69 More Fun, Interesting & Weird Random Facts: Volume 2
1. If you were to walk from Finland to North Korea, the only country you would cross would be Russia.
2. The can opener was not invented until 48 years after cans were invented. Speaking of, are you in the market for a new can opener and want to learn more? Check out our piece!
3. The largest kind of deer is the moose. Males can grow up to ten feet in length and up to 1,500 pounds.
4. Depending on whom you ask, either Greenland or Australia is the world’s largest island. Greenland, at just under 840,000 square miles, is usually consider the largest. Australia is almost three million square miles, but it’s generally disqualified from consideration because it’s already a continent.
5. Estimating the exact age of how long sharks live is not an exact science. But Greenland sharks can live to be at least 270 years old—and maybe even 500 years old.
6. You’ve probably heard the phrase “as American as apple pie.” However, recipes for baking apples in pie go as far back as 1381 in England.
7. The heaviest dogs are St. Bernards. They can grow up to 260 pounds. Because of their great strength and size, they have often been used as mountain rescue dogs.
8. Brazil produces more coffee than any other country in the world. They supply about 25% of all coffee, producing more than three million tons of beans in some years.
9. Pringles are not actually potato chips. They are made from dehydrated potato flakes that are pressed into shape—and not from potatoes sliced very thin. When Fredric Baur — who created the slim tube packaging for the snack — passed away, his ashes were buried in a Pringles can. Is this making you crave Pringles? Same.
Click to satisfy your craving and buy your own!
10. The most common tiger is the Bengal tiger, which primarily lives in India. They can also be found in Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal, Bhutan, and China. Despite being the most common tiger, it is considered an endangered species.
11. Children are so curious you can practically quantify it. The average 4-year-old asks between 200 and 300 questions a day.
12. Leonardo da Vinci was ambidextrous. He could write with one hand and draw with his other hand—at the same time. He also invented scissors!
13. There are four oceans in the world: Pacific, Atlantic, Artic, and Indian. The Pacific Ocean is the biggest, while the Artic is the smallest.
14. Andrew Jackson was America’s seventh president, and was known for often deploying his vocabulary of swear words. His pet parrot seemed to have picked up that habit. He was so agitated and excited by visitors coming and going during Jackson’s funeral that had to be removed for swearing so much.
15. The stapes is the smallest bone in the human body. It’s found in the middle ear, and measures a very tiny three millimeters by 2.5 millimeters in size. The bone is crucial in moving sound waves and delivers them from the outer ear to the inner ear on their way to the brain.
16. Do you know anyone whose birthday is February 29th? The odds of being born on a leap day are about one in 1,461.
17. Until 1901, the White House was simply known as the Executive Residence. Teddy Roosevelt wanted to lend more prestige to the home of the president, and changed the name.
18. If Earth were about the size of a single grain of sand, then the sun would be about the size of a tennis ball.
19. Just like people, cows have accents, and their moos can vary from region to region.
20. There are only three countries that do not use the metric system: Myanmar, Liberia, and the United States.
21. Mars is often called the Red Planet, and it gets its color because it’s basically covered in iron-oxide. That’s the same element that makes our blood red.
22. The American flag has 50 stars to represent the 50 states of the union. It also has seven red stripes and six white stripes to represent the 13 original colonies.
23. Michael Jordan won six NBA championships in his playing career, and was the Finals MVP for all of them. He was also an All-Star 14 times, was named to the All-Defensive team nine times, was the scoring champion 10 times, and won the 1984-85 Rookie of the Year award.
24. You may think of bagels as a New York City institution, but they actually originated in Poland.
25. The first Wimbledon Championship was held in 1877. Spencer Gore was its first winner, defeating William Marshall.
26. In 2019, Blue Ivy Carter — daughter of Jay-Z and Beyoncé — became the youngest person to appear on the Billboard charts. She was only seven years old when she sang the opening lyrics to her mother’s single “Brown Skin Girl,” which was featured on the soundtrack to the 2019 version of The Lion King.
