25 Amazing Facts
If you liked these, check out more free quick-facts here. You might also be interested in QI’s 1,227 QI Facts to Blow Your Socks Off.
Text Version:
Fact 449: While often used as the poster woman for “how things were different back in the day” with models and actresses, Marilyn Monroe’s body dimensions according to her tailor were 35 inch bust, 22 inch waist, and 25 inch hips and 5 ft. 5.5 in. tall. According to BluFire Model Registry, the average model today is 34/24/34 and 5 ft. 8 in. tall.
Fact 450: A single human sperm cell contains around 37.5 MB of information.
Fact 451: During WWII, all the snakes and dangerous insects were killed in the London Zoo by the Zoo keepers in case they managed to escape after a bombing.
Fact 452: The only living animal who has the same scientific name as their common name is the boa constrictor.
Fact 453: The 1900 Olympics included a long jump competition… for horses.
Fact 454: The human eye can detect somewhere between 100K-10 million shades of color. For reference, HDMI 1.3 supports 30 (1 billion), 36 (68 billion), and 48 bits (281 trillion) of color.
Fact 455: Wombat poop is cubic.
Fact 456: In the last century, the east coast of the United States has moved about 8 ft. further away from Europe.
Fact 457: The largest island on a lake which is itself on an island in a lake is Treasure Island in Lake Mindemoya, which is on Manitoulin Island in Lake Huron.
Fact 458: Oranges are a berry, as are bananas. Strawberries however are not technically berries, they are aggregate fruits.
Fact 459: The highest crime rate per capita of any city in the world is at Vatican City where an average of 600 crimes are committed per year, despite only having 800 residents.
Fact 460: More U.S. soldiers committed suicide in Afghanistan than were killed in action there in 2012.
Fact 461: The manager of the first ever McDonalds was named Ed MacLuckie.
Fact 462: In Nevada, a disturbance with as few as 2 people can legally be considered a riot. In the U.S. in general, it takes 3 people. In England, 12.
Fact 463: About 5% of all Association Football (Soccer) injuries occur during celebrations after scoring a goal.
Fact 464: The fear of dinner party conversations or dinner parties in general is known as Deipnophobia.
Fact 465: The fear of having no cell phone signal or otherwise being unable to make or receive cell phone calls is called Nomophobia.
Fact 466: How do we know vampires don’t exist? If each vampire ate just 1 meal a day, starting with just 1 vampire and each victim then turning into a vampire, it would take about 1 month for the entire human population to become vampires.
Fact 467: The Sun is 20 “years” old- it’s completed 20 orbits around our galaxy’s center since it first sparked to life.
Fact 468: The favorite childhood book of George W. Bush, according to him, was The Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle… written when George W. Bush was 23 years old.
Fact 469: Cows have dstinct accents in their mooing, depending on where they are from.
Fact 470: Ever wonder how humanity collectively forgets so quickly? It’s estimated that around 95% of all text currently in existence will never be looked at again by human eyes.
Fact 471: Approximately 46% of babies born in China are birthed via a Caesarean section.
Fact 472: Over 200 million IKEA catalogues were printed in 2012, this is about 8 times the number of Bibles printed in the same year.
Fact 473: Wikipedia to date has taken about 100 million man-hours to create. This may sound like a lot, but in fact in a typical month, people in the U.S. alone spend about 1.5 billion man hours watching advertisements on TV.
Fact 474: The world’s best-selling sci-fi novel to date, Dune, was rejected 20 times before being accepted… by a car manual publisher (Chiltons).
Fact 475: One of the common early uses of Heroin, which was marketed as non-addictive, was to help treat people who were addicted to morphine, even though Heroin ultimately proved to be more addictive. When morphine was first isolated from opium in 1805, one of its early uses was a “non-addictive” drug to treat people who were addicted to the less addictive opium.
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#452 might be wrong. I think the gorilla has a similar name
Gorilla’s scientific name is gorilla gorilla while its common name is obviously just gorilla so they’re not the same, boa constrictor is the only animal where they’re exactly the same, however there are plants with the same common and scientific name such as aloe vera
Then Governor, George Bush responded to the same survey by listing “Sarah’s Flag for Texas” which was published in 1993 (24 years after The Very Hungry Caterpillar and just prior to his election as Governor). It appears that he (or his staff) misread the question as “favorite children’s books” rather than “favorite books while you were a child.”
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/560549.html
@demarke: While that may be true, I remain skeptical just because politicians when they say their favorite anything come up with the answers not by what is actually their favorite thing, but via having their campaign people study an amazing amount of data to determine what would be just the right thing to say given their target voting audience. There is little they say, do, or even wear that isn’t carefully calculated.
