69 Fun, Weird, Interesting & Cool Random Facts: Volume 4
1. A cat’s tail averages about 10 inches long, and contains 10% of the bones in their body.
2. At 8.3% of mass, aluminum is the most abundant metal in the Earth’s crust. It’s the third-most abundant of all the elements, after oxygen (46.6%) and silicon (27.7%).
3. At least 1.2 billion people live in Africa, and linguist estimate that there are almost 2,000 native languages spoken there.
4. Many sports fans know that basketball was invented by Dr. James Naismith in 1891 in Springfield, Massachusetts. But many sports fans probably don’t know that he is the only coach in the history of the Kansas Jayhawks men’s basketball team to have a losing record.
5. The tallest person who has ever lived is known to be Robert Wadlow, who was measured at 8 feet and over 11 inches tall.
6. Paul Revere, of course, is famous for his midnight ride in 1775 to warn that the British were coming in the days before the beginnings of the American Revolutionary War. As if altering the course of history wasn’t enough, Revere billed the Massachusetts State House ten pounds and four shillings in expenses for his trouble.
7. There are about 289 different species of octopi, and the biggest is the giant Pacific octopus. They usually grow about 16 feet and 110 pounds, but one is known to have weighed more than 600 pounds and measure 30 feet. But the smallest octopus can be as small as a flea when it’s born.
8. Emperor penguins are the only warm-blooded animal to stay in Antarctica all winter. Other than humans, of course.
9. Arizona and Hawaii are the only two states that do not observe daylight savings.
10. You may think that a group of kittens would be called a litter, but it’s actually called a kindle.
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11. Speaking of kittens, there are 32 muscles in a cat’s ear.
12. Baseball has origins in Cooperstown, New York and Hoboken, New Jersey in the 18th century, but Jane Austen referenced “base-ball” in Northanger Abbey in 1797.
13. Even if you haven’t seen Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 film Psycho, you’re probably familiar with Janet Leigh’s famous shower scene below. It’s an iconic image of horror, so much so that the actress admitted to taking only baths for nearly 35 years after the film.
14. “Seeing red” is a common term that signifies being angry, and it comes from bullfighting. The matador waves their red cape and the bull is supposedly so incensed by the color that it charges. However, it’s not the color that agitates the bull, but the movement of the cape. Bulls are actually red-green colorblind.
15. Mount Rushmore, located in the Black Hills in Keystone, South Dakota, features the heads of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. They were originally to be depicted down to the waist, but construction ended in the fall of 1941 due to lack of funding.
16. “Rapper’s Delight” by the Sugarhill Gang is widely regarded as the very first hip-hop song. It was released in 1979.
17. The Heisman Trophy is the oldest award in college football. It was created by the Downtown Athletic Club in 1935 to recognize the best college football player east of the Mississippi River and its first recipient was Jay Berwanger, a halfback at University of Chicago. The athletic director of the Downtown Athletic Club, Joh Heisman, passed away in 1936 and the award was renamed in his honor.
18. Zoophobia is the fear of animals.
19. Spam is what we call unsolicited email, and it came from a bit in Monty Python’s Flying Circus where they chant “spam” to drown out other people speaking. Anyone who has overlooked an important email because it was hidden underneath a lot of spam can see how the term came to be.
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21. Ever wonder what a group of pandas is called? They are an embarrassment.
22. If you have arachnophobia, then you are afraid of spiders.
23. You lose between 50 and 100 hairs every single day. Unless, of course, you are bald.
24. Penguins used to be six feet tall and 250 pounds! Bones were found at Seymour Island in the Antarctic Peninsula that support the existence of giant penguins about 40 million years ago.
25. Cheetahs can do lots of things other cats can do, like meow, purr, growl, and hiss. But they can’t roar.
26. The coldest day on record in the United States happened in January 1971 in Prospect Creek, Alaska. It was -80 degrees Fahrenheit.
27. Elephants are pachyderms, which is Greek for “thick skin.”
28. The next time you see a whole group of crows, you can say, “that’s a murder of crows.”
29. If you live in a major metropolitan city in the United States, you could be forgiven for thinking that the pigeon is the most plentiful bird in the world. But it’s actually the red-billed quelea, the small sparrow-like bird native to Sub-Saharan Africa. According to the National Audubon Society, there are 1.5 billion red-billed queleas populating the Earth.
30. Founding fathers Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both passed away on the Fourth of July in 1826. This was exactly 50 years after the Declaration of Independence.
31. Baseballs are often fouled away, end up in the dirt, or are rejected by the pitcher during the game. They only last an average of 7 pitches before a new one is used.
32. In 1914, Dr. Avery Bunting invented a very effective skin cream that he called Dr. Bunting’s Sunburn Remedy. But then a patient told him that the cream knocked out their eczema, and Bunting renamed it Noxzema.
33. Have you ever noticed that grades in school skip right over the letter “E?” That’s because teachers were worried that “E” would be interpreted as “excellent,” so “F” for “fail” was used instead.
34. Hamlet is William Shakespeare’s longest play. It is 30,557 words long.
Click on Billy to buy The Complete Works of William Shakespeare!
35. It should be understood that a nervous breakdown is not an official medical term, but rather a severe mental health condition like depression or anxiety that nonetheless requires medical attention. With that in mind, Warren G. Harding had no less than five of them when he was in his twenties and early thirties before he was president. Each time required a visit to the Battle Creek Sanitarium, a wellness institution in Michigan.
