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People Share The Most Random Facts They Know

Jeopardy! Call me!

People Share The Most Random Facts They Know
Image by Anemone123 from Pixabay

The amount of knowledge we acquire over the course of our lives is astonishing. When we really sit down and think, we'd all be amazed at the stockpile of information our brains store. That's why more of us should try to get on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" You don't have to be a genius to know things. And we know the most inexplicable things.

Redditor u/JM5172 wanted to learn a few things about life by asking... What's a random fact you know for some reason?

Did you know dolphins sleep with one eye open? How is that possible? I sleep with an eye mask and curtains drawn in complete darkness. But they do it to be ready for sharks. They can actually turn off half of their brains one side at a time. Crazy.

Slow Down!

Driving Biff Tannen GIF by Back to the Future TrilogyGiphy

Here is one "The first ever person convicted of speeding was going 8 mph."

iTzDp14

Bless You

Approximately 20% of people in the world can make themselves sneeze by looking into the sun.

roflgrim

I'm more surprised by the fact it's only 20% of people. I remember having a conversation about being able to do this in grade school and everyone agreed that looking at the sun causes sneezing. Hell, if it's during allergy season and I focus enough I can create a genuine sneeze on command.

randomusername02130

ZAPPED!!!!

Frank Zappa was playing a show with The Mothers Of Invention at a casino on a lake in Switzerland when an audience member shot a flare off causing the place to catch fire and burn down, destroying a ton of their equipment. A week later they played in London with rented equipment and Frank was pushed off the stage by a jealous fan who thought Frank was f**king his girlfriend. Frank was messed up really bad and never toured with The Mothers of Invention ever again. In fact for 6 months he was in a wheelchair and couldn't tour at all. These two events really changed the trajectory of his musical career.

At the same time as the infamous Switzerland show, a band had arrived at a hotel across the lake to record an album. They watched the casino burn from the hotel and it inspired them to write a new song right there in the hotel. The band, Deep Purple, then recorded what would become their most famous song "Smoke on the Water".

I don't know why I know this because I'm not a fan of either of them.

wooztheweb

Tardigrades

Water bears (Tardigrades) can survive a few minutes near absolute zero. They can also survive being boiled. They can also lose like 99% of the water in their body and live for years as a dehydrated nothing. Then return to normal form when/if they end up in a better environment.

I read about them in in a science magazine when I was like 11. They seemed like the most bad@ss creature on earth so I never forgot about them.

SleepingOnTheLazyBoy

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Science is science. Fact is fact. Truth is truth and simple is simple. These are things we must now attest to in 2021. Can we please all get onboard with wha...

What about Carrots?

season 2 episode 10 GIF by SpongeBob SquarePantsGiphy

When threatened, the sea cucumber will eject its digestive system to scare its predators.

Zbignich

That happened to me once after eating a bad piece of fish.

mynam3isn3o

So far, so very interesting. I never look into the Sun and know I have to to see if I'm part of the 20% of sneezers. And 8 miles an hour? That's petty...

Super Baby

Baby Success GIFGiphy

Babies can hold their entire body-weight suspended from a stick for several seconds up to a minute. Current thought is that it's an ability left from when we were a lot hairier.

Jawlikebutt

Equate it All...

81 x 81 = 6,561. In middle school, me and one of my friends were convinced we could memorize all math equations and this is the only one that stuck with me outside of the standard multiplication table.

domthehooper

111111111 x 111111111 = 12345678987654321

Martin_RB

Measured...

Music charts in the US is measured in 'Top 40' because standard jukebox machines in the past held 40 records.

BizarroCullen

Interesting, I heard something similar, but not jukebox limits but radio play time limits. Ie they wanted the "most popular countdown" show and 40 was the number of songs they could reliably fit into that format without making the show too long (three hours or something).

hansn

Secrets

The White House only got the ability to print double-sided documents in 2016.

brynjamen

The amount of ancient technology our government uses is staggering. You'd think the pentagon would be filled with super computers, but up until like three years ago, the Pentagon was having custom floppy disks made and paying a crap ton of money for it because...

