50 Fun and Interesting Facts About Everything
I couldn’t decide on a good picture to embody the soul of this article… so here are some ducks.
Writing all of these articles tend to lead to reading and learning a lot of interesting facts and, although some of these will be their own article in the future, I just want to share them immediately!
So here are 50:
Women were instrumental in creating and furthering the wild west, the first woman mayor was elected in 1888 and brothels also helped the wild west flourish.
Turns out the west wasn’t actually so wild, duels weren’t that common and those who participated could be tried for manslaughter… if caught
Another thing that wasn’t so common was the good ol’ cowboy hats, back then even the wildest of the western men wore derby hats as they stayed on the head better in windy weather, the cowboy hat we all know today didn’t become popular until the very late 19th century and early 20th century.
And what about the cowboys of Rome? The gladiators! Gladiator matches didn’t always end in death, it was actually pretty rare for gladiators to kill each other in matches since they were seen as athletes that brought in money and you don’t kill your money makers.
The thumbs-down you often see in the media representing death in gladiatorial combat doesn’t actually mean death. It’s the exact opposite, it was a way to tell the gladiators to sheath their swords.
Speaking of death, witches in Salem weren’t actually burned at the stake, like in England they were hanged, but what people often leave out is that in France and Germany they were totally burned at the stake with counts of up to 700 male and female witches burned in the 15th and 16th century.
Witches’ ingredients like the eye of newt were actually just sort of code names for actual plants, the eye of newt is mustard seed, the toe of frog is buttercup; the flower not reeses, and the wool of bat was holly leaves.
Now plants are an interesting bunch, for example, apples, pears, plums, cherries, apricots, and peaches are all part of the Rose or Rosacea family, so a rose by any other name is… an apricot? Nasty.
Berries are also an interesting bunch and by interesting I mean they do enjoy their false advertising since strawberries and raspberries aren’t berries
But bananas and cucumbers are because they contain the seed on the inside. I’ve sent a letter to the national association of berries to have the names of bananas and cucumbers changed to banana berries and cucumberries respectively but I haven’t heard anything back... those cowards.
Let’s continue with the food misconceptions, the forbidden fruit was never described as an apple in the bible. No one really knows what the fruit is that the bible was referring to but some ideas are apples, pomegranates, figs, and even bananas.
Twinkie’s shelf life is not forever like Zombieland tried to trick us into believing, it’s more like 25 days which I think is slightly less than forever days
There is no difference between a brown and white egg, just the price. It actually depends on what the chicken is fed but if you get a brown and white egg from two chickens raised the same and eating the same… no difference
Sweet and white potatoes are almost the same as well, sweet has more vitamin A and one more carb, and white has more potassium… also flavor, no one has heard of a white potato pie
Caesar salads aren’t named after Julius Caesar; they’re actually named after its inventor Caesar Cardini, an Italian chef operating a restaurant in Mexico.
That red liquid that comes out of a steak is not blood, it’s water colored by myoglobin which is a protein. I mean… still though.
Those green drinks specifically for detoxing are a scam. Your organs, kidneys, liver, etc all detox your body. The reason some people think it works is that if all you eat and drink is green juice, you’re putting yourself in a caloric deficit and the first thing you lose is water. In reality, it’s probably doing more damage in the long term since they are usually nutrient deficient in many ways no matter what the advertisement tells you.
Also, you don’t actually need 8 cups of water daily, it’s a good goal but you get water from food, and the water from other drinks counts. It also depends on your activity levels, remember, if you feel thirsty at any point during the day, you need to adjust your water intake levels
Vitamin C doesn’t cure colds, taking extra vitamin C when you have a cold is like tossing a cup of water into a raging forest fire. Take vitamin C before you get a cold, also it’s better to get it naturally
Speaking of medicine that doesn’t work, ketchup was sold as medicine in the mid-1800s and was even sold in pill form. I like ketchup but the idea of taking it as a pill is, for some reason, so gross. Does anyone remember all the different colors of ketchup they came out with years ago?
