Redditorevery1isstupidwanted to hear about all the things people think we all need to know.
So they asked:
"What’s a random fact you think is worth sharing?"
I just learned the origin of Valentine's Day and I love it.
Nothing to do with love.
Fascinating fact.
Forbidden
"It was forbidden to ride on moose in Sweden until 1973. An old law forbade such for fear of rebels."
Adventuredepot
"That’s fair. Anybody who could get a moose to let them ride it into battle could definitely overthrow a government."
CeramicLicker
4 Points
"If you find a four leaf clover then there is a good chance you'll find more not too far away."
visarom584
"My sister has this crazy talent of just being able to spot them ANYWHERE. I will look for hours and not find anything and she’ll walk by and point out 4."
thatlldo-pig
"I found a patch of them as a kid. Plucked a few to show everyone, but they got squat in my hand and I wasn't able to find the patch again. Nobody believed me, but I knew what I'd found."
FriendRaven1
Alive and Well
"There was a short period of time when Picasso and Snoop Dogg were both alive together."
gipile1901
"In a similar vein, there are people alive today who heard firsthand accounts from family members about what life was like at the time of the American Civil War. E.g., someone born around 1930 having been told stories by a grandparent or great grandparent born around 1850."
NoCelery1168
As it Should
"The first 1080p video on YouTube was the Muppet's rendition of 'Bohemian Rhapsody'."
__americanreject
GiphyThe Muppets should begin everything.
Always...
Get A Hobby, Dude!
"When an octopus is stressed or bored, it often starts eating its own tentacles."
Itsmeemarioooo
GiphyOne a Day
"There are so many different varieties of apple that if you ate a different one every day for 20 years you will still not have eaten them all."
Theearthhasnoedges
"Humans have created a ton of them. We still are fairly often. Apples also have a lot of natural variance and diversity. One of the most interesting things about them is that much like a human being can have multiple children at once that are not identical, each seed in a single apple could also produce a completely different tree bearing a different type of apple than the other seeds from the same apple."
Theearthhasnoedges
Sniff it Out...
"Honeybees can be trained to sniff out land mines in war zones! Obviously dogs can do it but to avoid blowing up poor unsuspecting doggos, they figured out that bees could do the same thing and swarm the area without setting the mine off to alert people to its presence."
gecedah135
So Deep
"A cave in Vietnam called Son Doong is over 600 feet deep and miles long. It's so big and open it has its own ecosystem with a rainforest growing in it."
"In Thailand there is a rock formation called Hin Sam Wan which looks like three whales jumping out of the cliff."
Dakens2021
Reactions
"The figure in Munch's 'The Scream' is not screaming but is, in fact, reacting to hearing the scream."
gipile1901
GiphyI hate that 'Scream' painting.
It freaks me out.
So it's clearly doing its job.
Want to "know" more?
Sign up for the Knowable newsletter here.
Never miss another big, odd, funny or heartbreaking moment again.
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 TrilogyGiphyHere is one "The first ever person convicted of speeding was going 8 mph."
Bless You
Approximately 20% of people in the world can make themselves sneeze by looking into the sun.
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.
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.
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.
Former Flat Earthers Explain What Finally Made Them Come Around | George Takei’s Oh Myyy
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 SquarePantsGiphyWhen threatened, the sea cucumber will eject its digestive system to scare its predators.
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 GIFGiphyBabies 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.
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.
Measured...
Music charts in the US is measured in 'Top 40' because standard jukebox machines in the past held 40 records.
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).
Secrets
The White House only got the ability to print double-sided documents in 2016.
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.
Sweat it Out
Sweating Hot Dog GIFGiphyCows sweat through their nose.
Dogs sweat through their nose and paws.
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.
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.
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.
Pounds Away
Anthony Anderson Reaction GIFGiphyCrying helps you lose weight,
Told this to my friends every time they cried, sometime it helped.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Hey Flipper
Dolphin GIFGiphyDolphins get high on pufferfish 🐬.
Apparently girls have more tastebuds than boys.
There are no clocks in casinos in Vegas.
3
I have three
- You are special, in that you are almost guaranteed to know something that someone else doesn't.
- 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.
- 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.
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.
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.
Listen Up
Listen GIF by The Maury ShowGiphyWhen you lose your teeth for good, the bones in your ears shift and your hearing gets worse. Brush those bad boys!
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.
Want to "know" more? Never miss another big, odd, funny, or heartbreaking moment again. Sign up for the Knowable newsletter here.
Small Diets....
haters GIF by GIPHY Studios OriginalsGiphySquid can literally give themselves brain damage by eating something too big. Their brain is a donut shape and the esophagus runs through it.
Fur Baby
Furry artists can make upwards to 35-50USD an hour doing paid commissions, that's why industry graphic designers usually ends up going down that rabbit hole.
I mean hey there's human artists who do Caricatures and the whole Uncanny valley stuff of Nightmarish Will Smith zombies.... people with eyes too big or being denounced and boycotted on twitter. If you draw a fluffy bunny, what's the worst that can go wrong?
That Rolling Rock beer ........
That Rolling Rock beer almost went bankrupt in the 1990's. As a last ditch effort they hired a new marketing exec to turn their fortunes around. In their big meeting with all the board members waiting in anticipation for his big reveal he told them to just raise the price. They were ready to fire him on the spot, because they couldn't sell any at the cheapo price. Then he told them why - their price point was less than Budweiser at the time and that was the standard by which people judged the quality of a beer. He reasoned that if they increased the price to the next tier above Bud and did nothing else, people would believe it was a better beer, even though it was the same as it ever was.
