Pedants will know that tomatoes are a fruit, but did you know that bananas are actually berries? If you did, pat yourself on the back, but, as it turns out, there are multitudes of facts and stories about our world that don’t sound realistic at all, but are entirely factual. Truth, as they say, is often stranger than fiction.
Someone asked “What’s a fact that sounds fake, but is actually true?” and netizens shared their best examples. So get comfortable as you scroll through, upvote your favorites and be sure to add your own thoughts and examples to the comments section down below.
#1
1 million seconds = 11 days.
1 billion seconds = 30 years.
We don’t need billionaires.
jpporcaro:
The difference between a million and a billion is about a billion.
Image credits: Lexinoz
#2
For the price you need to pay to have your hip replaced in the US, you could fly to Spain first class, have it replaced. Go running with the bulls, break your hip again. Replace it a second time. Fly back to the US first class. And STILL have some left over.
Image credits: The_Duke2331
#3
Egyptian civilisation is so old that Ancient Egypt itself had Egyptology. They had no more clue about the origins of the Sphinx than we do today.
ferret_80:
Egypt is so ridiculously old it can be hard to truly picture. Cleopatea ruled in 50 BCE, there was already 5000 years of Egyptian civilisation at that point.
We are currently only 2074 years from Cleopatra's rule. Think how old Roman ruins are, how ancient they seem to us. And Ancient Egypt 2000 years ago had double that time as a civilisation.
Anyways prehistory fascinates me and I'll take most any excuse to enthuse about it.
Right_Two_5737:
They dug a canal from the Nile to the Red Sea and used it for a few centuries. Then economic conditions changed and the maintenance cost of the canal wasn't worth it anymore, so it was abandoned and filled in with sand. A few centuries later, economic conditions changed again so they dug the canal again. All of this happened several times.
Image credits: Jolly-Minimum-6641
#4
Bananas are berries and strawberries aren’t.
miniatureconlangs:
This kind of... well, it stems from a misunderstanding of how language works, really.
It's quite common for words to have multiple slightly different meanings. Just consider words like 'just', 'consider', 'words' or 'like'. Context usually tells us which meaning is intended.
The normal, "inherited" and old meaning of 'berry' is basically 'tiny somewhat juicy fruitlet'. Raspberries, strawberries, bilberries, lingonberries, gooseberries et.c. all qualify for that. If you're the kind of person who shames someone for calling any of those berries berries, stop it and be ashamed of yourself.
An artifical, and very contextually specific meaning of 'berry' is that used in botany - 'A soft fruit which develops from a single ovary and contains seeds not encased in pits.' This was never intended for universal use, but for specialists to be able to discuss a specialized topic without having to be very wordy. For them, the size is of secondary consideration when discussing these matters, and so, they made up their own terminology to discuss them. However, they used words that were already in circulation, because there were many of them, and they didn't feel like making new ones up.
Their technical, very specific definition was never meant for widespread use.
What makes this very clear is that if you encounter a species you've never seen before, if you honestly believe in the idea that berries only are to be used of "a soft fruit which develops from a single ovary and contains seeds not encased in pits", then you won't know what to call it until you've dissected the berry. That's not a practical approach to human communication, that's downright inane.
But of course, if you're the kind of person who corrects people for calling berries berries, you're probably also the kind who will correct me when I tell you that whales are bony fish.
Image credits: Artemisiae
#5
The U.S. Appalachian Mountains and the Scottish Highlands are the same mountain range, torn asunder by plate tectonics. The ancient mountains are older than sharks, themselves older than the Rings of Saturn, and knew a world before trees.
Tdhods:
Sharks are also older than the North Star, which blew my mind.
Image credits: The_Mr_Wilson
#6
You can fit all the other planets in the Solar System between the Earth and the Moon.
Locke_Erasmus:
With plenty of room to spare, if I recall correctly. Pretty sure you can jam Pluto in there too. Justice for Pluto!
Image credits: cwx149
#7
Michelin stars are given out by the Michelin tyre company.
It was a marketing ploy, designed to get people to drive further, and to wear down their tyres. Now it is seen as one of the highest endorsements in the cooking world.
Engineary:
Also, the Michelin man ("Bibendum") is white because natural tire rubber was white / gray in color, and original tires were white.
Once they started adding carbon to the tire mixture to add strength (and turning the road tires black), Bibendum was already so well-known and recognizable that they just left him white.
athy-dragoness:
Similarly, Guinness World Records was created by the Guinness beer company and originally given out in pubs.
Image credits: interesseret
#8
Spiders learn your daily routine. Who the F**K figured that out?
Anytime you see a spider in your house, it's because you've deviated from your daily routine and, according to the spider, you're not where you're supposed to be.
