Truth is stranger than fiction, they say. This recent Ask Reddit thread is a great example of that.
“What is a true fact so baffling, it should be false?” someone posed a question, sparking a viral thread full of random and hard-to-believe facts.
Did you know that cheetahs don’t roar? And what about the fact that we live many times closer to the last dinosaur than the first and last dinosaur did to each other?
Below we wrapped up some of the most unbelievable and mind-bending facts, so pull your seat closer.
#1
[Switzerland has accidentally invaded Liechtenstein thrice in the last 50 years](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liechtenstein%E2%80%93Switzerland_relations).
* On the first time in 1976, Swiss military got lost and ended up in Liechtenstein, so the Liechtensteiners offered them drinks like proper hosts.
* On the second time in 1992, Swiss military forgot that a certain observation post was actually not in Swiss territory but in Liechtenstein territory, so they just said sorry and forgot about it.
* Then again in 2007, the Swiss army got lost and entered Liechtenstein, but eventually realized they weren’t in Switzerland anymore, Toto, so they turned back. Liechtenstein didn’t even know this happened till the Swiss apologized (again), to which they basically said, no problem, bro.
Takeaways: The Swiss army are bad with directions. The Liechtenstein ~~army~~ people are chill bros.
Image source: sendhelpandthensome, St9191
#2
Cheetahs cant roar, but they can meow like house cats.
Image source: karatekid606, Piet Bakker
#3
Even if 99% of Earth’s population thought you were unattractive, 76 million people would still find you attractive
Image source: forsoythemilk, cottonbro studio
#4
One day Mao Zedong saw a sparrow eating grain. Thinking that the sparrows were hurting China’s grain supply, he and the Communist Party launched the *Four Pests Campaign*. The Chinese military and population [took out] every sparrow they could find. Embassies didn’t allow the Chinese to [take out] sparrows on their property, so the Chinese banged pots and pans outside the embassies 24/7 until the sparrows died of exhaustion. Unfortunately for the Chinese, sparrows mainly eat insects, not grain. The locust population exploded and [***43 million people starved to death.***](https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-four-pests-campaign-objectives-execution-failure-and-consequences.html)
Image source: WooIWorthWaIIaby, Susanne Jutzeler, suju-foto
#5
The life of Frane Selak, the luckiest unlucky man in the world:
• January 1962- Frane is riding on a train through a freezing canyon when it fell into an icy river. All 17 other passengers died while he escapes with a broken arm and hypothermia.
• 1963- On his first plane trip he was sucked out of the plane’s door and landed in a haystack, unscathed. 19 other people were killed in the crash.
• 1966- He was riding in a bus when it skidded off the road into yet another icy river. 4 passengers drowned while he only received some minor cuts and bruises.
•1970- His car’s engine burst into flames while he was driving but he managed to escape before it exploded.
•1973- In yet another driving incident, his car’s engine was doused with hot oil from a broken fuel pump. This caused flames to shoot through the air vents, singing off all of his hair. He was otherwise unharmed.
•1995- He was hit by a bus but only sustained minor injuries.
•1996- To escape a head-on collision with a United-Nations truck on a mountain curve, he swerved into a guard rail that broke on impact. to save himself, he jumped out of his car’s open door and grabbed onto a tree branch as he watched his car plummet off the cliff.
Suffice to say the guy had a complicated relationship with the Grim Reaper.
Edit: Got his name wrong
Edit 2: Got the first edit wrong, turns out i was right the first time
Image source: GenericDefense, Fact Maniac
#6
People were deliberately infected with malaria to cure their syphilis, and the man who developed this treatment – Julius Wagner-Jauregg received the nobel prize for it.
(The extremely high fevers of the malaria infections [unalived] the syphilis bacteria, then the patients were cured of the malaria using quinine.)
Image source: zazzlekdazzle, en.wikipedia.org
#7
It’s pretty well known by now, but calculators today have more computing power than Apollo 11. We got to the moon with slide rulers and huge balls.
Image source: SayNoToStim, Mikhail Nilov
#8
Oxford University Predates the Aztec empire by over 200 years.
And, for fun one of my favorites:
Woolly Mammoths were still around at the time the Great Pyramids in Giza were built.
Image source: oldenbka, Samuel M
#9
I just read a post on /r/technicallythetruth.
We’ve all kicked a pregnant woman before.
Image source: LurkersGoneLurk
#10
If every single person on the entire planet took part in a rock paper scissors contest. Where everyone paired up and played, losers were knocked out and winners stayed on etc
You would only have to win 33 times in a row to beat all 7.53 billion people on the planet
Image source: Afasso, Thirdman
#11
From 1613 and 1620 a Samurai travelled to Rome by way of Mexico. During this time, Shakespeare was still alive, Virginia had been founded for around a decade, Gallileo was accused of heresy, and Pocahantes arrived in England. He met the Pope he was made a Roman citizen. His name was Hasekura Tsunenaga, and was the last japanese person to officially visit Europe until around 1860.
