Our understanding of the world doesn’t always correspond with reality. However, if we are brave enough to accept that and remain open to learning new things, the two might come closer. The good news: it’s not that difficult; other people are doing it!
For example, when Reddit user aShadowWizard asked everyone on the platform to share the facts they remember because of how comically absurd they sounded at first, thousands replied. From creepy historic events to funny scientific discoveries, the answers covered just about every field you can think of.
#1
Two pharmacists were trying to recreate a fish sauce from Asia. The result was basically inedible. So they stuck it in the basement for 18 months and before throwing it away decided to try it and Worcestershire sauce was born.
Image source: TerribleBid8416, jcomp
#2
Australia lost a war against birds.
Image source: optimistchronos, Damien Tait
#3
The ducks at the pond are free. You can just take them.
Image source: SpikeRosered, Getty Images
#4
Death Row Records was owned by Hasbro Toys for a while…
Image source: ElDiario, Barbara Bresna
#5
When Spanish explorers brought tobacco to Europe from the Americas. One of them demonstrated smoking in his home town. His neighbors were frightened to see him exhaling smoke because it seemed demonic. The Spanish Inquisition threw him in prison for 7 years.
Image source: Gibby1293, Afif Ramdhasuma
#6
Whales are mammals which mean they lactate. Their “milk” is the consistency of toothpaste and has so much fat in it that it’s pretty much butter. They squirt it into their calf’s mouths.
The milk tastes fishy from the whales diet.
Image source: greenmountaingoblin, Getty Images
#7
A bridge once collapsed because 300 or so people gathered on it to watch a clown in a bathtub be pulled along a river by 4 geese.
Image source: South-Swordfish7891, fasc1nate
#8
In the year 1910, in the American state of Ohio, there were only 2 registered automobiles…and they hit each other.
Image source: Equinoqs, Scott Greer
#9
Manatees fart to control their buoyancy.
Image source: Willing_Plant4483, NOAA
#10
Kathleen Coronna is an NYC resident who was severely injured at the Macys thanksgiving parade when a float knocked over a light pole. Almost 10 years later, NY Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle crashed his plane into her apartment building and sent wreckage into her apartment (she was not home). That’s some Final Destination stuff.
Image source: UnrealisticPersona, National Transportation Safety Board
#11
That in Germany attempting to escape from prison is not considered a crime in itself as the law recognizes the human instinct to seek freedom. If no other laws are broken while escaped, the escape is not punishable under German law.
Image source: Shoddy-Extreme9960, freepik
#12
Nintendo used to run a brothel and casino, and at one point their largest customer was the yakuza.
Image source: snownative86, Kvnga
#13
Modern humans are closer in time to the T-Rex than the T-Rex was to Stegosaurus.
Image source: ErosMaggot, Tofan Teodor
#14
There are more bones in gummy worms than actual worms.
Image source: travfields619, Alexander Grey
#15
There’s a species of jellyfish that’s basically immortal. Like, it just… respawns. Nature said “nah, death is optional.”.
Image source: DramaticDeparture654, Jeffrey Hamilton
#16
A cat can theoretically fall from any height and survive.
The way I like to phrase that is, “The terminal velocity of a cat is non-fatal.”.
Image source: Conscious_Raisin_436, zudduz
#17
The Canadian British who burned the White House down in 1812, first held a session of Mock Congress where they unanimously voted to do said arson.
Image source: Skvli, George Munger
#18
The human body is bioluminescent; the light it produces is just too weak for us to see.
The light we produce is about 1000% weaker than that of a firefly.
Image source: Ghost_of_a_Black_Cat, Ramez E. Nassif
#19
If you are bored, you can rotate a cow in your mind. It’s free and the cops can’t stop you.
Image source: I_might_be_weasel, Juan Pablo Serrano
#20
I always liked that Venus’s day is longer than it’s year. It also spins the other way.
Image source: PostMatureBaby, Planet Volumes
#21
Our Milky Way galaxy contains something like 500,000,000,000 (500 billion) stars, each with around 3 or 4 planets orbiting them on average. And that’s just our galaxy. There are about 250,000,000,000 galaxies in our observable universe , each with about as many stars as our own. And that’s just the observable universe. Some theories suggest our observable universe is only about 10% of the whole thing, while other theories suggest the universe is infinite.
Space is really big.
Image source: EnchantedTaquito8252, Osarugue Igbinoba
#22
I was taken to the police station three times in one day because of some robbery.
U.p.d.
In my country, a former USSR republic, the police operate very differently from those in America or Europe. At the time this happened, the situation was even worse. Our police officers could routinely take someone to the station for arbitrary reasons, such as saying, “A crime happened here, you are a suspect,” or “We need to check your identity to see if you are a criminal.”
These measures were not always lawful. Sometimes, people were taken to the station where police would demand a bribe for their release, or force them to confess to crimes they hadn’t committed.
On the day when I was walking home from college in the evening with my friend. As we approached my building, a police car pulled up. An officer got out and immediately told us we were suspects in a crime that had occurred in the area.
