Trivia Buffs Reveal What Factoids Could Save Your Life One Day

Trivia is a fun way to use all of that useless information you have stored in your brain for entertainment purposes. What if those strands of information could actually be useful to you and you didn't even know it? There is proof that this could be the case.

gondolacka asks: What trivial knowledge might save your life one day?

At some point I read somewhere online that if a car was going to hit you, you should jump to avoid being run over or "swallowed" by the car. So one day while walking to class, some lady ran a red light and came at me at full speed. In the split second I saw her coming at me, I remembered that little bit of information and jumped. I ended up bouncing off the hood of her car and slid a good 5-6 feet and got up relatively unscathed-just a few cuts and bruises.

If an elephant charges at you with its trunk hanging loosely in front of it, it's probably bluffing and just trying to scare you off.

If it's charging at you with its trunk curled up and tucked in, then it really wants to end you.

I'm fairly sure I've got those the right way round.

Three tips from the chemical lab:

Hot glass looks like cold glass

Hot metal looks like cold metal

Hot ceramics look like cold ceramics

Avocados are poisonous to birds, it said. Good to know!

I get to work. I worked at a zoo and I was shooting breeze with the commissary tech that morning. We just got a shipment of food in, and I saw an avacado. Cool! Food enrichment is fun to make and give. "So who's getting the avacado today?" I asked.

"Koko," the commissary tech replied, "his keeper asked for a diet adjustment because we want to put some weight on him."

Koko was an umbrella cockattoo. "You didn't already send out today's food yet, did you? Birds can't have avocados. It's poisonous."

The commissary tech went white. The bird keeper was called immediately and the veterinarian was contacted to evaluate his diet.

Yup. No avocados allowed. It's toxic.

Takes about 8 lbs of pressure to pull an ear off from top to bottom. You can get a big sumb**** off of you pretty quickly if you show him his ear(s)

One of the most effective and used medicines for a heart attack is aspirin. When someone is having a heart attack, have them chew on an aspirin.

If you throw up and it looks like coffee grounds it means you are bleeding into your stomach. Also if you are somewhere and the air starts tingling it means lightning is going to strike nearby

If your car breaks down in a very remote place, burning a tire will draw attention to you. The thick, black smoke can be seen for miles.

If you find more than one person unconscious, DO NOT APPROACH. There's possibly gas and toxins about, you'll just be another victim if you get too close. Phone the authorities and report it instead.

Don't use water to put out a grease fire

You lose warmth from latent heat loss 25 times faster in wet clothes than without. In other words if you fall into cold water, get naked and get dry as your first priority.

kangaroos can't hop backwards.

if you're ever getting mauled by a gang of kangaroos, this could be slightly advantageous to know

Phloem, the thin skin-like layer of a tree between the outer bark and wood, is a really nutritious food source easily harvested in the dead of winter. Most trees in North America are edible.

If you drop a knife, let it drop, don't try to catch it.

If wrestling a pistol from someone, choke up on the barrel and wrap your fingers where the shell would expel. If fired, the gun is jammed and cannot be fired again until the casing is removed

I don't know if it's trivial but I now there are still a lot of people who don't know the mnemonic FAST in order to quickly remember and identify a stroke.

• Face: Ask the person to smile. Does one side of the face droop?
• Arms: Ask the person to raise both arms. Does one arm drift downward?
• Speech: Ask the person to repeat a simple phrase. Is their speech slurred or strange?
• Time: Note the time that you observe these symptoms and call 9-1-1 immediately

This has saved many lives and I feel like more people should know it.

Lefty loosey, righty tighty.

Once the car fills up with water, THEN you can open the door.

Rice that's been cooked and then left to go to room temperature can grow a potentially deadly bacteria that isn't (I think) killed by reheating. Refrigerate leftover rice.

If something could potentially have an electric current through it and you have to touch it for some reason, use the back of your hand or fingers, never touch it like you're "grabbing" it.

Electricity can tense up your muscles and force you to hold on which could kill you much more easily than just getting a nasty shock that you pull away from.