1- No one made floppy disks anymore and...

2- the computers they were using were so old that they didn't have cd imports.

puppylv777

Sweat it Out

Sweating Hot Dog GIFGiphy

Cows sweat through their nose.

Butt_Roidholds

Dogs sweat through their nose and paws.

fiskars12345

The Timing

Despite what you see in movies and TV, the effects of chloroform don't kick in for another 5 minutes or so after it's been administered.

ScorpionX-123

That's just when you start feeling the effect. It takes a lot longer for what you see in movies. In fact a lot of people use chloroform to get high.

General-Solid4977

Manic Mondays

President James Garfield died on a Monday. His assassin, Charles Guiteau, when shopping for a gun, decided on one with an ivory grip because it would look better in a museum. He also tried touring the facility where he expected to be incarcerated, but was turned away.

herculesmeowlligan

I guess that's why Garfield really hated Mondays.

Garteg

Pounds Away

Anthony Anderson Reaction GIFGiphy

Crying helps you lose weight,

Told this to my friends every time they cried, sometime it helped.

Raidropn

And most weight loss (practically all of it, actually) is lost through breathing.

Granted, there's only a minuscule amount of waste CO2 expelled in each breath from you burning your energy reserves to stay alive, but think of how many breaths you take in a day, and over the course of weeks to months.

AdvocateSaint

So Cute

Cute Aggression is a feeling you get when you get overwhelmed by positive emotion so your brain tries to counterbalance that with negative emotions. So there can be things that are so cute you wanna kill them.

-Jiras

I remember reading somewhere on the internet (so it has to be true) that the reason people squeeze cute small animals is because the human brain literally cannon comprehend how cute it is and therefore instinctively wants to make it stop being so cute by squeezing it to death.

SmallTowneBoy

The Dust

The difference in size between a grain of dust and the Earth is the same difference in size between a grain of dust and an atom. furthermore, the difference in size between the Earth and an atom is the same difference in size between an atom and 1 plank length.

KageSama1919

Hey Flipper

Dolphin GIFGiphy

Dolphins get high on pufferfish 🐬.

Apparently girls have more tastebuds than boys.

There are no clocks in casinos in Vegas.

Catcat1385

3

I have three

  1. You are special, in that you are almost guaranteed to know something that someone else doesn't.
  2. By the age of 40 you probably still won't have heard the funniest joke you will ever hear, and over 40 you will probably already know the funniest joke you will ever tell to someone else.
  3. The number of possible ways to shuffle a pack of playing cards is 52 factorial - or 80,658,175,170,943,878,571,660,636,856,403,766,975,289,505,440,883,277,824,000,000,000,000

If you were to make every person on the planet shuffle a deck of cards every second of every day for the entire life of the universe there would still be a one in a trillion, trillion, trillion chance of the two decks being in the same order.

mrlippy83

Birth

Most of my random facts come from QI but the chain saw was invented to cut through the pubic bone and open the birth canal to air in child birth. It was on a pocket watch type chain that was pulled back and forth. So ya.

differentiatedpans

The Calvary

That a cavalry unit once captured a fleet of enemy ships.

Capture of the Dutch fleet at Den Helder to cross on horse back.

Basically the Dutch fleet was anchored between the 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) stretch of sea that separates the mainland port of Den Helder and the island of Texel.

That stretch of sea was frozen trapping the ships in position and it just so happened to thick enough to cross.

After a quick charge across the ice the French horsemen surrounded the 14 dutch ships.

It seems both sides were in capable of any kind of military action, the french couldn't bring across their heavy guns and the Dutch prepared to destroy the ships but it both sides decided to wait for orders.