That was as weird as seeing Santa Claus in different color suits… which was a real thing. Prior to the most recognizable design we know and love today, he originally came in three different colors, red, tan, and even green. He was a jolly colorful fella.
Just like the sculptures and statues in ancient Greece and Rome. In the 1960s archeologists discovered ancient sculptures with flecks of color on them. Turns out sculptures were colored using common items like eggs, beeswax, and mercury among other items. But after centuries of wear and tear, the colors peeled off leaving the marble or bronze underneath. This of course wasn’t the only thing we have learned about people by digging up old remains.
Like finding out that your hair and fingernails don’t actually keep growing after you die, it only appears that way because your body dehydrates and it looks like it’s growing. Although there is this weird doll somewhere in the world that I need to look into more because supposedly it has growing hair. That has nothing to do with anything here but it does terrify me a bit and I can’t stop thinking about it
Shaving doesn’t make more hair or coarse hair grow, it only appears and feels that way because the blade cuts your hair at an angle. The only thing that determines hair growth is genetics and apparently a quarantine.
By the way, fingerprints aren’t solely human traits. Chimpanzees and apes have them too and the ones koalas have are so close to ours that some experts have a hard time telling koalas’ fingerprints apart from humans. So if you want to commit the perfect crime bring a koala
Everyone’s memories, suuuuck. Memories are easily influenced and can change based on our perceptions of the world or the wording of questions. Also, you can implant false memories into people, Inception didn’t have to be that long of a movie. Wait, was Inception about implanting memories? It’s been a while since I’ve seen it.
Also, the idea that smiling constantly makes you happier has been around for centuries, and also it doesn’t actually work according to multiple studies. And if you’re just smiling all the time, it’s a bit creepy, don’t do that.
Something else that doesn’t work is power poses. That’s the “life hack” that came into prominence in 2012 after one of three authors of the study gave a ted talk saying it will change your life. She left out that before they even published their papers there were some doubts about the science then in 2015 multiple researchers found they couldn’t replicate the science in their own studies. And in 2016 one of the authors came out against power posing because of the evidence that it doesn’t work.
Next, you can’t learn a language while you sleep despite the multiple articles saying you can because of one study in 2014. The actual study showed people studying prior to sleep, going to sleep listening to what they already learned, then the next day showing they retained more of the information. That was one study and it wasn’t a whole language. So as of right now, no you cannot learn while you sleep. I blame this one on Dexter’s Laboratory, omlette du fromage… yea right
Schizophrenia doesn’t mean multiple personalities, that’s dissociative identity disorder and people suffering from schizophrenia are not violent.
People suffering from Tourettes syndrome don’t always curse, only about 10% of those with Tourettes end up cursing uncontrollably
We had a whole episode on this but I need to repeat it, polygraph machines do not work, do not take them, do not request to take one, they are pseudoscience aka fake
People who sleepwalk can be woken up preferably with a large horn, just kidding, don’t do that. They can be woken up but it’s recommended you lead them back to bed without waking them up if you can and don’t leave them alone. You can even stare at them until they wake up to give them a good scare
How many people think you swallow spiders while sleeping throughout your life? The prevailing myth is 8 per year and it’s fake. The chances of you swallowing any spiders or even having a spider come near your mouth while you sleep are slim to none. They don’t like morning breath. Also, the vibrations of your mouth, the force of the air coming out of your breath, and your nose all make spiders not want to come anywhere near you. The myth is thought to have started from a magazine talking about how easily people believe random fake facts on the internet and they made up the spider one as an example.
Also, goldfish have pretty long memories, despite the 3-second memory myth. Multiple studies have shown goldfish have long memories at least 5 months which is longer than my memory
And the next time someone tells you you’re as blind as a bat you tell them “oh you mean I have great eyesight, even better than humans?” because bats aren’t actually blind. They can see real good.
Then you tell them about snakes because if they think bats are blind they probably think that snakes unhinge or dislocate their jaw to eat and that’s wrong. Snakes don’t have connected jaws like we do, so there’s nothing to dislocate or unhinge. It’s just some really stretchy ligament, they have that allows them to open their mouth wider than humans. Close your mouth.
