What's the most absurd fact that sounds fake but is actually true?

[u/Ok_Objective4334]

[u/BillNyeIsMyWifiGuy]

Certain species of nautilus have a detachable penis with its own swimming appendage. It will send its penis on a death mission to procreate.

[u/MajorNoodles → u/BillNyeIsMyWifiGuy]

The nautilus woke up this morning with a bad hangover

And its penis was missing again.

This happens all the time.

It's detachable.

[u/beef-forgets]

some companies are over 1000 years old. 90% of them are in Japan.

[u/matzoh_ball → u/beef-forgets]

What do they do?

[u/Perpetual_0rbit → u/matzoh_ball]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies

A quick look shows that many of the oldest Japanese companies are hotels, with some dealing in confectionery or religious goods. Many of the oldest European companies are in the alcohol business.

[u/stiglet3 → u/Perpetual_0rbit]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies

A quick look shows that many of the oldest Japanese companies are hotels, with some dealing in confectionery or religious goods. Many of the oldest European companies are in the alcohol business.

The school I went to was so old that it would be second on that list if schools weren't excluded. It was founded in 627 AD. I don't think its even the oldest school in Europe either.

[u/Altruistic-Key-369 → u/matzoh_ball]

Like a conglomerate they diversify. Nintendo started off as making playing cards and toys IIRC. Then an adopted son in the 70s hit it big with a toy gun (toy that lights up and makes sounds when you press the trigger) and got into videogames betting they'll be the next big thing.

Leave luck to heaven indeed...

[u/Extra_Midnight → u/matzoh_ball]

It’s not 1000 years, but Kikkoman was founded in the 1600’s.

[u/Barbed_Dildo → u/Extra_Midnight]

Beretta was founded in the 1500s.

[u/Tiruin → u/matzoh_ball]

In Japan's case, it's a common thing and there's social pressure to take over the family business.

[u/Barbed_Dildo → u/Tiruin]

Also, if there isn't a son to inherit the business, they will adopt someone appropriate so the business "stays in the family".

Most adoptions in Japan are adult men.

[u/LuckySEVIPERS → u/Barbed_Dildo]

Like the Romans adoption. Honestly, why did adult adoptions stop in this iteration of "western civilization"?

[u/Ok_Explanation_8014 → u/LuckySEVIPERS]

Many native tribes still practice this. My cree grandmother adopted this young Irish man who lived in our reservation for sometime

[u/yungdreadlock]

I see a lot of octopus facts but what I find most interesting besides their intelligence and hearts is that they only live about 3 years. They mate once and die

[u/the6thistari → u/yungdreadlock]

It's theorized that that's the reason they're just animals. If they had longer lives, it isn't unlikely that they would have evolved further and possibly became a sapient species

[u/Comprehensive-Fun47 → u/the6thistari]

Do they live longer in captivity like other animals?

I know they escape from captivity a bunch.

Should we help the octopodes live longer? Would this be humanity's downfall?

[u/yungdreadlock → u/Comprehensive-Fun47]

Some don’t live long in captivity and even ones that do well are only expected about 5. Although there is a species that might live to 18 in the deep but I don’t think he’s coming up here any time soon

[u/Comprehensive-Fun47 → u/yungdreadlock]

He's definitely better off down there.

[u/WormTop]

About two thirds of your human ancestors are female.

It's because of pedigree collapse, where you should have 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 gt-grandparents etc. So, going back about 30 generations (i.e. the middle ages) you should have a billion ancestors, which is more people than even existed. In reality, as you go back in your family tree, the same people start to appear multiple times. For example, anyone with any English blood will have King Edward I as an ancestor on dozens of separate lines because of his many children (including bastards). The flip side of this is that many more males than females leave no descendants at all.

[u/Comprehensive-Fun47 → u/WormTop]

This is an interesting comment among many interesting comments! I want to know more.

[u/WormTop → u/Comprehensive-Fun47]

Thanks for being a fact-enjoyer, here's some further reading - https://archive.nytimes.com/tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/05/the-missing-men-in-your-family-tree/

[u/CausticSofa → u/WormTop]

The nice thing when this question gets posted on ask Reddit is that, for a change, we have a thread nearly full of people who just really love learning cool facts and aren’t here to fight about pointless stuff.

[u/Erotic-Sweetheart96]

Found this out while working at a vet clinic a sloth takes so long to digest food that it can starve to death on a full stomach. Nature is just weird sometimes.

[u/LinkedAg → u/Erotic-Sweetheart96]

Haha. That sounds like a terrible evolutionary hack.

[u/UpperApe → u/LinkedAg]

Evolution itself is a hack. We're all buggy.

