the only number that is spelled with the same number of letters as itself.
George Miller had his wife Margaret Sixel edit the movie Mad Max: Fury Road. Even though she had never cut an action movie before, Miller felt that if it was edited by "the usual kind of guys, it would look like every other action movie we see." She went on to win a Oscar for her editing work in the film.
One teaspoon of soil contains more microorganisms than there are people on the entire planet.
The nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb" was actually based on a real girl in Boston named Mary Sawyer, whose pet lamb followed her to school one day.
The first number to be spelled using the letter "a" is "one thousand."
A hippopotamus' sweat is red, but does not contain blood. This red pigment provides a natural sunblock and also prevents bacterial growth on their skin.
The largest tsunami ever recorded occurred in Lituya Bay, Alaska in 1958, with a wave reaching the incredible height of 1720 feet.
In order to fairly assess taxes in the 1600's, King Christian IV of Denmark asked ship captains to estimate the value of their cargo, and this value was decided as the taxable amount without further questions asked. However, the King also possessed the right to purchase the entire cargo at exactly the price they named.
Zachary Taylor, the 12th president of the United States, died during his presidency from a gastrointestinal disease that was thought to be the result of eating too many cherries and too much iced milk at a 4th of July party.
Sloths have been known to grab their own arm, mistaking it for a branch, which causes them to fall out of the tree and sometimes kills them.
Until 1971, the Postmaster General (the head of the USPS) sat on the President's Cabinet and was in the line of succession of the president.
The unicorn is the national animal of Scotland.
In 2013 a surgeon in the U.K. was convicted of assault after branding his initials into two patients' livers during a transplant.
George Washington never knew that dinosaurs existed, as they were not studied scientifically until the 1800's.
Rajveer Meena of India holds the world record for reciting the most digits of Pi at 70,000 decimal places.
John Steinbeck's original manuscript for Of Mice and Men was eaten by his dog, Toby.
The three most-read books in the world today are believed to be The Bible, Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, and Harry Potter.
A giraffe's heart is about 2 feet long.
The male giraffe will continuously headbutt the female in the bladder until she urinates. The male then tastes the urine to determine if she is ovulating, and if so, the merriment begins…
The M-185 highway that goes around Michigan's Mackinac Island is the only state highway in the United States that bans all motor vehicles.
The Great Fire of London in 1666 destroyed more than 13,500 homes and displaced more than 80,000 people, but amazingly only caused 6 deaths.
Although a Major League Baseball game typically lasts around three hours, on average there are around 10 minutes of actual play-time if you count pitches being thrown and balls in play.
According to a 2020 study, at least 27% of Americans over the age of 18 have cut off contact with a family member.
The first known speeding ticket was issued to Walter Arnold in 1896 for going the whopping speed of 8 miles per hour. The posted speed limit was 2 mph.
The official state question of New Mexico is "Red or green?", which refers to which type of chile sauce you'd like on your food.
There is a phenomenon known as "third man syndrome" in which people undergoing traumatic, life-threatening experiences feel the presence of an unknown party (such as a spirit) offering advice or comfort.
The book Ender's Game was primarily written as a setup book so that the author, Orson Scott Card, could write the book he really wanted to write: Speaker for the Dead. As it turns out, Ender's Game became wildly popular while Speaker for the Dead has only been read by a fraction of as many people.
A study done by Union College in 2019 determined that joining a fraternity lowered a student's GPA by 0.25 on average, but increased their future income by 36% compared to those who didn't join.
The longest wedding veil on record stretched 22,843 feet, which is more than 4 miles long.
One in 10 people born in Europe are thought to be conceived in an Ikea bed.
The bark on larger Redwood trees can be as much as two feet thick.
Durian, which grows in Southeast Asia, is known as the smelliest fruit in the world. It can smell like rotten eggs, sweaty socks, or garbage.
Bats eat enough insects each year to save the United States more than one billion dollars annually in crop damage and pesticides.
That distinct smell of vomit is caused by the presence of butyric acid. This acid is also found in parmesan cheese and other dairy products.
Our brains are made up of about 75% water, which is one of the reasons that dehydration can lead to headaches, weariness, and decreased mental capacity.
German chocolate cake was invented by an English-American baker named Samuel German. It has nothing to do with the country of Germany.
James Patterson was the first ever writer to exceed one million sales in ebooks.
The word "set" has the largest number of meanings in the English language, with the Oxford English Dictionary listing 430 different senses in which the word can be used.
About one in every 5,000 babies is born with a blocked or missing butt hole. This is a condition known as "imperforate anus" and generally requires surgery to create the opening.
A cockroach can live for nine days without its head before it finally dies of starvation.
A pineapple takes anywhere from 1.5 to 3 years to grow.
Before coming to the United States as a toy in the 1920's, the yo-yo was originally used in the Philippines as a weapon in the 16th century.
The rules of basketball changed in 1937. Prior to then, the referee would toss a "jump ball" after every made basket instead of giving the ball to the other team.
Babies are born with around 300 bones, but some of these will eventually fuse together, which is why the adult body only has 206 bones.
Prior to the year 1800, 43% of all people died before reaching the age of 5.
On the Apollo 10 spaceflight, there was an unidentified turd floating around the spacecraft for which each of the astronauts denied responsibility.