50 “Fun Facts That Nobody Asked For”

I really like the Christmas Truce of 1914 where almost every German and British soldier decided to just stop the war for that special day. I think there are some stories of them playing some good old football (soccer if you will), exchanging hats, Christmas presents they got from their families.
It is one of my favorite wholesome facts about WWI

Dragonflies suck water up their butts and shoot it out like jets when they get tired.

Dr. Seuss invented the word nerd.

German submarine U-215. Sank during WW2. Didn’t decompress though. It’s still sealed on the bottom of the ocean with 49 people inside. I’ve always wondered what went down in there…

A baby could swim in a blue whale's veins. That's how huge it is.

Humans share 99.9% of their DNA with any other human on the planet. Humans share 99% of their DNA with their closest relative, the chimpanzee. Humans also share 60% of their DNA with bananas.

I used to work as a checkpoint manager in airport security. I would get called over for strange or unusual items, to make a determination if said item was a "threat to aviation safety".

It was quite common to be called by screening officers to verify that the oddly shaped organic mass, was in fact, a b**tplug. Everyone knows what a dildo or vibrator looks like, but f****n' kids these days, they wouldn't know a b**tplug if it jumped up, started dancing and sang Hello My Ragtime Gal.

There is a thing known as the Half-life of Facts, where there is an amount of time that will pass before 50% of the facts you know in a subject will be either proven false or superseded with more detailed knowledge. This duration differs based on the field of knowledge.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-life_of_knowledge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-life_of_knowledge)

This means it's almost certain that a large percent of the fun facts in this thread will be wrong or outdated, which is likely a leading cause of arguments online.

The potato was once so undesirable that even the poor of Europe wanted nothing to do with it. They believed it caused leprosy, sterilization, and an over active sex drive.

Lake Superior does not give up her dead. The waters of Lake Superior are so cold that the bodies and the majority of stuff from shipwrecks is preserved.

The Great Lakes (all of them) are basically just giant ship graveyards.

2% of people can hear their eyes move and blink.

Edit: I hate to be that person but, MOM IM FAMOUS.

Queen Victoria gave the rights of her will to her physician who she trusted more than her family. The royal family is still trying and failing to get the will from the doctor’s family.

Cleopatra was Greek, not Egyptian or African

"Louie Louie" was a #2 hit in 1963 for The Kingsmen. The vocals were so garbled and slurred, rumors spread that the lyrics were dirty. The FBI investigated the song on suspicion of violating obscenity laws. After two years, they decided the lyrics were "unintelligible at any speed."

Somehow, they missed the drummer yelling "F**k!" at 0:54

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKt75jUuKJY

There's a surgery called a rotationoplasty where they remove the middle of your leg, then re-attach the foot (backwards) to your thigh so that your ankle can be your new knee for a prosthetic leg.

Seems gross but it really improves the quality of life over the other option, which is no knee at all.

Before he became president, Abraham Lincoln was an elite wrestling champion. In 300 matches, he only lost one. Bonus fun fact: He was also a licensed bartender.

The largest cell in the human body is the female egg. The smallest is the male sperm.

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The largest and smallest cells create life.

the word deja vu gets its name from what its thought to be. Deja vu happens when your brain identifies something that is normally unfamiliar as familiar. However, it has a little known counterpart.

Jamais vu is the opposite, when something familiar suddenly seems unfamiliar for some reason. Jamais vu is actually much easier to activate than deja vu because you can do this by simply saying a word 100 times in a row. By the end of it, the word no longer sounds like the word anymore and just sounds like strange noises. Jamais vu!

Edit: it was bothering me so I fixed the spelling

The day that Michael Jackson's hair famously caught on fire during the filming of a Pepsi commercial was on January 27, 1984, the 9,282nd day of his life. Michael Jackson was born on August 29, 1958, and died on June 25, 2009, living to be 18,563 days old.

The day of his accident was the exact median day of his life. He had a literal mid-life crisis!

A trapper caught a mama bear in Winnipeg, Canada, and the baby was there. He got the baby and sold it to a Canadian soldier. The soldier took it to his base, and everyone loved the bear. They trained the bear, and was great for morale.

But they had to go to World War 1, so they gave the bear to the London zoo. The zoo saw that the bear was good with everyone, including kids. Kids could play with, and even ride the bear. The kids made many memories with the increasingly popular bear. One of those kids Christopher Robin. His father saw Christopher Robin playing with his bear, named after the bear at the zoo.

Since the soldier found the bear in Winnipeg, he shortened the name to "Winnie".

That's right. You know this bear as the classic children's story, "Winnie the pooh." Christopher Robin was Christopher Robin Milne, son of author A A Milne, who wrote the "Winnie the Pooh" books.

Edit 2: where did pooh come from? When Christopher Robin would get goose down feathers on him, he would excitedly blow them away with a "pooh! Pooh!" His father thought it was adorable, and so added "the Pooh" after Winnie.

Edit:

correction:

The bear cub was from White River Ontario, not Winnipeg. Harry Colbourn purchased the bear cub for $20 and named it “Winnipeg”, (“Winnie” for short) after his hometown in Canada (Colbourn was originally from Birmingham England). On Dec 9 1914, Colbourn donated Winnie to the London Zoo.

thanks u/Loverboy_Talis