40 Mind-Blowing Facts You Didn’t Know You Needed

These 40 fascinating facts will have you questioning reality, impressing your friends, and wondering how you ever lived without knowing them!

“TIL Danny Trejo has a clause in his movie contracts that requires his villainous characters to die by the end of the film. He wants children to learn that crime doesn’t pay.”

“TIL about skeuomorphism, when modern objects, real or digital, retain features of previous designs even when they aren’t functional. Examples include the very tiny handle on maple syrup bottles, faux buckles on shoes, the floppy disk ‘save’ icon, or the sound of a shutter on a cell phone camera.”

“TIL George Washington decided to step down after two terms because he feared he might die in office and Americans would then view the presidency as a lifetime appointment”

“TIL Charles Darwin created the office chair, he put wheels on the bottom of his chair so he could roll between specimens.”

“TIL: The “Simple Sabotage Field Manual” was declassified in 2008 and it contains advice on how spies can sabotage the enemy by just being maliciously incompetent. Advice include praising inefficient coworkers, cry and sob frequently at work, asking inane questions in meetings, and spreading gossip.”

“TIL in 2010 a doctor and his son just happened to be walking by an apartment building in Paris when a 15-month-old boy fell 80ft (24m) from a seventh floor balcony before bouncing off a cafe awning into the doctor’s arms. His catch helped the boy escape “miraculously without a single scratch.””

“TIL that Great White Sharks across the Pacific Ocean consistently congregate at one specific spot in the Pacific Ocean. Scientists call this the White Shark Cafe.”

“TIL that Weird Al’s Phantom Menace parody ‘The Saga Begins’ was recorded a month before the film released in May 1999. Yankovic was denied an early screening by Lucasfilm, but managed to almost exactly piece together the plot by researching rumours posted on Star Wars fan forums.”

“TIL that Elton John never performed the Princess Diana version of Candle in the Wind again after her funeral in 1997, despite receiving numerous requests.”

“TIL South Park aired an episode titled “Band in China”… which resulted in them being banned in China.”

“TIL huge rogue waves were dismissed as a scientifically implausible sailors’ myth by scientists until one 84ft wave hit an oil platform. The phenomenon has since been proven mathematically and simulated in a lab, also proving the existence of rogue holes in the ocean.”

“TIL Siblings can get completely different results (e.g., one 30% Irish and another 50% Irish) from DNA ancestry tests, even though they share the same parents, due to genetic recombination.”

“TIL life didn’t give us lemons, they are not naturally occurring. They are a hybrid fruit from selective breeding of the citron and the bitter orange”

“TIL Tasmanian Devil’s give birth to between 30 and 40 offsprings but the mother only has four teats. The first four to attach to teats survive, the others perish.”

“TIL the term ‘jaywalking’ was promoted and popularized by the automobile industry to blame pedestrians for traffic issues.”

“TIL in 2013 a woman went to pick up a friend in Brussels (less than 90 miles from her home), however because of a GPS error, she ended up in Croatia after driving 900 miles across five international borders. She realized she took a wrong turn two days after leaving. Her son had reported her missing.”

“TIL – the family that couldn’t sleep, a family in Venice, Italy where for over 200 years many of the family members died suffering from fatal insomnia.”

“TIL Mihailo Tolotos was a Greek Orthodox monk that died without ever seeing a woman. He lived all his 82 years of life in Mount Athos monastery”

“TIL In 1941, prior to widespread fluoridation of drinking water, almost 10% of US military recruits were rejected because they didn’t have 6 opposing teeth in their upper and lower jaws”

“TIL that after George Harrison’s death from lung cancer, his widow sued a doctor at the hospital where he received radiation therapy for allegedly forcing Harrison to listen to his son play guitar and autograph the guitar while lacking his mental faculties.”

“TIL the United States Army is the largest single employer of musicians in the country”

“TIL there were just 5 surviving longbows from medieval England known to exist before 137 whole longbows (and 3,500 arrows) were recovered from the wreck of the Mary Rose in 1980 (a ship of Henry VIII’s navy that capsized in 1545). The bows were in excellent finished condition & have been preserved.”

“TIL after Leona Helmsley did not pay her contractors that worked on her Connecticut home, she was investigated for tax evasion, and she received a 16 year sentence. During trial her housekeeper testified that Helmsley said “only the little people pay taxes.” She ended up serving 19 months in prison.”

“TIL that “court jesters” were often used to give bad news to the monarch that no one else would dare deliver. When the French fleet was destroyed at the Battle of Sluys, Phillip VI’s jester told him that the English sailors “don’t even have the guts to jump into the water like our brave French””

“TIL in 2020 a woman took an online DNA test which showed a 22% match with a man who she’d eventually discover to be her still alive uncle, who was kidnapped in 1951 at the age of six & had been missing for 70 years. After he was abducted in Oakland, he was flown to the east coast & raised there.”

“TIL that eminem is first rapper to reach 50 million pure album sales.Physical albums sold, excluding digital downloads and streaming.”

“TIL Geysers are quite rare, requiring a combination of water, heat, and fortuitous plumbing. Yellowstone National Park is home to half of all the geysers found in the world.”

“TIL Robert F. Kennedy’s assassin is still alive and has been denied parole 17 times”

“TIL that Gene Roddenberry originally did not want to cast Patrick Stewart as Picard, since he had envisioned an actor who was “masculine, virile, and had a lot of hair”.”

“TIL 10 US states have absolutely no vehicle inspection whatsoever (i.e no safety, emissions, or VIN inspections)”

“TIL that in Major League Baseball the ball is pitched so fast that the eye cannot track it. However, the brain is able to calculate its trajectory via specialized cells, making it possible for the batter to hit it.”

“TIL that the first laws outlawing food coloring were in regards to bread. White bread was expensive and some bakers added chalk to lighten dark bread. King Edward I (1272-1307) created a law saying anyone caught using whiteners in bread would be put in the public pillory for one hour.”

“TIL If you’ve believed in good faith for at least five years that you’re a Swiss citizen and local authorities have treated you as such, you can apply for simplified naturalisation.”

“TIL About a man named Heshen who was known as the most corrupt official in Chinese history. After his death in 1799, his personal wealth was valued at $270 billion, or 15 years of Qing government revenues”

“TIL in 2023, Zimbabwe signed control over almost 20% of the country’s land to Blue Carbon, an Emirati company, for $1.5 billion. The company seeks to conserve forests that might otherwise be logged.”

“TIL strength training also involves the nervous system, where your strength is not only determined by how big your muscles are, but by how well the nervous system can recruit muscles, synchronize their firing, and prevent mechanisms designed to prevent your body from tearing itself apart.”

“TIL every person who has become a centibillionaire (a net worth of usually $100 billion, €100 billion, or £100 billion), first became one in 2017 or later except for Bill Gates who first reached the threshold in 1999.”

“TIL the total number of Americans over 7-feet tall is estimated between 85 and 150.”

“TIL Pope Pius XII once asserted in a speech that the Big Bang theory scientifically proved that the universe was created by a divine creator. Horrified, the physicist Georges Lemaître convinced the Pope not to make any further statements connecting his theory and theology.”

“TIL about ‘Balconing’ in Ibiza, a phenomenon in which intoxicated party goers die or are injured by acting wildly on the balconies of the hotel establishments where they have stayed”

Credits: www.reddit.com

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