Information flows through the internet at speeds so fast that, if you literally blink, you'll miss it. Outlets like political Twitter timelines, science blogs, and YouTube channels dedicated to world history, have made it their mission to share the most interesting facts on a variety of topics. Even with those sources, you might have missed some things. Don't worry. Reddit's got your back, thanks to a question asked by user, r/Taully12:

Reddit, what is the most 'mind boggling' fact you know?

In World War 2, a Hungarian Mathematician named Abraham Wald developed a counter-intuitive method for armor plate placement while studying damaged aircraft. He observed planes returning home from sorties with large holes in them, and was tasked with figuring out where to put armor plates. His crucial insight was to not put armor plates where the holes were.

The holes in the aircraft that returned represented damage that did not impact the ability of the planes to return home. In other words, he made the critical observation of the bias in the data he was observing: he was only looking at planes that survived. With this knowledge, he instructed armor to be placed in areas that were not damaged, because if these areas were hit, there would be no damage in that component in the planes that returned home.

dankeHerrSkeltal

The inscription on the One Ring from Lord Of The Rings is not actually "Elvish" which quite a few people mistake it to be, but an entirely different language that Tolkien created called The Black Speech of Mordor or "Orcish".

Tolkien has stated that he came up with the Black Speech by thinking of the most horrible things in his life. In particular his experiences from WW1, which is why when you hear The Black Speech, such as when Sauron speaks it in LOTR & The Hobbit, it sounds like a dialect sent straight from hell.

He grew to be disgusted by the language he created so much that when a fan sent him a wine goblet with The One Ring's inscription on it as a gift, he used it as an ashtray.

killingjoke96

All of the solid objects around me are actually "vibrating".

judsonm123

43% of all people born prior to 1800 died before the age of 5

_abbottcostello

Cicadas live underground for several years and emerge only to reproduce. The number of years they take to come above ground is mostly a prime number. Each species has its own prime number of years they stay underground.

The reason to be a prime number is that it reduces drastically the chance of two different species meeting above ground in the same year and crossbreed, weakening the genes of both species.

[EDIT] As several people pointed out, crossbreeding might be actually good for the evolution on the long run. However, each species is already refining their genes for ages. If they crossbreed they have to start over the whole process.

mycelo

Indiana legislators tried to legally define pi as 3.2... and almost succeeded

nariofromnarnia

In the mid-1880s Aluminum was more valuable than gold, now we use it expendably to wrap food.

BadSarc

Olympus Mons on Mars, the tallest known mountain in the solar system, is so large at its base that an observer on its peak wouldn't know he was standing on a mountain because its slope would be obscured by the curvature of the planet itself.

madjula

that if sound waves could travel through space the sun burning would sound as loud as a chainsaw at about 10 metres...

psygnoproteus

There is microscopic organism called a tardigrade (also water bear) which can survive extreme environments, including the vacuum of space, by dehydrating its body and basically putting itself into stasis. Then, when conditions improve, it absorbs some water and goes back to doing whatever it does.

noossab

Male Irish mummies are often found with nipple mutilations leading many experts to believe Irish leaders may have wore nipple rings, as kissing a King's nipple was believed to be a sign of respect.

[username deleted]

A supernova seen from the distance the Sun is to the Earth will be brighter, in terms of energy delivered to your retina, than a hydrogen bomb pressed against your eyeball...by 9 orders of magnitude

TheDanimal8888

From the time that it was discovered (1930), to the time that it was declassified as a planet (2006), Pluto made less than a third of a full revolution around the sun.

quickpocket

Cortés landed in South America or the New World and spread diseases that after 80 years killed 21 million natives. 21 million people in 80 years. That's 262,500 people dying annually, 730 people dying daily and 30 people hourly, for 80 years straight.

Sweston34

There are more atoms in a teaspoon of water than there are teaspoons of water in the Atlantic.

_meat_andtaters

That in WWII, an American airman by the name of Alan Magee survived a free fall from 22,000 ft without a parachute and becoming a prisoner of war for 2 years.

In 1943 he was in a B-17 making a bombing run over France when plane's wing was shot off by German fighters. As the plane entered a spin he leapt out without a parachute and immediately lost consciousness from the altitude. After falling 4 miles he crashed through the glass ceiling of the St. Nazaire railroad station and onto the floor below where he was captured as a prisoner of war. He suffered almost 30 shrapnel wounds, several broken bones, severe damage to his nose, eyes, lungs, kidneys, and his right arm was nearly severed off. His captors treated him back to health.

