Strange Facts
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So I learned of a reddit thread about strange facts, collected the ones I liked, and compiled them together.
I figured others might enjoy this too or have ones to add I don't already know.
Strange Facts
Bees turn into queens by eating a special honey that transforms them, as if they were a real life pokemon
(Hrmm, bee one appears to be false. The other bees are just deformed from being starved)
Worms have 5 hearts
Chocolate was used as a currency by the Aztecs
The surface of Mars is covered in rust, which is why it appears red
There is a train station in Japan that has a cat station master
Cows have "best friends" and get stressed when separated
Tomatoes were once thought to be poisonous
Apples float but pears sink, because apples are 25% air
Wombat poop is cube-shaped
Pineapples are a collection of berries
Bananas are berries
Hoppoptamus milk is pink
Some Frogs will glow when they eat fireflies
Before 1913, Americans could mail their kids to Grandma via the postal service
Some fish can cough
It takes a little over 8 minutes for the light from the Sun to get to the Earth
Giraffe tongues are black, to protect them from sunburn
Owls cannot be choked
A group of elephants is called a parade
A group of owls is called a parliament
A group of wild cats is called a destruction
A group of crows is called a murder
A group of ravens is called an unkindness
Pineapples used to be so expensive that people would rent them as a centrepiece for their parties
Scotland's national animal is a unicorn
At birth, a baby panda is smaller than a mouse
Bulls are colourblind
Herrings communicate with flatulence
If you heat up a magnet, it loses its magnetism
Garlic attracts leeches
It snows metal on planet Venus
A single Spaghetti is a Spaghetto
Cows get excited when they solve puzzles
The filling in a Kit Kat is broken up Kit Kat's
The little jump guinea pigs do when they're happy is called popcorning
When a cat walks towards you with its tail up that means it likes you and is excited to see you
Elephants have a noise that means "there are bees here let's leave immediately"
Humans glow in the dark, but the light we emit is 1,000 times weaker than our human eyes are able to pick up
On some other planets, it rains diamonds
Otters have skin pockets. They use them to carry their favorite rocks
Male seahorses carry the babies in their tummies instead of the mothers
Humans have stripes we can't see, known as Blaschko's lines
Making a penny costs more than a penny
There are more ways to arrange a single deck of cards than there are stars in our galaxy
There is a D in Fridge but not in Refrigerator
Every "E" in Mercedes is pronounced differently
Cashews come from a fruit
Cheese is just a loaf of milk
No land animal can match humans for endurance -
@Selerik said in Strange Facts:
So I learned of a reddit thread about strange facts, collected the ones I liked, and compiled them together.
I figured others might enjoy this too or have ones to add I don't already know.
Strange Facts
Tomatoes were once thought to be poisonous
There is a book series that uses this as a core setting feature. A plague caused by tomatoes. So much so humans buy tomato products on the black market.
Pay no attention to me. I'm old, jaded and generally unfriendly. I am prone to fits of stupidity, but I am still unique, just like everyone else. ~~ Current President of the Anti-Faraday fan club.
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@Selerik
Tomatoes were considered poisonous, as I recall, because cutting them released the acidic juice. When used with pewter dishes - which is what people had in the middle ages - it drew out the lead. Once ingested, the lead began to poison the eater.
I also thought they were commonly mistaken for something else that was poisonous... And now I see that Wikipedia informs me they were confused with nightshade. -
Tomatoes are a member of the nightshade family (is why the leaves are so toxic, iirc). Not sure if that is something they'd know back then or not, however.
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@dontpanda Yep! The full factoid is really interesting.
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French nobles were paid to post guards at potato fields and let peasants 'steal' them, to convince the French to adopt tubers as a foodstuff.
US courts used to limit the amount of lobster prisoners could be fed, based on the 'cruel and unusual punishment' clause.
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@insomniac7809 I will never understand why people like lobster. Maybe they're all lying and too scared to admit it tastes like sea rubber.
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@Seamus I love those damned books.
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the first documented syphilis epidemic in europe in 1494 was a strain so virulent that there are reports of people having huge chunks of skin fall off, including facial features
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there was a german colony in texas in 1842
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the most prolific documented serial killer in modern history is pedro lopez who murdered more than 300 little girls in peru and ecuador and who is currently at large
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anything is a dildo if you're brave enough
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@Prototart Wasn't the first documented outbreak among the clergy too?
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oh dude i actually forgot all about that
so, basically there are some bones from a monastery ans they have damage indicative of advanced syphilis and they're people who died before the colombian exchange which means there was syphilis in europe before ~The Great Pox~
the theory with it i think is that the ~The Great Pox~ one was native to the Americas and different enough that Europeans had just zero resistance to it and so you got, you know, this insane contagiousness and rapid onset and uh, dudes faces falling off during the siege of paris and then eventually it settled down to just making guy de maupassant think flies were eating his brain
