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.