Our world is the most unbelievable place in the universe (at least from what we know) so we thought we have to celebrate this by telling you the most incredible and unbelievable fun facts about the world you have definitely never heard about. Did you know that there is still a living descendant of a civil war veteran or why a solar eclipse appears to observers on earth as if the sun and moon were exactly the same sizes? We tell you all the details and a lot of more fun facts about our world so make sure to read them all.
1. Dogs are red-green blind.
2. Ice cream manufacturer Ben & Jerry’s has a cemetery for discontinued ice cream varieties on its premises.
3. Coober Pedy is a city in the Australian outback, where more than 50 percent of the inhabitants live in underground caves.
4. Historical finds prove that man sailed on ships as early as 6,000 years BC. The first traces of wheels, however, only date back to 4,000 years BC, meaning that ships seem to have been invented before the wheel.
5. The largest land animal permanently living in Antarctica is only 0.24 inches long. It is the wingless mosquito species “Belgica antarctica”.
6. Rome holds the world record for the city with most elevators.
7. Until the 20th century, Ugandans could still pay with the shell of a cowrie snail. At the height of the currency’s strength, you could buy a woman for two snails.
8. With a height of 59 feet, the tallest animal to ever have lived on earth was probably the Sauroposeidon. One of its cervical vertebrae alone was already 4.6 feet long.
9. 66 million years ago, an asteroid with a diameter of 6.2 to 9.3 miles hit the Yucatan peninsula – at the time still a shallow sea. The Chicxulub impact had a force of at least 200 million Hiroshima bombs and directly and indirectly caused the extinction of up to 75 percent of all plant and animal species living at that time.
10. Dogs and humans are the only mammals with a prostate.
11. On 23 March 1994, Aeroflot flight 593 crashed in a hilly landscape over Siberia, killing 75 people. Recordings on the voice recorder proved that at the time of the accident the pilot had let his 15-year-old son fly the plane.
12. The beginnings of the Internet date back to 1969, when US universities and the military networked mainframes to make more efficient use of their computing power. It was not until 1990 that the Internet was made accessible to the general public.
13. Pizza is one of the few words that is understood almost everywhere in the world.
14. In 1972 the first black superhero to get his own comic book series, Luke Cage was released.
15. Barney Stinson from “How I met your Mother” is the real inventor of the “Bro-Code”. Based on Google search analytics the term hadn’t existed before 2008.
16. Behind Lincoln’s face in Mount Rushmore, there is a secret chamber where memorabilia of the most important historical events in the USA are kept. The room is not accessible to tourists.
17. In 1993, Canadian lawyer Garry Hoy wanted to prove to a group of visitors that the glass in the Toronto Dominion Centre was unbreakable. To demonstrate this, he jumped against the glass – which thereupon broke out of its frame and plummeted downwards together with Garry Hoy. Hoy died, but the pane of glass remained intact, even after the fall.
18. The average fee to cross the Panama Canal by ship is 54,000 dollars.
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19. The Christmas tree was invented in Germany.
20. “Chauffeur” is the French word for heater, because the first cars were steam-powered and had to be heated.
21. In a guidebook for spies, the US intelligence agency CIA explained how during the Cold War spies could exchange information using their shoelaces. The message communicated differed depending on how the shoelaces were tied.
22. African American Ebbie Tolbert was born in 1807 and lived in slavery for more than 50 years. At the advanced age of 113 years – shortly before her death – she was allowed to cast her ballot for the first time in her life in St. Louis.
23. The “dingo fence” is a fence in Australia designed to protect sheep in the southeast of the continent from predators. It has a total length of 3,363 miles.
24. In 2016, at the age of 104, Jack Reynolds from Great Britain became the oldest person to get a tattoo. One year later, he became the oldest person to ride a roller coaster.
25. The copyright to the song “Happy birthday to you” expired in 2016 in the USA and in 2017 in the European Union. Until then, royalties had to be paid to Warner Music whenever the song was played on radio or television or in a cinema.
26. The longest “word” in the English language is the chemically correct designation of the protein “titin”. Titin is only the short form of the scientific name, which correctly begins with “Methionyl…” and ends with “…isoleucine”. The scientific name, however, consists of 189,819 letters and the pronunciation would take several hours, so that scientists only use the name “titin”.
27. Apple owns more cash than the United States.
28. There are about nine million people in a prison around the world. 25 percent of them come from the USA.
29. The largest industrial accident ever happened on 16 April 1947 in Texas City. While cargo was being loaded, 2,200 tons of ammonium nitrate ignited on the ship Grandcamp in city’s port. The explosion was so massive that even at a distance of ten miles, people were knocked off their feet, and window panes burst as far as 37 miles away. 581 people died as a result of the explosion and over 8,400 people were injured.
30. “Lifetime” paid 750,000 dollars per episode for the worldwide distribution rights on the TV show “How I Met Your Mother”.
31. Germany was the first country to implement summer time.
32. The credit for the loudest burp ever goes to Englishman Paul Hunn, whose burp on 23 August 2009 was measured at 109.9 decibels, which corresponds to the volume at a rock concert.
33. Some national flags contain another small flag. This “flag in a flag” is called a “jack” and is always placed in the upper left corner, as this is the most visible area of a flag.
34. The concept of “rap battles” dates back to the fifth century. At that time, poets competed against each other in a public competition in which they rhymed insults and sexual perversions. This tradition was particularly popular in Nordic and Celtic cultures. There are stories about the Nordic god Loki, who insulted other gods in rhyme form, and even William Shakespeare refers to this in some of his plays.
35. It is estimated that every five seconds, somebody somewhere in the world buys a BILLY shelf.
36. Anna Bågenholm survived the second lowest body temperature ever recorded in humans. Due to a skiing accident, she was trapped in water under a layer of ice for 80 minutes. Her body temperature dropped to 56.7 degrees Fahrenheit. Although doctors believed her to be clinically dead, she survived the incident without further damage.
37. “Semantic saturation” describes the psychological phenomenon that a word temporarily seems to lose or change its meaning if you say or write it down too many times in a row.
38. In 1967, Lawrence Roberts, one of the forefathers of the Internet, was still of the opinion that the exchange of messages among network participants was not an important motive for building a network of computers. Today, services such as WhatsApp, Telegram and e-mail have become an indispensable part of our everyday lives.
39. “Jenga” is Swahili and means “to build”.
40. Megatherium was a giant sloth that was 20 feet long, had huge claws to defend itself and weighed as much as an elephant. Thanks to small bone plates under its skin, it was armored as if by chain mail.
41. When Michael Jackson died in 2009, this caused several websites, including Twitter and Wikipedia, to crash, as many people wanted to know more about his death and overloaded the website operators’ servers.
42. Mikhail Kalashnikov, the inventor of the AK-47 assault rifle, today regrets having built the weapon. In retrospect, he wishes he had invented something that had benefitted mankind, such as a lawnmower, for example.
43. Approximately 96 percent of all French secondary schools have condom vending machines on their grounds.
44. McDonald’s also delivers its food – in at least 18 countries around the world.
45. During the Great Depression of the 1920s and 1930s, banker Pat Munroe advised his customers in the city of Quincy, Florida, to buy shares in the beverage company Coca-Cola. Over the next few years, the share price rose so much that countless people in Quincy quickly became millionaires and the city became the richest city in the USA.
46. When the Millennium Bridge in London was completed in the year 2000, pedestrians almost caused it to collapse. Due to a slight natural oscillation of the bridge, the people crossed it in lockstep so that a resonance occurred. The bridge started swinging so strongly that it had to be closed only two days after its opening in order to make appropriate improvements.
47. During the First World War, a unique event took place on the western front. On Christmas Eve, allied troops stopped their fighting and started singing Christmas carols. The Germans responded by shouting “Merry Christmas”. Some of the English then came out of their trenches and ran to the Germans to greet them and shake hands, and then the soldiers even exchanged cigarettes.
48. McDonald’s earns 8.7 billion dollars a year though franchise revenue only. That is more than the gross domestic product of Mongolia.
49. The suicide rate in Japan is 60 percent above the global average. This is why workshops teaching people to express their feelings are becoming more and more popular in the country.
50. In 1986, a Russian pilot bet his co-pilot that he could land an airplane without sight, using only the onboard instruments. To prove this, the two of them completely covered the windows of the plane and because of this negligence, the plane crashed. Of the 94 passengers, 70 died, but the pilot himself survived the accident.