I found this out just the other day. When I first moved into my place it had been empty for a month or so and there were spiders, not everywhere, but noticeably around. Now I don't see them at all anymore.
Image credits: mdubelite
#9
There would be a lot more ancient Egyptian mummies around if the Victorians didn’t turn most of them into paint or eat them.
Southern_Hamster_338:
They even unraveled mummies at parties for entertainment! SO WEIRD!!! No wonder there are so many laws now about desecrating the dead!
And the Victorian Era continued til 1901 I think? So that’s crazy too!
Taman_Should:
I’ve read a few things about this. The Victorians didn’t “eat” mummies per se, but they did enjoy using the aptly named Mummy Brown pigment like you said, and “mummy powder” was a common item sold in drug stores and apothecaries. It’s more accurate to say that they snorted ground-up mummies as “medicine.”
The local governments in Egypt also deserve their fair share of the blame for keeping this bizarre fad going. They were well aware of the European appetite for mummies and ancient curiosities, and they capitalized on it every chance they got. At one point, the mummy trade made up a significant percentage of the whole Egyptian economy. Just imagine grave-robbing being something like 1/3 of your nation’s GDP!
You have to understand though, there were once thousands upon thousands of mummies all over Egypt and Sudan. Mostly in plain above-ground mausoleums. For centuries, it was the most common burial practice for anyone who could afford it. Everybody wanted to be mummified, from all walks of life, in every social class. Movies and other works of fiction have given a lot of people the impression that being mummified was a privilege only reserved for the elites or powerful leaders, but this isn’t true at all.
There were so many mummies that when Egypt was first building railroads through the Sahara, the trains sometimes burned mummies as fuel when there was no wood or coal available. Their oily wrappings were conveniently flammable. That’s right, they had MUMMY-POWERED TRAINS.
Image credits: Faust_8
#10
Wild but true, Octopuses have three hearts, honey can survive 3,000 years, sharks predate trees, wombats poop cubes, and there’s a jellyfish that can live forever.
Nature really doesn’t play by the rules.
SwingingtotheBeat:
That explains why my last jar of honey said, “Best by: March 03, 5025”
Image credits: Patient-Day-7586
#11
Radio Shack sued a regional auto parts chain Auto Shack for infringing on their name. Auto Shack changed their name to AutoZone. Years later, Radio Shack created a section called POWERZONE so AutoZone sued them for infringing on their name.
atombomb1945:
I worked for Radio Shack long ago. They were happy to sue any business or company using the words "Shack" or "Radio" in their name. One that happened while I worked there was some Mom and Pop place opened a restaurant called "Pizza Shack" and they were taken to court. We were all told to be very careful about how we used the company name as well. This was before social media but we were warned that even using the name of the store outside of work could be grounds for a lawsuit.
They just ended up k**ling themselves actually.
Image credits: GotMoFans
#12
There is a fish with the scientific name Boops boops.
"In the early third century CE, Athenaeus, in his Deipnosophistae, suggested that the name came from the sound that the fish makes. The name boops is mentioned due to the fish's large eyes."
Image credits: MissMarionMac
#13
Flying from Anchorage, Alaska to London is about the same distance and time as from Miami, Florida to London.
Girth matters.
Image credits: SupplyChainGuy1
#14
As a species, humans can out-run every other animal on earth. EVERY ANIMAL.
Its not that we're faster, its that we have the longest endurance. They might get away from us, but we always catch up when the animal gets tired.
Image credits: Ganglebot
#15
There are two comic strips called Dennis the Menace - one from the UK, one from the US. They have nothing to do with each other and were developed entirely separately from each other - but they both premiered on the same day (March 12 1951).
CMDR_omnicognate:
Also that Dennis the Menace US is like, a regular boy who sometimes gets into trouble, UK Dennis the Menace is an actual menace. The meme showing the difference between the two is funny to me, showing the US one fishing in a goldfish bowl, and the UK one just sawing his mum’s table in half for no reason at all.
Image credits: Sable_Tip
#16
Just learned this factoid - most "shooting stars" you see are about the size of a raisin. That, to me, is unbelievable.
#17
The largest desert in the world is Antarctica.
#18
99.6% (or so) of Canadians live further south than Glasgow.
BondStreetIrregular:
By way of context, a Canadian town on the same latitude as Leeds gets about 40 times more snow annually.
Image credits: blaublau
#19
The first documented use of OMG to refer to "Oh My God" was sent by Admiral Jackie Fisher to First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill in 1917 via telegram.
L3PALADIN:
A lot of modern shorthand owes its origin to telegram because it was the first time you paid by the word/letter. it was also a time when people sat down at a desk to do their correspondences so there was no time based reason to shorten anything yet.