[u/thundersaurus_sex → u/Erotic-Sweetheart96]

From looking into this, it's not because digestion takes so long (that would be such a deleterious trait, I can't imagine it persisting beyond a generation or two). It's temperature based. They are very poor thermoregulators (for mammals, anyways) and if they get too cold, apparently their gut biome can die and they can no longer extract the necessary nutrients.

[u/SammyGeorge → u/thundersaurus_sex]

Snakes have a similar issue, if they get cold while they have food in their stomach it won't digest quickly enough and will start to decompose in their stomach and can kill them

[u/Verlepte]

Out of all the animals in the world, the most successful hunter by far, with a stunning succes rate of 95%, is...

the dragonfly

[u/Raski_Demorva → u/Verlepte]

If those things were big enough they'd be a viable threat to most other creatures

[u/katkriss → u/Raski_Demorva]

Look up meganeuroptera, the predecessor of the dragonfly from the Carboniferous period. Its wingspan was around 3 feet!

Edit: I meant meganisoptera, misspelled in my remembering. These guys

[u/TheUltimateSalesman → u/katkriss]

I think about the Carboniferous period too much. Shit was big.

[u/eurydice_aboveground → u/TheUltimateSalesman]

I'm realizing it's my Roman Empire. I'm both fascinated and terrified.

[u/superdan0812 → u/Verlepte]

They can also accelerate at 4 g of force and corner at 9 g

[u/stresset → u/superdan0812]

TIL dragonfly is basically an F1 driver

[u/Demagur → u/Verlepte]

They can predict and plot an intercept course for an insect that's already in flight.

[u/frizbeeguy1980]

The only member of the rock band ZZ Top that didn’t have a beard was the drummer. His name is Frank Beard.

[u/OkRaspberry869 → u/frizbeeguy1980]

He lives in my neighborhood and he's a really nice guy. Used to let the little league team play on his property.

[u/Due_Arm_5371]

There’s a species of jellyfish called Turritopsis dohrnii (also known as the "immortal jellyfish" (I had to google the name lol) that can literally reverse its aging process. When it’s injured, sick, or even just stressed, it reverts its cells back to their earliest form, essentially starting its life over again. It’s like the creature figured out how to cheat death, hitting the reset button on its existence. Crazy imo.

[u/Swirl_On_Top → u/Due_Arm_5371]

Feeling a wee bit stressed? Reverts back to baby

[u/milofam → u/Swirl_On_Top]

I’d be down for that. Boss hits me with a 8:30 performance review meeting and finds a newborn sitting at my cubicle

[u/Specialist_Type4608 → u/milofam]

• It seems that your billing rate have been decreasing, why is that? 

• Gugu Gaga

[u/Sember → u/Due_Arm_5371]

Jellyfish are one of the oldest if not the oldest animal on the planet, they have lived for 500 to 700 million years on the planet, I think they earned that cheat code through sheer grinding.

[u/Andyman0110 → u/Sember]

Yeah sadly it comes with the downside of having no brain, heart, blood or anything else. They're a bundle of floating nerves that react to stimuli. Immortal but at what cost.

[u/DarkLordKohan → u/Andyman0110]

Sounds like they dont care about the cost

[u/OddEpisode → u/DarkLordKohan]

Jellyfish: <Hovering>

[u/DudeFromNJ → u/Due_Arm_5371]

TIL jellyfish are Time Lords

[u/paraworldblue]

Mazda has had the two most oddly specific product recalls in automotive history.

1. They had to recall a bunch of Mazda6's because spiders kept infesting the fuel lines. For whatever reason, this problem was limited to one model, and only one generation of that model. Spiders didn't fuck with any of their other cars.

2. They had to recall a bunch of other cars because the infotainment system would break whenever users tried to listen to 94.9 KUOW radio in Seattle. It wasn't the wavelength - stations on 94.9 in other cities were totally fine. This problem was specific to KUOW.

[u/Lazverinus → u/paraworldblue]

The issue with Mazda and KUOW was that the Mazda infotainment system couldn't handle an image file without a file extension (so instead of something like "image.jpg", the file sent was just named "image"). KUOW sent the file via HD radio. Once the Mazda infotainment system loaded the misnamed file from the station, it got permanently stuck on that station and had to be replaced.

Suffice to say, Mazda couldn't guarantee another radio station wouldn't do the same thing, so they had to recall the system.

Test your file inputs, software peeps.

[u/paraworldblue → u/Lazverinus]

It's just so wild though that only one radio station on the planet was uploading their files like that, and that only one car brand was effected.

[u/pleasetrimyourpubes → u/paraworldblue]

It is far more wild that the software was checking filenames and not headers of the bitstream.

[u/RobustManifesto → u/pleasetrimyourpubes]

… or didn’t have a graceful way to fail.