They drove us a long distance to the precinct. Once there, the duty officer told the arresting officers that the investigator was unavailable. The officers simply told us, “You are free to go.”
I asked them to at least drive us back, since they had brought us so far and would be returning to the area anyway. In response, they swore at me. My friend and I had to walk all the way back home.
The moment we reached my building, a different police car stopped us. It was the same line: “There was a robbery committed here.”
We explained that we had just been to the station and were released because the investigator wasn’t there. They didn’t believe us, and we were taken to the precinct again. And once again, the duty officer confirmed: “The investigator is absent.” We were let go a second time.
Eventually, we made it back. My friend lived in the next entrance, so he went home, and I went to mine. A little while later, my cousin called and asked me to go for a walk. I thought, “Surely this can’t happen a third time,” and stepped outside.
I was wrong. It happened—I was arrested for the third time that day.
I don’t know if a real crime had actually taken place, or if they were simply trying to find someone they could pressure into confessing.
But I am grateful to the investigator who, for whatever reason, wasn’t there.
Image source: GillKayera, Ahmet Kurt
#23
Pepsi (technically) briefly had a navy in 1989. As in, they owned literal warships and submarines.
Image source: WaffleHouseGladiator, Quỳnh Lê Mạnh
#24
The national animal of Scotland is a unicorn.
Image source: inolongerseethelight, SizeCareless953
#25
In 1956, a drunken Thomas Fitzpatrick bet he could get from New Jersey to a Manhattan bar in 15 minutes. He then steals a plane and flies it to New York and lands on 191st in front of the bar.
2 years later, at the same bar, he’s telling the story and someone said they didn’t believe him… So he did it again.
Image source: nowhereman136, utterlyinteresting.com
#26
Statistically, the average number of arms per human is slightly below two.
Image source: Javeyn, Sincerely Media
#27
69.
That’s the world record for number of babies birthed by a woman (throughout her life, not all at once).
#28
If you stack all the blue whales in the ocean on top of each other to build a tower to the moon, they would die.
Image source: DrBatman0, Todd Cravens
#29
Charles Darwin and Steve Irwin owned the same Galapagos tortoise. It was named Harriet.
Image source: NastyLittleBagginses
#30
A man once saved a boy from drowning, and in gratitude the boy’s family paid for the education of the savior’s son. The saved boy was Winston Churchill. The son was Alexander Fleming, who went on to discover penicillin.
Image source: bassaleboy
#31
Ohio is the only state to not share a single letter with the word Mackerel.
Image source: JFeisty
#32
The 10th president John Tyler’s grandson died in May last year. John Tyler was born in 1790.
Image source: kigam_reddit
#33
So I got one of my own, one of the founders of the D.A.R.E. program in the US was the founder of Herbalife, Mark R. Hughes, which explains why the program didn’t work at all.
Image source: aShadowWizard
#34
The spikes on a tail of the stegosaurus was named after a term in a ‘the far side’ comic.
The thagomizer.
Image source: FrankanelloKODT
#35
The dot above ‘i’ and ‘j’ is called a tittle.
Image source: TheCubicDrift
#36
Everything in the universe is either a duck, or it is not a duck.
Image source: alaraja
#37
When Lockheed Martin was working on the prototype that would eventually become the SR-71 blackbird spy plane they decided they needed to make the airframe out of titanium. It was the only metal that could withstand the insane heat this thing would undergo when cruising at Mach 3+ without being structurally compromised. So they sourced the massive amount of titanium they’d need from the largest producer of titanium metal in the world…The Soviet Union.
You heard me right. Through a series of shell corporations and dummy accounts the CIA helped buy titanium from The Soviet Union to build a plane that would go on to spy on The Soviet Union.
Image source: copnonymous
#38
Weasels do not mate for life and are polygamous. The males mate with multiple females and don’t help to raise any of the offspring. Same with ferrets and stoats. It’s why I always thought they were so savage in the Redwall books.
Image source: Rachel794
#39
Killer whales are a known predator of moose.
Image source: ToxicNed
#40
Pluto has not made a complete orbit of the sun since its discovery.
Image source: stumpyturk
#41
In the Middle Ages, Catholic theologians wrestled with the idea of God’s omnipotence. If God is unlimited then he could have created more worlds, more men, even whole other civilizations. That led to other debates: was Christ’s sacrifice on the cross infinite enough to redeem beings beyond Earth or would God stage separate incarnations for them?
In short medieval theologians debated about aliens living on alien worlds.
Image source: Diocletion-Jones
#42
At the zoo here, an orangutan named Fu Manchu figured out how to pick the lock of his enclosure. He used a piece of wire that he hid in his mouth during the day, escaping at night. The wire was only discovered after he’d broken out multiple times.
Image source: weaponlesswords
#43
Everyone has kicked a pregnant woman.
Image source: coporate, Ömürden Cengiz
#44
Gislane Maxwell has access to a puppy at her prison.
Image source: DEFECTIVEAFRICAN
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