Image credits: wikingwarrior
#20
Woolly mammoths were still alive when the Egyptian pyramids were being built.
#21
Pokemon has made more money than Harry Potter, Marvel, the Beatles, and Taylor Swift combined. Pokemon is the highest grossing IP of all time and it isn’t even remotely close. Pokemon is many $10B’s ahead of second place.
Sunnyfishyfish:
It also was the reason Nintendo dominated the handheld game industry for so long. Most franchises spike and then drop off after awhile. Pokemon never did. It just kept going up and up and up and up and up.
Image credits: Capable_Wait09
#22
President Jimmy Carter was once attacked by a rabbit in a lake.
"On April 20, 1979, during a few days of vacation in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, Carter was fishing in a johnboat in a pond on his farm, when he saw a swamp rabbit, which Carter later speculated was fleeing from a predator, swimming in the water and making its way towards him, "hissing menacingly, its teeth flashing and nostrils flared", so he reacted by either hitting or splashing water at it with his paddle to scare it away, and it subsequently swam away from him and climbed out of the pond."
Image credits: lkjandersen
#23
Dolphins and migratory birds sleep with only one half of their brain in sleep mode, the other half remains active and continues to guide them.
Image credits: ArkhamN7
#24
Apple Corps (record label owned by the Beatles) sued Apple Computer for name infringement. They settled, with Apple Computer paying a fee and agreeing never to get into the music business.
The first sound file on a Mac was called sosumi, a playful jab taunting Apple Corps “so sue me”.
Image credits: HoochieKoochieMan
#25
Simeon the Second was crowned Tsar of Bulgaria at the age of six, following his father's death (possibly assassinated by the Germans). The monarchy was then abolished in 1946 and he went into exile. Decades later, he'd return to Bulgaria and be elected Prime Minister.
Sounds like something you'd hear about a fictional European country in a comic book.
#26
Up until a few months ago, John Tyler, the 10th president of the United States, had a living grandson. John Tyler was born in 1790 and took office in 1841 when he assumed the presidency upon William Henry Harrison's death; he had 8 children with his first wife and 7 with his second, the youngest being born in 1860 when he was 70, making him the US president who fathered the most children.
His son Lyon had a child when he was 75 years old, in 1928; Tyler's grandson Harrison Ruffin Tyler, was living in Virginia until his passing on May 25th, 2025. The difference from John Tyler's birth to Harrison Tyler's death was a span of 235 years.
dcgradc:
My grandfather was born in 1876 . When my mom was born in 1945, he was 71.
She passed in 2024, so 148 years . If I last another 20, it will be 168. My mother had me at 17, so that's the big difference.
A fun fact :
My mom's uncle married my dad's aunt . That's how they met.
Image credits: A911owner
#27
Cancer is cured several dozen times every day in your body alone.
supremedalek925:
That reminds me of a crazy cancer fact. There are actually cancers that are contagious and can hop from individual to individual, and have been reported in several different animals, including dogs. Unlike cancers that mutate from one’s own body, they still have the DNA of the individual they originated from. In dogs, it’s the cancer of a dog who contracted it thousands of years ago that is still being spread to this day.
Image credits: Nexxus3000
#28
Koalas have a hard time digesting the only food they actually eat because it’s poisonous. But it’s still the only thing they will eat. Also because they can’t digest it very well the moms have a hard time producing milk so the babies will suckle the moms a*****e and eat it’s s**t so it can get food which also helps its body be able to somewhat digest the eucalyptus.
Also they have Chlamydia. Not all of them but a lot of them.
