Hang on to your hats, Pandas, because we’re going for a wild ride today. Down, down, down, deep into the Lands of Knowledge where we’ll visit the Caverns of Curiosity and the Tundra of Tantalizing Trivia.

Prompted by redditor u/da-genius-kid, internet users have been sharing some incredibly intriguing facts about the world. And some of these facts and tidbits of trivia, shared on the r/AskReddit subreddit, might just blow your mind and make you see the world in a different way. Scroll down, have a read, and remember to upvote the facts that you personally found to be the most interesting. Got any cool ones to share that we might have missed? Let us know in the comments.

I reached out to Steven Wooding, a member of the Insitute of Physics in the UK, as well as a member of the Omni Calculator Project that creates cool things like the Weird Units Converter, for a chat about fact reliability, avoiding stagnation, and what features a true scientist must have. He told Bored Panda that curiosity, creativity, and open-mindedness are all very important for researchers.

"Scientists have to be curious about how the world works and persistent in their work, as it may take years for it to pay off. Creativity to imagine what might be possible and attention to detail to gain knowledge are also very important," he told me. "We have to be open-minded to new facts and let data guide the way, rather than just what we think. On the other hand, we should also be critical of data. One experiment doesn’t make a fact. A fact comes from experiments that can be repeated and verified many times over."

#1

Most people know that dogs have a really good sense of smell, but I recently did some research into the full extent of it.

40% of the brain goes entirely to their sense of smell. They have a completely different organ that is designed purely to take in the smell, separately from the oxygen they breathe (unlike humans, we process it together).

To put this into perspective, we can taste a teaspoon of sugar in our coffee. They could smell a teaspoon of sugar inside two olympic sized swimming pools.

A cancer alert dog kept marking to one mole on a woman's arm. They had already tested it and it was negative. They decided to retest due to the dog's behavior, and found an incredibly small fraction of a cancer cell in the spot.

Image credits: mazebean5

Steven, from the Omni Calculator Project team, agrees that our attention spans appear to be getting shorter with the advent of platforms like Twitter and TikTok, as well as newsfeeds.

"If you feel you are time-pressured, it’s probably only natural that you don’t want to invest a chunk of time on one article but instead scan the headlines to get lots of little bits of information. I have certainly noticed myself being less likely to read a long article unless it’s something that genuinely interests me," he explained that our natural interests, as well as our desire to save our time and energy limit how much attention we give to each and every bit of news we come across. Unfortunately, this means that some of us tend to stay at a superficial level.

"The negative impact is that we won’t reach a deeper level of understanding of something and end up missing out. This is ironic, as people today rush around trying not to miss out on things," Steven explained.

#2

Natural redheads (of which I am one) have a genetic resistance to anesthesia + unusually high tolerance for pain. I guess the latter is to compensate for the former?

Anyway, that’s why I always had a terrible fear of the dentist; they’d give me the normal dose of novocaine, then think I was lying when I said it didn’t work. Fun times! Knew I finally found the right dentist when he walked in, took one look at me, and told the tech to load up four times the novocaine - what he called the “redhead dose.” And I’ve never had to feel that pain again.

Image credits: LollyHutzenklutz

#3

Juno, who was sent to Jupiter by NASA, was Jupiter's wife in Roman mythology. Jupiter's moons are named after Jupiter's mistresses. So NASA sent Jupiter's wife to 'spy' on him and his mistresses. Always thought this was pretty cool

Image credits: Timmyb1985

The expert also gave Bored Panda his take on how to avoid getting stuck in a stagnant mindset, as though we already know absolutely everything.

"It’s essential to have a growth mindset and realize that you probably know very little. We can only gain more profound knowledge of the world by investing time in exploring it. This issue goes back to short attention spans, which gives us a broad, but shallow spread of knowledge. Take the time to read a book on a subject, and you are bound to learn more," he suggested that we find the patience to delve deeper into a subject.

#4

Multiplying any two digit number with eleven is the sum of the two digit inserted between the two digits 63×11=> (6+3) => 693

#5

The Sun is extremely loud, we just can't hear it because sound can't travel through the vacuum of space.

Image credits: KingdaToro

#6

Woodpeckers tongues wrap around their skulls to prevent them getting concussions.

Image credits: HalfEyeLizard

However fun the internet might be, we should still be aware that some information out there is spread to bamboozle us. An expert told Bored Panda just last week about the red flags each and every one of us should watch out for.