51. The Eiffel Tower was only built for the 1889 World Exhibition and was supposed to be demolished 20 years later.
52. Ten percent of all Germans don’t know why they celebrate Christmas.
53. The long drink “gin and tonic” was invented by the British in the 17th century as protection against malaria. The reason for this is that until 1940, the quinine contained in tonic water was the only substance known to be effective against malaria. However, since this also causes the tonic water to taste bitter, the drink was mixed with gin to improve its taste.
54. The urine and sweat of people suffering from “leucinosis” smells of maple syrup. Those affected lack an enzyme needed to break down certain protein elements. For this reason, their bodies increasingly contain the degradation product “sotolone”, which smells strongly of maple syrup.
55. The most popular quotes from Barney Stinson from “How I Met Your Mother” are “Have you met Ted?”, “Wait for it”, “What up” and “Suit up” and are already mentioned in the first episode of “How I Met Your Mother”.
56. Mexican priest Sergio Gutiérrez Benítez supported an orphanage for over 23 years by earning money as a wrestler under the pseudonym “Fray Tormenta”. He became known all over the world for his distinctive mask, which he now wears even during his sermons in church.
57. Cats are the most popular pet in the United States. There are 88 million cats compared to 74 million dogs.
58. According to the Global Age Watch Index 2014, Germany is the third best country on earth after Sweden and Norway, for humans to get as old as possible.
59. Every year, about four million cats are consumed as delicacies in China.
60. The brain of an ostrich is smaller than its eyes.
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61. To date, 43 Germans have won an Oscar and 81 have been awarded the Nobel Prize.
62. Hippos can sleep under water. A congenital reflex lets them drift to the surface while asleep in order to breathe and then to submerge again without waking up.
63. The easternmost point of Brazil is closer to Africa than the westernmost point of Brazil.
64. Barney Stinson from “How I Met Your Mother” has worn the ducky tie in 11 episodes.
65. In 2016, Pizza Hut delivered a pizza to the top of Kilimanjaro, setting the world record for the highest pizza delivery ever.
66. The most common cause of death in Germany for men and women is coronary heart disease.
67. An average Facebook user has 342 friends.
68. In 2012, the author of the book series “Fifty Shades of Grey” – E. L. James – was the most successful author of the year.
69. In 2017, Ed Sheeran paid more taxes in the UK than Amazon and Starbucks.
70. A chameleon’s tongue can grow to up to one and a half times its body size.
71. A study from 2003 came to the conclusion that French people, among all nations, have the most frequent sex.
72. In 2017, researchers discovered the largest dinosaur footprint to date in Western Australia. The footprint is over 5 feet long and is said to be over 130 million years old.
73. Papua New Guinea is the country with the greatest variety of languages spoken in a single country. Although the country has only about eight million inhabitants, more than 700 different languages are spoken.
74. The fur of a mammoth could grow to a length of more than three feet in winter.
75. On the small island of Limone sul Garda in Italy the inhabitants have developed a genetic mutation that makes it impossible for them to have a heart attack.
76. In the U.S., the probability of suicide is twice the rate of an assassination by a third party.
77. Bulletproof glass can be made in such a way that it is bulletproof only from one side and allows bullets to pass through from the other.
78. Every year, humans kill up to 100 million sharks to get to their fins.
79. Adult cats exclusively meow to communicate with humans.
80. The Zoological Garden in Berlin is the largest zoo in the world.
81. In 1983, 90 percent of US media were still in the hands of 50 different companies. Today, only six companies control 90 percent of the media landscape in the USA.
82. A horizontal line above a mathematical expression, for example to express an infinite period, is called a “vinculum”.
83. The risk of drowning in the desert is greater than the risk of dying of thirst there. Occasionally, there can be heavy rain in deserts, and as the water cannot seep away due to the dryness of the soil, it produces deadly flash floods.
84. The name of the Twitter bird is “Larry Bird”.
85. The largest cat in the world had a length of 1.36 yards.
86. In the United States, the term “public viewing” refers to a public coroner’s examination.
87. There is a skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus Rex on the Google campus. It is supposed to remind employees not to let Google die out.
88. In the case of “alien hand syndrome”, the affected person has no control over one of his or her hands. The hand acts completely uncontrolled and in the worst case can even try to strangle the affected person.
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89. There are approximately sever million tons of plastic waste in our oceans. Just by doing without plastic bags, people could significantly improve the situation.
90. According to scientists, the giant tortoise Jonathan was born around 1832 in the Seychelles and is therefore the oldest living reptile on earth. Some researchers even believe that Jonathan may be the oldest living land animal.
91. Black panthers are not an actual species. Instead, these are really leopards or jaguars that due to a genetic defect have a black coat.
92. The Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral is located at exactly 28 degrees north latitude, as the moon’s orbit is also rotated by 28 degrees relative to the equator. When flying to the moon, you therefore receive maximum momentum from the earth’s rotation.
93. Until 1809, Finland was officially only a part of Sweden.
94. In France it is prohibited by law, to name a pig “Napoleon”.
95. A building on the Amazon campus – the Wainwright Building – was named after the website’s first customer.
96. Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury is the actor who has most often played the same role in a comic book adaptation. Second place goes to Hugh Jackman as Wolverine.
97. It has been scientifically proven that petting a dog can significantly reduce blood pressure in humans.
98. In Finland, people love crazy sports. There are world championships in swamp football, mosquito catching and mobile phone throwing.
99. Scientist Daniel Fahrenheit wanted to avoid negative temperature values on his temperature scale, so he defined the lowest temperature he could artificially reach as zero degrees Fahrenheit.
100. The old president moves out and the new president moves into the White House during the inauguration ceremony, which lasts only a few hours.
101. During the 1990s, software errors were the most common source of missile crashes in space travel. For example, the Ariane 5 rocket crashed in 1996 because the acceleration reading was stored as a 16-bit integer rather than a 32-bit integer.
102. Amazon was originally supposed to be called “Cadabra”. But when the founder’s lawyer understood “cadaver”, a different name was chosen.
103. At least 50 percent of the oxygen in our atmosphere is produced by phytoplankton in the oceans and not by land plants. Due to the rising sea temperatures, however, the phytoplankton population continues to decline.
104. Even blind people have optical hallucinations after taking LSD. However, this only occurs in those who have lost their vision during their lifetime.
105. Before the word “Zombie” became a common term, Marvel had rights to the word.
106. When Ed Headrick, the inventor of the Frisbee, died in 2002, his ashes were melted down into Frisbees and distributed to his family and closest friends.
107. Before Netflix streamed films, customers could have DVDs sent to them by mail. Due to the volume of customers and the large number of films and series, Netflix at times became the largest customer of the US Postal Service.
108. American Steven Pruitt has written over 30,000 articles on Wikipedia and improved over three million articles. This corresponds to about one third of all articles available on Wikipedia in English. In 2017, Time magazine therefore named him one of the 25 most influential people on the Internet, along with Donald Trump, J. K. Rowling and Kim Kardashian.
109. In Finland, there are more saunas than cars. There are a total of 2.2 million saunas for 5.4 million inhabitants.
110. The most common zodiac sign among billionaires is Aquarius. The least common one is Cancer.
111. Mae C. Jemison was the first female African-American astronaut in the history of space travel. In 1992 she flew into space with the space shuttle Endeavour.
112. The domain www.nissan.com belongs to the American Uzi Nissan, who claimed the website for himself back in 1994. He has been in litigation with the car manufacturer Nissan for many years because Uzi Nissan does not want to sell the domain.
113. On 1 April 1957, the British BBC played an April Fools’ joke in which it published a short film about spaghetti growing on trees. After the show, the station received hundreds of calls from viewers asking how they could grow such a tree themselves.
114. Onoda Hirō was a Japanese intelligence officer who believed that the proclamation of the end of World War II was only a ruse by the Allies and therefore continued to hold his position 29 years after the end of the war. Only when his former superior, who was now a bookseller, visited him in 1974 could Onoda be convinced that the war was over.
115. Samsung is responsible for 20 percent of South Korea’s gross domestic product.
116. When Arnold Schwarzenegger wrote a veto letter to the State Assembly of California during his time as Governor of California, it turned out that the first letters of each line formed the word “Fuck You”. At first, Schwarzenegger claimed that this was just a coincidence, but in his biography he later confirmed that he had intentionally placed this hidden message.
117. Vagina is the Latin word for “sheath”.
118. For his role as Harry Potter, actor Daniel Radcliffe received a total pay of 74 million pounds. According to his own account, the actor has spent almost none of the money so far.