36. George Washington owned 36 foxhounds. He probably loved them all equally.
37. Superman has been around since April 1938, when he appeared in Action Comics #1.
38. Greyhounds are the fastest dogs, which is why they are popular for racing. They can hit running speeds of up to 45 miles per hour, while the average dog can run about 19 miles per hour.
39. Chinese checkers is not really a variation of checkers, nor did it come from China. It was invented in Germany in 1892.
40. Babe Ruth is famous for hitting a lot of home runs for the New York Yankees. Before that, he was a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox.
41. A street or passage that’s closed at one end is called a cul-de-sac.
42. The Chinese invented toilet paper in the 14th century. But before it was modernized and widespread, different cultures used different materials. Eskimos used snow or moss, Vikings used wool, and the Greeks would use clay. Native Americans used corn-on-the-cob.
43. Unicorns are a mythical creature but believe it or not, we thought they were real, as recently as about four hundred years ago. In fact, the Vikings once sold a horn to Queen Elizabeth I around 1577 for roughly five million dollars in today’s prices. Of course, it was not an actual unicorn horn but the horn of a narwhal, a real-life creature typically found in the Arctic waters around Russia, Canada, and Greenland.
44. Frank Lloyd Wright may be the most well-known architect who ever lived, so it’s only fitting that his son John Lloyd Wright invented Lincoln Logs, the famous interlocking wood beams you may have played with as a child.
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45. The Beatles had six #1 singles in 1964. The great rock-n-roll band has also scored 34 top 10 hits.
46. Lobster is a delicious, exquisite, and often expensive dish, but at one point they were so plentiful and considered so ignoble and low-class that they were fed to prisoners.
47. A young Jimi Hendrix spent time in Little Richard’s touring band. Hendrix didn’t last long, but he did record the singles “I Don’t Know What You’ve Got But It’s Got Me” and “Dancing All Around The World” with Little Richard. Speaking of Little Richard, check out our list of Best 1950s Rock-n-Roll Albums You Should Buy.
48. The pupils of a goat are rectangular. This helps creates a broad line of sight that allows goats to sense danger approaching from their peripheral vision.
49. Helvetica is a well-known font, perhaps the most famous, and it was designed in Switzerland in 1957. It’s also the Latin word for “Swiss.”
50. Bram Stoker is the author of the well-known horror novel Dracula. But he never actually ever visited Transylvania. Interested in more Bram Stoker facts? We’ve got lots of them!
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51. The potato famine did a number on Ireland. After 160 years, the population of the country is still two million people less than before the famine.
52. Shaquille O’Neal is a Hall-of-Famer and among the greatest basketball players to ever play in the NBA. Despite playing more than 20 seasons, he made exactly one three-point shot his entire professional career.
53. Believe it or not, almost two billion people study to speak English as a second language. Not only is that much higher than the number of actual native English speakers (about 350 million), it’s about twice as much as the number of Mandarin Chinese speakers (about one billion).
54. The only plant that spins clockwise is Venus.
55. Genghis Khan (1162-1227) was the leader of globally influential Mongol empire, and it’s hard to imagine the history of the world without him (which Jack Weatherford’s fantastic Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World talks about at length). He also fathered so many children while building his empire that one in 200 men in the world are a direct descendant.
56. Antarctica is home to about 12 million penguins, and their urine make up about 3% of the ice in Antarctica’s glaciers.
57. Human beings are the only animal species known to blush. According to Mark Twain, they’re also the only animal that needs to.
58. The first episode of The Simpsons aired on December 17, 1989.
59. As a young teenager, Lady Gaga appeared in an episode of The Sopranos. She’s among Anthony Jr.’s circle of friends in Season 3, and you can spot her in the video below. Her real name, by the way, is Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta.
60. The platypus has confounded naturalists since its discovery in 1798 in New South Wales, Australia, with properties so unusual that many people assumed tales of its existence was a hoax, with its duck-like bill, beaver-esque tail, and feet similar to that of an otter. It’s also the only mammal that lays eggs, and it doesn’t even have a stomach.
61. The popular Barbie doll has a full name. It’s Barbara Millicent Roberts. She was launched in March 1959. In case you were wondering, her partner Ken’s full name is Kenneth Carson.
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62. Paris wasn’t always Paris. In the first few Anno Domini centuries, it was the Roman city of Lutetia.
63. Ever bob for apples at Halloween? They can float because they’re 25% air.
64. The largest eyes in the animal kingdom belong to the giant squid. They measure about eleven inches in diameter, roughly about the size of a soccer ball. These humungous eyes serve the squid well in the deep, deep oceans.
65. As you may imagine, it takes a lot of time, money, and resources to make sure the White House is always spotlessly white. It takes about 570 gallons of paint to cover all 55,000 square feet of its surfaces, and repainting is part of its routine maintenance.
66. Those Michelin stars that are awarded to the best chefs and are so desirable and coveted by the best and finest restaurants all over the world are actually from the same Michelin company that makes those tires. When the Michelin brothers founded the tire company in 1889, they also created a guide book for travelers that included details on where you could find gas, shelter, and of course, good places to eat.
67. The first World Series took place in 1903. The Boston Americans (later named the Red Sox) beat the Pittsburgh Pirates in a best-of-nine series.
68. John Wayne’s actual name was Marion Mitchell Morrison.
69. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights were all stored in Fort Knox during World War II.
Read more fun trivia content at Content Bash!
Looking for more weird, cool, interesting random facts? Check out Volume 1, Volume 2, and Volume 3!
Books are cool! So is literature. Check out our features on facts about influential writers like J.D. Salinger, Bram Stoker, Virginia Woolf, Emily Brontë, 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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