What's the wildest random fact you know, Pandas? Have you ever heard that flour is insanely flammable, especially when dispersed and thrown into the air? Or did you know that Subway bread contains so much sugar in it that, in Ireland, they're not allowed to legally call it "bread?"
We just found out about these and more interesting gems from several threads online. In one of them, one netizen asked, "What is [the] most 'Why the [heck] do you know that?' fact?" In another, a Threads user wrote: "Teach me something new today. Drop a fact [that is] useless, funny, random… let's share what we know."
And people didn't disappoint, as their brains seem like sponges for useless but fascinating facts. We've gathered the most interesting tidbits of knowledge from these online threads and present the wildest to you here. For example, read on to find out what distance it takes for a human to hear a blue whale's heartbeat!
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My mid school teacher was explaining about Spanish exploration of the New World, and he asked us if we know about the Aztec. I promptly raised hand and tell the class about their brief history until their demise under the Spanish, in which my teacher was impressed. Little did he know that all i did was just recites the entirety of Moctezuma campaign from Age of Empires 2.
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There are 4 suits in a deck of cards, 1 for each season
There are 52 cards, for the 52 weeks in a year
If you number each card with ace as 1 up to 13 then add all the cards together you get 364.
Add one joker and it’s 365, for the days of the year.
Add the other joker and it’s 366, for a leap year.
#5
Polar bear livers should never be eaten, they're so full of vitamin A that it'll poison you.
Edit: This fact broughy to you by The SAS Survival Handbook, which takes the concept of "survival" way beyond your average hike in the woods.
#6
Human bodies do not produce farts, that comes from the bacteria in our intestines, we are merely the chimney.
© Photo: letuswatchtvinpeace
#7
The bread in a Subway sandwich has so much sugar in it, that in Ireland it's legally not allowed to be called bread.
Legally, it's confectionery.
© Photo: jrf_1973
#8
If you mix 95% water and 5% potassium hydroxide, in a metal tube with a body inside and heat it up for four to six hours, all that will be left are squishy bones. You can run that through a cremulator and pour sulphuric acid on it to get rid of the bones. It's alkaline hydrolysis. The sulphuric acid thing I added for spice- but yeah. It's actually alot more eco-friendly friendly option than cremation so xD.
© Photo: Legalize_positivity
#9
Santiago Chile is further East than New York City.
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© Photo: maurs_bar
#11
Every Kentucky Derby winner since 1982 has been descended from Man o’War, with the exception of 1994 winner Go For Gin.
© Photo: NathanGa
#12
I have many but the first of which is probably: Life wouldn't give you lemons because lemons are *not* a naturally occurring fruit.
© Photo: kingferret53
#13
If you really want to get your hands on some industrial or commercial grade explosives, robbing a construction company is the way to go.
© Photo: NickDanger3di
#14
Mantis shrimp have a punch so fast that it boils the water around the punch. With a speed roughly that of a .22 caliber bullet, it can stun some fish instantly and even break a man's finger.
© Photo: Jacobus121
#15
Whoever coined the term, “coined the term,” coined the term, “coined the term.”.
#16
Back in high school my human geography teacher had a map of European ethnicities on the board and questioned out loud why the Hungarian people were called "Magyars", to which I promptly raised my hand and told him it was because in Hungarian the country is called Magyarorszag (don't remember how it's spelled). Needless to say the room was very impressed.
But I didn't have the heart to tell him it was because I was a Hetalia fan.
EDIT: I guess some people didn't take "Human Geography" in school, but it's the name of the subject. Nonetheless my instructor was indeed of the homo sapien species... or so I was made to believe.
#17
Flour is flammable and too much vanilla essence consumed by a child will be fatal to them.
© Photo: anon
#18
Recycling of plastics is useless.
The time, money and energy used to do so are are no more green than producing raw plastic from crude sources, and are mainly done because many people don't know what else to do (we gotta do something, right?). And the plastics that are successfully recycled tend to be lower grade than raw, their hydrocarbon chains are weakened, Of course there are compromises, trade-offs and uses for these recycled plastics, but they aren't applicable large scale. The best solution is to reduce the amount of plastics used in the first place.
The cost/benefit of recycling paper, glass and metal is worth it, but not so for plastic.
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When bees fall asleep they cuddle each others little toes.
© Photo: aetherlyz
#25
Corpses at the bottom of Lake Superior (they don't float to the surface like in other bodies of water) stay preserved for much longer than normal because the conditions of the water are ideal for preserving corpses. Some are still in recognizable condition even decades after getting in there.
#26
Your bones aren’t white like a spooky skeleton. They’re a pinkish Grey.
#27
The person's that invented Pringels remains were put in a pringels can
#28
The smell when you file your nails is the same smell as if you were to file or cut through your bones.
