People Share 44 Facts That Completely Changed How They Think About, Well, Everything

I was taken to the police station three times in one day because of some robbery.


U.p.d.
In my country, a former USSR republic, the police operate very differently from those in America or Europe. At the time this happened, the situation was even worse. Our police officers could routinely take someone to the station for arbitrary reasons, such as saying, "A crime happened here, you are a suspect," or "We need to check your identity to see if you are a criminal."
These measures were not always lawful. Sometimes, people were taken to the station where police would demand a bribe for their release, or force them to confess to crimes they hadn't committed.


On the day when I was walking home from college in the evening with my friend. As we approached my building, a police car pulled up. An officer got out and immediately told us we were suspects in a crime that had occurred in the area.
They drove us a long distance to the precinct. Once there, the duty officer told the arresting officers that the investigator was unavailable. The officers simply told us, "You are free to go."
I asked them to at least drive us back, since they had brought us so far and would be returning to the area anyway. In response, they swore at me. My friend and I had to walk all the way back home.


The moment we reached my building, a different police car stopped us. It was the same line: "There was a robbery committed here."
We explained that we had just been to the station and were released because the investigator wasn't there. They didn't believe us, and we were taken to the precinct again. And once again, the duty officer confirmed: "The investigator is absent." We were let go a second time.


Eventually, we made it back. My friend lived in the next entrance, so he went home, and I went to mine. A little while later, my cousin called and asked me to go for a walk. I thought, "Surely this can't happen a third time," and stepped outside.
I was wrong. It happened—I was arrested for the third time that day.


I don't know if a real crime had actually taken place, or if they were simply trying to find someone they could pressure into confessing.
But I am grateful to the investigator who, for whatever reason, wasn't there.

Our Milky Way galaxy contains something like 500,000,000,000 (500 billion) stars, each with  around 3 or 4 planets orbiting them on average. And that's just our galaxy. There are about 250,000,000,000 galaxies in our observable universe , each with about as many stars as our own. And that's just the observable universe. Some theories suggest our observable universe is only about 10% of the whole thing, while other theories suggest the universe is infinite.


Space is really big.

A cat can theoretically fall from any height and survive.

The way I like to phrase that is, "The terminal velocity of a cat is non-fatal.".

Pluto has not made a complete orbit of the sun since its discovery.

Modern humans are closer in time to the T-Rex than the T-Rex was to Stegosaurus.

K***r whales are a known predator of moose.

Nintendo used to run a brothel and casino, and at one point their largest customer was the yakuza.

There’s a species of jellyfish that’s basically immortal. Like, it just... respawns. Nature said “nah, death is optional.”.

There are more bones in gummy worms than actual worms.

The dot above 'i' and 'j' is called a tittle.

69.
That’s the world record for number of babies birthed by a woman (throughout her life, not all at once).

So I got one of my own, one of the founders of the D.A.R.E. program in the US was the founder of Herbalife, Mark R. Hughes, which explains why the program didn't work at all.

Statistically, the average number of arms per human is slightly below two.

The human body is bioluminescent; the light it produces is just too weak for us to see.

The light we produce is about 1000% weaker than that of a firefly.

Pepsi (technically) briefly had a navy in 1989. As in, they owned literal warships and submarines.

The 10th president John Tyler's grandson died in May last year. John Tyler was born in 1790.

Death Row Records was owned by Hasbro Toys for a while...

I always liked that Venus's day is longer than it's year. It also spins the other way.

Ohio is the only state to not share a single letter with the word Mackerel.

Weasels do not mate for life and are polygamous. The males mate with multiple females and don’t help to raise any of the offspring. Same with ferrets and stoats. It’s why I always thought they were so savage in the Redwall books.