The Dutch were ordered to surrender, there were no casualties on either side. The French took ownership of the ships but later returned them to the Batavian Republic in May 1795 under the Treaty of The Hague; one of its other provisions was an indemnity of ƒ100 million.

yorkton

Listen Up

Listen GIF by The Maury ShowGiphy

When you lose your teeth for good, the bones in your ears shift and your hearing gets worse. Brush those bad boys!

SomeRhymeNoReason

Ok. I'm taking noted because like I said... who knows when "Millionaire" or "Jeopardy" will call? Also... snails sleep for three hours at a time... just so you know.

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REDDIT

People Who Actually Died And Were Revived Share Their Experiences

"Reddit user AlaskaStiletto asked: 'Redditors who have 'died' and come back to life, what did you see?'"

Close up face of a woman in bed, staring into the camera
Photo by Jen Theodore

Experiencing death is a fascinating and frightening idea.

Who doesn't want to know what is waiting for us on the other side?

But so many of us want to know and then come back and live a little longer.

It would be so great to be sure there is something else.

But the whole dying part is not that great, so we'll have to rely on other people's accounts.

Redditor AlaskaStiletto wanted to hear from everyone who has returned to life, so they asked:

"Redditors who have 'died' and come back to life, what did you see?"

Sensations

Happy Good Vibes GIF by Major League SoccerGiphy

"My dad's heart stopped when he had a heart attack and he had to be brought back to life. He kept the paper copy of the heart monitor which shows he flatlined. He said he felt an overwhelming sensation of peace, like nothing he had felt before."

PeachesnPain

Recovery

"I had surgical complications in 2010 that caused a great deal of blood loss. As a result, I had extremely low blood pressure and could barely stay awake. I remember feeling like I was surrounded by loved ones who had passed. They were in a circle around me and I knew they were there to guide me onwards. I told them I was not ready to go because my kids needed me and I came back."

"My nurse later said she was afraid she’d find me dead every time she came into the room."

"It took months, and blood transfusions, but I recovered."

good_golly99

Take Me Back

"Overwhelming peace and happiness. A bright airy and floating feeling. I live a very stressful life. Imagine finding out the person you have had a crush on reveals they have the same feelings for you and then you win the lotto later that day - that was the feeling I had."

"I never feared death afterward and am relieved when I hear of people dying after suffering from an illness."

rayrayrayray

Free

The Light Minnie GIF by (G)I-DLEGiphy

"I had a heart surgery with near-death experience, for me at least (well the possibility that those effects are caused by morphine is also there) I just saw black and nothing else but it was warm and I had such inner peace, its weird as I sometimes still think about it and wish this feeling of being so light and free again."

TooReDTooHigh

This is why I hate surgery.

You just never know.

Shocked

Giphy

"More of a near-death experience. I was electrocuted. I felt like I was in a deep hole looking straight up in the sky. My life flashed before me. Felt sad for my family, but I had a deep sense of peace."

Admirable_Buyer6528

The SOB

"Nursing in the ICU, we’ve had people try to die on us many times during the years, some successfully. One guy stood out to me. His heart stopped. We called a code, are working on him, and suddenly he comes to. We hadn’t vented him yet, so he was able to talk, and he started screaming, 'Don’t let them take me, don’t let them take me, they are coming,' he was scared and yelling."

"Then he yelled a little more, as we tried to calm him down, he screamed, 'No, No,' and gestured towards the end of the bed, and died again. We didn’t get him back. It was seriously creepy. We called his son to tell him the news, and the son said basically, 'Good, he was an SOB.'”

1-cupcake-at-a-time

Colors

"My sister died and said it was extremely peaceful. She said it was very loud like a train station and lots of talking and she was stuck in this area that was like a curtain with lots of beautiful colors (colors that you don’t see in real life according to her) a man told her 'He was sorry, but she had to go back as it wasn’t her time.'"

