81 Lesser Known Facts To Impress Your Friends And Family
I feel like it is safe to assume that because you’re here, reading this listicle, you are also a fan of cool facts or other bits of trivia. Learning new and interesting facts is such an enjoyable way to get a dopamine hit and find yourself lost down a wikihole.
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We’ve covered some weird facts before, thanks to an incredibly entertaining and addictive social media lineup aptly named, “Weird Facts.” But this time we thought it would be fun to find out some new facts that you can drop to impress your friends and family at your next gathering.
Covering topics across all interests, we collected 81 facts about animals, monsters, giving birth, history, and more. And they are far from boring, like the one about how someone filed a patent for a device that spins a pregnant person with great force with the intention of yeeting a baby out of the uterus.
We made sure to link sources for each fact so you can read more about each topic, or if you wanted to fact-check us. It’s okay, our feelings won't be hurt, it’s good practice to be skeptical of things you read on the internet.
Speaking of, continue scrolling to read the 81 facts that may not be popularly known. With these random but entertaining facts, you’ll further solidify your place on your trivia team, or maybe just use some as an engaging ice breaker.
1. In 1904 T-shirts were marketed to single men who didn’t know how to sew buttons on collared shirts
2. There is only one major US city that has been founded by a woman: Miami
3. Regardless of size, all mammals take roughly 12 seconds to poop
4. Wombats have cube-shaped poop
5. Switzerland requires guinea pigs to be kept in pairs or more, it's illegal to own just one because they're social animals and get lonely
6. The Mars Curiosity rover sings itself "Happy Birthday" only once on Aug. 5, 2013
7. Big Major Cay in Exuma, Bahamas is home to swimming pigs
8. Before trees, Earth was covered with giant mushrooms that were 24ft tall and 3ft wide
9. The Coolidge effect is a sexual phenomenon named after President Calvin Coolidge
10. Snakes can burp fire
11. An ultracrepidarian is someone who gives their opinions on subjects they don't actually know anything about
12. Ancient Greeks came up with stories of cyclops after they found fossils of mammoths, and had no idea what it was
13. In 1963, a patent was filed for a "birthing apparatus" that would spin pregnant people around at as much as 7G until their baby was ejected out from the centrifugal force
14. Ketchup was once sold as medicine
15. Only magicians are legally allowed to own domesticated rabbits in Queensland, Australia
16. Mosquitos are the most dangerous animal in the world
17. Mister Rogers would announce that he was feeding his fish on his show after he received a letter from a blind child asking if they were okay
18. Choosing paper bags isn't that much better for the enviroment than using plastic bags
19. A puffin chick is called a puffling
20. The Mayor of NYC, Fiorello LaGuardia, introduced the modern thong
21. Sex-repulsed physician John Kellogg, invented cornflakes to prevent masturbation
22. A Minnesota high school gives service dogs in their own yearbook photos
23. Froot Loops have the same flavor, no matter the color
24. Hollywood villains usually have British accents because we associate them with having high intellect and low morals
25. A 19th-century slang term for sex was "Horizontal refreshment"
26. There are fruit trees with multiple grafts called Fruit Salad Trees
27. "What in tarnation?" is essentially an idiom of "What the hell?"
