Only Fun Facts is what we stand for and also what we will deliver. Nothing more and nothing less. We want to amaze and surprise people by all the unbelievable facts and trivia around the globe. Did you know that the entire human population could live in New Zealand, and the population density would still be lower than that of Manhattan in New York? Isn’t that amazing?
Or have you heard that a pineapple was such a large status symbol in the 18th century England that you could even rent it for a day? We hope all our fun facts will be as interesting for you as these two examples so have fun with the following 200 unbelievable facts.
200 unbelievable Fun Facts
1. The word “mafia” refers to the criminal organization in Sicily. Comparable structures in other regions use their own names like “Camorra” or “Yakuza”.
2. Spending more than 15,000 dollars for a wedding increases the rate of divorce compared to couples who have a cheaper wedding.
3. Monopoly was developed in 1930 in the U.S. to create a pastime for the unemployed people during the great depression.
4. To protect the German soldiers from the British night vision technology, they spread the lie that eating lots of carrots helped British soldiers to increase their eyesight during night. A myth was born.
5. In 1976 the BBC made an April fools hoax, that the planets in our sun system are located in a special constellation so that the gravity is decreased. This resulted in more than one thousand calls, confirming that one actually can feel the effect.
Read More: 250 Scientific Facts You Need to Know
6. Frequent sex increases the growth of brain cells.
7. The likelihood of getting bitten by a human in New York is higher than the likelihood of getting bitten by a shark in the sea.
8. The indents on a golf ball are called “dimples”.
9. In Dubai people own refrigerator magnets, which order a pizza by pressing them.
10. Monhar Aich won Mr. Universe in 1952. Today he is more than 100 years old and exercises regularly at the gym.
11. Diabetic patients are unable to regulate their blood glucose level. For this reason, the glucose level is sometimes so high that even the urine of a diabetic patient would taste sweet.
12. About 90 percent of people won’t find the the mistake in here: A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J,K,L,M,N,O,P,Q,R,S,T,U,V,W,X,Y,Z. (The solution to this fun fact can be found at the end of this article)
Read More: 76 Facts about Food
13. The first flags of pirates were red, not black.
14. Pandas are able to fake a pregnancy to get more food from the zookeepers.
15. Brryan Jackson’s father infected his son with HIV at the age of eleven months to kill him, because he didn’t want to pay alimony. Within 5 years the doctors diagnosed AIDS in Jackson. They gave him just a few months. Today, Brryan Jackson is 20 years old and HIV has not been detected in his blood for more than five years.
16. Just one percent of all heart attacks is caused by sex whereas ten percent are brought about by getting up too fast.
17. If. There. Is. A. Period. After. Every. Word. Our. Brain. Automatically. Starts. Making. Pauses. After. Each. Word.
18. Octopus-Wrestling was a popular trend in the sixties. A diver grapples with an octopus in shallow water and tries to bring it to the surface.
19. Adrian Carton de Wiart fought in both World Wars and he was shot in his head, his leg, his hips and his ear. He also survived a plane crash and when the doctors were unwilling to amputate two of his fingers, he bit them off. When he was later asked about his time during the war he replied “I had enjoyed the war”.
20. In 1952 Albert Einstein received the offer to become President of Israel. He refused. If you are interested in even more fun facts about Einstein you should read our detailed article about him. You can find it here.
21. If you start counting from one, then 1,000 is the first number in which the letter “A” occurs.
22. About 89 percent of all men have problems with differentiating between kind behavior from a woman and flirting.
23. Germany was the first country to implement daylight saving time. Thats not the only thing Germans have come up with. If you want to read even more fun facts about Germany make sure to read our dedicated article about that topic here.
24. Chris Putnam is a developer at Facebook and has immortalized himself in social networks. If one writes :putnam: in a comment, one will see his face as a smiley.