"Red flags to watch out for that a claim may be fake: it's outlandish, it's too good to be true, you haven't seen the claim anywhere else, you've never heard the source, the source isn't reputable, you can't find two other sources making the same claim, your gut tells you, ‘this can't be true,'" Mike Sington, an entertainment, pop culture, and lifestyle expert from Los Angeles, who knows how social and traditional media works, explained to me earlier.

He told Bored Panda that the reliability of information has suffered because of how popular social media has become. "The rise of social media has decreased the reliability of information because misinformation can spread so quickly before it can be corrected," he said.

#7

Cats don't meow to talk to other cats they use different language for that They meow to talk to us

Image credits: Winter-Rip7364

#8

Lemons aren't naturally occuring, they were created through the breeding of bitter oranges and citrons. So we made lemons, then made lemonade. Screw you life.

Image credits: DeggleMo

#9

For 1 600 billionth of a second when a hydrogen bomb detonates, it is 100 million degrees Celsius, the core of the sun is 15 million degrees Celsius.

Image credits: i_like_atla

According to the expert, one simple way to double-check the reliability of a source, fact, or news story is to start off with a simple Google search. If you can’t find any additional sourcing or evidence, remain skeptical.

"Do this and think before reposting or you may be contributing to the problem. Amplification doesn’t make a claim true or accurate," he said.

The sources that the expert trusts the most include Associated Press, Reuters, and The New York Times. "They employ fact-checkers and editors that ensure the information they post is correct. They’re basically doing the research and homework for you. There are literally too many online sources to list that can’t be trusted and should be avoided. Anyone can basically post anything they want… proceed with caution," the expert warned.

#10

A sword made from the blood of your enemies is technically possible.

If you separate the iron out of the blood of 300 adults, you could smelt it down to an iron ingot. This ingot would be enough to be used to create a longsword.

Image credits: disturbing_silence

#11

The lighter was invented before the match.

Image credits: johnnyloveswag

#12

In the 70s, in the USA, it was believed that infants didn’t feel pain. My first operation was in 74, when I was a day old, to shove a sac full of exposed nerves back into my spine (spina bifida myelomeningocele).

Image credits: MansonGirl15

"Our attention spans have been reduced to mere seconds at a time because that’s the way information and entertainment is fed to us now. People get tiny bite-sized bits of news by scrolling a Twitter feed, they entertain themselves by scrolling quickly through Instagram and TikTok. It’s creating a habit that doesn’t have to be," Mike warned that we’re being changed by what we consume.

"The good news is there’s plenty of long-form entertainment and news available, you just have to seek it out. I believe the benefit is worth it. I’ve discovered it improves your ability to focus, it’s more calming, you retain more information, and it gives you a more balanced and nuanced view of the world.”

#13

Since it’s discovery in 1930 Pluto has yet to orbit the sun and won’t until 2178.

Image credits: jettatom

#14

In the time it takes you to read this sentence, you’ve traveled approximately 2,200 miles through space relative to the cosmic background radiation.

Image credits: Pissedbuddha1

#15

People live closer in time to T Rex than T rex lived to stegosaurus.

Image credits: atomicskier76

#16

That the placebo effect is real. It has to be accounted for in human trials of medical treatments.

This means that our minds have the capacity to affect real healthcare outcomes and this happens consistently.

#17

The smell grass emits after it is getting cut actually has quite the purpose: it's supposed to mark whoever hurt the plant so that predators of the animal would eventually start to associate the smell with prey. Therefore grass is literally trying to kill us once you start hurting it.

#18

The microgravity in space can cause an astronauts blood to run backwards

Image credits: DavosLostFingers

#19

Neil Armstrong backwards is Gnorts Mr. Alien

#20

The 1966-1967 UCLA Bruins Men’s Basketball team went undefeated and won the National Championship. They were ranked number 1 throughout the entire season. In those days, freshmen weren’t allowed to play on the varsity team, but every year, at the end of the season, the freshmen team played the varsity team in an exhibition game. UCLA’s freshmen team beat the undefeated varsity team by 15 points with a young center named Lew Alcindor, later changing his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

#21

Your tongue rests on the roof of your mouth, not the base.

#22

You only need to fold a piece of paper in half 45 times to be able to reach the Moon.

Image credits: Alternative_Line_448

#23

Scientists don't know how anesthesia works. It just does.

Image credits: TheIronRavn

#24

People who are born deaf and develop schizophrenia see random hands signing to them.

