Just because it’s hard to believe something, doesn’t mean it’s not true. These facts are the perfect conversation starter or conversation ruiner, depending on how much of a sense of wonderment the person you’re talking to has.
They range from the very small to the very large, so there should be something for everybody here. If you were wondering how much radiation you’d get from eating one hundred bananas, just scroll and read on. You’re in the right place.
Take a break from whatever you’re doing and prepare to boggle your mind with these crazy facts.
1
Advanced Monkeys
Monkeys have entered the Stone Age.
2
French Guillotines
France was still executing people by guillotine when the first Star Wars movie came out.
3
Diamond Rain
It rains diamonds inside Jupiter, Saturn, and other gas giants.
4
The Scale of Atoms
If you were to remove all the empty space between and within the atoms in every living human being, we would all fit into a space roughly equivalent to a sugar cube.
5
The Powerhouse of the Cell
Mitochondria, the powerhouse of the cell, used to be their own organisms that eventually integrated into cells.
6
Radioactive Bananas
Potassium, found in bananas, contains a small amount of radioactivity. Eating 100 bananas would cause the same amount of radiation exposure as you get from natural background radiation each day.
7
Sound in Water
Sound travels four times faster through water than through air.
8
Girls Might Be Smarter
Male infants tend to have larger brain volumes, but after adjusting for brain size, female infants have more grey matter.
9
Caterpillar Soup
Inside their cocoons, caterpillars basically dissolve into liquid. The only remaining part is a group of cells called the ‘imaginal disc’ that contains all the information and mechanism to transform the liquid into a butterfly. Caterpillars even retain memories through this process.
10
Beetle Bag
If you put one of every animal in a bag and then pick one at random, you have a one in five chance of picking a beetle.
11
T. Rex and Stegosaurus
The gap between T. Rex and Stegosaurus is about 16 million years greater than the gap between T. Rex and present day.
12
The Sun Is Massive
About 99.85% of all the mass in our solar system is found in the Sun.
13
Lots of Water
There are eight times as many atoms in a teaspoon of water as there are teaspoons of water in the Atlantic Ocean.
14
The Pyramids are Ancient
When the Pyramids were built, there were still woolly mammoths walking the Earth.
15
Sharks Are Really Old
Sharks are older than trees.
16
Deck of Cards
There are more ways to shuffle a deck of cards than there are atoms on Earth.
17
Valuable Aluminum
In the mid-1880’s, aluminum was more valuable than gold.
18
A Trillion Seconds
A million seconds is 12 days. A billion seconds is 31 years. A trillion seconds is 31,688 years.
19
Life After Decapitation
Your head can live without your body for up to 15 seconds.
20
Alien Telescope
If an advanced alien species on a planet 80 million light years away from Earth looked at our planet through a telescope, they would be seeing dinosaurs right now.
21
No Knees
Babies don’t have kneecaps.
22
Tie Your Laces
Your shoelaces come undone when you walk because the knot is subject to 7 G’s of force with every step you take.
23
Tight Squeeze
A 600-pound octopus can squeeze itself through a hole the size of a quarter.
24
Microwave Shielding
The black mesh on the front of microwaves works by physically blocking the waves. The waves are so big they can’t fit through the holes.
25
Ocean Oxygen
The majority of oxygen on the planet comes from plants in the ocean.
26
Upside Down Vision
Our eyes see everything upside down and our brain flips it so it makes sense to us. If you wear special glasses that flip everything upside down, your brain will eventually get used to it and flip it right side up for you.
27
The Size of Dust
A speck of dust is halfway between the size of the Earth and an atom.
28
Pluto’s Long Orbit
From the time Pluto was discovered until the time it was declared no longer a planet, it still had not made one complete revolution around the sun.
29
Infinite Pi
Pi is a number that goes on forever. But it’s still less than 4.
30
Whale Tongue
Most elephants weigh less than a blue whale’s tongue.
31
Ancient Mortality Rates
43% of all people born before 1800 died before the age of 5.