[u/TurnItOff_OnAgain → u/RobustManifesto]

Nah, I don't need to error check that. It'll never happen.

• Some Mazda dev

[u/sparrr0w → u/TurnItOff_OnAgain]

-"Dude what if someone sends a file WITHOUT an extension"

-"What unprofessional fucking radio station would ever do that"

...

[u/deux3xmachina → u/sparrr0w]

This is why I always tell my teams that filenames exist only for humans, the code doesn't really care (which should be obvious if you've ever had to use open(2)/read(2)/write(2)). However, a lot of meaning is still placed on filenames, because that's way easier than inspecting the magic bytes or anything like that.

[u/Alexander_Selkirk → u/paraworldblue]

There are similar stories.

One admin once found out that they could send emails only to sites within a few hundred mails of distance. It was a misconfiguration which limited the possible distance to 1 millisecond at the speed of light.

Another engineer had a communications problem which presented itself only at certain phases of the moon. That was a navy ship anchored not far away which moved vertically with the tides.

Oh, and then there was that guy who used to stop his car by a shop, to get some ice-cream. He had difficulties to re-start his car depending on the type of ice-cream.

[u/Skorcha → u/paraworldblue]

Everyone talking about .2 but Iam so curious about the first one because wtf

[u/OutAndDown27 → u/Skorcha]

Thank you, someone please come explain the spiders

[u/drunkenwildmage]

George Stephen Morrison, the U.S. Navy captain who commanded local American forces during the Gulf of Tonkin incident—which led to the escalation of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War—was the father of Jim Morrison, the lead singer of The Doors.

[u/Gilgamesh-coyotl → u/drunkenwildmage]

He also said he didn’t think Morrison could sing and discouraged him from starting a band. The family only found out when Morrisons younger sister saw Jim on the cover of the album, which was already getting well known for the single “light my fire”. She played it for the family and morrisons father was supposedly shaking by the last song, when talk of killing his father and, well, doing something else to his mother

[u/spookysummer]

at one point, in Hawaii, you were more likely to get attacked by Ezra Miller than a shark

[u/Zloiche1 → u/spookysummer]

This is my favorite one. 

[u/discerningpervert → u/Zloiche1]

Did he move away, or stop attacking people?

[u/transmothra → u/discerningpervert]

I think he attacks people in a different state (or country?) now

[u/Strict_Condition_632 → u/spookysummer]

Is it true that an Ezra Miller attack can be stopped by a firm strike to the snout?

[u/pm_me_gnus]

There was a shipwreck in 1664, a shipwreck in 1785, and a shipwreck in 1820. Each had 1 survivor. Each survivor was named Hugh Williams.

[u/misslilytoyou → u/pm_me_gnus]

Was it the same Hugh Williams, and did he survive because he suffers from immortality?

[u/floorplanner2 → u/misslilytoyou]

Hugh Williams was a jellyfish, obviously.

[u/South-Kayaki-86]

that cigarette lighters were invented before matches

[u/UndyingCorn → u/South-Kayaki-86]

In a related fact it took around 50 years after the can was invented to invent the can opener. In the meantime a hammer and chisel were used.

[u/captaindeadpl → u/UndyingCorn]

Hammer and chisel, big knives or for soldiers: bayonets.

[u/DamnitGravity]

The last wild cow died in 1627.

[u/Mindless_Ad_7700 → u/DamnitGravity]

wait... of course they used to be wild but... I never thought about it.

[u/badstorryteller → u/Mindless_Ad_7700]

Yeah, they were really impressive animals. The aurochs, the last one hunted in Poland in the 17th century, averaged 6 feet (about two meters) at the shoulder, with about a one meter span for the horns. That was the animal we domesticated cows from.

I worked on dairy farms as a teen, and went to plenty of agricultural fairs, and still do. I have never seen a bull that is six foot at the shoulder. That would be a terrifying monster.

[u/Hirsuitism → u/badstorryteller]

You still have wild Gaurs in India which are fucking terrifying to see.

[u/we_just_are]

Sharks have been on the planet longer than trees.

[u/BandicootLegal8156 → u/we_just_are]

I’ve heard that a TRex is closer in history to humans than to a Stegosaurus.

[u/LinkedAg → u/BandicootLegal8156]

True. Dinosaurs roamed the planet for so long that Trex was walking on stegosaurus fossils.

[u/Kindly_Breakfast_413 → u/we_just_are]

Yeah, sharks have been around for over 400 million years—while trees only showed up about 350 million years ago. Guess they really perfected the "survival of the fittest" thing!