119. It is estimated that about 220,000 marriage proposals are made each year on Valentine’s Day.
120. Hawaii plans to pass a law by 2024 prohibiting anyone under the age of 100 from smoking cigarettes.
121. The penis foreskin of burn patients can be used for healthy skin growth.
122. The skin that snakes leave behind during moulting is called a “snake shirt”.
123. Although Christopher Columbus was the first to discover the American continent, it was the Italian Amerigo Vespucci who came up with the idea that this might be a new continent and not an Indian island, as Columbus had initially thought. In memory of this insight, the continent was named “America” after Amerigo Vespucci.
124. Throughout its career, the British rock band Pink Floyd has released so many songs with astronomical allusions that scientists have named an asteroid after the band. “19367 Pink Floyd” was discovered in 1997 and has a diameter of over 4,100 miles.
125. In its home market of South Korea, Samsung is more than just a tech company. A South Korean can be born in a Samsung-run hospital, live in a Samsung apartment, attend Samsung University and be buried by a Samsung funeral home.
126. The true inventor of the first practical light bulb was not Thomas Alva Edison, but Joseph Wilson Swan. He had already secured a patent for his invention in England two years before Edison. But the two eventually reached an out-of-court agreement and joined forces in the Edison & Swan United Electric Light Company.
127. The country with the highest population density is Monaco. There, an average of 49,106 people share one square mile.
128. Martin Goodman – one of the founders of Marvel – thought Spider-Man was a bad idea because people do not like spiders.
129. Defenestration is the term used to describe a person falling out of a window.
130. During the Second World War, British soldier Digby Tatham-Warter was known among his comrades for always taking an umbrella along into battle so that his own comrades could identify him better and would not accidentally shoot him. He even managed to capture a German car after stabbing the driver in the eye with his umbrella.
131. Women suffering from “hyperlactation syndrome” produce excessive amounts of breast milk – up to 1.6 gallons of milk a day. A woman’s average milk production is usually less than 0.3 gallons per day.
132. Actor Robert Downey Jr. credits Burger King with saving his life. When he wanted to eat a burger from the fast food chain in 2003, he found it so bad that he began rethinking his entire life and decided to put an end to his drug addiction. Five years later, he received the role of Iron Man.
133. Approximately 20 percent of the French landmass is outside of Europe. For example the islands Martinique and Guadeloupe are in the Caribbean Sea.
134. In 2012 about 37 percent of Italians had never used the Internet.
135. Man has already left over 200 tons of garbage on the moon, including 70 spaceships, backpacks, 96 bags with urine and vomit as well as old boots.
136. Will Smith was originally supposed to play the role of Neo in “Matrix”. However, he refused and preferred to do “Wild Wild West” instead.
137. The guide dog Kirsch has an honorary master’s degree because he attended all lectures together with his owner.
138. The most frequently visited tourist attraction in Paris is not the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre, but Disneyland.
139. The phenomenon of having to sneeze when suddenly exposed to bright light is called the photic sneeze reflex.
140. Babies can already get an erection in the womb.
141. Whittier is a city in Alaska with 217 inhabitants. Almost the entire population of the city lives in the small community’s only building, which also houses a school, a hospital, a church and a grocery store. For this, the town has been nicknamed the “town under one roof”.
142. No mammal can dive deeper than Cuvier’s beaked whale. A dive into the depth of the oceans can last up to 140 minutes and, according to measurements, reach a depth of 9,816 feet.
143. According to a study, men from Congo have the largest penises.
144. In the USA, more money is spent on slot machines than on cinema, baseball and amusement parks combined.
145. In order to avoid an association with the political Black Panther party, Marvel renamed superhero “Black Panther” to “Black Leopard” for a while.
146. The fast food chain Subway has over 41,000 restaurants. This means that on average, two restaurants have been opened per day since its establishment in 1965.
147. The largest dog in the world is 43.7 inches tall.
148. The Australian state of Queensland allows emojis on license plates.
149. Japanese people believe that black cats bring good luck.
150. The word “idiot” is a psychology term that describes people with an IQ between 0 and 25.
151. 32-year-old Wombat “Patrick” living in Australia was the oldest animal of his species. As he was not able to find a female partner, his keepers even created a Tinder profile for him.
152. The inner skin of a vagina is folded and opens while having sex.
153. During World War II, the Nazis attempted to cover the river Alster as part of their “Operation Cloak of Invisibility”. They covered parts of the river with wood and wire, built dummy houses and planted trees on the frozen river, as they suspected that the Allies were using the Alster for orientation. The objective was to save Hamburg’s city center from more severe bomb damage. However, this hope was not fulfilled.
154. On 13 February 2019, NASA officially lost contact with its Mars rover “Opportunity”. Originally, the rover was planned to be used for only 90 days, but instead it would continue to send data to Earth for more than 15 years. Contact was ultimately lost when the rover got caught in a sandstorm.
155. The US secret service CIA bought the film rights to the books “Animal Farm” and “1984” from George Orwell in order to be able to use the films for their anti-communist propaganda.
156. The word “mafia” refers to the criminal organization in Sicily. Comparable structures in other regions use their own names like “Camorra” or “Yakuza”.
157. In medieval France, women were among others punished by being forced to catch a chicken in the city while naked.
158. An interesting new pattern of behavior was observed in Japanese crows. Nuts, which the animals are not able to crack on their own, are increasingly thrown onto roads by the crows so that cars drive over them and crack them. Afterwards, the crow flies back to the open nut and collects the contents.
159. Death from being overworked and work-related stress are such a common cause of death in Japan that the Japanese even have their own word for it. Karōshi.
160. Male clownfish become females when their partner dies.
161. The weirdest things that have been found in food sold by McDonald’s are. bandaging material, the head of a chicken and a dead rat.
162. An estimated 11 quadrillion tons of diamonds are hidden at a depth of 90 to 150 miles under the earth’s surface.
163. The Lily actress Alyson Hannigan from “How I Met Your Mother” is married to Alexis Dennis in real life, the actor of news reader Sandy Rivers.
164. The larvae of cicada of the genus Magicicada hatch only 17 years after they have been deposited in the ground and then live for only a few weeks. As a result, the United States are practically invaded by the small insects every 17 years.
165. Scientists have succeeded in creating a genetic strain of manioc that contains more iron and zinc than conventional plants of this type. The crop is a widespread food source, particularly in Latin America, and with this special breeding it could reduce the problem of zinc and iron deficiency in children within the region.
166. The genetic defect “congenital analgesia” causes the affected person to feel absolutely to pain. In 2006, a 14-year-old suffering from this genetic defect jumped off a roof to show his friends that he does not feel pain. However, he died as a result of the injuries sustained during impact.
167. There are an estimated 500 million dogs on our planet.
168. With one “bite”, blue whales consume up to 1,100 pounds of food or almost half a million calories. Opening the mouth and eating food alone can burn up to 2,000 calories.
169. In the 1880s, Charles Pickering, director of the Harvard Observatory, was constantly complaining about his male colleagues. One day he supposedly said that even his Scottish maid would be able to perform better. He decided to hire his housekeeper Williamina Fleming, who then went on to successfully lead a team for several decades, helping to classify thousands of stars. She even discovered a white dwarf and was the first human to find the Horsehead Nebula.
170. On average, German women have their first baby at the age of 29.
171. 50,000 people die a year in the U.S. from the effects of passive smoking.
172. The Sơn-Đoòng cave in Vietnam is the largest cave in the world. It even contains a large rainforest, and its dimensions are so vast that even a Boeing 747 could easily fit inside. Despite its size, the cave was not discovered until 1991.
173. Paparazzi is Italian and can be translated to “annoying mosquitoes”.
174. All scenes of the children of Ted Mosby in “How I Met Your Mother” were shot during the first season.
175. During the Second World War, the city of Constance was largely spared from Allied bombing raids. Unlike other German cities, Constance did not cut off electricity at night. Allied pilots could therefore hardly distinguish the city from neighboring Switzerland, where the lights also remained on at night. In order to avoid mistakes, no bombs were dropped in the region.
176. Orthocarbonic acid is also known as “Hitler’s Acid”, as its graphic representation resembles a swastika.
177. Malaria was once used to treat syphilis. As early as 1917, the Austrian physician Julius Wagner-Jauregg injected syphilis patients with the malaria pathogen in order for the resulting fever to kill the syphilis pathogens. The method of treatment was so successful that Julius Wagner-Jauregg was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1927. Since the discovery of penicillin, however, this method of treatment has been abandoned.