#25

You could fit all the planets in the solar system between Earth and The Moon at their average distance, with nearly 5,000 miles to spare.

Image credits: thebutler97

#26

Atoms don’t touch so you really haven’t touched anything

Image credits: Sad-Adhesiveness5146

#27

Diamonds aren't valuable nor are they rare. De Beers (An international corporation that specialises in everything diamond) created a advertising campaign saying that a man should be spending a two month salary on a diamond engagement ring. They then raised price's, restricted supply and created this costly illusion that generations of people still consider it to be a mandatory part in marriage process.

#28

If our Sun was the size of a white blood cell, our galaxy would be the size of the continental United States.

Image credits: FutrzakKowalski

#29

Crows have extremely good memory, they can even get their relatives to recognize people that they've already recognised

#30

The brain is the only thing that we know of that has named itself.

#31

If you go in the opposite direction of Earths rotation, you go slower if you go faster

#32

Still in early developing in the womb, human embryos specifically react to 3 dots of light shaping an upside-down triangle. That's the basic, primary geometry of a human face!

Humans are prepared to distinguish human faces among other stimuli. We're truly social animals, aren't we.

#33

Axolotls can regenerate anything as long as they stay within their original climate and pool of water. If they stay outside of it or the pool changes chemicals, they become salamanders that can't regenerate anymore. I'm really hoping scientists will be able to clone their dna and start utilising that regeneration genome for people in need of regeneration therapy.

#34

Orange County, California, has a population higher than twenty European countries.

#35

The last living person who was the child of a Civil War veteran, died in June of 2020. Her father was 83 when she was born.

#36

If Brooklyn was its own city, it would be the fourth largest city in the U.S., after NYC, L.A. and Chicago.

#37

Women’s sanitary pads have come along way in history.

In the 1700s they made special aprons to try and hid it.

Early 1900s women were using rags similar to baby nappies to disguise it.

In the 1920s during the war nurses figured out Kotex curad bandages were much more absorbing so they used them with a belt made specially for holding it.

In 1929 the first tampon was invented.

In the 1930s menstrual cups were invented but many women felt it was a backwards concept so it wasn’t popular.

In 1970 pad companies started using adhesive backing.

The 1980s are to blame for advertising with blue liquid. To show absorbency.

#38

Picasso and Alice Cooper were pen pals.

#39

Luis Jiménez was killed by the sculpture he created, Blue Mustang, otherwise know as Blucifer. A part of the sculpture fell on him and severed an artery in his leg

#40

Humans create as much heat as a 100 watt incandescent bulb. Which is why greenhouses have a single 100 watt bulb burning that workers turn off when they enter. Keeps the temperature constant.

#41

Apple seeds DO NOT yield the same apple it came from... every apple seed yields a completely unique apple. If you want the exact same apple, you have to cut a branch off the existing apple tree and graft in onto another tree

#42

Time travels for you ever so slightly faster when you’re at the top of a building compare to on the ground floor.

#43

Splinter free toilet paper was invented in 1935. Which means before that, toilet paper had splinters. Ouch.

Image credits: Georgia_The_Jungle

#44

Fathers can breastfeed..no meds or other intervention needed...in times of stress, mostly after the death of the mother in childbirth. Father's have attempted to breastfeed and, boom. Start producing viable milk. It's has been documented a non trivial amount of times..

#45

If you're within vicinity of a fallen powerline, bunny hop or slide your feet side-to-side to get away from the pole. This is to counteract "step potential" as lifting your feet off the ground will cause a difference in voltage causing an electrocution.

#46

The us airdropped pianos to it's troops

#47

In Rwanda, witchcraft is considered cheating in sports, especially in Association football (soccer if you're from the USA, Japan, and Australia etc.) The punishment if caught ranges from fine to suspensions.

This was due to many complaints from other teams about such usage. In 2016, Moussa Camara was playing for Rayon Sports when he ran to the goal of rival Mukura. It wasn't clear, but the goalie caught Camara and informed the rest of Mukura. A chase got invovled, but Camara got away. Mukura complain that Camara went Harry Potter. There are footages of this, it mostly in French though, with the commentary team was laughing.

While it sounds petty, but in countries, like Rwanda, witchcraft is taken seriously.

#48

There are more atoms in a teaspoon of water than there are teaspoons of water in the Atlantic Ocean

#49

Purple isn't a real frequency of light like red or blue. It's how our brains interpret jumbled frequencies of red and blue light. It seems to be a byproduct of how our brains developed to interpret the light that hits the blue, green, and red cones in our eyes.