Hannah_LL7

"I had a really similar experience except I was in an endless garden with flowers that were colors I had never seen before. It was quiet and peaceful and a woman in a dress looked at me, shook her head, and just said 'Not yet.' As I was coming back, it was extremely loud, like everyone in the world was trying to talk all at once. It was all very disorienting but it changed my perspective on life!"

huntokarrr

The Fog

"I was in a gray fog with a girl who looked a lot like a young version of my grandmother (who was still alive) but dressed like a pioneer in the 1800s she didn't say anything but kept pulling me towards an opening in the wall. I kept refusing to go because I was so tired."

"I finally got tired of her nagging and went and that's when I came to. I had bled out during a c-section and my heart could not beat without blood. They had to deliver the baby and sew up the bleeders. refill me with blood before they could restart my heart so, like, at least 12 minutes gone."

Fluffy-Hotel-5184

Through the Walls

"My spouse was dead for a couple of minutes one miserable night. She maintains that she saw nothing, but only heard people talking about her like through a wall. The only thing she remembers for absolute certain was begging an ER nurse that she didn't want to die."

"She's quite alive and well today."

Hot-Refrigerator6583

Well let's all be happy to be alive.

It seems to be all we have.

Man's waist line
Santhosh Vaithiyanathan/Unsplash

Trying to lose weight is a struggle understood by many people regardless of size.

The goal of reaching a healthy weight may seem unattainable, but with diet and exercise, it can pay off through persistence and discipline.

Seeing the pounds gradually drop off can also be a great motivator and incentivize people to stay the course.

Those who've achieved their respective weight goals shared their experiences when Redditor apprenti8455 asked:

"People who lost a lot of weight, what surprises you the most now?"

Redditors didn't see these coming.

Shiver Me Timbers

"I’m always cold now!"

– Telrom_1

"I had a coworker lose over 130 pounds five or six years ago. I’ve never seen him without a jacket on since."

– r7ndom

"140 lbs lost here starting just before COVID, I feel like that little old lady that's always cold, damn this top comment was on point lmao."

– mr_remy

Drawing Concern

"I lost 100 pounds over a year and a half but since I’m old(70’s) it seems few people comment on it because (I think) they think I’m wasting away from some terminal illness."

– dee-fondy

"Congrats on the weight loss! It’s honestly a real accomplishment 🙂"

"Working in oncology, I can never comment on someone’s weight loss unless I specifically know it was on purpose, regardless of their age. I think it kind of ruffles feathers at times, but like I don’t want to congratulate someone for having cancer or something. It’s a weird place to be in."

– LizardofDeath

Unleashing Insults

"I remember when I lost the first big chunk of weight (around 50 lbs) it was like it gave some people license to talk sh*t about the 'old' me. Old coworkers, friends, made a lot of not just negative, but harsh comments about what I used to look like. One person I met after the big loss saw a picture of me prior and said, 'Wow, we wouldn’t even be friends!'”

"It wasn’t extremely common, but I was a little alarmed by some of the attention. My weight has been up and down since then, but every time I gain a little it gets me a little down thinking about those things people said."

– alanamablamaspama

Not Everything Goes After Losing Weight

"The loose skin is a bit unexpected."

– KeltarCentauri

"I haven’t experienced it myself, but surgery to remove skin takes a long time to recover. Longer than bariatric surgery and usually isn’t covered by insurance unless you have both."

– KatMagic1977

"It definitely does take a long time to recover. My Dad dropped a little over 200 pounds a few years back and decided to go through with skin removal surgery to deal with the excess. His procedure was extensive, as in he had skin taken from just about every part of his body excluding his head, and he went through hell for weeks in recovery, and he was bedridden for a lot of it."

– Jaew96

These Redditors shared their pleasantly surprising experiences.

Shopping

"I can buy clothes in any store I want."