178. If McDonald’s was its own country, it would be the 90th biggest economy in the world. Interesting, isn’t it? For even more facts like that make sure to read our article full of McDonald’s facts.
179. Shortly before his death, James Barrie, the creator of Peter Pan, transferred the rights to his book to the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, which today is one of the leading children’s hospitals in Britain. To this day, the royalty income from the book continues to support the hospital in treating a large number of children.
180. The record for “The most orgasms in one hour” is 134 for women and 16 for men.
181. When California was exposed to an extreme drought in 1915, a “rainmaker” was hired by the City of San Diego and promised a payment of 10,000 dollars if he managed to summon rain. Shortly thereafter it rained for almost a month without interruption, resulting in numerous floods and destroyed dams. The city council decided that this must have been a sign from God, so they did not pay the rainmaker. If you want more facts like this make sure to check out our California facts.
182. Asia has a larger surface area than the moon. While the surface of the moon measures only 14,645,698 square miles, Asia covers a total of 17,212,368 square miles.
183. Finland has exactly 187,888 lakes and 179,585 islands. Both are world records in terms of frequency.
184. The International Space Station ISS is in orbit about 250 miles above the earth.
185. In addition to the domain google.com or google.de, Google also owns all the domains that users typically enter when they mistype: gogle.com, gooogle.com, googlr.com. The numbered variant 466453.com also belongs to the search engine company.
186. The urine of the Asian bearcat smells like popcorn. The reason for this is that the animal’s urine contains the same fragrance that gives popcorn its distinctive smell.
187. Before she became famous, the singer “Pink” worked for McDonald’s.
188. The black mamba can reach a speed of 12.4 miles per hour.
189. In France, the national fencing federation recognized light saber fencing as an official competitive sport in 2019. Instead of saber, foil or sword, the fighters use replicas of light sabers from Star Wars. With this campaign, the association hopes to get more young people interested in fencing.
190. The record for the longest time between the birth of twins is 87 days. One of the children was premature, while the other remained in the mother’s womb until the regular birth.
191. Every year on Valentine’s Day, approximately 110 million roses are sold worldwide.
192. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a method that uses laser to transmit voice messages directly into the recipient’s ear. So far, transmissions over a distance of 8.2 feet are reportedly possible.
193. After the great success of the Eiffel Tower, London planned the construction of the similar looking Watkin’s Tower in 1892. Due to economic difficulties encountered by the construction company, however, the tower was never completed and was later demolished. At over 1.148 feet, it would have been the tallest building of its time.
194. A statistical survey conducted by Facebook shows that most couples separate two weeks before Christmas.
195. Around the region of the Ecuadorian city of Quito, a large number of the inhabitants suffer from a special form of dwarfism. The genetic mutation which inhibits growth also protects those affected from all forms of cancer and diabetes.
196. The Scully effect is the term used to describe the fact that after the TV series “The X-Files” was broadcast, women became increasingly interested in scientific professions. The reason for this was the female protagonist Dana Scully, who solved curious cases for the FBI thanks to her medical studies.
197. The name “Lego” is derived from “Leg Godt”, which means “play well” in Danish.
198. The world’s longest escalator is 453 feet long and located in St. Petersburg, Russia.
199. With an estimated length of 221 feet, the Patagotitan mayorum was probably the longest dinosaur in the world. Weighing in at about 77 tons, it was as heavy as a Boeing 747 and therefore probably the heaviest land creature of all time.
200. Rhnull (rhesus factor zero) is the rarest blood type in the world. So far, only 40 people worldwide are known to have this blood group.
201. As Burger King has no rights to its brand name in Australia, the fast food chain is called “Hungry Jack’s” there.
202. Current research assumes that Jesus was not born on 25 December, but rather in March. So instead of commemorating Jesus Christ at Christmas, we should instead honor Isaac Newton, who was verifiably born on 25 December.
203. The Cristo Redentor statue in Rio de Janeiro is not the largest Christ statue in the world. With a height of 108 feet, the Christ the King statue in Poland is ten feet higher.
204. Assuming that Santa Claus has 34 hours to deliver all his gifts and only visits 800 million households around the world, his sled would have to be traveling at 99.99 percent of the speed of light.
205. Buzz Aldrin was the first person to have a bowel movement on the moon.
206. Scientist Max Planck was advised by his professor Philipp von Jolly not to go into physics, as almost everything had already been discovered in theoretical physics. Planck replied that he only wanted to learn the basics. In 1919, Planck was awarded the Nobel Prize for his development of quantum theory.
207. Netflix has over 20 million subscribers in China, even though Netflix is not available in China at all.
208. In Las Vegas, Paris and Munich, there are escape games based on the horror movie “SAW”.
209. The mad hatter from “Alice in Wonderland” is based on the fact that in the 18th century hatmakers often suffered from mental illnesses. For a long time, people were not sure why this was the case, but then they discovered that the mercury used by hatmakers to make hats caused mental disorders.
210. Greyhounds can reach speeds of more than 68 miles per hour and are therefore almost as fast as cheetahs.
211. Helium is the only element that was not first discovered on Earth. Instead, it was discovered in 1868 in the form of previously unknown spectral lines in the light of the sun.
212. Before McDonald’s offered burgers, the company sold hot dogs.
213. Each year, about one million new employees are hired by McDonald’s in the U.S.
214. When leaving school, a child in the U.S. has already witnessed 40,000 people dying on TV.
215. Twitter’s ticker symbol is TWTR. However, due to a mix-up on the first trading day of the short message service’s shares, a lot of stock traders bought the shares of Tweeter’s Home Entertainment with the ticker symbol TWTRQ, boosting the share price of the small company by 2,200 percent.
216. The inventor of “Spongebob” Stephen Hillenburg was a marine biologist, which is why he chose the deep sea as the setting for his cartoon series.
217. The guitarist of the rock band Queen has a doctorate in astrophysics.
218. “Fox tossing” was a popular sport in the 16th century in which two people held a 23-foot-long cloth on both sides and then pulled it tight as soon as a fox ran over the cloth so that it flew into the air. The game continued until the animal broke its bones when it hit the ground and was then killed by a hunter.
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219. Some cities in the United States have started spraying Christmas trees still standing in the woods in winter with fox urine. It is odorless while frozen, but smells awful as soon as it melts. This is to prevent tree thieves from going into the forest to cut down a Christmas tree on their own.
220. In the Arabic versions of the cult show, Homer Simpson drinks water instead of beer.
221. An average, one U.S. citizen consumes as many resources per day as 32 people in Kenya.
222. There are more public libraries in the U.S. than McDonald’s restaurants.
223. There are more Subway restaurants worldwide than McDonald’s outlets.
224. The Paricutín volcano in Mexico was not there until 20 February 1943. Witnesses report having worked on a maize field that day and heard a dull “plop”. A day later, the volcano was already 33 feet high, and by the next day it had grown to 164 feet. A year later, the volcano had reached a height of 1,102 feet when it began to spew lava. Today, the volcano is 1,391 feet high and continues to be active.
225. Between 2011 and 2013, China consumed more cement than the USA during the entire 20th century.
226. Barry Marshall was firmly convinced that not stress but rather Helicobacter pylori bacteria are the main cause of stomach ulcers. In a self-experiment in 1984, he therefore drank a test tube of the bacteria and shortly thereafter developed severe gastritis, which he successfully cured with antibiotics. In 2005, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for his research on Helicobacter pylori together with John Robin Warren.
227. Marie Byrd Land in Antarctica and Bir Tawil, an area between Egypt and Sudan, are the only areas in the world that do not belong to a nation. These areas are therefore no man’s land.
228. There was already McLobster, McSpaghetti and McPizza, on offer at McDonald’s.
229. For years, Liechtenstein and Haiti had the same flag, which was only noticed when the two nations met at the 1936 Olympic Games. A year later, the flag of Liechtenstein was therefore adorned with the symbol of a golden princely hat.
230. A “kakistocracy” is a system of government where a country is ruled by the worst and least qualified persons.
231. In the USA, there is a sports league for rock-paper-scissors competitions.
232. The Amazon logo is the company’s name and a smile that goes from A to Z. This is to express the idea that anything is sent to anyone anywhere in the world.
233. R2-D2 from Star Wars is called C1-P8 in Italy.
234. Cymothoa exigua, a parasitic isopod, is the only known parasite that can replace an entire body part of its host. First, the parasite feeds on the tongue of a fish until it completely replaces it and in doing so takes over the tongue’s function.