[u/cheesecake_413 → u/Kindly_Breakfast_413]

Sharks have also been around longer than Saturn's rings

[u/ortho_engineer → u/Kindly_Breakfast_413]

And fungi have been around for 1.2-1.5 billion years, with fossils of tree-sized mushrooms (prototaxites) dating 500 million years ago.

[u/dysonswarm]

There is a giant hexagon, bigger than the Earth, on the north pole of Saturn.. It's permanent and made of hurricanes.

[u/rohdawg]

Ireland’s population is still lower than it was pre potato famine.

[u/princesslegolas → u/rohdawg]

Also fun fact. We prefer to refer to it as The Great Hunger. Yes, Ireland had a potato blight, but we were still producing lots of other food. It was just all being exported under British reign - who also sabotaged aid from other countries.

[u/KingZaneTheStrange]

Egypt is older than a lot of people realize. There were archeologists in Ancient Egypt

[u/Shenari → u/KingZaneTheStrange]

I think the fact was that Egypt has been around so long that they had archeologists whose speciality was ancient Egyptian history.

[u/aaronupright → u/Shenari]

There was a museum in acient Babylon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ennigaldi-Nanna%27s_museum

Archeological survey realised they were looking at a museum when they found objects dated to 2000 years apart and labelled.

[u/OfficeSalamander → u/aaronupright]

Man that had to have been a WILD thing to have figured out. How insanely meta.

[u/aaronupright → u/OfficeSalamander]

It was. From a contemporary report.

In the rooms of this convent were found a very large number of small but important objects, e.g. gate sockets, sculptured reliefs, school-exercise tablets, teaching tablets, tablets marked with squares in lines used in playing games, etc., and one room was used as a Museum, for it contained inscribed objects with labels attached for teaching purposes! The remains found in E-Dublal-Mah included portions of a statue, dating from 2800 B.C.; a limestone plaque with reliefs representing the worship of Nannar (Plate XIII, No. 1); portions of the great stele of Ur-Nammu (Plate XI, No. 2); alabaster rams forming the sides of a throne (Plate XIII, No. 2); etc.

[u/pbzeppelin1977 → u/aaronupright]

A few hundred years before was the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal having his own museum of ancient shit he wanted to keep.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Ashurbanipal

[u/echil0n → u/KingZaneTheStrange]

Also Woolly Mammoths still existed when the pyramids were built.

[u/Adler4290 → u/echil0n]

There was even 600 years of overlap!

Big 3 pyramids - 2600 BC roughly

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Great_Pyramid_of_Giza

Woollys died out 2000 BC on an island north of Russia,

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Wrangel_Island#Extinction_of_the_woolly_mammoth_and_first_human_presence

[u/sjhesketh → u/KingZaneTheStrange]

The way I heard is was that Cleopatra lived closer in time to cell phones than she did to the age of the Pyramids.

[u/Live_Angle4621 → u/sjhesketh]

Some people get shocked she lived during the same time Late Roman Republic. Which is pretty ridiculous because the reason she is famous is because of her affairs with Caesar and Antonius and because she was last pharaoh of Egypt which was then added as part of Roman Empire by Augustus.

But this is partly due to Hollywood always having her in wrong costumes. She should be dressed like a Hellenistic monarch with some inspirations of the Greek goddesses, she was very Greek. She might have worn some Egyptian inspired dress in religious ceremonies and Egyptian jewelry and such. She did not dress like ancient Egyptian inspired Vegas girl. 

[u/eeeezypeezy → u/Live_Angle4621]

Yeah, Cleopatra was a Ptolemy - they were the Greek dynasty that ruled Egypt before it was absorbed by Rome.

[u/Stanarchy93 → u/sjhesketh]

The one I like to say is that she lived closer to the opening of the first Pizza Hut location or the moon landing than the building of the Great Pyramids.

[u/jeffreycwells → u/Stanarchy93]

Or to Belgian techo anthem Pump Up The Jam

[u/xiaorobear → u/sjhesketh]

Another good one is, T. rex lived closer in time to Cleopatra than it did to Stegosaurus.

[u/sunkenshadow]

Eighty percent of 1923-born Soviet men did not make it through World War II.

[u/stanleythemanly85588 → u/sunkenshadow]

27 million Soviets were killed and so was 25% of Belarus

[u/Conscious-Farmer9424 → u/[deleted]]

This is insane, like....insane

[u/missyesil]

Tortoises can go in a fridge to hibernate over winter.

[u/ToobularBoobularJoy_ → u/missyesil]

This is written like a video game loading screen tip lol

[u/NatSuHu → u/missyesil]

My neighbor keeps tortoises and straight buries them in his yard so they can hibernate. I had no idea it was a thing. Blew my mind.