25. If one donates a part of one’s liver, the missing part will grow again.
Read More: 161 Crazy Historical Facts
26. The deepest hole ever explored by man was 7.5 miles deep. Compared to that, the earth has a diameter of 7,926 miles.
27. When two wolves mate, they stay together for the rest of their lives.
28. Apple owns more cash than the United States.
29. Frank Oz, the voice of Yoda in Star Wars, was also the voice of Miss Piggy.
30. Ten percent of all car accidents are caused by being distracted, for example when writing an SMS.
31. In preparation of the movie “Rocky” Sylvester Stallone asked the former professional boxer Earnie Shavers to beat him multiple times in the face at full force. Stallone vomited after his first punch.
32. Pornhub once started campaign called “Save the Boobs”. For every 30th view in the category “small tit” or “big tit”, the company donated one penny to the “Susan G Komen Foundation” – a foundation whose aim is to cure breast cancer. However, the foundation refused the donation. Therefore, Pornhub tripled the amount of money and donated it to a foundation with a similar purpose.
33. James Fixx, the creator of the word “jogging” died from a heart attack while jogging.
34. Because of the large amount of sugar in it, it is impossible for honey to spoil. Even in 1,000 years it would still be edible.
Read More: 111 Space Facts That’ll Blow Your Mind
35. The “S” in the name of Harry S. Truman only represents an “S”.
36. Nutella was invented during World War II, when an Italian soldier mixed chocolate with hazelnut to stretch his food ration.
37. During the production of “Toy Story 2”, an employee accidentally erased the whole movie and almost ruined the production. Fortunately, one of the employees had a backup on her desktop computer, so the work went on and the movie made it to the cinemas.
38. In Turkmenistan, water, gas and electricity has been free to citizens since 1991.
39. Renfield-Syndrome is characterized by an obsession with drinking blood.
40. It is impossible to cause your own death by strangling yourself.
41. In 1938, Adolf Hitler was Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year”.
42. According to NASA, Jurassic Park is the seventh best movie in the world, measured in terms of scientific accuracy.
43. In Australia, a hog stole 18 beers from a camping site, got drunk and then tried to attack a cow. Looking for more facts about beer? We have a great article about it.
44. People who own iPhones have sex more often compared to Android users.
Read More: 82 crazy Facts about the USA
45. A study came to the conclusion that female students, who are perceived as attractive by their fellow male students, achieve better grades.
46. In order to avoid a long-standing dispute, the CEO’s of Southwest Airline and Stevens Aviation decided to resolve their problem by arm wrestling. The winner was given the right to use a specific advertising slogan.
47. In Iran 70 percent of all science students are female.
48. Before there were trees on the earth, our planet was covered by giant mushrooms.
49. In the U.S. most movies are released on Independence Day. Conversely, the movie “Independence Day” was released a week prior to Independence Day.
50. The gravity on the moon is about one-sixth of the earth’s gravitational pull.
51. In 2010 a professor at the Kansas State University wanted to show his students that during a diet only the amount of calories is important, and not the nutrients. For two months he almost exclusively ate candy and lost more than 26 pounds.
Read More: 100 Interesting Facts You Need to Know
52. Only eight percent of the world’s money is physical. The rest exists digitally.
53. Before the word “Zombie” became a common term, Marvel had rights to the word.
54. In 1981 a hard disk containing one gigabyte cost 300,000 dollars.
55. During his time in school Isaac Newton wrote an essay on how water moves from the roots to the leaves in a tree. This phenomenon could first be scientifically proven about 225 years later.
56. The heart of a shrimp is located in its head.
57. Swans only have one partner in their lifetime.
58. Humans and dolphins are the only animals, which have sex solely for pleasure.
59. Astronauts in the ISS can witness 15 sunrises and 15 sunsets a day.
60. The website “godtube.com” describes itself as YouTube for Christians.
61. The actor Robin Williams was passionate about video games, which is the reason why he named his daughter “Zelda”.
62. Henry Ford was the first tycoon to not let his employees work on Saturdays and Sundays, so that they could spend more time with their cars. Thus the weekend was born.
