There’s nothing like a useless fact to break the ice when you’re stuck in the elevator with the new guy in the office. Or, y’know, in case you end up on Jeopardy or something. Well, these Reddit users have you covered.
The difference between a cemetery and a graveyard? Graveyards are attached to churches; cemeteries are stand-alone.
Jillian_J_Ellis
If you push a living sponge through a fine mesh screen, it will rearrange itself within a few hours.
Black_Sun_Rising
Arby’s holds the record for the longest ever commercial. They made it that long in order to prove that their Smokehouse Brisket is really actually smoked for 13 hours.
spicypepperoni
Aldous Huxley and C. S. Lewis died on the same day, but nobody heard about it because it was also the day JFK was shot.
Yolking_Around
Penguins have glands under their eyes to extract and secrete excess salt. These are powerful enough that they allow them to drink seawater as their primary water source.
SwordAndPenguin
A poor Cuban postman, Felix Carvajal, who had no competitive running experience, once competed in the 1904 Olympic marathon.
He had to hitchhike his way to St. Louis because he lost the money he had on a craps game in New Orleans. He only had street clothes when he got to St. Louis, including a beret, long johns, and trousers that he had cut into shorts.
It was very hot that day, and a Boston Marathon runner had to drop out after 2 blocks. Very little water was available as well.
Despite the fact that Felix ate rotten apples, got an upset stomach from said apples, and then took a nap during the race, he finished 4th in the marathon. (continued…)
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This the same infamous marathon where someone drove half of it in a car, the winner was messed up on rat poison and brandy, and one of the first two Black men to compete in the Olympics was chased a mile off course by stray dogs.
The marathon was nearly cancelled for the next Olympics because it was so stupid and silly.
nhlfan40
The door opening noise from Star Trek was actually a piece of paper being taken out of an envelope.
Mr5wift
In feudal Japan, lords purposely built homes with squeaky floors as a defensive measure against ninjas.
juiceboxheero
The entire reason CS Lewis wrote the lamppost into Chronicles of Narnia was because JRR Tolkien insisted that no good Fantasy writer would include something as arbitrary as a lamppost in their novel.
notasugarbabybutok
The release of the original Spider Man movie was delayed because of the 9/11 attacks. They spent the following months editing the twin towers out of every scene. But they missed one.
anothermcocplayer
The plural of fish can be fish or fishes. If all the fish are the same species, then the plural is fish (two salmon are fish). If there is more than one species, the plural is fishes (a salmon and a haddock comprise fishes).
badamache
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A second is called a second because it is the second division of the hour by 60, the first division being a minute.
elee0228
The killer whale is the natural predator of the moose. Killer whales attack moose as they swim from island to island in search of food.
Punult
There once existed a theoretical state of war that lasted 335 years and 19 days, and was between the Dutch and an archipelago off the coast of southwest England called the Isles of Scilly.
What’s more, there were no casualties (because the Dutch forgot that they were at war with the Isles).
It wasn’t until a Scilly historian contacted the Dutch about the “war” in 1985, and received the information that the “war” was still technically ongoing, that a peace treaty was signed in 1986.
CarbonSpectre
The composer Richard Wagner blew most of his money on women’s lingerie.
spunkychickpea
The whole of Australia could fit comfortably into the Sahara desert, with plenty of room to spare.
hortonhoo
Frogs’ neck muscles are so weak because of the ‘ribbity’ thing they do that they use their eyes to push food down their throat. It looks like they’re blinking but they suck their eyes down into their bodies to push food into heir stomach.
SnareSp11
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Drinking your own urine will kill you quicker than drinking nothing at all.
Youwantobefooled
Japanese honeybees cook hornet scouts that enter the hive by swarming them and then vibrating until they reach a temperature they can stand but the hornet can’t.
Flanchester
Before clocks, “clockwise” was called “sunwise” and “counterclockwise” was called “widdershins.” Widdershins. Widdershins.
svenson_26
Tommy Lee Jones and Al Gore were college roommates.
DaFlabbagasta
If Wayne Gretzky, who holds the NHL record for most career goals, had never scored a goal, he would still hold the record for most career points. (Total points = goals + assists.)
Dr_Dippy
The difference between a hotel and a motel is, hotel doors open into a hallway, motel doors open to the outside.
Motel is a portmanteau of “motor hotel,” which is why the rooms open to the outside where the parking lot is. Its easy to remember when you know that.
kpc45
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Ketchup was sold as medicine in the 1830s.
It was supposed to cure digestive problems. Only later was ketchup made using tomatoes. Before, it was made from mushrooms or fish.
the_music_of_chance
The man who first came up with the character Wonder Woman also helped commercialize the polygraph machine. This is really interesting considering Wonder Woman’s Lasso of Truth…
LordFluffy
Nissan racing cars normally use the number 23 because in Japanese, a 2 is pronounced ‘ni’ and a 3 is pronounced ‘san’.
-Reddit_Account-
Chicago has 80% of the world’s revolving doors.
fudgeman
There are at least two people in New York city with exactly the same number of hairs on their head. This isn’t a “it’s statistically likely” type of thing, we’re talking mathematical fact.
The average person has 100,000 hairs on their head. Say the maximum is 10 times that, 1 million hairs. Since you can’t have half a hair, that means there are only 1,000,001 possible unique numbers of hair on someone’s head (if you count 0, totally bald). That means that, in a city with a population of 1,000,002, at least one of those combinations has to be repeated. New York City has over 8 million people.
Notmiefault
In architecture, it’s only a “gargoyle” if it channels rain. If it’s just a creepy statue, it’s a “grotesque”.
tunaman808
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If you drew a cylinder around the Eiffel Tower, the air inside the cylinder would weigh more than the tower itself.
thedevilsredditor
In order to appeal to a larger market in the US, the Chinese gooseberry was renamed as the kiwifruit (which was later shortened to the kiwi).
ttjclark
A jiffy is an actual unit of time, not just an expression. In computer engineering, it is the length of one cycle of the computer’s system clock. In chemistry and physics, a jiffy is the amount of time it takes light to travel a distance of one centimetre.
VirtualEyeroll
The longest English word having only a single vowel is: strengths.
off2cd_lizard
There is strong evidence to suggest that dolphins not only have language and their own names in the form of what is known as “signature whistles”, but also different pods in different parts of the world have their own language much like humans do.
Also, if something major happens to a pod, like there is a giant school of fish to have for dinner coming their way, the pod will stop what they are doing and have a quick little meeting and literally discuss a plan of action before carrying out the task.
Leeshie55
Julian Glover, the actor who plays Grand Maester Pycelle in Game of Thrones also played General Veers in The Empire Strikes Back (the commander in the AT-AT during the Hoth attack). He was also a Bond villain and the main villain in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
Vance_DeGeneres
Since the AFL-NFL merger in 1970, there have only been three 6-6 ties in NFL history.
And the Cardinals have been in every one of them.
An_Taoiseach