Image source: thecinnaman123, Claude Déruet Claude Deruet
#12
We live many times closer to the last dinosaur than the first and last dinosaur did to each other.
Image source: Laikathespaceface, Marcus Lange
#13
Giant squids have a donut shaped brain so their esophagus can run through the middle. If they try to swallow too large a bite of food they can get brain damage.
Image source: VerminSupreme__, Jonathan Diemel
#14
In the last 3,000 years, there were only 268 years in which there was no war in the world
Image source: Kanuchoo, Santiago Sauceda González
#15
if sound could travel through space, the roar of the sun would be deafening even though it’s 93M miles away.
EDIT: because space is a vacuum. sound can’t travel though a vacuum.
EDIT AGAIN: obviously lots of other things in the universe would change, and yes, presumably other stars and planets would make noise too. we’d probably all die screaming as the earth itself imploded from the pressure of traveling so fast though a universe that WASN’T a vacuum.
LAST EDIT: YES, JESUS CHRIST RICK AND MORTY, AS HUNDREDS OF YOU HAVE POINTED OUT.
Image source: cubs_070816, Jonathan Gross
#16
The record for most children born to one mother is 69, to the wife of Feodor Vassilyev (b. 1707–c.1782), a peasant from Shuya, Russia. In 27 labors, she gave birth to 16 pairs of twins, seven sets of triplets and four sets of quadruplets.
Edit: wife name is Valentina Vassilyeva.
Image source: manoa99, twitter.com
#17
The longest time between two twins being born is 87 days.
Image source: Psycondriact, Kübra Kuzu
#18
A morbidly obese person can survive with absolute starvation without any sickness or feeling ill (under close control). There have been studies since 60’s, there is a patient in 1973 who went under a 382 day starvation diet for therapuetic purposes under close control with only vitamin and mineral supplements and water intake without protein, carbohydrate or fat intake (no food at all). Dropped from 207 kg to 88kg and maintained it. After a follow up check-up 5 years later, the patient was 96 kilograms, stabilized. Prolonged fasting had no ill effects. If anybody is curious about the article, the pubmed ID is: PMC2495396.
Edit: fixed autocorrect
Image source: Dartosismyname, Towfiqu barbhuiya
#19
An eyewitness to Lincoln’s assassination at Ford’s Theater told his story on national television.
EDIT: Based on suggestions below, I’m proposing a new version of this factoid which makes it sound even crazier (but still factually true)…
An eyewitness to Lincoln’s assassination at Ford’s Theater appeared as a contestant on a nationally televised game show with Lucille Ball
Image source: bufadad, Moses Parker Rice
#20
A 500 lb. cigarette-smoking, beer-drinking brown bear named Wojtek was enlisted and served in the Polish army during WWII. “Private Wojtek” helped the Polish win the brutal Battle of Monte Cassino, and was even promoted to corporal. Following the war, he retired in Scotland.
Image source: CaptainWisconsin, en.wikipedia.org
#21
If you took every civilian-owned firearm in the US and laid them side-by-side, you would have a giant belt of guns long enough to go completely around the moon.
After going completely around the moon, you would still have enough guns left over to equip every soldier in the world with two guns.
Image source: generica_ccount
#22
Stalin, Hitler, and Freud all lived in Vienna at the same time.
Edit: And as others have pointed out (including a source further down), Tito and Trotsky were also there.
Image source: Tsquare43, Philipp Deus
#23
Only four people have been to the Challenger Deep, the deepest part of the ocean. One of those people is James Cameron, the director of Titanic.
Image source: agnomengnome, MARK THIESSEN, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
#24
Giraffes eat bones.
Image source: anon, Francesco Ungaro
#25
When Mt Everest was first measured it was exactly 29,000 feet. It was reported as 29,002 because exactly 29,000 was not believable.
Image source: 1pointtwentyone, shankar s.
#26
The phrase “plastic surgery” has nothing to do with the material. Plastic surgery as a field predates the development of plastics by 70 years. The two terms simply share a Greek word root meaning “sculpted” or “reshaped”.
Image source: mwoody450, Anna Shvets
#27
Ireland was a net exporter of food during the great potato famine.
Image source: 270343, William Murphy
#28
If you earned $1 every second, it would take 2,921 years to have more money than Bill Gates.
Image source: grwrnotashowrthought, Greg Rubenstein
#29
There were more planes destroyed in World War II than there are (currently intact) planes on Earth today
Image source: Dickcheese_McDoogles, Jack
#30
To scale, the distance between a nucleus and orbiting electron is 16 times longer than the distance between the Sun and Pluto.
Image source: LonelyPauper, Pietro Zuco
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