– WaySavvyD

"When I lost weight I was dying to go find cute, smaller clothes and I really struggled. As someone who had always been restricted to one or two stores that catered to plus-sized clothing, a full mall of shops with items in my size was daunting. Too many options and not enough knowledge of brands that were good vs cheap. I usually went home pretty frustrated."

– ganache98012

No More Symptoms

"Lost about 80 pounds in the past year and a half, biggest thing that I’ve noticed that I haven’t seen mentioned on here yet is my acid reflux and heartburn are basically gone. I used to be popping tums every couple hours and now they just sit in the medicine cabinet collecting dust."

– colleennicole93

Expanding Capabilities

"I'm all for not judging people by their appearance and I recognise that there are unhealthy, unachievable beauty standards, but one thing that is undeniable is that I can just do stuff now. Just stamina and flexibility alone are worth it, appearance is tertiary at best."

– Ramblonius

People Change Their Tune

"How much nicer people are to you."

"My feet weren't 'wide' they were 'fat.'"

– LiZZygsu

"Have to agree. Lost 220 lbs, people make eye contact and hold open doors and stuff"

"And on the foot thing, I also lost a full shoe size numerically and also wear regular width now 😅"

– awholedamngarden

It's gonna take some getting used to.

Bones Everywhere

"Having bones. Collarbones, wrist bones, knee bones, hip bones, ribs. I have so many bones sticking out everywhere and it’s weird as hell."

– Princess-Pancake-97

"I noticed the shadow of my ribs the other day and it threw me, there’s a whole skeleton in here."

– bekastrange

Knee Pillow

"Right?! And they’re so … pointy! Now I get why people sleep with pillows between their legs - the knee bones laying on top of each other (side sleeper here) is weird and jarring."

– snic2030

"I lost only 40 pounds within the last year or so. I’m struggling to relate to most of these comments as I feel like I just 'slimmed down' rather than dropped a ton. But wow, the pillow between the knees at night. YES! I can relate to this. I think a lot of my weight was in my thighs. I never needed to do this up until recently."

– Strongbad23

More Mobility

"I’ve lost 100 lbs since 2020. It’s a collection of little things that surprise me. For at least 10 years I couldn’t put on socks, or tie my shoes. I couldn’t bend over and pick something up. I couldn’t climb a ladder to fix something. Simple things like that I can do now that fascinate me."

"Edit: Some additional little things are sitting in a chair with arms, sitting in a booth in a restaurant, being able to shop in a normal store AND not needing to buy the biggest size there, being able to easily wipe my butt, and looking down and being able to see my penis."

– dma1965

People making significant changes, whether for mental or physical health, can surely find a newfound perspective on life.

But they can also discover different issues they never saw coming.

That being said, overcoming any challenge in life is laudable, especially if it leads to gaining confidence and ditching insecurities.

In 2017, I returned to my office after my lunch break to hear my supervisors discussing Tom Petty. This seemed like a random topic to me until one of my supervisors told me Tom Petty had passed away. He was a huge fan of Petty and spent the next hour or so combing through the internet to get more information.

He came back into the room my other supervisor and I were working in and announced that Tom Petty wasn't dead after all. News outlets had jumped the gun to announce his death, but he was actually still alive.

The next day, I came in to find out that Tom Petty was dead; the news may have been premature, but true.

This is a classic example of the rumor being started on the internet. Sometimes, like with the news of Tom Petty's death, the rumor can run wild and appear everywhere. Other times, the rumor can be seen by just a few people and dismissed. However, a lot of times, these rumors turn out to be true.

Redditors know a lot of internet rumors that turned out to be true, and are eager to share.

It all started when Redditor strakerak asked:

"What started out as an internet rumor that ended up being infamously true?"

The King Of Pop

"Michael Jackson writing the music for Sonic 3."

"He actually did, but was never credited on the game because it would breach his contract with his record label."

– -WigglyLine-

"He did the same when he appeared on The Simpsons. He appeared under a pseudonym, and the Producers said it was an impersonator."