63. The inventor of the Game Boy was initially a janitor at Nintendo.
Read More: 207 Wild Animal Facts
64. A Scottish study found that most heart attacks happen on a Monday.
65. To investigate in a strip club in Seattle, an undercover agent visited the club 160 times and spent 16,835 dollars of tax payer money for at least 130 lap dances. Currently not one single person has been charged in this case.
66. Did you know that the the brain hides superfluous information, like the second “the” in this sentence?
67. To kill a spider, a woman in Kansas burned down her house.
68. According to current estimates, it would cost more than 23 billion dollars to build a real “Jurassic Park”.
69. Einstein believed that mankind would only survive four years after the extinction of bees.
70. The chimpanzee “Congo” was able to draw abstract works of art. Even Pablo Picasso was a fan of his pictures. (Source)
71. In Asian culture, white is a mourning colour. Therefore Asian wedding dresses are never white.
72. The shoe size of the Statue of Liberty is size 879.
73. The more intelligent someone is, the more zinc and copper can be found in one’s hair.
74. A newborn just has 234 milliliters of blood in its body.
75. To prove their credibility in court in early Rome, men have sworn on their balls.
76. Every 21st inhabitant of New York is a millionaire.
77. Before the actor James Franco became successful, he practiced different accents while working as a cashier at McDonald’s to see his customers reactions.
78. Due to reduced air pressure, water on Mount Everest boils at 158 degrees Fahrenheit.
79. Carde is the roman god for door handles, door sills and door hinges.
80. Goosebumps are a reflex from the times when man had much more hair. When our hair stands up, we appeared bigger and more menacing to enemies.
81. The deepest gold mine in the world is located in South Africa, and is situated 2.5 miles below the surface.
82. On average a man ejaculates 7,200 times during his entire life.
83. Rabbits have such good peripheral sight they are able to see things behind their head.
84. Being in love releases the same hormones that the use of cocaine releases.
85. It takes an average employee at McDonald’s about seven months to earn the amount the CEO makes in one hour.
86. The earth is the only planet in our solar system, that is not named after a god.
87. Babies can already get an erection in the womb.
88. In summer the Eiffel Tower is 5.9 inches higher than in winter.
89. On the occasion of the new Star Wars Movie “The Force Awakens” the weirdest products were sold under the “Star Wars” trade mark. Including a knife block, oranges, mascara and special “Yoda water”.
90. A study proved that men really have problems understanding women’s feelings.
91. Although Clint Eastwood smokes in almost all of his movies, he himself is not a smoker.
Read More: 50 Pawsome Facts About Dogs
92. A man on average gets eleven erections per day. Nine during his sleep.
93. The Harvard physicist Lene Hau was successful in reducing the speed of light to 38 miles per hour.
94. Slugs are able to sleep three consecutive years.
95. An adult oyster can clean and filter up to 190 liters of water per day.
96. In 2012 about 37 percent of Italians had never used the Internet.
97. The Jewish boxer Salamo Arouch was imprisoned in a concentration camp during World War II and was forced to fight against other inmates. The loser was shot or gassed.
98. The original name of the movie “Scream” was “Scary movie”.
99. The name “Google” is derived from the word “googol” which denotes a one followed by one hundred zeros.
100. Lake Karachay in Russia has been overrun with so much nuclear waste after World War II, that one hour of exposure is a lethal dose of radiation.
Even more Fun Facts
101. 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.
102. 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.
103. 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.
104. 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.
105. 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.
106. It is estimated that about 220,000 marriage proposals are made each year on Valentine’s Day.
107. 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.
108. 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.
109. 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.
110. From 1409 to 1417, there were three different popes, all claiming to be the head of the Catholic Church.
Read More: 55 Fun Facts About Money, Wealth And Success
111. 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.
112. 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.