27. We put a man on the moon in 1969 before we put wheels on luggage in 1970.
28. Denmark has the record for the oldest continuously used national flag among all the countries in the world. The flag features a white cross against a bright red background, and it’s been in use since 1625.
29. Have you ever fantasized about winning an Oscar and giving an acceptance speech while holding the statue? Then perhaps you should visit Kate Winslet’s home. The actress has been known to keep hers (which she won in 2009 for The Reader) in the bathroom so guests can do exactly that in front of the mirror.
30. Barry Manilow’s hit song “I Write the Songs” won a Grammy Award in 1977 for Song of the Year, but he did not write the song. It was composed by touring Beach Boys member Bruce Johnston. However, Manilow did write the jingles for State Farm and Band-Aid.
Click on the cover to buy The Essential Barry Manilow on CD!
31. Many of us think of Egypt when we think of pyramids, but the country of Sudan has almost twice as many pyramids as Egypt does. Depending on the account, Egypt has upwards of 138 pyramids, while Sudan has upwards of 255.
32. Many of us associate rice with Asia, as the food is a staple in many Asian countries. However, Arkansas is the leading producer of rice in the United States.
33. Babies are born without a kneecap bone. They are, however, born with kneecap cartilage that ossify into a bone when they’re around four years old.
34. The very first Calvin and Hobbes comic strip appeared in newspapers on November 18, 1985. It ran in about 2,400 newspapers before ending on December 31, 1995.
35. The hamburger was supposedly invented in Seymour, Wisconsin in 1885, when 15-year-old vendor Charlie Nagreen flattened a meatball and put it between two slices of bread.
36. We may think of a sombrero as a certain kind of hat from Mexico, but it’s just the Spanish word for “hat.”
37. Snowflakes are unique, and one is not like another. The largest known snowflake fell in Fort Keogh, Montana in 1887. It was 15 inches in diameter and 8 inches thick.
38. Do you know what an intergluteal cleft is? It’s your butt crack! lmao.
39. Did you ever use one of those popular Texas Instrument graphing calculator for math exams when you were in school? They were expensive, and they packed quite the punch. Believe it or not, a TI-83 calculator has six times more processing power than the computer that landed Apollo 11 on the moon in 1969. If you’ve always wanted to have one when you were in school but your family was too poor to buy one, consider this your second chance at happiness.
Click on the calculator to buy your own T1-83!
40. It can literally rain diamonds on gas planets like Jupiter and Saturn. Because of the abundance of carbon in the atmosphere, carbon sediment can turn into graphite and fall when it’s struck by lightning. As it falls, the pressure of the atmosphere hardens it until it turns into a diamond.
41. Over 73 million people saw The Beatles make their American television debut on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964. Though rock-n-roll was already fantastic before The Beatles came along, nothing would ever be the same again.
42. In the 1870s, a town in Belgium attempted to use cats to deliver mail. Unsurprisingly, it did not work very well and did not last very long.
43. The letter “A” does not appear in a written number until you reach one thousand. Count and see for yourself.
44. Bullfrogs do not really sleep. Though they sometimes shut their eyes and rest, they remain fully alert to external stimuli.
45. You’ve probably heard the expression “the greatest thing since sliced bread,” though sliced bread was first sold in 1928. Lots of great things have been invented since sliced bread, including television.
46. The very first toy to be advertised on television was Mr. Potato Head. No house is a true home without a Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head as part of your family so get your own Potato Heads today!
Click on the baked potato to buy your own Mr. Potato Head!
47. Woodpeckers are not zombies, but they will eat the brains of other birds if they’ve gone long enough without food.
48. Loch Ness Monster sightings have been occurring for over a thousand years. The very first one was in 565 AD.
49. The 1960 horror flick Psycho is perhaps Alfred Hitchcock’s most famous film, and often pointed to as a landmark example of the genre. It was also the very first movie to feature a toilet bowl flushing.