#50

Time scale stuff breaks my brain

Cleopatra lived closer in time to the building of the first Pizza Hut than to the building of the pyramids for example (to use a well known example)

It was only 66 years between the first successful flight test by the Wright brothers and landing man on the moon... Human ingenuity knows no bounds when money isn't an issue and barriers are removed.

#51

I find it really interesting that we have around 5-10 pounds of bacteria living in our intestines. These bacteria play a vital role in digestion and are responsible for creating certain vitamins, such as B12.

#52

Male reindeer lose their antlers in the winter but females don’t. Therefore Santa’s sleigh is pulled by a team of strong independent ladies.

Image credits: AllDogsGoToReddit

#53

Frogs swallow with their eyes

#54

The fastest gust of wind ever recorded on Earth was 253 miles per hour.

#55

Almost is the longest word in the English language that is in alphabetical order

#56

If the earth were compressed to the point at which it would become a black hole, it would be about the diameter of a golf ball.

#57

Woman already have their lifetime supply of eggs in their bodies when they're unborn, inside their pregnant mothers as a fetus, so the egg that would become you as ultimately also existed inside your grandmother via your mother.

#58

The first toothpaste was Portuguese urine. It had the highest ammonia content and only royalty could afford to have it imported.

#59

Everything in the entire universe is either a potato or it isn't.

#60

Omicron is Greek for "little O" (o-micron). Compared to its uppercase counterpart "O-mega."

#61

Dr. Ruth, the sex Dr was trained as a sniper in the Israeli military, and Bob Ross, that painter was an airforce drill instructor.

#62

We can only ever prove if extraterrestrial life exists, we can never prove it doesn't exist. But just because we haven't made contact with them or them with us doesn't mean they don't exist.

So maybe some day we might be able to prove they do exist, but we'll never be able to prove they don't exist.

#63

John Tyler, the 10th president of the U.S., still has a GRANDSON that is alive. Not a great grandson, not a great great grandson. A GRANDSON.

#64

There is less meat in a Big Mac than a Quarter Pounder.

I started my job at McDonald’s and I had a shift on the grilling area. A trainer told me about how much meat is in each patty.

The Big Mac uses two 10:1 patties, which are both a tenth of a pound.

The Quarter Pounder has a 4:1, which is a quarter of the pound (wow who knew).

Therefore, the Big Mac has a fifth of a pound of meat while the quarter pounder has a quarter.

#65

When you slap your hand on a table, there's a 1 in 5.261 chance that all molecules miss each other and your hand goes through the table

#66

The average house in East Midlands UK in 2019 increased in value(earned) more than it's owner.

#67

Horses only breathe through their nostrils and not their mouth at all!! It’s a minor thing in the big picture, but my mind went boom!

#68

Plasma used to cut steel plate is hotter than the surface of the sun.

Source - Am plasma system operator, among other things.

#69

Pineapple contains bromelain.

Bromelain is an enzyme that fulfills a proteolytic function, it degrades proteins producing amino acids that make it up.

So that stinging you feel when you eat pineapple is because the pineapple is also eating you.

#70

One of the reasons Germany didn’t invent nukes first was because a few Norwegians sabotaged one of their bases and stunted their progress.

#71

Comic Sans is a good font to use if a dyslexic person will be reading the material.

#72

Al Gore and Tommy Lee Jones were college roommates

#73

In Formula 1, the full grid of 20 cars during all practice, qualifying and race sessions over an entire single season will burn less fuel than one commercial flight from London to New York.

#74

The James Webb Space Telescope launching later this week is so insanely sensitive it boggles the mind. Some of the things it will be looking at will be 20x dimmer than looking at a 5 watt lightbulb on the moon. Even with it’s massive 6 meter (20 foot) diameter main mirror just a single photon of light will be hitting it per second from the target. To put that into perspective, if you look up at a reasonably bright star, even with your pupil being just 8 mm across, probably upwards of a million photos are striking your eye just from that star every second.

#75

Sharks are older than trees.

Individual sharks that we have identified are older than the United States.

Dr. Pepper is older than albums of recorded music.

#76

I did about two months of research into subliminal messaging and mental health through virtual environments for my psych class. It is commonly known that negative messages in the morning can cause people's day to be ruined, and can heavily influence mood and work ethic. With my research and experiment, I found that the opposite is also true. You see, the problem lies with the different brain waves as you wake up.