He was liberated in 1945 and awarded an Air Medal and a Purple Heart.

Feverhorse

When you speak inside your mind small muscles in your throat mimic the formation of each word.

kixxaxxas

This is called subvocalisation and a couple people (maybe NASA or us military?) are actually trying to build a machine that would detect the muscle movements and transcribe them to words. I believe they already have a very basic prototype.

So in a few decades maybe we'll be able to "read minds"

Edit: this is not necessarily a bad thing -such a machine could help millions of people.

JustHereToRedditAway

Eels actually have 2 jaws. The first being like a normal jaw, the second being hidden in their throat. The secondary jaw lunges forward when the eel bites down on prey, bites down on the piece within the mouth and bites a chunk out of it, pulling it down the throat. Think about the alien in the movie Alien, the secondary mini-mouth they use is based off an eels anatomy.

Belledemort

That France was still executing by guillotine during the first Star Wars movie.

OdmupPet

The fact that recently a group of scientists went to investigate a forest of trees that were able to live for thousands of years on their own, and ended up finding traces of massive radiation in the very early rings of the trunks. All of them had this in the same spots.

Around the same time, judging by the average age of the trees and the rings the radiation was located in, there was a battle involving the Crusaders (Deus Vult btw), and one of the soldier's uncovered diaries had described seeing the image of the cross burning like fire in the sky, which had given them extra morale and then they won the battle.

So, using logic, you can guess that this 'cross in the sky' was what caused the radiation. And I can hear you thinking 'How in the f---?'. Well, I can proudly tell you that literally no-one knows.

SteaMonkey

People have graffitied penises onto the Great Wall of China that have existed for longer than the USA

1122233334444

Senator Daniel Inouye literally lived-out every over-done action movie trope:

Inouye was promoted to sergeant within his first year, and he was assigned as a platoon sergeant. He served in Italy in 1944 during the Rome-Arno Campaign before his regiment was transferred to the Vosges Mountains region of France, where he spent two weeks in the battle to relieve the Lost Battalion, a battalion of the 141st Infantry Regiment that was surrounded by German forces. He was promoted to second lieutenant for his actions there. At one point while he was leading an attack, a shot struck him in the chest directly above his heart, but the bullet was stopped by the two silver dollars he happened to have stacked in his shirt pocket. He continued to carry the coins throughout the war in his shirt pocket as good luck charms, until he lost them shortly before the battle in which he lost his arm.

On April 21, 1945, Inouye was grievously wounded while leading an assault on a heavily defended ridge near San Terenzo in Tuscany, Italy, called the Colle Musatello. The ridge served as a strongpoint of the German fortifications known as the Gothic Line, the last and most unyielding line of German defensive works in Italy. As he led his platoon in a flanking maneuver, three German machine guns opened fire from covered positions 40 yards away, pinning his men to the ground. Inouye stood up to attack and was shot in the stomach. Ignoring his wound, he proceeded to attack and destroy the first machine gun nest with hand grenades and his Thompson submachine gun. When informed of the severity of his wound, he refused treatment and rallied his men for an attack on the second machine gun position, which he successfully destroyed before collapsing from blood loss.

As his squad distracted the third machine gunner, Inouye crawled toward the final bunker, coming within 10 yards. As he raised himself up and cocked his arm to throw his last grenade, a German soldier inside the bunker fired a rifle grenade, which struck his right elbow, nearly severing most of his arm and leaving his primed grenade reflexively "clenched in a fist that suddenly didn't belong to me anymore". Inouye's horrified soldiers moved to his aid, but he shouted for them to keep back out of fear his severed fist would involuntarily relax and drop the grenade. While the German inside the bunker reloaded his rifle, Inouye pried the live grenade from his useless right hand and transferred it to his left. As the enemy soldier aimed his rifle at him, Inouye tossed the grenade into the bunker and destroyed it. He stumbled to his feet and continued forward, silencing the last German resistance with a one-handed burst from his Thompson before being wounded in the leg and tumbling unconscious to the bottom of the ridge. He awoke to see the worried men of his platoon hovering over him. His only comment before being carried away was to order them back to their positions, saying "Nobody called off the war!"

The remainder of Inouye's mutilated right arm was later amputated at a field hospital without proper anesthesia, as he had been given too much morphine at an aid station and it was feared any more would lower his blood pressure enough to kill him.

This all from a first-generation Japanese-American that enlisted into a segregated division only after the US lifted the ban on the Japanese serving in the military.

getjustin

Hawaii is very proud of him. One of the main highways on my island is named after him.

Daronakah

H/T: Reddit