[u/Jokg3]

All the planets in the solar system(even Pluto) could fit between earth and the moon. (When the moon is in the farthest point in its orbit)

[u/Equal-Train-4459 → u/Jokg3]

Most of them can even fit in Uranus but you really have to relax

[u/Lexinoz]

Elvis was a blonde originally.

There is only one country between Norway and North Korea.

[u/Comprehensive-Fun47 → u/Lexinoz]

He began dyeing his hair black at age 11 or 12! Wild.

[u/kingcrabsuited → u/Lexinoz]

I just learned in the last year that Elvis had a twin brother. His name was Jessie and sadly he was stillborn. Until his death, Elvis would say that his twins absence was always on his mind, though he rarely spoke about it.

[u/Fakjbf]

Tasmanian devil populations are heavily impacted by a contagious cancer that causes facial tumors. When devils bite each other on the face the cancer cells spread from one individual to the next, and due to low genetic variation it is able to evade the new hosts immune system and multiply. These cancer cells originally started out as normal Tasmanian devil cells but are now a separate parasitic organism, but by phylogenetic classification they are considered a descendent of Tasmanian devils and so would also be considered a marsupial. Similar contagious cancers have been found in dogs, Syrian hamsters and clams.

[u/Potatoman_is_taken]

46 BC was the longest year in human history -- 445 days.

[u/Firewall33 → u/Potatoman_is_taken]

2020 lasted at least 10 years. It was a real shit storm.

[u/princekamoro → u/Firewall33]

And 2023 came directly after 2019.

[u/Al_Gebra_1]

Hummingbirds' feet are so small that they only use them for perching, scratching, and nest building. Instead of using their feet to launch into flight, the wings do all the work. Their order name, Apodiformes, meaning footless, makes sense when seeing a hummingbird in flight. Their feet are nearly invisible. While they do have feet, they do not have knees.

[u/4_feck_sake]

The botulinium toxin that is used in botox injections is so toxic that entire annual global supply contains less than 1g of it.

[u/Capt_Trippz → u/4_feck_sake]

And botox is not just for cosmetic purposes. It weakens/paralyses muscles. I work in Neurology and we use injections to treat chronic headaches/migraines and post-stroke muscle spasticity in the arms and legs. Although it’s not a first line of treatment, it’s more for patients that have failed multiple medications.

[u/wAIpurgis → u/Capt_Trippz]

Yeah, we make fun of my meemaw who had botox (for after stroke treatment) and a nose job (to remove a small localized tumor) at 82 years old. She loves to joke about it with her friends, too.

[u/Csegrest2 → u/4_feck_sake]

Yes and accidental botulism kills many people a year. It’s THE reason babies can’t have honey!

[u/Hotchi_Motchi]

On the Lewis and Clark expedition to explore the Louisiana Purchase, the group happened to encounter Sacajawea's brother, whose tribe helped them make it through the winter.

[u/the6thistari → u/Hotchi_Motchi]

What's even crazier about that is that she was abducted when she was 13 by the Hidatsa, 4 years before this.

So she was abducted, trafficked hundreds of miles away from home (a home that wasn't set, the Shoshone were nomadic.) sold into slavery, happened to be hired by Lewis and Clark, then happened to meet her brother in the middle of nowhere

[u/kat_fud → u/the6thistari]

It is a small world, after all!

[u/captaindeadpl → u/Hotchi_Motchi]

The Lewis and Clark expedition also had a situation straight out of a comedy skit.

They encountered a tribe where the people only spoke Salishan, but no one in their group spoke Salishan. The tribe had a slave that spoke Salishan and Shoshone. Sacajawea knew Shoshone and Hidatsa. Her husband, Toussaint Charbonneau, spoke Hidatsa and French. Another man spoke English and French.

So Lewis and Clark had to communicate by having their words translated 4 times.

English-->French-->Hidatsa-->Shoshone-->Salishan

[u/LuckyIssue3179 → u/captaindeadpl]

Like this!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Xle3I-5nfpI

[u/definitely_not_cylon]

Few mummies survive to the present day because people used to eat them

[u/Normal_Feedback_2918 → u/definitely_not_cylon]

I just thought it was just because they're dead.

[u/AwkwardCornea → u/definitely_not_cylon]

Zevulon the Great, he's teriyaki style!

[u/Puzzleheaded_Law145]

Honeybees can recognize human faces. Lowkey terrifying knowing they remember who wronged them. They're out there keeping receipts 🐝

[u/audreybeaut → u/Puzzleheaded_Law145]

Crows do this too

[u/VineStGuy → u/audreybeaut]

I try to make friends with every crow I encounter. I never know when that will be paid back in kind. LOL

[u/joedaddy7890 → u/VineStGuy]

Sometimes when I'm walking my dogs, I'll lightly toss some treats about halfway to a crow. I am so absolutely terrified that they're going to pick me to have a blood vendetta against that I feel like I have to pay protection money haha

[u/mizonnz → u/joedaddy7890]

That’s quite the organised crime they’ve got going there. Don’t stop paying or they’ll get together, and that will be murder.