Another thing everyone should know is we totally know how bees can fly, this is on Jerry Seinfeld and The Bee Movie… and also a 1930s French entomologist named August Magnan if you want to get technical. Magnan said bee flight should be impossible but clearly it’s not. Bees fly by, can anyone guess? Flapping their wings. You were close. Yea it’s not much of a mystery but the way they flap is different from what we’ve seen before, they flap back and forth in a sort of circular motion creating cyclones beneath them enabling them to fly. By the way, the Bee movie is a bonkers ridiculous movie, no one should think anything they show or state relating to bees is in any way scientifically accurate… they land a plane with bees… a plane
And cartoons weren’t much better, as a kid bug bunny made me believe bulls hate the color red but in reality, bulls don’t care. They get annoyed at the motion of the flapping flag. It could be blue, yellow, red, or even white and it would still come after you.
Speaking of cartoons, Humpty dumpty wasn’t actually an egg. Nowhere in the original poem or nursery rhyme from the 1700s does it state Humpty Dumpty was an egg. It wasn’t until Lewis Carroll’s novel, Through the Looking-Glass from 1872 that he was referred to as an egg.
The Simpsons pushed the myth that people would explode in space in one of their great Halloween episodes. In reality, if you were to go into outer space without a space suit you wouldn’t blow up and you also don’t freeze. The vacuum of space lowers the boiling point of the liquids in your body so you puff up to about twice your size as the gas expands you. It won’t matter because, within 15 seconds, you’ll be unconscious from the lack of oxygen then after about two minutes, you’re dead from... Lack of oxygen. You’re not superman you know.
Speaking of Superman, his cartoons from these days makes you think Superman could always fly out into space whenever he wants but in reality, flying wasn’t part of his original skill set, he could just jump really high.
But things get changed all the time like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles who originally didn’t have different colored bandanas and were pretty violent in their original black and white comics. Once the popularity increased the violence was toned down.
Kind of like some of Disney’s most popular stories like Cinderella, Red Riding Hood, Snow White, and even Elsa was inspired by much older stories like The Snow Queen. Some of which were taken from the Brothers Grimm fairy tales which were usually pretty violent and didn’t have happy endings all the time. By the way, they didn’t make up their stories either, they wrote them down after traveling and talking to people and then writing down the stories they heard. If only they would have copyrighted their stuff.
Speaking of copyright, Disney keeps lobbying to extend the copyright of Mickey Mouse, despite Walt Disney not having designed Mickey Mouse, that credit actually goes to cartoonist Ub Iwerks.
But proper credit gets muddled up sometimes like the famous mantra of Spider-Man “with great power comes great responsibility”, that’s often attributed to Uncle Ben in the comics but in reality, wasn’t actually said by anyone in the first comic. It was the narrator that stated a version of that line in the first appearance of Spider-man in 1962. Uncle Ben wouldn’t utter the line for another decade
We’re down to the last four, let’s do a lightning round, speaking of which lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice is a myth. Places like the empire state building get struck by lightning multiple times per year and if you’re saying “yea but that’s a stationary target” Then you should talk to Roy Sullivan, I mean you can’t because he’s dead but not from being struck by lightning despite him being struck at least 7 times in his life. Figuring out the possibilities mathematically on that would be tough.
But not too tough for ol’ Albert Einstein because despite the common myth, he never actually failed math. Einstein was an Einstein in math, some think the myth originated because halfway through his years in high school they reversed the school’s grading structure, so if you looked at a report card prior to the reversal it would appear that he failed. Einstein himself heard about the myth when he was alive and thought it was funny.
Sort of like if people from the middle ages heard you telling them the prevailing myth that they think the earth is flat. In reality, people knew the earth was round going all the way back to the days of Pythagoras which was 500 BCE.
Or if the Aztecs heard about the myth that they thought Hernando Cortes was a god. There’s no proof of that and Hernando Cortes’s own letters make no mention of the Aztecs believing he was a god.
That’s fifty! Thanks for reading! Hopefully, you learned something new!