Just to play devil’s advocate with that, perhaps what actually happened was that book is one of the most popular children’s books of all time, so they went with it, with somebody along the chain screwing up and not noticing the date it was published or misreading it. They then simply made up a nice little cover store for the slip. Whatever the case, never believe anything a politician says, especially during elections and when talking about “favorite things”. 🙂
People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.
Otto von Bismarck
In GWB’s case, both are true, at the same time.
“The only living animal who has the same scientific name as their common name is the boa constrictor.” Should be IT’S common name (animal is singular).
BTW, it’s ALWAYS Bush’s fault. Repeat after me: It’s ALWAYS Bush’s fault.
Should be “ITS” common name. It’s == it is. “It’s” is not used for a possessive.
Fact 454 is not a fact. It is completely wrong and the result of flawed testing methodology.
Humans can distinguish between more than 24 million colours when a properly designed scientific test is used.
There is a reason why HDMI and BluRay support 30,36 and 48 bit colour. These larger colour palettes are necessary to avoid obvious colour banding and other colour artifacts that humans can clearly perceive.
@AJ: Care to reference any of these “properly designed scientific tests”? From my research, which was pretty extensive on that one including looking at several papers that seemed “properly designed”, the numbers are as stated.
24 million colors is still remarkably lower than the 1 bil colors in 30 bit.
#466 isn’t right, nowhere in vampire lore and mythology does it say that a vampire bite is what turns you into a vampire, it takes more than a feeding. I think you may be confusing zombies with vampires here.
So you’ve read all vampire lore from every culture and every time period?
While it’s not technically wrong that oranges and bananas are berries, both are considered to be modified berries rather than true berries. An orange is known as a hesperidium, which is defined as a berry with a leathery rind (along with some other technical distinctions). A banana is an epigynous berry (or ‘false berry’), which is a berry that forms from other flower parts besides the ovary (a true berry is formed from the ovary only).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hesperidium
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berry
Fact 449
how is this an amazing fact? do you even know how big the difference in height is between 5ft 8 and 5ft 5.5 is????
In perspective 34/24/34 in a woman who is 5ft 5.5 is today considered “medium”, not to mention only a plus size modelling agency would take you in if you were 35/22/35 and 5ft 5.5. (and use you only for pin up modelling, maybe catalog modelling)
Who where you trying to fool with this???
What, are you dumb? It’s not the height alone, it’s the bust, waist and hip size that’s interesting.
Fact 468 – not that surprising. You get a whole new crop of “favorite” children’s books when you have kids of your own…duh.
Well – its wrong. It was written and first published in 1969
@MR: 1946 + 23 = 1969…
Fact 452. The picture is actually showing a Green Tree Python, not a boa constrictor. Different family of snakes.
@Andrew Pryor: Yep, but copyright laws and high quality photos we have rights to played a part in that. 😉
Great list, interesting facts, well done.
#468 is wrong. The very hungry caterpillar was written and first published in 1969
@MR: Hence, “when George W. Bush was 23 years old”. Bush was born in 1946.
That is CANADIAN camouflage and gear, not British.
Fact #460’s picture isn’t of a US soldier, thats british camouflage and camo netting. Not to refute the facts, it just makes the whole list less legitimate when you use the wrong pictures
2LT. Helgren, US ARMY
@Jonny Helgren: It’s an issue of what pictures I have rights to publish and what I don’t. 🙂
Number 460 is a Canadian. He is carrying a C7 rifle with scope, wearing Canadian Arid cam, with a Canadian Temperate Green LB Vest.
“it just makes the whole (comment) less legitimate when you use the wrong (facts)”
Actually, looks more like a C8 Carbine he is carrying. The British carry the SA80 A2 Individual Weapon System.
Seems to me there is more pissing and moaning about the facts than actual appreciation for this interesting fact list. Well done, Daven, I really enjoyed reading. Thank you for sharing these!
Gorillas “scientific name” is gorilla gorilla gorilla
Gorilla Gorilla =/= Gorilla
@sadie while you’re comment is correct you don’t go far enough technically speaking the banana plant is a grass which would make a banana no only a false berry but also a grain which is one of the reasons they are so starchy
That “boa constrictor” in the picture is an emerald tree boa. Completely different species.
The text version reduces Marilyn’s hip measurement by ten inches… (currently it says “Marilyn Monroe’s body dimensions according to her tailor were 35 inch bust, 22 inch waist, and 25 inch hips and 5 ft. 5.5 in. tall.”)
fact #475 and now methadone (an extremely addictive opiate) is used to get folks off of heroine. bottom line; stay on opium!