There are a few things that can spice up our day. One such thing includes gaining bits of knowledge that makes you question things. In other words, facts that make you say, “Wow!” or “I Had No Idea”. Today, we have gathered some random, yet, interesting facts that we found from the internet, for your learning pleasure.
1. If you were to fold a piece of paper 42 times, it would be thick enough to reach the moon.
If you have tried to fold a piece of paper like me, you would know that it is pretty much impossible to fold it more than about 8 times. Though, Myth Busters once folded a giant sheet the size of a football field 10 times. The formula to figure out how many of something you’ll have after doubling it N number of times is as follows: o * 2^(n); where o is the original number. A standard sheet of paper is about 0.1 mm so 42 folds would give us:
0.1 * 2^(42) = 439,804,651,110 mm
Which is 440 billion millimeters, or 439,804 kilometers. The moon on average is 384,400 kilometers from Earth, so the it is theoretically possible.
2. France has more time zones than the U.S. or Russia.
With a total area of 6.602 million mi², Russia is the largest country in the world. The United States has an area of 3.797 million mi² and France has 248,573 mi². While France might not be as big as the rest of them, it still has more timezones, compared to others. This is because France has islands scattered all over the globe. Its territories fall into 12 distinct time zones, compared to Russia’s 11 and America’s 6.
3. Fire doesn’t have a shadow.
Basically, a shadow is created when light is blocked. Since light does not destructively interfere, light from the surroundings simply pass though the flame, unaltered.
4. The longest hiccups lasted for approximately 68 years.
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, a man named Charles Osborne had the hiccups non-stop from 1922 to June 5th, 1990.
5. You can feel when someone is looking at you.
It’s called “gaze detection”, and it’s your brain’s ability to sense when someone is staring at you. According to researchers, when someone is gazing at you, certain brain cells are activated, which gives you that weird feeling.
6. Every two minutes we take more pictures than all of humanity took in the 19th century.
7. There is more processing power in a TI-83 calculator than the computer that landed Apollo 11 on the moon.
8. When you speak inside your mind, your throat says each word.
9. Every odd number has an “e” in it.
10. The year 1816 is known as the “Year Without a Summer”.
11. You’d need more than 700 floppy disks to equal one gigabyte of storage.
12. Nobody born after 1935 has walked on the moon.
13. Scotland has more than 400 words and expressions for snow.
14. If 23 people are in the same room, there’s a 50/50 chance that at least two people will have the same birthday. In a room of 75, there’s a 99.9% chance.
15. Like humans, cows have regional accents.
16. Nobody knows who named our planet “Earth”.
17. Australia has over 10,000 beaches. You could visit a new beach everyday for over 27 years.
18. Blue whales can eat half a million calories in a single mouthful.
19. Pirates wore eye patches to give them better below-deck vision.
20. There are more public libraries than there are McDonald’s in the U.S.
21. Your mouth produces about 1 liter of saliva every day.
22. Lemons float in water and limes sink.
23. A strawberry is not a berry, whereas an avocado is.
24. The state of Wyoming has only two escalators and they are both located in banks in the city of Casper.
25. The # is not actually called a hashtag. The technical term for a hashtag is “octothorp”.
26. There is an estimated 10 million tons of diamonds in Jupiter and Saturn.
27. We went to the moon before we thought to put wheels on luggage.
28. Clouds turn grey because they get thicker.
29. Placing a ripe banana next to fruits will ripen them.
30. Cleopatra lived closer to the building of Pizza Hut and the invention of the iPhone than the building of the pyramids.
31. Real diamonds don’t show up on an x-ray machine.
32. The only vegetable or fruit never sold frozen, canned, processed, cooked, or in any other form but fresh is Lettuce.
33. Pieces of the same metal become permanently stuck together if they touch in space.
34. Barcode readers read the white parts, not the black.
35. Chocolate is scientifically proven to make you happy.
36. There is a basketball court on the top floor of the Supreme Court Building dubbed the ‘Highest Court in the Land’.
37. Human teeth are just as strong as shark teeth.
38. Apples are more effective at perking you up than coffee.
39. Alaska is the only state that can be typed out with one row on your keyboard.
40. A bolt of lightning contains enough energy to toast 100,000 slices of bread.
41. At a rate of 8 to 10 beats per minute, the blue whale’s heartbeat can be heard from over 2 miles away.
42. Spices and herbs are different. Spices come from every part of a plant aside from the leaf, whereas herbs are the leaf itself.
43. Space smells like seared steak.
44. Water makes different pouring sounds depending on its temperature. You can actually tell the difference between hot and cold water being poured.
45. Chinese police use geese squads because they are extremely vigilant and have excellent hearing.
46. Sharks can live for five centuries.
47. The human heart will beat more than 2.5 billion times in the average lifetime.
48. There is enough gold at the core of the earth to cover the surface of the planet to knee depth.
49. There are more fake flamingos in the world than real ones.
50. The fax machine was invented before the telephone.
51. You are one centimeter taller than usual when you wake up in the morning.
52. More than 50% of the people in the world have never made or received a phone call.
53. There are more atoms in a drop of water than there are drops of water in all of the worlds oceans.
54. Judge Judy makes $47 million dollars a year.
55. It takes anywhere from one to two weeks to make a jellybean.
Despite its high production, the process is extremely lengthy. Think of that when you throw away a flavor you don’t like.