235. For his first role in Star Wars Episode 4, Han Solo actor Harrison Ford received $10,000 in 1977, while for Episode 7 in 2015 he was paid $20 million.
236. McDonald’s is the biggest customer of Coca Cola.
237. In an online petition, 87,000 people voted for McDonald’s to serve a vegetarian burger.
238. Dinosaurs lived on earth for 170 million years. In contrast, humans (Homo Sapiens) have only been around for 300,000 years.
239. In Lazio (Italy) policemen drive Lamborghinis.
240. “Pikachurin” is a protein that facilitates the correct transmission of electrical signals between the eye and the brain. It was discovered by Japanese scientists and named after the Pokémon Pikachu.
241. Approximately 70 percent of the world’s total oxygen is released by plants in the oceans.
242. During World War II, women in France who had relations with German soldiers were shaved bald so that everyone could see that they had betrayed their country.
243. A study came to the conclusion that female students, who are perceived as attractive by their fellow male students, achieve better grades.
244. Australian rower Bobby Pearce won the 1928 Olympic Games against eight other competitors, even though he stopped during the race to let ducks pass in front of him.
245. Only 14 percent of all billionaires have no degree.
246. The composition of breast milk adapts to the age and thus to the needs of a child.
247. A dog’s sense of smell is 10,000 times stronger than that of a human being.
248. The American pygmy shrew has to eat three times its own body weight every day. For this, the animal has to go hunting again every 15 to 30 minutes, as even an hour without food would lead to its death.
249. At Christmas, the number of hits on divorce websites doubles.
250. With over 1,200 different subspecies, bats account for about 20 percent of all known mammal species.
251. Kopi luwak is the most expensive coffee in the world. It is produced by feeding the beans to civets, which break down the bitter substances in the beans during their digestive process. The otherwise intact beans are collected after excretion and prepared for sale.
252. Due to strong solar storms in 1859, the earth experienced the strongest geomagnetic storm ever recorded. The storm was so strong that you could see auroras even in Rome and some telegraphs could be operated for more than two hours without being connected to the power grid, using only the energy produced by the geomagnetic storm.
253. The Twitter account @everyword has tweeted every single word of the English language.
254. During the hostage situation at the Dubrovka Theatre in Moscow in 2002, special units used the narcotic carfentanyl, which is otherwise only used to stun big game like elephants, in their attempt to free the hostages. Due to insufficient medical care after the chemical attack, 125 hostages died as a result of the use of gas, but only five by the hands of the hostage-takers.
255. Scientists have demonstrated that cats have the same brain patterns as humans have during sleep. It is therefore assumed that cats can dream.
256. Blowing out the candles on a birthday cake increases the number of bacteria on the cake by around 1,400 percent.
257. Eating chocolate can be fatal for dogs.
258. Cigarette filters do not change color during smoking because they retain pollutants, but rather because they are specifically designed to change their color. Studies have shown that because of the change in color, smokers feel that smoking with a filter is healthier than smoking without a filter and therefore smoke more.
259. About 31 percent of Germany’s surface is covered by forest.
260. The largest crossroads in the world is in China. It runs over five levels, has 20 exits and covers 99 acres.
261. The Indonesian chicken species “Ayam Cemani” has a genetic peculiarity that results in the animals being completely black. Not only is the plumage of the animals black, but also their eyes, skin, flesh, bones, claws and blood. The dark coloration is due to a natural genetic disposition of the chicken, which results in the animal forming more color pigments than other species.
262. More people know the logo of McDonald’s than the Christian Cross.
263. The clitoris has more than 8,000 nerve endings, while the penis just has 4,000.
264. There is actually a website about Barney Stinson’s fake character “Lorenzo von Matterhorn” from “How I Met Your Mother”: www.lorenzovonmatterhorn.com.
265. The planet Uranus was discovered in 1781, while the Antarctic was not discovered until 1820.
266. With the Active Denial System, the United States already has a microwave weapon that can heat the skin of victims up to 0.3 miles away to 55 degrees in just a few seconds.
267. The human is the only primate who has no bone in his penis.
268. The Christmas tree that is set up every year on London’s Trafalgar Square is always given to the British by Norway. This tradition has existed since 1947 and is intended to express the Norwegians’ gratitude for the support by the British during the Second World War.
269. The FBI kept a 1,400-page file on Albert Einstein because he was suspected of being a Communist.
270. When the USA bought Alaska from Russia in 1867, they switched from the Julian calendar previously used in Alaska to the Gregorian calendar used in the USA. The result was that the 8th to 17th of October 1867 never existed in Alaska.
271. Andorra does not have an army of its own. Instead, the law stipulates that at least every male head of household must possess a weapon for defense purposes. The law even obliges the police to make a weapon available to every male citizen who does not have one.
272. With a height of 380.3 feet, the highest tree in the world is the sequoia “Hyperion” in the Redwood National Park in California.
273. With a maximum speed of 68 miles per hour, the marlin is the fastest fish in the world. For comparison, a cruise ship travels the seas at an average speed of 19 miles per hour.
274. In the USA, a slave from 1850 by today’s standards, would cost 1,000 dollars.
275. The Indricotherium was the largest land mammal of all times and had no enemies to fear. The species could grow to almost 30 feet and weighed up to 22 tons. This made the giants almost ten feet taller than a giraffe and more than three times as heavy as an elephant.
276. The so-called urchin crab (Dorippe frascone) carries sea urchins on its back to defend itself.
277. In Novosibirsk, Russia, there is a monument to all laboratory mice in the world. The statue shows a mouse wearing a lab coat knitting a DNA helix to commemorate all laboratory mice and rats that died in the name of science.
278. In 2002, long-distance runner Tom Johnson competed against a horse in an 50-mile race. He ran the distance in five hours and 45 minutes, arriving ten seconds ahead of the horse.
279. Many different bacteria are located in a woman’s vagina. Much of those bacteria are also found in yogurt.
280. In 1975, the American Gary Dahl sold so-called “Pet Rocks”. These were just common pebbles, but Dahl marketed them like pets. Within a very short time, a big hype arose about the stones, quickly making Dahl a millionaire. Only one year later, however, the interest quickly subsided again.
281. Every year on 13 October, Finland celebrates the official day of failure.
282. The X-Men No. 1 is the best-selling comic book in the world with a total of eight million copies sold.
283. The last time all living human beings were on Earth was on 2 November 2000. Since then, the International Space Station has been continuously occupied.
284. After Google installed the “Did you mean” function in its search engine, the number of search queries doubled almost overnight.
285. There are more people living in California than in Canada.
286. Reed Hasting, the founder of Netflix, came up with the idea for the streaming service after forgetting to return a rental DVD and paying $40 for it.
287. When it was founded in 1953, Burger King was still called Insta-Burger King.
288. In 2009, Burger King launched a campaign where you could get a free burger if you unfriended ten friends on Facebook. The affected people then received a message that their friendship was worth less than a whopper. For image reasons, the campaign ended fairly quickly.
289. Researchers in Australia are working on a new condom made of cellulose that is 30 percent thinner but 20 percent more robust.
290. The longest street in the world connects Alaska with the south of Argentina. It has a length of approximately 18,641 miles and crosses 17 states, six time zones and four climate zones.
291. Blue whales are the heaviest animals in the history of the earth. With a length of up to 110 feet, they weigh a total of 150 tons.
292. During the 18th century, the most important first aid measure for drowned people was to blow tobacco smoke into their rectum.
293. Although the name Tiffany was extremely popular in the 12th century, it is never used in historical novels because readers find it too modern. This has given rise to the term “Tiffany effect”, where something is considered much more modern than it actually is.
294. While the Atlantic grows by a few inches every year, the Pacific Ocean is shrinking.
295. The Hercules beetle and the Titan beetle are the two largest known beetle species. Both grow to a length of up to 6.7 inches.
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296. The TV series “Breaking Bad” tells the story of chemistry teacher Walter White, who becomes the largest producer of methamphetamine (meth) in the entire southwest of the United States. There is, in fact, a real Walter White who claims to have cooked the best meth in Alabama for ten years. He, too, first produced the meth in a camping vehicle. His marriage broke apart because of his criminal dealings, and at times he was denied contact with his two children. Today he is in prison.