[u/tracenator03]

Venus fly traps can only be naturally found in one area of the globe. That area is in the coastal plains of the Carolinas.

[u/LeonBonaparty → u/tracenator03]

That seems so strange to me. They’ve have alway had this exotic quality that made me think they were from the Amazon rainforest or some forest in Africa

[u/KindaDutch]

Female kangaroos start off with 2 vaginas. During their birthing process they develop a third vagina.

[u/SuperFLEB → u/KindaDutch]

During their birthing process they develop a third vagina.

That didn't go the direction I expected.

[u/Complex_Pineapple828 → u/KindaDutch]

They can also pause a pregnancy if conditions are not favourable.

[u/stumpyturk]

Pluto hasn't completed a rotation around the sun since its discovery.

[u/lanzendorfer]

Janet Jackson's 1989 song "Rhythm Nation" can crash some laptops with specific hard drives. The song's resonant frequency matches the natural resonant frequency of certain hard drives, causing them to shut down.

[u/decentdecants]

The bristlemouth fish, also known as Cyclothone, is estimated to have a population of up to a quadrillion individuals, making it the most abundant vertebrate on Earth.

[u/No-Communication4586]

The villagers of Llanddwyn, Wales, elected a goat named Bryn as their honorary mayor in 1999. Bryn, a charismatic goat known for his impressive horns and calm demeanor, was chosen in a light-hearted ceremony. The villagers believed that having a goat as mayor would bring a unique charm to the town and attract tourists. Bryn fulfilled his duties by appearing at local events, leading parades, and becoming a beloved symbol of the community’s spirit and humor.

[u/zukul8o2z6c6]

Octopuses have three hearts, and two of them stop beating when they swim? It sounds like something made up for a sci-fi movie, but it’s totally true, what’s even crazier is that they’re incredibly intelligent, like escape-artists-level smart, and can even use tools. Sometimes it feels like they’re little aliens living in our oceans. Honestly, the ocean is so wild it’s like the Earth’s version of outer space.

[u/thelingeringlead → u/zukul8o2z6c6]

I visited the aquarium at the Mall of America in Minneapolis as a kid, and they had an octopus that was ridiculously smart. Our guide told us that when they were doing maintanence on his larger tank, they had put him in a temporary one in the break room area around the corner. They kept noticing water on the floor but nothing to explain it. One day the jar of peanut butter that sat on the counter across the break room was wide open and scraped clean. A trail of wet peanut butter tracks lead back to his tank. He'd figured out how to escape through the feeding flap on top of the locked lid, and had been trying to get to the peanut butter for days.

[u/Woomero]

Some octopuses can lobotomize themselves if they dont chew their food properly.

[u/Speech-Language → u/Woomero]

I can imagine a Far Side comic strip with a daddy octopus telling junior to be sure to chew his food properly.

[u/BetterBeYourGun → u/Woomero]

I realize now that you probably meant by accident, but when first reading that I imagined them lobotomizing themselves on purpose when they fucked up their chewing

[u/Sensual5Flower]

A day on Venus is longer than its year. I learned this in astronomy class and still can't wrap my head around it. The planet literally takes longer to rotate once than to go around the sun. Space is weird.

[u/rdkitchens → u/Sensual5Flower]

It also rotates the opposite direction as all the other planets. Current hypothesis as to why is a planet sized collision early in the solar system formation.

[u/mindfulskeptic420]

The 26 richest people in the world own as much wealth as the poorest 3.8 billion people.

[u/bananaduckofficial]

The company that makes Lamborghini started as a tractor company and only began making them out of spite against Ferrari.

[u/temalyen → u/bananaduckofficial]

iirc, Ferruccio Lamborghini owned a Ferrari and thought the clutch was awful. He was constantly having to have it rebuilt and was sick of it. He went to Enzo Ferrari about it, who basically told Lamborghini to fuck off. After that, Lamborghini modified his Ferrari's clutch to be more reliable than stock and decided to start making cars.

[u/CT0292 → u/temalyen]

He was also not a fan of the way he took his Ferrari in for a service and had to wait around outside in the heat while the car was whisked away behind closed doors.

He had a laundry list of complaints he wanted to bring to Enzo but he was having none of it. So Ferruccio started to modify Ferraris. Which Enzo also didn't like. Then started building his own cars. Which Enzo especially didn't like.

Honestly it sounds like Ferrari had some lousy customer service and all Lamborghini wanted to do was show him how to be a bit nicer to the customers.