© Photo: GoodShufu
#29
It’s pretty common for types of jellyfish to be used as cheap food fillers all over the world. chances are,if you’ve eaten a cheap eggroll or something from a random place,you probably ate jellyfish filler without knowing since they take on and absorb the taste of whatever they were added to so easily.
© Photo: ilovedtransyIvania
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© Photo: poobae
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The act of throwing somebody out of a window is called defenestration.
The act of of throwing somebody into a fire is called decrepitation.
Floccinaucinihilipilification is the act of judging something as worthless.
So technically you could do all three in just a few seconds. You could floccinaucinihilipilificate a person and choose to both defenestrate and decrepitate them in response if there is a fire lit underneath the window you plan to throw them from. Don't do that tho, I just like silly words.
#34
A dog will eat its own babies if one is sick.
#35
I learnt that you cannot/ shouldn't pick up a human head, as its very unbalanced and will most likely roll out your hands.
That and the skin by your neck is so stretchy, you can rotate your head I think 3 times before the skin rips.
Both I learnt in reddit threads. Both got me weird looks at gatherings when I bring it up.
#36
The buried treasure of Montezuma is most likely near Kanab, Utah. Misfortune has met nearly anyone who has tried to get into the underwater cave it is suspected to be in.
People have tried to drill through the ground above the cave and they found gold on the drill bit, but the driller and his wife passed away from heart conditions and such that night. The hole was sealed with cement afterwards. Divers who searched for the treasure reported seeing ghosts of Native Americans and such guarding the area while others had their oxygen tanks shut off and their regulators ripped out.
Montezuma was known to have his men sacrificed when they buried treasure so that their spirits would guard it. I have personal connections to one of the first divers who went down there, but he, like most of the other divers, refuses to talk about what happened down there. He just warns people to leave it alone, and he hasn't been the same since he went down there.
I've been to that exact lake a few times in my life. It is the most eerily still place I've been to in that state and it has a highway right next to it for crying out loud. Something or someone wants the blood money of Montezuma to stay far away from modern human hands as possible.
#37
If you brush your teeth twice a day and 2m each then you would spend 0.28% of your lifetime brushing. For some reason I had it in note.
© Photo: Micse
#38
Mummy parties, where people unboxed and ate Egyptian mummies, were a thing in Victorian England.
#39
Squirrels can survive terminal velocity but not terminal cancer.
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© Photo: yourfrienddany
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A Portuguese Man of War isn't technically a jellyfish, but is actually a siphonophore, where several organism comprise themselves to create a larger collective of one.
Edit: As u/refaelzat pointed out, the Portuguese Man of War is still a jellyfish while also being a siphonophore. I'm not exactly sure what the correct classification is for this, though.
#43
Injecting elemental mercury into your veins to become a superhero, while colossally stupid, is not typically fatal. Mercury in its elemental form is not water-soluble and therefore doesn't get absorbed into the bloodstream.
#44
Humans can become more flexible based on the visual field.
Most of this stuff how freely you are to move your muscles is center brain region controlled which gets info from our visual field.
If you do a wide stretch. And then you turn your gaze there, and try to go further out. Your brain will allow you more muscle movement.. next time you do the stretch you will be more flexible. In fact 25-40% more in some cases.
In fact visual system is hella interesting it's nuts how much it directs from time perception to how focussed and awake we are because we also have cells in our eyes that are angled Slightly upwards that just scan for light intensity. They literally dictate if we are awake and alert or not... It's why skylights work and why desk ergonomics tell you to offset your screen. Because you get sleepy if you look down on the screen more or less because you drown out those cells.
Heck did you know our peripheral vision literally runs on a higher frame rate of sorts. You can literally focus on more things and spot more stuff if you train yourself to focus on your peripheral vision.. the center focus in your eyes runs slower and is processing stuff with more detail..you can train yourself to be good at wheres waldo... In fact it's why it even works. Because if you spot something that looks like waldo there's small attention dips due to dopamine release where you will literally miss waldo if he's next to the thing almost looking like him.. because our focus literally tunnel visions Like that if we don't pay attention to the periphery.
#45
There are sugar free gummy bears that cause people to have wild violent diarrhea, and it is *still* available for sale.
Also has some entertaining reviews.
#46
Louis XIV's heart was mummified, outside his corpse, that is. It was taken from the tomb by plunderers during the revolution and came into the possession of Lord Harcourt, archbishop of York, in the first half of the 19th century. As if this isn't creepy enough, William Buckland, dean of Westminster, was given the heart in 1848 and apparently ate it!
#47
Venus flytraps are only native to the Carolinas in the US. They have to be imported to be found anywhere else.
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Pablo Picasso lived at the same time as both Charles Darwin and Eminem.