28. Melbourne, Australia, was briefly named Batmania
29. A female architecture student caught a massive design flaw in a Manhattan skyscraper and prevented it's inevitable collapse
30. The mass suicide ritual of lemmings jumping off cliffs is a false story based off a staged scene in a 1958 Disney documentary
31. Most police in Japan will get a futon and roll up a person into a little burrito if they are being violent or drunk
32. Due to the large amount of cats on the grounds of the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, they have a "Press Secretary to the Cats"
33. The first doctor to perform a successful cesearen section in South Africa was Dr. James Barry, who also happened to be a woman in disguise
34. All the buildings in a small village in Poland are decorated with paintings of flowers
35. There are more libraries in the U.S. than McDonald's
Fact Source:
36. University of Nebraska’s Memorial Stadium becomes the 3rd largest city in Nebraska on Gameday
37. The Chupa Chups lolipop logo was designed by Salvador Dalí
38. In the 18th century, people wore "beauty patches" (fake moles) made of silk, velvet or mouse skin as a fashion statement
39. Okunoshima is an island in Japan inhabited by friendly bunnies
40. Japan railways built Turtle Tunnels to save them from being run over by trains
41. Cows have best friends and get stressed when separated from them
42. In 1895 English medical papers warned about "Bicycle Face", which was people's faces getting stuck from the exertion from bicycling
43. Richard Nixon once unknowingly smuggled a suitcase full of cannabis through the airport for Louis Armstrong
44. Up until the 1980s, it was illegal for women to drive a car down Main Street in Waynesboro, Virginia, unless her husband was walking in front of the car waving a red flag
45. The last letter added to the English alphabet was the letter J
46. The city of Sunol, California, elected a dog named Bosco as their mayor from 1981 to 1994
47. Anna Jarvis, who invented Mother's Day, did so with the intention of it being anti-commercialism
48. Canada passed the 'Apology Act' in 2009 declaring that an apology can't be used as evidence of admission of guilt because Canadians say "sorry" so much
49. In addition to lower case letters, there are also lower case numbers
50. Iceland has an official 'Elf Whisperer' who inspects construction sites to make sure no elves are around before construction starts
51. In 1975 a cat co-authored a physics paper
52. Before the 1800s, people used to sleep in two shifts, a “first” and “second sleep”
53. The amount of people killed by guillotine in Nazi Germany is comparable to those who suffered the same fate during the French Revolution
54. Between the 18th and 19th centuries, squirrels were some of America’s most popular pets
55. The town of Strasbourg, France suffered a "dancing plague" in 1518
56. In the 1920s there were several US cities that organized Anti-Flirt Clubs to combat catcalling
57. German chocolate cake isn't named after the country, but a man named Sam German
58. In 1854 school teacher Elizabeth Jennings Graham challenged the racist streetcar policies in New York City, and her eventual lawsuit led to the desegregation of New York's public transit system
59. The Royal Family has been forbidden from playing Monopoly, because things get "too vicious"
60. Norville Rogers is the real name of Shaggy from Scooby-Doo
61. Sour Patch Kids are the same candy as Swedish Fish, with some sour sugar coating
62. Toilet seat covers are pointless
63. Uranus used to be named George
64. Normandy Beach has as much as 4% shrapnel broken down into the sand
65. On April 18, 1930, after a spectacularly uneventful day, BBC’s radio announcer said at 6:30 pm, “There is no news”
66. The voice actors of Mickey and Minnie Mouse were married in real life
67. A 1930s lawsuit that now makes it so movies have to specify they’re fiction traces back to the infamous Rasputin
68. Lego is the world's largest manufacturer of tires
69. Chainsaws were invented by Scottish doctors to aid in childbirth
70. Sea otters have baggy pockets of loose skin under their forearms where they store food or their favorite rocks
71. A "buttload" is an actual measurement of weight
72. There is a cheerleading squad in Arizona that only people 55 or older can join
They're the Sun City Poms!
73. A Kentucky airport has therapy miniature horses for anxious flyers
74. The McRib is made up of 70 different ingredients
75. An author in 1898 predicted how the Titanic would sink, 14 years before the accident
76. of people said they dreamed in black and white before the invention of color TV. Today, 12% do
77. Abraham Lincoln’s son, Robert Todd Lincoln, was either actually present or very near by 3 out of 4 presidential assassinations
78. Amelia Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt once snuck away from a White House dinner party to go on a joyride flight from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore
79. "She sells seashells by the seashore" was written about Mary Anning, a pioneering 19th-century paleontologist from Lyme Regis in England
80. Mountain Dew can dissolve a mouse 😳
81. Prior to the release of movies with sound, popcorn wasn't a theater snack
Have you heard about any of these facts before? I feel like the Mister Rogers one may be more commonly known these days, but I spent quite a lot of time fact-checking and getting way too absorbed into each different fact.
In the comments section below, let us know everything, your thoughts, feelings, and weird or otherwise not widely known facts. And be sure to share these weird facts with your friends!