50. Dolph Lundgren — the actor famous for starring in dozens of action movies of a certain quality — has a peculiar background that belies his reputation as a movie star. After graduating from the University of Sydney with a master’s degree in chemical engineering, he was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to M.I.T., but quit in just two weeks to pursue acting. He also dated performer Grace Jones, and was her bodyguard.
51. Amazingly, bats make up about 20% of all the world’s mammals. There are over 900 different species of bats.
52. The body of a grown human has a skeleton of 206 bones. Babies, however, are born with 300 bones. Eventually, the bones fuse together and condense into 206 bones as they grow. More than half of your bones are located in your hands and feet.
53. We think of Nintendo as the huge video game brand that features The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros. that we’ve known and loved for years. But many people probably don’t know that Nintendo began as a playing card company in 1889, and even predates the very first motion pictures.
54. Us humans shed a lot of skin. In fact, we shed about 40 pounds of our skin in our lifetime, basically replacing it all every month.
55. Ants have an incredibly hard exoskeleton. That, plus its extremely small eight enables ants to survive just about any fall.
56. Believe it or not, waterfalls can happen underwater as well, including the tallest waterfall in the world. The Denmark Strait cataract, located between Greenland and Iceland, is about 11,500 feet.
57. There is a basketball court on the top floor of the U.S. Supreme Court Building. It’s often referred to as “the highest court in the land.”
58. Horatio Magellan Crunch is the full name of the Cap’N Crunch mascot. The three stripes on his uniform cuffs confirm that he also isn’t really a captain, but a commander. Are you hungry for your own bowl of Cap’N Crunch? They’re grrreeeeeeaaat!
Click on the pilot to buy your own boxes of Cap’N Crunch!
59. Sunflowers are known to soak up radioactive particles. Millions of them were planted in Japan after a tragic tsunami hit Fukashima in 2011 and exposed toxins from a nearby nuclear power plant that contaminated the soil.
60. If you cut off a starfish’s arm, it can grow back. In fact, a starfish can regenerate a whole body from a single arm. If you cut off the arm of a starfish plush toy, though, it probably won’t grow back.
61. A dog’s ear has 18 muscles, all working separately that results in the free movement that you often see in dog’s ears.
62. The oldest hotel in the world is the Nishiyama Onsen Keiunkan in Yamanashi, Japan. It has been in operation since 705 A.D.
63. The sperm whale is the loudest animal on earth. The clicking sound of a sperm whale has been recorded at 230 decibels — that’s noisier than a jet engine taking off!
64. William Shakespeare — perhaps the most famous writer in the history of the world — had parents, wife, and children that could not (or just barely) read or write.
Click on the guy to buy The Complete Works of Shakespeare!
65. Have you ever used a mix of random symbols and punctuation to signify curse words when writing? That’s called a grawlix.
66. Marie Curie is the only person to have won the Nobel Prize twice. In 1903, she shared a joint Nobel Prize for Physics with her husband for their study on spontaneous radiation. She was awarded a second Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911 for her work in radioactivity. She also coined the term “radioactivity.” Her daughter Eve wrote her biography.
67. When you squeeze a tube of toothpaste and put a big hunk of it on your toothbrush, that blob is sometimes called a nurdle.
68. A cockroach can hold its breath for up to 40 minutes and can even live an entire week without its head.
69. Chihuahuas are the smallest dogs. Typically, they weigh between three and six pounds, and stand between six and nine inches tall. A fat chihuahua is only about 12 pounds.
Read more fun trivia content at Content Bash!
Looking for more weird, cool, interesting random facts? Check out Volume 1, Volume 3, and Volume 4!
Books are cool! So is literature. Check out our features on facts about influential writers like J.D. Salinger, Charlotte Brontë, Bram Stoker, Virginia Woolf, and Oscar Wilde!
Need to buy a dictionary but can’t decide which one to get? Fortunately we have a Guide to Buying A Dictionary! We also have a guide to buying the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary that is not for the faint-of-heart. You should also see our list of Essential Reference Books, as well as Style Guides For Freelance Writers & Journalists.
Cover Image Credit: Image by Lubos Houska from Pixabay
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