The Earth's endless mysteries continue to fascinate us and make us realize we are all specks of dust even as occupants of the blue planet.
And newsflash: Contrary to some people's belief, the earth is not flat.
Did you know the Amazon River has 1100 tributaries? Or that you can walk from Gibraltar all the way to either South Africa or Malaysia if you so desire?
It's okay if you didn't. There's a reason why some geography facts are considered useless information.
Curious to hear more trivai from strangers on the internet, Redditor IcelandSushie asked:
"What's a useless geography fact?"
Bodies Of Water
The following factoids tend to sink beneath the surface.
Lava Land
"There was an island originated by volcanic eruption below southern Italy. Different countries argued about which one should have been its rightful owner, but some time later there was another eruption and the island disappeared."
"Posiden's Island."
– aibaron
Land O' Lakes
"Canada has the more lakes than every other country combined."
– Potensh
"The United States has more land area than canada, but not if you count the lakes."
"The United States has more land area than Canada even if you include all the lakes. Because the land area of a lake is zero."
Deepest Lake
"Lake Baikal contains approximately 20% of the world's surface freshwater."
"Holy crap, it would take over three years for the Amazon River (discharge of 6500 cu km/yr) to fill Lake Baikal (volume of 23615 cu km)!"
"And the Amazon River is f'king huge, more discharge than the next seven rivers combined."
Head Scratchers
Don't think too hard. You might break your brain from these statistics involving size, direction, and borders.
Same Destination
"If someone were to travel in any of the four cardinal directions from anywhere in Los Algodones, Mexico (due north, due east, due south, or due west), they would cross a U.S. border."
French Border
"France shares its longest border with Brazil."
"Yup. People forget that French Guiana and also the island of Reunion (Indian Ocean) are not mere overseas territories... they are actually France on the same basis that Paris and Bordeaux are France."
The Biggest State
"Alaska, the largest state in the US, is almost 3 times larger than the second largest state in the US which is Texas."
Beyond Our Borders
Were you aware about these interesting tidbits from abroad?
Word
"not exactly a geography fact but some cool wordplay."
"the first three letters of Sweden and Denmark spell Sweden while the remaining letters spell Denmark!"
Thing About Switzerland
"Switzerland is a third world country. Third world simply means not a NATO aligned country (first world) and not a Warsaw pact aligned country (second world). Other neutral countries are also third world - Finland, Austria and Ireland being capitalist examples and Yugoslavia being a communist example."
– mordenty
Barely Exists
"Because Finland is .2% of the global population, and the number of people in the world is always at +/- .2% of the number, there is a chance that Finland doesn't exist."
– teb_22
While these alleged "useless" geography facts will not increase your chances of getting a high-paying job, your now increased awareness will make you the talk of the town.
So the next time you're at a dinner party and you don't know how to start a conversation, try saying: "did you know Alaska is three times larger than Texas?"
Either you'll be frowned upon as a crazy person giving unsolicited information OR you could bring life to that party. It's worth a try, right?
Typically, I would write an intro about my own experiences with the weird kids at school, but I WAS the weird kid in school. Not in a bad way, more like a “I had a John Waters phase” when I was 16 and everyone knew it. So like, cool-weird. At least I hope so.
Schools aren’t always so lucky to have the cool kinds of weird kids though. The spectrum of weird extends even further than that, and can sometimes end up very disasterous.
U/Imaginary_East5786 asked: What was the weirdest thing the weird kid did at school?
Let’s start with the grossest of the gross. Because why not.
Was it worth it?
peeing ralph wiggum GIF
Giphy
He heard that you'd automatically get suspended if you peed your pants at school. He wanted to find out if it was true, peed his pants, got suspended.
> Observation: 'I've heard that by peeing your pants you will be suspended'
> Hypothesis: If I pee my pants I will be suspended
> Experiment: I peed my pants and I got suspended
> Conclusion: If I pee my pants I get suspended
Uhhh what was the intention here?
He got mad that he didn't understand how to play a game at lunchtime so he started hitting and punching the nearest person to him, who happened to be me. When I shoved him away and asked him what the hell was he doing, he whipped his unit.out, charged at me and when I shoved him away from me again he started crying and ran away with his member still sticking out.
Next ones up are the lowkey (or even highkey) disturbing stories. These weird kids can get a little scary.
Boom theret.
At my middle school, someone decided to get a little attention with a good old fashioned bomb threat. Except they thought that a bomb threat meant literally writing "bomb threat" somewhere. Worse yet, they misspelled the f*ck out of it, and wrote "boom theret."
So we had to go on a brief, very awkward lockdown while the police checked the perimeter for booms.
I hope there was no overlap in the columns.
Serial Killer Halloween GIF by GIPHY CAM
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She wrote a list of all the girls and boys she wanted to kiss and murder and then casually passed it out on the playground.
2 separate lists or just the 1?
Same list 2 columns lol.
Holy crap.
Had the weird kid in high school ask the teacher to use the bathroom. She said no and this dude legit stabbed his hand with a pencil. Went all the way through then asked if he could now...sh*t was wild.
This was Pearl High School in Mississippi. This was the school Luke Woodham shot and killed his girlfriend and her friend at the school. This kid stabbed himself with the pencil about 2 months after that happened. This was late 1997.
Most of the time, however, the weird kids are pretty d*mn funny.
Ok, but this takes a lot of skill.
Had a kid nicknamed "cheeseburger" in the grade ahead of me in high school. He got his nickname because when it was time for his class to go to lunch, he snuck into the roof and crawled his way into the cafeteria, dropped down and proceeded to steal all the cheeseburger put out for lunch. Unfortunately they caught him in the act and sent him to the principal's office.
A year later he was caught stealing a teacher's computer, and in the process of being arrested he bit the officers hand, getting him sent to juvi never to be heard of again.
Every school had the cat girl.
cat dragging GIF
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The weird kid at my highschool tied a string around his pencil case and pulled out around the halls pretending it was a dog. He still lives in my hometown. I think unemployed.
Oh also weird girl in middle school acted like a cat. She would meow and hiss at people, lick the water fountain and rub her body on the teacher's legs. In 8th grade. I have no idea where she ended up.
Mood.
Weird kid in elementary was a self proclaimed alien. Once, while waiting for the bus, she told me "On my planet we eat people like you" and proceeded to bite me. We later became friends in high school and she used to give me massages during lunch break in the quad. Just realized now she was likely tenderizing me.
I was exactly this kind of weird.
He didn't say much, but if asked, he would go to the front of the class and perform Tip-Toe Through the Tulips with all of the emotion and volume of Tiny Tim, holding nothing back.
The last I heard, he became an energy trader, made a ton of money and married well.
I can definitely relate to that last one. In middle school, my English teacher would let me go to the front of the class and perform monologues or songs from Broadway musicals. Weird, but that’s what happens when schools cut funding for the arts and the theatre kids have no outlet.
As long as you’re not hurting anyone, I say let your freak flag fly, man