CallMeNoodler:
Koalas are f**king horrible animals. They have one of the smallest brain to body ratios of any mammal, additionally - their brains are smooth. A brain is folded to increase the surface area for neurons. If you present a koala with leaves plucked from a branch, laid on a flat surface, the koala will not recognise it as food. They are too thick to adapt their feeding behaviour to cope with change. In a room full of potential food, they can literally starve to death. This is not the token of an animal that is winning at life. Speaking of stupidity and food, one of the likely reasons for their primitive brains is the fact that additionally to being poisonous, eucalyptus leaves (the only thing they eat) have almost no nutritional value. They can't afford the extra energy to think, they sleep more than 80% of their f**king lives. When they are awake all they do is eat, shit and occasionally scream like satan. Because eucalyptus leaves hold such little nutritional value, koalas have to ferment the leaves in their guts for days on end. Unlike their brains, they have the largest hind gut to body ratio of any mammal. Many herbivorous mammals have adaptations to cope with harsh plant life taking its toll on their teeth, rodents for instance have teeth that never stop growing, some animals only have teeth on their lower jaw, grinding plant matter on bony plates in the tops of their mouths, others have enlarged molars that distribute the wear and break down plant matter more efficiently... Koalas are no exception, when their teeth erode down to nothing, they resolve the situation by starving to death, because they're terrible animals. Being mammals, koalas raise their joeys on milk (admittedly, one of the lowest milk yields to body ratio... There's a trend here). When the young joey needs to transition from rich, nourishing substances like milk, to eucalyptus (a plant that seems to be making it abundantly clear that it doesn't want to be eaten), it finds it does not have the necessary gut flora to digest the leaves. To remedy this, the young joey begins nuzzling its mother's anus until she leaks a little diarrhoea (actually fecal pap, slightly less digested), which he then proceeds to slurp on. This partially digested plant matter gives him just what he needs to start developing his digestive system. Of course, he may not even have needed to bother nuzzling his mother. She may have been suffering from incontinence. Why? Because koalas are riddled with chlamydia. In some areas the infection rate is 80% or higher. This statistic isn't helped by the fact that one of the few other activities koalas will spend their precious energy on is rape. Despite being seasonal breeders, males seem to either not know or care, and will simply overpower a female regardless of whether she is ovulating. If she fights back, he may drag them both out of the tree, which brings us full circle back to the brain: Koalas have a higher than average quantity of cerebrospinal fluid in their brains. This is to protect their brains from injury... should they fall from a tree. An animal so thick it has its own little built in special ed helmet. I hate them.
Image credits: iamacannibal
#29
The scientific name of Llamas is 'Lama Glama'.
Scientists have few opportunities to write their jokes in stone, but when they can, they do!
#30
A polar bears skin is black, and its fur clear!
#31
Greenland is more north east south and west than Iceland.
punania:
Similarly, Japan is more North, South, East and West than South Korea.
Image credits: marcusthecarcassman
#32
Gary Oldman is younger than Gary Numan.
#33
Redheads may need more anesthesia. I had a surgery consult today and brought that up to the doctor (my hair is naturally red,) and she told me that was ridiculous and “not everything on the internet is true.” Did a few google searches and it seems to be a real thing, peer reviewed studies and all.
Image credits: sneekysmiles
#34
There is a possibility the fastest, manmade object in the universe is a manhole cover that was thrown into space using a nuke.
The U.S. army was testing nuclear bombs, and tested one by drilling a deep hole, lowering the nuke into it, and sealing it with a manhole cover. Despite using a high speed camera, the manhole cover post-detonation was only visible for 2 or 3 frames, with meant it was shot off extremely fast. In numbers, the manhole cover was even so fast it could have easily defied earths gravity and have left the planet.
Of course, its also very well possible that due to the speed, the friction potentially had evaporated the cover. But I personally love the idea that there is a manhole moving through space and potentially crashing into another planet in our solar system.
Image credits: GuyFromDeathValley
#35
ACHOO syndrome stands for Autosomal Dominant Compelling Helio-Ophthalmic Outburst Syndrome. It is a condition where people experience involuntary, uncontrollable sneezing when exposed to bright light, such as sunlight or artificial light sources. The name is derived from the onomatopoeic sound of a sneeze, "achoo." The "helio-ophthalmic" part refers to the eyes (ophthalmic) being the trigger for the sneezing, while "outburst" describes the sudden and forceful nature of the sneeze.
#36
I've heard a shrimp's heart is in its head. It's a bizarre little fact that makes u stop and think about how wild animal biology can be.
Image credits: Pixeko
#37
Learned this in a design class: the world’s best-selling car since 1979—not a ford or Toyota—it’s the red-and-yellow Little Tikes “Cozy Coupe.”.
#38
There are over 920 known moons in the solar system.
On a personal note, my favourite moon is Styx, which orbits Pluto.
#39
Since 1950 human population tripled.
#40
The U.S. still makes $2 bill, so if you ever want a $2 bill, just go to your bank and ask for it.
#41
The average number of arms that people have is less than two.
#42
Your eyeballs have an entirely different immune system from the rest of your body. If your body finds out about your eyes, they treat it like any other invasive organism and attack it.
#43
The largest air force in the world is the United States Air Force, the second largest air force is the United States Navy.
biffbobfred:
The Russian Air Force is 3rd. The U.S. Air Force, Navy, army air corps, and U.S. Marines are 1, 2, 4, and 5
A single ford class carrier can carry more planes than many national air forces. Ballpark, a single Ford class aircraft carrier would be 80th largest Air Force in the world on its own, and there’s like 200 nations on this planet.
Image credits: MemoryDemise
#44
The color purple is not wavelength of light. It's made up by your brain.
#45
The planet **PSR J1719−1438 b** is very likely a super dense diamond with an oxygen surface.