"Only years later they confirmed it really was Michael."

"His singing voice was actually done by an impersonator, though."

– given2fly_

The Truth Comes Out

"In 1998, US Men’s National Team captain John Harkes was shockingly cut from the team right before the World Cup. The coach claimed it was because Harkes wouldn’t fit into his new preferred formation, but rumors flew on the early internet that it was actually because he had slept with his teammate Eric Wynalda’s wife. The rumor was so well-known in soccer circles that Harkes expressly denied it in his autobiography the next year."

"Fast forward 12 years to 2010 and Wynalda admits it’s true. The coach then came out and admitted it was why he dropped Harkes, but that he’d planned to keep the secret as long as Wynalda did."

– guyfromsoccer

Video Evidence

"The Tim Burton Hansel and Gretel that aired once on halloween in the 80's."

"I heard for years that it was fake but I knew it was real because my dad recorded everything in the 80s and he recorded that. We let a good friend of ours borrow it and switch it over from VHS to DVD and soon after that it made its way on to the internet , and there it is now. I know it's our copy because the tracking in the beginning is screwed up. Still have the VHS."

– Frozenthickness

"There was a similar story with a Nickelodeon movie called Cry Baby Lane. It was supposed to be so scary that Nickelodeon got complaints and denied its existence for years. Someone uploaded a taped copy to youtube about a decade ago."

– PattiAllen

The Movie Business

"That North Korea hacked Sony Pictures because of The Interview movie."

"I worked in the movie business at the time and the account managers at Sony all basically needed to get new identities as all of their personal information got leaked online."

OldMastodon5363

"My partner worked on that movie and the production bought all the crew 1 year of an identity theft tracking service."

CMV_Viremia

Keep Away From The Ears Of Kids

"Some banned episodes or scenes of cartoons."

"For example, I remember there was a Dexter’s Lab cartoon where he clones evil versions of DeDe and himself and they swear like every other word (censored of course), and people debated whether it even existed cause they only aired it like once. Now it’s pretty accessible online."

– Spledidlife

Yes, It's True

"Echelon, a massive electronic espionage system by the US and allies to intercept all electronic messages, especially emails."

"In the mid-nineties it was a topic on conspiracy BBS boards. A lot of people in my bubble at the time (mainly uni students in Europe) were including fake threats to the US in the their email signatures as a way to "protest" and "fill the system with false alarms" (obviously useless)."

"Then, in 1999-2000 came out to be true and a lot of security service agencies from UK and other US allies started to admit they were part of the espionage network."

– latflickr

How The Mighty Fell

"John Edward’s love child."

– ACam574

"A reminder that he was cheating on his wife while she was hospitalized for cancer treatment."

– Fanclock314

Ugh...

"Carrie Fisher's heart attack. Some a**hole who was on the same flight was livetweeting the whole medical emergency and justified it by insisting she was just making sure the family was informed."

– everylastlight

It Actually Happened

"Every year around her birthday there was a rumor that Betty White died. When I heard she died, I scoffed, saying that dumb rumor is back.... then saw it on the news. I was in shock."

– Known-Committee8679

"The fact that Betty died literally right before she turned 100 is such a Betty White way to go out."

– Paganigsegg

Big Actor, Small Roles

"I distinctly remember some rumors about the reason why Bruce Willis was taking so many roles in sh*tty movies before it was announced he has dementia."

– KampferMann

"RedLetterMedia did a deep dive on his recent movie activity to try and work out why exactly he was taking part in basically scam-movies. They noticed he had an earpiece in one of the scenes and joked that the director was feeding him lines. I remember they even disclaimed over the rumours at the time, and possible made a follow-up vid when it was revealed to the public."

– CardinalCreepia

What To Do Next?

"That the writer of LOST were making it up as they went."

"Turned out to be absolutely true."

– homarjr

That last one was kind of obvious!

Do you have any to add? Let us know in the comment below.