297. The westernmost point of the USA and the easternmost point of Russia lie just three miles apart.
298. Drug baron Pablo Escobar offered Colombia to pay off the country’s entire foreign debt of 20 billion dollars if it did not extradite him to the USA.
299. The first cloned cat has been called “CC” as an abbreviation for “carbon copy”‘.
300. The vagina has a self-cleaning mechanism.
301. An average vagina is three to four inches deep and can increase by up to 200 percent when the woman is aroused.
302. The soldier Jack Churchill went into every battle of the Second World War carrying a sword, bagpipes and a longbow. During a mission in France, he even achieved the only confirmed kill by longbow during the Second World War. His comrades therefore nicknamed him “Mad Jack”.
303. The often mentioned “Bro Code” and “Playbook” in the TV-Show “How I Met Your Mother” are real books, which can be bought.
304. There are approximately 80 species of fungi worldwide that can glow in the dark. This attracts insects, which then spread the spores of the fungus.
305. The average starting salary for a developer at Microsoft is 106,000 dollars.
306. On its website, Netflix offers the opportunity to request series or films to be included in the company’s online catalogue.
307. In the US state of Illinois, there is a restaurant called “Burger King” that is not part of the fast food chain. Since the restaurant secured the rights to the name earlier, it won the legal dispute with the Burger King chain. To this day, the franchise is not allowed to open a branch within a radius of 20 miles.
308. The world record for the most consecutive push-ups was set in 1980 by Minoru Yoshida from Japan who managed to do 10,507 in a row.
309. The Bourbon vanilla takes its name from the island of Réunion, where the black pods are grown. After the occupation by the French King Louis XIII, the island was called “Bourbon” after the name of his noble family.
310. The Norwegian Lundehund is the only type of dog with six toes per paw.
311. Nintendo originally did not develop consoles and video games, but rather started off producing playing cards.
312. Michael Jackson was negotiating to buy Marvel.
313. There are no one- and two-cent coins in Finland. Prices must always be rounded up or down to the nearest five cents by law.
314. A Geiger counter clicks when it is exposed to radioactivity because the radiation releases electrons from the noble gas in the counter tube. This causes a chain reaction, resulting in a brief flow of electrical current, which is made audible via a loudspeaker.
315. “Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva” (abbreviated “FOP”) is a rare disease in which the affected person slowly petrifies while still alive. The disease converts healthy muscle, connective and supporting tissue into bone material.
316. Marvel originally was named “Timely Comics”.
317. When Hitler visited Paris during World War Two, activists cut the elevator cables of the Eifel Tower so that he had to climb the stairs all the way to the top.
318. Frequently asked questions at a Microsoft job interview are: “Why are manhole covers round?” and “Design a coffee machine that can be used by astronauts”.
319. The highest waterfall in the world is Salto Ángel in Venezuela with a height of 3,212 feet.
320. “Son of Sam Law” is the term used in the USA to describe laws that prohibit criminals from earning money in any way with the stories of their crimes – for example through films or books. Instead, the state has the right to confiscate such proceeds and pay the money to the perpetrator’s victims.
321. If you have a ten dollar note in your pocket and do not have any debts, you are richer than 25 percent of the U.S. citizens.
322. Mosquitoes have killed more people than any other animal. It is estimated that mosquitoes kill more people worldwide in five minutes than sharks do in a whole year.
323. Anna Kopchovsky, the first woman to cycle around the world in 1894, had only learned how to cycle a few days before she set off. She covered the entire distance in 15 months and received a reward of 10,000 dollars.
324. When you obtain a doctorate in Finland, you receive a hat and a sword from your university.
325. An average pubic hair has a life expectancy of three weeks. A head hair “lives” in comparison up to seven years.
326. Sea water has an average salt content of 3.5 percent.
327. While the British royal system allows women who marry into the royal family to become queens, men who marry into the royal family cannot become kings. Men who marry into the family only receive the royal title “Prince”. This is the reason why the husband of the reigning Queen Elizabeth is only Prince and not King of the United Kingdom.
328. Approximately 4.3 trillion cigarette butts are generated worldwide every year.
329. A cheetah can briefly reach speeds of up to 75 miles per hour. However, the sprint exhausts it so much that it needs between 20 and 60 minutes to recuperate before eating. Other predators therefore often try to steal its food in the meantime.
330. When her ship capsized in 1880, the former queen of Thailand, Sunandha Kumariratana, drowned together with her daughter. Despite the presence of many courtiers, no one dared to save the queen, as just a few years earlier it had been punishable by death to touch a member of the royal family.
331. According to a social study conducted by Arizona State University, men think they are smarter than equally smart women. Women, on the other hand, tend to underestimate their abilities.
332. The Scottish kilt originally came from France.
333. The “Like” button on Facebook was originally supposed to be called the “Awesome” button.
334. The Japanese company YKK is the largest manufacturer of zippers in the world. That is why the company logo “YKK” can be found on most zippers worldwide.
335. Italian Frank Lentini was born in 1889 with three legs, four feet, 16 toes and two genital organs. Until his death he earned his living as a circus artist.
336. American professional basketball player Shaquille O’Neal scored only a single three-point shot throughout his entire professional career. We also have many more facts about basketball for you.
337. Crickets consist of up to 70 percent protein, while beef steaks contain only 17 to 40 percent protein.
338. Born in 1930, Irene Triplett is the last living descendant of a civil war veteran. Although the US civil war ended in 1865, she continues to receive her late father’s veteran’s pension of $73.13 every month. Her father Mose Triplett was only 18 years old when he went to war and 83 when Irene was born.
339. Facebook pays for all private flights taken by Mark Zuckerberg and his family. The cost amounts to 1.2 million dollars per year.
340. It is assumed that cats are responsible for the extinction of several animal species.
341. The largest insect of all time lived 300 million years ago. Meganeura resembled today’s dragonflies, but had an enormous wingspan of 30 inches.
342. The speculum – a tool for gynaecologists – was already used 1,300 years before Christ.
343. In addition to rainbows, there are also fogbows.
344. The Italian “San Marino” is the oldest republic in the world.
345. The storming of the Bastille was mainly symbolic, at the time there were only nine prisoners who were subsequently freed.
346. Thanks to collaboration with Twitter, every public tweet sent in the U.S., is digitally archived in the Library of Congress.
347. The Flynn effect describes the fact that the average IQ increases with each generation. However, it is not clear why we humans are becoming more and more intelligent.
348. The first dinosaur bones were not discovered and scientifically described until 1824. So before that, people never knew that dinosaurs used to roam our planet.
349. Due to global warming, the sea level rises approximately three millimeters each year.
350. When the height of Mount Everest was first determined in the 19th century, researchers calculated a total height of exactly 29,000 feet. The height they published, however, was 29,002 feet, as the researchers feared that a figure as even as 29,000 feet might be interpreted as a rough estimate.
351. The Greenland shark does not reach sexual maturity until the age of 150. With an estimated life expectancy of up to 500 years, it is also the longest living vertebrate on the planet.
352. The longest mathematical proof is more than 15,000 pages long and was written by more than 100 mathematicians.
353. The country with the lowest population density is Mongolia. On average, there are only 4.9 people per square mile.
354. All time zones meet in Antarctica, so it is almost impossible to attribute an exact time to the place. Instead, the time of the country owning the respective research station is often used for simplification purposes.
355. Liliy’s high school lover, Scooter from “How I Met Your Mother” , is the husband of Barney actor – Neil Patrick Harris – in real life.
356. It is estimated that about 70 percent of all Sicilian businesses pay protection money to the mafia. The average amount of the payment is between 200 and 5,000 euros. As a result, the Sicilian mafia Cosa Nostra supposedly takes in ten billion euros every year.
357. Karaoke is Japanese and means “empty orchestra”.
358. When McDonald’s opened a restaurant in Rome in 1986, demonstrators handed out free pasta to counter McDonald’s fast food.
359. In Finland, Valentine’s Day is called Ystävänpäivä (“Friends’ Day”). So there, the day is not only dedicated to one’s partner, but also to one’s circle of friends.
360. McDonald’s is not the largest restaurant chain in the world. Subway is.
361. Male reindeer shed their antlers every year at Christmas time. However, since Santa’s reindeer all have antlers, they must be either female or neutered.
362. The abbreviation “OMG” (oh my God) was first mentioned in 1917 in a letter to the former Prime Minister of Great Britain, Winston Churchill.
363. In order to die of a caffeine overdose, a person would have to consume about 100 cups of coffee in a very short time.