113. American professional basketball player Shaquille O’Neal scored only a single three-point shot throughout his entire professional career.
114. “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.
115. 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.
116. 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.
117. 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.
118. 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.
119. 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.
120. 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.
121. 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.
122. 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.
123. 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.
124. 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.
125. 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.
126. 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.
127. 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.
128. 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”.
129. 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.
130. Crickets consist of up to 70 percent protein, while beef steaks contain only 17 to 40 percent protein.
131. Samsung is responsible for 20 percent of South Korea’s gross domestic product.
132. 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.
133. 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.
134. 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.
135. 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.
Read More: 212 Fun Facts About Planet Earth
136. 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.
137. The abbreviation “OMG” (oh my God) was first mentioned in 1917 in a letter to the former Prime Minister of Great Britain, Winston Churchill.
138. 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.
139. In terms of GDP growth, Ethiopia was the fastest growing economy in the world in 2017.
140. 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”.
141. 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.
142. Hawaii plans to pass a law by 2024 prohibiting anyone under the age of 100 from smoking cigarettes.
143. 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. We have even more facts like this one in our list with facts about the human body.
144. 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.
145. A horizontal line above a mathematical expression, for example to express an infinite period, is called a “vinculum”.
146. 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.
147. 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.
148. 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.
149. The largest land animal permanently living in Antarctica is only 0.24 inches long. It is the wingless mosquito species “Belgica antarctica”.
150. In the USA, more money is spent on slot machines than on cinema, baseball and amusement parks combined.
151. 90 percent of all people live in the northern hemisphere.
Read More: 250 Random Facts That Will Blow Your Mind
152. 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.
153. With over 1,200 different subspecies, bats account for about 20 percent of all known mammal species.
154. Every year on Valentine’s Day, approximately 110 million roses are sold worldwide.
155. The Italian state of Bellagio, namesake of the Las Vegas hotel with the same name, has fewer inhabitants than the hotel has rooms.
156. 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.
157. 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.
158. A “kakistocracy” is a system of government where a country is ruled by the worst and least qualified persons.
159. 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.
160. 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.
161. 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.
162. 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.
163. 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.
164. 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.
165. 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.
166. “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.
167. Between 2011 and 2013, China consumed more cement than the USA during the entire 20th century.
168. 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.
169. The International Space Station ISS is in orbit about 250 miles above the earth.
170. 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.
171. 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.
172. 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.
173. 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.
174. 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.
175. Orthocarbonic acid is also known as “Hitler’s Acid”, as its graphic representation resembles a swastika.
176. 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.
177. 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.
178. The easternmost point of Brazil is closer to Africa than the westernmost point of Brazil.
179. There are no family names in Ethiopia. Instead, a child’s surname is simply their father’s first name.
180. 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.
181. 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.
182. 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.
183. 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.
184. 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.
185. 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.
186. 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.
187. The first graphics-enabled web browser was developed in 1993.
188. “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.
189. 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.
190. 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.
191. 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.
192. 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.
193. 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.
194. 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.
195. The Belgian Post Office developed a special stamp in 2013 that tastes like chocolate when licked on the back.
196. Lake Baikal in Russia is home to 20 percent of the world’s total unfrozen fresh water.
197. 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.
198. 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.
199. 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.
200. 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.
How did you like our 200 fun facts? Which was the most interesting trivia and which fact did you already knew? Tell us your opinion down in the comments below and let us discuss. If you are interested in even more fun facts have a look at our Unbelievable Facts section or follow us on Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.
We publish new and interesting facts on social media every day so make sure to follow us. If you want to learn more on the background of our unbelievable fun facts just subscribe to our newsletter and receive always the latest stories we created for you.
We are also happy about every fact that you know and that we have not published yet. Just write to us if you are aware of any fun facts which we should definitely post on our website. We are looking forward to receiving your facts and making this website even better.
The solution to our fact about the mistake almost nobody realize is that there are two “the” in that text.