It turned into their ad campaign and they thumbed their noses at all the yuppies who drank it by the case in college in the 70's and 80's who started buying it again because it was now a "better" beer. It was wildly successful and saved the company.
Ummm....
buffy the vampire slayer coffee GIF by Pop TVGiphyIn order to make a dagger out of the blood of your enemies, you'd have to kill 559 people in order to get the amount of iron you need.
Death Details...
Valery Khodemchuk was an engineer working the Night Shift at Chernobyl's Reactor 4 the night it exploded. He was the very first person killed in the accident, as he likely died instantly when his body was vaporized by the blast. His remains were never recovered, and the ruins now serve as his tomb.
Since it was a steam explosion rather than a nuclear explosion, it probably wasn't an especially quick or pleasant death, too.
The Grain Say so....
Crayfish (or lobster?) have a sort of open channel like an ear that helps them balance. A few grains of sand sit in it and because gravity is pulling the grains down they always know which way is up. However if you put magnetic metal shavings into the holes and hold a large strong magnet above them they'll start to swim upside down.
What about Frosted?
John Kellogg (inventor of corn flakes) was a huge advocate for circumcision because he believed it would prevent us from masturbating.
He also had a chair that delivered a high pressure enema to clean his bowels. He would use it many times a day, and several rich and famous people of the time also used it (henry ford, amelia earhart, jc penny).
First Position.....
Dolly Wells Starz GIF by Blunt TalkGiphySome foot fetishes occur because the part of the brain that controls feeling in the feet is positioned right next to the part that produces libido, and sometimes the wires within the brain become crossed.
Waste...
Sean Solomon Reaction GIF by Animation Domination High-DefGiphyThere's enough arsenic trioxide dust to kill 21 billion people or everyone 3x over hidden underground. All they did was trap it in concrete for someone else to fix it later.
Damn, just read up on this, it's basically worst than all the nuclear waste they're storing away to 'deal with later': https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100027413/1100100027417
Walter White?
Leave a human body soaking in a solution of lye and water for several months and it will dissolve into liquid and soft bone dust which can be washed down a drain, leaving no evidence behind. If you need to speed the process up you can heat the water up to just short of boiling and dissolve the body in ~6 hours.
Hey Bud...
PAL (Permissive Action Link) controllers for nuclear weapons work by removing small varied amounts of explosives from each detonator package, and adjusting detonation timers by nanosecond-scale intervals to compensate accordingly. Any nuclear weapon equipped with PAL cannot be detonated without knowledge of these timings, which are encrypted by constantly changing codes.
Veggie Posh
check out beverly hills 90210 GIFGiphyBeverly Hills California has the best soil for growing cucumbers.
The Length
Planck length is the smallest length at which space can be defined.
The entire observable universe is naturally the largest thing we can observe, and the largest thing we know of currently.
So silt is in the between those 2 in terms of size.
So, if you consider just how large space is, and how small a grain of silt would look to a human, that should give you an indication of just how small a planck length is, and the fact that one of the smallest observable objects on earth are in between the largest and smallest things we can currently define, it almost seems unbalanced.
Like you'd think that maybe our solar system would be in between the size of the observable universe and the smallest definable length, but nope. A grain of silt.
I'm Pretty
hipster beard GIFGiphyI'm a bearded man. I know a thing or 2 about makeup. This is because of a very realistic character creator in a game. And my aristocrat character kept looking like a skank. So I actually googled how to do makeup. People are usually very surprised that I know do much.
Capillary Action
The force necessary to compress the arteries going into your brain is smaller than the force gravity exerts on your head, so you can technically hang yourself while lying down.
There is also something called Capillary Action. Water (and blood) is super "sticky" because the hydrogen bonds in water molecules can attach to other molecules. Using this natural adhesion, water can push itself up the stems of plants and trees.
Build and Fall
well done love GIF by LEGOGiphyLego at one point in the early 2000s was the bestselling toy brand in the world, and also months from bankruptcy.
See, they had such spectacularly bad communication inside their company they had sets that cost them more to produce than they sold them for.
The Ways to Go
You don't need big fancy expensive chemicals or lethal weapons to kill people. simple things like injecting a small amount of distilled water into the blood stream or administering too much blood pressure medication can kill someone within 24 hours and there would be no signs pointing to murder when the time comes for an autopsy
edit!!! i meant distilled water not sterile water. very very sorry.
Retina Angles...
googly eyes GIFGiphyThe human eye captures the images of everything you see but receives it literally turned upside down, it is your brain that accommodates it so that everything is in its place.
Worthless data, but it is interesting.
Soup's On....
Cannibalism, while outlawed in a few states is not actually illegal in much of the US.
However, because of other laws and regulations, its nearly impossible to legally obtain human flesh.
It has been done though. You would probably be charged with desecrating a body, and possibly disturbing a crime scene. It would depend heavily on the circumstances. Basically, you'd have to have consent to eat it, or very extenuating circumstances.
Here's a link Today I Found Out
It explains it a lot better than I could.
Fleshed Out
Human meat looks like beef but taste more like pork. A human heart, if cut open while pumping blood, can squirt a distance of 30 feet. Not sure if these are weird enough since I just searched them up a while back.
Want to "know" more? Never miss another big, odd, funny, or heartbreaking moment again. Sign up for the Knowable newsletter here.