364. During World War II, Adolf Hitler gave the order to spare the British city of Blackpool from bomb attacks, as he intended to go on holiday there after Germany had won the war.
365. Santa Claus was not invented by Coca Cola.
366. In the Simpsons, God and Jesus are the only characters with five fingers.
367. When Facebook went public, it was worth more than eBay, Yahoo, Groupon, LinkedIn, Netflix and AOL combined.
368. The thermometer was invented in Italy.
369. Dogs can understand up to 250 different words and gestures and count up to five. This makes them about as intelligent as a two-year-old child.
370. From 1409 to 1417, there were three different popes, all claiming to be the head of the Catholic Church.
371. In France there is a village named “Pussy”.
372. The first graphics-enabled web browser was developed in 1993.
373. Finland was the first country in the world to make broadband Internet access a legal right. If a house does not have a broadband connection, a Finish tenant can sue his or her landlord or the city.
374. Netflix now accounts for about 15 percent of all Internet traffic in the United States.
375. In Italy on New Year’s Eve, traditionally one wears red underwear to have luck for the new year.
376. Tattooing is illegal in South Korea. In the country, tattoos are mainly worn by criminals, which is why a tattoo is considered a valid reason for a company not to hire somebody.
377. The English term “ultracrepidarianism” describes a person who tends to always express an opinion on a subject, even though he or she knows nothing about the topic.
378. The brain growth of early humans only began due to the increased protein intake from an increasingly meat-oriented diet.
379. Since 1987, the Chinese government has been sending plant seeds into space on a regular basis in order to deliberately cause mutations in the plants due to the increased radiation in space. The objective is to create improved and more productive plants. This project has already yielded giant eggplants, a 1.6 feet long cucumber and higher yielding pepper plants.
380. The hawksbill turtle has probably existed since the Cretaceous period.
381. In northern Finland, the sun never sets from June to July – it shines all day long. In winter, however, the opposite is the case. The sun never rises and the sky is at best only bathed in a dark blue.
382. The earthquake that struck Japan in 2011 with a magnitude of 9.0 was so strong that it changed the earth’s mass. Since then, one day on earth has been 1.8 microseconds shorter.
383. With every ejaculation a man unloads one to two teaspoons full of sperm.
384. In winter, the rotor blades of wind turbines are heated so that no ice forms on them.
385. John Paul Stapp was a Brazilian researcher who investigated the effects of speed and acceleration on the human body. During an experiment carried out in 1954, he accelerated to 632 miles per hour before braking completely in 1.4 seconds. During this experiment, he was subject to 46.2 times the force of gravity. To this date, this is the highest acceleration a person has ever voluntarily withstood.
386. Dalmatian puppies are born with a white coat. The black dots only appear after a while in the course of their childhood.
387. The most common first name in Italy is Russo.
388. In terms of GDP growth, Ethiopia was the fastest growing economy in the world in 2017.
389. The croissant is not a French creation, but an Austrian creation.
390. Although 70 percent of our planet’s surface is covered with water, a sphere containing all the water in the world would only have a diameter of about 435 miles. That is less than half the diameter of the moon.
391. The Italian state of Bellagio, namesake of the Las Vegas hotel with the same name, has fewer inhabitants than the hotel has rooms.
392. There are no family names in Ethiopia. Instead, a child’s surname is simply their father’s first name.
393. In eight cities in Italy, an elevated level of cocaine and marijuana in the air can be documented.
394. The largest shark that ever lived was the Megalodon. It could grow to a length of up to 65 feet, almost three times the size of a white shark.
395. The “Fallen Astronaut Sculpture” is the only work of art on the moon so far. It was created by Belgian artist Paul Van Hoeydonck and brought to the moon during the Apollo 15 mission in 1971. It commemorates the 14 astronauts who died prior to the Apollo 15 mission.
396. The vaginal fluid of women can be found in sharks.
397. Wombat excrements are cube-shaped. So far, we have not been able to determine the evolutionary advantage of excreta in this shape. It is assumed, however, that it allows the animals to better mark their territory.
398. Popcorn became a popular cinema snack in the United States during the global economic crisis because it was so cheap.
399. The name “Microsoft” is a combination of “microcomputer” and “software”.
400. Vladimir Putin once tried to exploit Angela Merkel’s fear of dogs. The two heads of state met in Sochi in January 2007 to discuss important issues related to energy policy and cooperation between Russia and the EU. During the entire conversation, Putin let his Labrador “Koni” stay close to Merkel’s legs.
401. The Marvel superhero Northstar, a French-Canadian mutant, was the first gay superhero in the world.
402. The Belgian Post Office developed a special stamp in 2013 that tastes like chocolate when licked on the back.
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403. The average depth of our oceans is 12,467 feet. The deepest point, the Mariana Trench, is even approximately 36,201 feet below sea level.
404. In 1867 the USA bought Alaska from Russia for just 7.2 million dollars.
405. Robert Downey Jr. was the only actor who was allowed to read the entire script of “Avengers: Endgame”.
406. In England, the second Day of Christmas is called “Boxing Day” because employees and servants traditionally received a gift box – the so-called Christmas Box – from their employer.
407. Since no human has ever seen or heard a live dinosaur, all the sounds of dinosaurs known from movies are completely imaginary. There is no evidence that dinosaurs really sounded that way.
408. Every year, Finland grows by about 2.7 square miles. Due to melting glaciers, the land mass becomes lighter and slowly rises out of the sea.
409. The video game “Super Mario Bros.” was so popular in 1985 that the best-selling book in Japan was a guidebook containing tips on how best to play the game.
410. Iceland has the lowest population density in the EU – only 9.1 people per square mile.
411. The term “Internet” is the short form of the technical term “Internetwork”, which was originally used for the technology at the time of its creation.
412. The Diomedes Islands are a group of islands in the Arctic Ocean. The western island of this group belongs to Russia, while the eastern island belongs to the USA. Both islands are only 2.5 miles apart, but as the International Date Line runs between them, they are separated by a 21-hour time difference.
413. During “How I Met Your Mother” there have been 13 interventions. The most popular ones were Barneys frequent usage of magic tricks, Marshals addiction to charts and Lilly’s fake British accent.
414. In France it is not prohibited to marry a dead person.
415. In 1949 a boxing match was held between boxer Gus Waldorf and a bear. The bear was given a muzzle and boxing gloves to create “fair” conditions for both fighters. In the end, however, it was the bear that won.
416. In the earth’s core, there are temperatures of up to 10,800 degrees Fahrenheit.
417. On average, each major character of “How I Met Your Mother” earned 120,000 dollars per episode. Barney Stinson actor Neil Patrick Harris earned 210,000 dollars per episode.
418. Cobie Smulder, the Robin actor in “How I Met Your Mother”, is actually Canadian.
419. The first Twitter user to reach more than a million followers was Ashton Kutcher.
420. 90 percent of all people live in the northern hemisphere.
421. Retweets and Hashtags were not invented by Twitter, but were developed by users of the short message service and later integrated into the service as official functions.
422. “The Pineapple Incident” is the most watched episode of “How I Met Your Mother”.
423. The official length of a marathon was defined as 26,219 miles because it was exactly the length of the course at the Olympic Games in London in 1908 and not because it corresponds to the historical distance between Athens and Marathon. That distance is only about 24.8 miles.
424. A type of jellyfish called the “sea wasp” is the most poisonous animal in the world.
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425. In 1893, a U.S. citizen made an application to change the name of the country to “The United States of the Earth”.
426. Just like whales, elephants and hippos can communicate with their fellow creatures over long distances via infrasound.
427. In 1994, Microsoft, in collaboration with Timex, introduced the world’s first smart watch. At that time, however, nobody was interested in it, so production was discontinued.
428. On average, a man gets eleven erections per day. Nine during his sleep.
429. Philip Noel-Baker so far is the only person to have won both an Olympic medal and a Nobel Prize.
430. The “Diderot effect” is the phenomenon whereby after a purchase some people feel compelled to make further purchases in order to create an appropriate overall picture. If, for example, you buy a new item of clothing, this often leads to dissatisfaction with old items of clothing. You therefore buy clothes that go better with the new garment.
431. Burger King offers free burgers for life to celebrities who want to promote their fast food.
432. Jonah Falcon, the man with the longest penis in the world, was arrested at San Francisco airport because security people mistook his large penis for a bomb.
