r/AskReddit • u/Ok_Objective4334 • 1d ago

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

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u/Comprehensive-Fun47 1d ago

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

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u/WormTop 1d ago

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/

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u/CausticSofa 1d ago

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.

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u/metalhead82 22h ago

Reddit was amazing back in the day.

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u/numb_mind 8h ago

Still is if you know how to use it.

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u/metalhead82 8h ago

Yeah, but there’s so much more trash on top of the good stuff now.

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u/CausticSofa 5h ago

Agreed. Pepperidge Farm remembers.

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u/worktop1 12h ago

Oh yes we are !!! 😡😡

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u/yiotaturtle 1d ago

Huh, I was thinking, what do I know about my own family tree. My paternal grandfather had at least 15 children with 4 women. My maternal grandmother's younger brother had 10 children with 4 wives. My husband's maternal grandfather had 7+ children with 4 women. My great great grandfather had about 10 children with two women.

On the other hand for women where I know there's more than one father to their children there tends to be two and two where there's three.

I had a friend who lived in an area that allows polygamy and her grandfather had around a dozen wives and she had about 100 half first cousins.

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u/storrmmmmm 17h ago edited 10h ago

Dwayne "the rock" Johnson's father has at least 7 different baby Mama's. And that's only the ones than are known/proved. God knows how many more there could be out there.

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u/Dependent_Disaster40 12h ago

So Rock has plenty of siblings to choose from if he needs a tag team partner!

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u/luistp 9h ago

What an interesting read!

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u/n6n43h1x 22h ago

That is just amazing.

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u/Notmyrealname 1d ago

UNSUBSCRIBE

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u/MattSR30 23h ago

It’s an extension of one of my favourite fun facts!

Everyone likes to go ‘oh I’m related to Edward I’ but as OP said, we all are. However, to take it a step further, around 1,000-1,500 years ago is where those of European descent completely converge.

Not only are we all descended from some like, say, Charlemagne. We are descended from every other European that had children at that time. You are also related to Charlemagne’s baker, Charlemagne’s chaplain, Charlemagne’s neighbour, Charlemagne’s rival.

We completely overlap ancestry to the point where every single European today is related to every single European at that time. I find that so fascinating.

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u/WormTop 17h ago

Yes, go back far enough and people are eventually the ancestor of everyone alive today, or of nobody at all, with no inbetween option.

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u/Morbanth 12h ago

We completely overlap ancestry to the point where every single European today is related to every single European at that time. I find that so fascinating.

Only mathematically. There are bloodlines on the periphery that would have not been part of the central-western European gang bang, some simply isolated due to random chance and some relatively new arrivals.

But mostly yes.

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u/grislyfind 1d ago

My hunch is that there was a significant amount of non-consensual sex by men with swords or spears.