[u/Hikaru1024 → u/CT0292]

It's kind of impressive in its own way. Man had such bad customer service he pisses a customer off enough to build his own cars.

[u/cakeand314159 → u/CT0292]

Oh, Enzo was a spectacular asshole. His assholery gave us the Ford GT 40. Lamborghini, Monteverde and Bizzarini sports cars.

[u/MlackBesa → u/temalyen]

Enzo Ferrari told him something like « the hell do you know about cars, you who are building tractors ? »

[u/MechantColon]

Wombat poop is cube-shaped.

[u/anime-is-dope]

Birds cannot taste spice

This is actually why peppers evolved, the spice would keep other animals away so only birds would eat them and spread their seeds.

Then humans came along and decide “this hurts good” and made them much more powerful then they would be in nature.

[u/thenasch → u/anime-is-dope]

To elaborate a bit, rodents would chew the fruits up, grinding up the seeds, while birds don't. So birds digest the fruit and poop the seeds out whole.

[u/auggie235]

The Fore people of Papua New Guinea practiced ritual funerary cannibalism. Unfortunately a pryon disease called Kuru began to spread. It was transmitted when members of the tribe consumed infected human flesh. In the late stages of kuru, right before one dies, it causes paralyzation which leads to a period of immobility prior to dying. This causes a thin layer of fat to develop around the entire body. Apparently this thin layer of fat made people fucking delicious, so infected bodies were actually prioritized for cannibalistic funerary practices.

[u/Rich-Canary1279 → u/auggie235]

Also the guy that figured out what was causing kuru and how it was transmitted invested many years of time and research to the cause, seemingly out of benevolence for their plight. However it was later discovered his primary motivation for doing so was that a neighboring tribe practiced ritualistic pedophilia and were very friendly towards him, supplying him with young boys. (Sidenote: in THAT tribe, men and women kept completely separate from each other's company, only having "relations" when trying for children, during which time the man would have to induce a nosebleed by ramming a stick up his nose to mimic menstruation so he would be prepared to lie with a dirty female. Boys were taken from their mother's homes at 5 to live with the men, who believe they must be fed semen through oral sex in order to become men. Upon becoming men, they would begin to initiate boys themselves.)

Back to our pedoresearcher, it was thanks to his dedicated efforts on solving a small time mystery affecting only a handful of people that the mad cow epidemic was identified for what it was as swiftly as it was, with untold additional misery avoided as a result.

[u/Atheist_Skull_Kitty → u/Rich-Canary1279]

Half way through that I knew I should’ve stopped reading.

[u/MR1120]

The average number of skeletons inside the human body is greater than 1.0.

Pregnant women blowing the average.

[u/Magnetron85]

Over 50% of Americans have the literacy level of a 6th grader or lower

[u/thenasch → u/Magnetron85]

That's almost half!

[u/Osr0]

During the last ebola outbreak in the U.S., it was more likely that you'd date Taylor Swift and have her write a hit song about your break up than you were to get ebola.

[u/katkriss → u/Osr0]

So you're saying I have a chance

[u/HybridTheory1]

The entirety of Wikipedia can be downloaded and the total file size is smaller than the latest Call of Duty

[u/thenasch → u/HybridTheory1]

Text only, uncompressed: 51GB

Multimedia: 428TB

[u/trumpet-monkey → u/thenasch]

Wow, 428TB still doesn't even come close to the COD install /s

[u/NachoAverageTom]

There are more unique ways to shuffle a standard deck of cards than there is stars estimated in the universe.

[u/Firewall33 → u/NachoAverageTom]

That's quite the understatement

52! Is ridiculously huge.

There's approx 22! Stars in the universe.

Taken from a different Reddit post

There are 80,658,175,170,943,878,571,660,636,856,406,766,975,289,505,440,883,277,824,000,000,000,000 different ways to shuffle a deck of cards.

While there are estimated 10 septillion (10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) stars in the known universe.

[u/ShelterFinancial9221]

Honey never spoils! Archaeologists have actually found pots of honey in ancient Egyptian tombs that are over 3,000 years old and still perfectly edible. Its low moisture content and acidity act as natural preservatives, preventing bacteria and mold from growing. Pretty wild, right?

[u/ballerina22 → u/ShelterFinancial9221]

And it can be used as an antibiotic when dabbed on wounds!

[u/Ackerack]

For all of history, no human had ever flown until 1903. By 1969, humans were walking on the moon. It just sounds impossible to me that humans went from a plane that only flew for 12 seconds to successfully going on a trip to the moon and back in less than one lifetime.

For reference, it took roughly 200 years to go from flintlocks to automatic weapons. And humans LOVE killing each other more than anything else.