I'm no psychologist, and this paper was written a senior seminar ago, so I don't remember the waves exactly. The important part is that there are four waves your brain releases depending on consciousness. Going through all four are very important for your mental well-being. By looking at your phone in the morning, you skip from the forst to the last wave, which leaves you mentally and emotionally vulnerable.

As I mentioned, however, the opposite is true. I used a test group of 5 people, who all had diagnosed depression and/or anxiety, as well as one participant having no history of depression or anxiety. Every night, at around 3am, I would send them a text message personalized to each of them, with positive messages assuring them that they'll have a good day and that if times are hard, the best they can do is try their hardest. I put a lot of effort into these, and every week I checked in on them, taking into account changes in their personal lives.

When I connected all the data, what I found was that all the people with anxiety and depression had significantly better work ethic, and took more initiative to solve their problems. They also noted slightly lowered levels of anxiety, and thought of self harm were lowered, too. As for the participant who had no mental health problems, he noticed a general increase in positivity and work ethic, as well.

So I guess of you have someone who's been really down lately, and you love them, send them a text for when they wake up. The effects needed about a week to set in, and they cap out at around a month and an half in from what I noticed. This is not a cure to depression and anxiety, but it is a small thing that someone can do for a loved one.

It's this study that has made me realize that I want to use my computer science degree to help people's mental health, and why I decided to get my masters in computer science, and get a degree in Psychology while I'm at it. Technology had proven itself to be bad for humanity's mental health, and it's time someone tried to fix it. I don't think I'm that man, but I'd sure as hell like to help pave the road for the guy that is.

Tldr; encouraging messages to be read as soon as someone wakes up is a great way to slightly help someone through their mental health problems

#77

There’s no real evidence to suggest that menstrual cycles sync up.

#78

Nintendo is older than CocaCola.

#79

Bookkeeper is the only word in the English language that has three sets of double letters consecutively.

#80

clown fish are hermaphrodite and, if the movie was realistic, Marlin in Finding Nemo would become a female and try to copulate with his son, as the mother was killed

#81

Octopus have 9 brains.

#82

Cannibalism is legal in 49 states. You can purchase parts through research, people donate their bodies to research and the researchers buy them, and after that you can eat it. Now, you can’t mutilate a corpse, or murder someone to get the meat but as long as you purchase it legally, you can eat foot meat tacos right in front of the cops and they can’t do anything about it, I mean they can try but you’ll be let go if you bought everything properly.

#83

President Hoover met Hitler, President FDR met Stalin.

#84

Konrad Heyer, the earliest born person ever to be photographed, was born sixty years before Abraham Lincoln, and twenty years before Napoleon.

#85

Whales naturally drown to death.

#86

A polar bears skin is black.

#87

That the theory of dinosaurs being extinct from asteroid happened in the 1980s

#88

Most of Canada's population lives south of Seattle.

#89

Western music tuning is imperfect. When you tune a piano you have to tune each interval to each other resulting in certain notes being sharp or flat in reference to the equal temper tuning we can derive mathematically.

#90

Homo erectus lasted as a species for like two million years, something like four times how long Homo sapiens have been around. If we look at longevity of survival as a measure of some sort of success they’ve got us beat big time.

#91

According to linguistic and genetic evidence, the first settlers of Madagascar came not from Africa, but from what is now Indonesia.

Makes more sense when you look at a map of ocean currents.

#92

If you put dry erase marker over permanent marker the permanent marker erases too (for dry erase boards)

#93

Pepsi purchased a military submarine after the Cold War.

#94

The name for the ringing of bells is tintinnabulation

#95

Paul McCartney and Bertrand Russell, were dinner mates.

#96

Abolitionist Harriet Tubman, during her life, lived at the same time as Thomas Jefferson and Ronald Reagan.

#97

The last living claimant to the Austro-Hungarian throne, died just ten years ago.

#98

Tectonic plates moving about the same rate as our fingernails grow.

#99

In the ancient days, condoms were made out of dried animal intestines

#100

Motorcycle helmets tested by the American Department of Transportation (DOT) have not been tested by the DOT, they have to be tested by a third party and helmet manufacturers can and do shop around for testers with loose standards.

Their standards are also based off of car crashes, not motorcycles, making your motorcycle helmet DOT standard mean dick all

For a safer helmet consider ECE or Snell