433. The honor code of comic book authors forbids the use of werewolves in comics.
434. Jakarta is the fastest sinking city in the world. Every year, the ground sinks by up to ten inches.
435. The fake cocaine that actors snort in movies is usually white snuff. It does not contain any real tobacco, but usually only consists of a mix of dextrose and menthol.
436. For his role as Iron Man, Robert Downey Jr. was paid 500,000 dollars in the first part. For the first Avengers film, however, his pay had already increased to 50 million dollars.
437. Laurence Tureaud, better known by his pseudonym “Mr. T”, chose this stage name because his father, uncle and brother had always been called “boy” by everyone. He believed that black people deserved more respect and therefore always wanted to be called “Mister”.
438. A substitute for cling film made of crab shells and plant fibers was developed in the United States.
439. In 1967 a solar storm almost caused a nuclear war. The charged solar particles caused the US early rocket warning system to fail, so that the Americans first assumed that the Soviet Union had launched a targeted interference attack in order to be able to carry out a nuclear strike on the USA.
440. In Korea, everyone is one year old from birth and turns one year older on New Year’s Day.
441. The flightless terror birds were the direct descendants of the dinosaurs and ruled the earth 49 million years ago. This was the only time that birds ruled the world. The animals were up to ten feet tall and weighed up to 772 pounds. Their giant razor-sharp beak secured them a place at the top of the food chain for a long time.
442. 2,520 is the smallest number that can be divided by all numbers from 1 to 10 with the result being an integer, meaning that there is no remainder.
443. The Vatican has its own telephone company, its own radio station, its own TV station, its own stamps, its own currency and its own army.
444. In 1916, a law was submitted to the US Congress to stipulate that any declaration of war by the USA first had to be confirmed by a referendum and that anyone who voted “yes” would have to go to war themselves. However, the law was never passed.
445. Cats sweat through their paws.
446. During a solar eclipse, it appears to observers on earth as if the sun and moon were exactly the same size. However, this is only a huge coincidence, because the sun is 400 times as big as the moon, but also 400 times further away.
447. In the United States at least one person per hour gets killed in a car accident due to drinking.
448. Male narwhals have an ivory horn with a length of up to ten feet on their head.
449. With more than 100 million records sold, the Scorpions are the most successful German band.
450. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, receives a fixed annual salary of just one dollar.
451. Hyperlinks were already blue in the early days of the Internet.
452. The Japanese giant crab is the largest living crab and can reach a span of up to 12.1 feet. However, the body has an average diameter of only 14.6 inches.
453. Termite mounds are built in such a way that the climate inside always remains approximately the same, even if major weather changes occur. Nevertheless, fresh air constantly enters the mound while pollutants are removed.
454. Sony earns more money as an insurance company than by selling electronics.
455. The kidnapping of four-year-old Charley Ross in 1874 is considered to be the first kidnapping in the history of the USA to have been widely reported in the media. The girl, who would never be found, was lured by two men with fireworks and sweets. Due to the worldwide interest in this case, children are still advised not to accept sweets from strangers to this day.
456. Whales can reach a volume of up to 230 decibels with their songs. That is twice as loud as a jet taking off.
457. In Brazil, a termite mound was discovered that is probably up to 4,000 years old – almost as old as the pyramids in Egypt.
458. The Vatican has released a church version of Pokémon Go. The game is called “Follow JC Go”, and instead of Pokémon you “catch” saints.
459. In Amazon’s early days, there was a programming error that caused Amazon to pay money to its customers. All you had to do was buy a negative number of books, and the amount was credited to your credit card.
460. Hulk originally was meant to be a grey monster but as the printing works had problems to always use the identical shade of grey, the creators decided to turn Hulk green.
461. The oldest bridge in France is called “Pont Neuf”. Translated it means “New Bridge”.
462. In 2010, General Electrics made profits of 14 billion dollars and paid not a penny in taxes.
463. The word “Arctic” comes from Greek and means “bear”, while “Antarctic” stands for “opposite the Arctic”. By this, the Greeks wanted to express that the star constellations of the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper, call Big Bear and Small Bear in Greek, are visible in the northern hemisphere, but cannot be seen in the southern hemisphere.
464. In 2018, bitcoin mining already consumed as much electricity as the entire Czech Republic.
465. In Italy, a man left his cat an inheritance of about ten million Euros.
466. Because Donald Duck doesn’t wear pants, his comics were banned in Finland for a long time.
467. Cats have 32 muscles to move their ears. In comparison, humans only have six muscles in their ears.
468. Scientist Nikola Tesla had a strange peculiarity. He wanted all the number he encountered in everyday life to be divisible by three. For example, he would only move into a hotel room if its room number was a multiple of three.
469. The name of the Microsoft search engine “Bing” comes from the word “Bingo”, which you shout out when you get exactly the answer you had hoped for.
470. Throughout the story of “How I Met Your Mother,” there were only twelve incidents in which Barney Stinson did not wear a suit.
471. Between 2011 and 2013, McDonald’s has opened one branch a day in China.
472. Stephen Hawking’s tombstone bears the formula he developed to calculate the entropy of black holes. He had requested this long before his death. Hawking was also buried near the graves of Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin.
473. Google considers more than 200 factors for the calculation of its search results.
474. The game “Quidditch” from the Harry Potter novels is now a recognized sport in our world, with its own leagues and even regular world championships.
475. Lake Baikal in Russia is home to 20 percent of the world’s total unfrozen fresh water.
476. Dogs have such a good sense of smell that they can even smell when a person’s insulin level drops too low.
477. During the nine seasons of “How I Met Your Mother” Ted dated 29 women who were not the mother.
478. American Express credit card numbers always start with a three, Visa cards with a four, Mastercards with a five and Discover Cards with a six.
479. The first Subway restaurant was opened in 1965 by a 17-year-old high school graduate looking for a way to finance his tuition fees.
480. Researchers believe that only ten percent of our seas are explored. This means we know less about our oceans than about the moon.
481. According to physical calculations, trees can reach a maximum height of 426 feet.
482. There is 4G reception on Mount Everest.
483. In Clark County, Nevada, there is a house that is an almost exact replica of the Simpson family house.
484. Google employees are allowed to use 20 percent of their working time every day for their own individual side projects. Among other things, this has led to the development of Google News.
485. Russian scientist Anatoli Bugorski accidentally held his head into a running particle accelerator in 1978 during an inspection. The doctors assumed that he would die a few days later, but surprisingly, he survived. Only one half of his face was paralyzed, his left ear is deaf and he regularly suffers epilepsy attacks.
486. The gigantism of the dinosaurs and many other prehistoric animal species can be traced back to epochs with a significantly increased oxygen concentration in the air. For example, the oxygen content in the Carboniferous was 35 percent instead of the current 21 percent.
487. Everyday McDonald’s serves over 68 million people. This is approximately one percent of the world’s population.
488. Jonah Falcon has the biggest penis in the world. It has a length of almost 14 inches.
489. The Titanic II is scheduled to put to sea in 2022, following the route of the original Titanic.
490. google.com is the only website that maintains that users should spend as little time on it as possible.
491. In 2009 in Florida, a man who was accused of owning child porn, said his cat had downloaded the files.
492. The Prague Town Hall Clock, which went into operation in 1410, is the oldest still functioning astronomical clock in the world. In addition to the time, the clock also shows astronomical correlations, such as the position of the moon in relation to Earth.
493. Pizza Hut was the first pizza service to deliver a pizza to the International Space Station. In 2001, the company paid one million dollars to the Russian Space Agency for this promotional campaign.
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494. When Amazon’s website was unavailable for 49 minutes in 2013, the company lost $5.7 million in revenue.
495. Fifty Shades of Grey began as erotic fan fiction about the main characters of Twilight: Bella and Edward.
496. During the first days in space, astronauts often suffer from space sickness. Since all bodily fluids are redistributed in weightlessness and the sense of balance is impaired, important tasks such as outboard work are not carried out in the first days of a space mission. There would be an acute risk of the astronauts throwing up in their suits.
497. In 2018, a message in a bottle was found in Australia which had been dropped into the Indian Ocean by a German research vessel in 1886.
498. From 1920 onwards, Alexander Alexandrovich Bogdanov tried to discover a medical fountain of youth by performing blood transfusions on himself and injecting himself with the blood of younger people. One blood transfusion, however, was contaminated with malaria and tuberculosis, which eventually killed Bogdanov.
499. The Christmas song “Jingle Bells” was originally written for Thanksgiving and not for Christmas.
500. Venus rotates around its own axis at only four miles per hour. So you could walk around Venus faster than it can turn itself.
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