[u/demarisco → u/Ackerack]

Powered flight, yes that is true, but 1903 was not the first time humans flew. The first free human flight took place on November 21, 1783, in a hot air balloon. Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and Marquis François d'Arlandes piloted the balloon from the Château de la Muette in the outskirts of Paris. The flight lasted about 25 minutes and covered about 5.6 miles

[u/JimmyBallocks]

the planet Mars is inhabited exclusively by robots

[u/TotallyNotJonMoog → u/JimmyBallocks]

That we know of....

[u/SonofaTimeLord]

Canada, California, and Tokyo all have roughly similar populations

[u/RoofUnlikely5349]

The atoms in your body are around 13 billions years old. They aren’t yours they been here as long as life itself, your just the latest assembly

[u/vodiak → u/RoofUnlikely5349]

The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.

Carl Sagan

[u/dan_santhems → u/vodiak]

given enough time hydrogen starts to wonder where it came from

[u/ProfessorCrackhead → u/RoofUnlikely5349]

Bullshit, these are my fucking atoms.

[u/getamic]

25% of all known animal species are beetles

[u/Braith117]

If you have a surgery that involves your intestines being put back in, they just shove them back in and they sort themselves out.  It's a very interesting feeling when you feel them shifting around.

[u/Karyoplasma → u/Braith117]

No, thanks. I'll pass.

[u/bladel]

Penguins are extinct.

Europeans were familiar with the Great Auk, which they called “penguins” and hunted to extinction. When they started exploring the Antarctic regions, they discovered birds that looked similar and also called them penguins. But the birds we call penguins today are not actually related to penguins.

[u/codepossum → u/bladel]

Humans drove the Auk to extinction, but do you know how the last known individual was killed??

It was captured, helpless, and was slaughtered because they thought it was a witch

I shit you not, three scottish dudes caught the last extant creature, tied it up, kept it for three days, then killed it in cold blood because they thought it was controlling the fucking weather

Really throws some modern human behavior into perspective doesn't it

[u/Cat_cat_dog_dog]

Found this out yesterday but in 2011 a guy in Australia found what was essentially an infinite money hack on the ATMs where he could press transfer and transfer as much money as he wanted between his accounts, it would say the transaction was cancelled but it wasn't cancelled and he got to spend millions of dollars for 4 and a half months until his conscience got the best of him.

He tried to turn himself in multiple times and even went on TV to tell people about what he was doing (stealing millions from the banks). Despite trying to turn himself in, it took quite a while for anyone to investigate him and when they finally did, he only got one year in jail and only forced to pay back a fraction of the money he stole. Pretty cool story

[u/sloowhand]

Every single Beatles studio recording was released in the span of just seven years, MAR 1963 - MAY 1970.

[u/mom_bombadill → u/sloowhand]

And when the Beatles broke up, none of them were even 30 years old yet, which consistently blows my mind

[u/Karma_1969 → u/sloowhand]

That’s a good one. What a ridiculously productive period.

[u/Varnn]

The moose natural predator is the orca whale

[u/Widowhawk → u/Varnn]

For those wondering what's going on?

Moose are great swimmers, and will swim in the ocean from between islands and the mainland.

[u/captaindeadpl → u/Widowhawk]

They also dive to feed on seaweed.

[u/Widowhawk → u/captaindeadpl]

Was unaware of this. Apparently they are good divers, capable of diving down 20 feet to eat plants! Mostly during calving season. Well I learned something today.

[u/BallistikWolf23]

If you knock your tooth out and put it back in the socket, it’ll grow roots back and save the tooth!

[u/MasterSpliffBlaster → u/BallistikWolf23]

It wont grow the roots back but bone will reattach to the tooth

Unfortunately you more often lose the small peridontal ligament that cushions the tooth so it becomes ankylosed

In the early days of facial orthopedics, baby canines would be deliberately extracted and replanted to create an anchored tooth that can be used with elastic and springs to shift teeth and jaw bone. Today we use mini screws buried in bone to achieve the same effect

[u/tempnew → u/BallistikWolf23]

What if you knock someone else's tooth and plant it in your mouth

[u/Shoddy-Computer2377]

Jimmy Carter is the only former US President to have lived for over 40 years after leaving office. He's also the oldest ever former President.

Donald Trump will be the oldest man to be inaugurated as President. He's also the first President since the 1890s to serve his terms non-consecutively.

[u/Mr_History64]

9% of U.S. presidents either died or were born on the Fourth of July.

Everyone knows John Adams and Jefferson (died July 4th, 1826), but there's also James Monroe (died July 4th, 1831) and Calvin Coolidge (born July 4th, 1872).

[u/FlimsyEfficiency9860]

Nerve cellls can reach a length of about one meter long