You know that we love fun facts and trivia like nobody else so it is my pleasure to provide you another list of 200 amazing general knowledge facts everyone should know. If you are looking for answers to one of the most asked questions this list has all the answers and much more. Have fun while reading the next 200 facts.
1. 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.
2. The “Lady Macbeth effect” is the phenomenon of wanting to wash yourself physically, even if you have only “dirtied” yourself mentally. If a person is ashamed of an event, he or she will find it liberating to take a shower.
3. So far, there have already been around 106 billion people in the world.
4. The dress that Princess Diana wore on her wedding with Prince Charles had a 26 feet long train.
5. Because emus and kangaroos are not able to walk backwards, they are officially referred to as heraldic animals of Australia.
6. On average, a baby or toddler needs around 6,000 diapers to dry.
7. Of up to 35,000 orchid species, 25,000 can already be found in the cloud forest of Venezuela.
8. Regardless of body size, all mammals take an average of about 21 seconds to empty their bladders. Scientists refer to this as the “law of urination”.
9. In New Zealand, there is a lake, which on average has a temperature of 147 degrees Fahrenheit due to geothermal processes.
10. The Coca-Cola Company invented the six-pack to encourage people to drink more Coke. In 1929 they introduced a reusable paperboard six-pack and in 1932 already two million six-pack cartons were in use. We offer many more facts about Coca-Cola.
11. „Sobrino de Botín“ is the name of a restaurant in Madrid which was founded in 1725. It is the oldest restaurant in the world in continuous operation.
12. George Lucas obtained the rights to the word “droid”. When Motorola released a cell phone with this name, they had to pay a fee to George Lucas.
13. Adolf Hitler’s nephew William Patrick Hitler emigrated to the USA in 1939 and even fought alongside the Americans against Nazi Germany during the Second World War. He was even awarded the Purple Heart for his accomplishments during the war. After the war, however, he changed his name to William Patrick Stuart-Houston.
14. Male Indian rhinos can spray urine over a distance of 16 feet (5 meters). They do so to show dominance and marking its territory.
15. About 90 percent of all lung cancer cases are caused by smoking.
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16. In 2007, Navy SEAL Mike Day was shot 27 times by four al-Qaeda leaders. He managed to kill the four leaders and get himself to safety. Today, he is in good health again and lives happily with his wife and daughter.
17. Mercury has at tail of rock particles. Scientists are still unsure, how to explain that phenomenon.
18. While Saturn has long been known for its rings, the ring systems around the gas planets Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune were first discovered in the 1970s. Would you like to read more facts about Saturn?
19. 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.
20. Canada became a country on July 1st, 1867 when the British Parliament passed the British North America Act.
21. The cargo ship SS Ancon was the first ship to transit the Panama Canal on August 15, 1914.
22. The combination of a knife with a fork and a spoon is called spork.
23. Until the 20th century, the Bible explicitly mentioned the existence of unicorns. Psalm 22:22 of the Luther Bible of 1912, for example, reads: “Help me out of the lion’s mouth and save me from the unicorns!” Today it is assumed that this is a translation error and should be “wild oxen” instead. Apart from unicorns, however, numerous other mythical creatures such as dragons or a Leviathan continue to be mentioned to this day.
24. Every year on 13 October, Finland celebrates the official day of failure.
25. The oldest bar in Ireland, which still exists, was opened 900 years before Christ.
26. Dog urine can corrode metal due to the strong acids in it.
27. On average, a man gets eleven erections per day. Nine during his sleep.
28. With 18 public holidays Colombia has the fourth highest number of public holidays in the world. Only Cambodia, Sri Lanka and India have more public holidays.
29. In 2019, Playstation was the brand with the most Twitter followers.
30. Algeria is not just the largest country in Africa but also among the ten largest countries in the world.
31. The metal tip of a shoelace is called an aglet.
32. When Great Britain returned Hong Kong to China in 1997 after years of colonization, it was agreed that Hong Kong should continue as a democratic state with its own laws, its own economy and its own currency. However, this agreement will expire in 2047 and China will take full control of Hong Kong from then on.
33. Maria and José are the most common names in Brazil. There are more than five million males named Jose and more than 11 million females named Maria.
34. A study has shown that people with a lot of body hair have on average a higher IQ than people with less body hair.
35. The police of Saudi Arabia have a special witches-unit, where people can report cases of magic. Fortune telling is also considered a crime.
36. The full name of Mahatma Gandhi was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.
37. Although Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, he never developed an antibiotic from it. It was not until decades later that Howard Florey discovered Fleming’s little-noticed scientific paper and recognized the potential of this discovery.
38. In France there is a village named “Pussy”.
39. In 2012, a new ant species was discovered in New York City. Scientists named it “ManhattAnt”.
40. In the late 80s Pepsi sold its soda to Russia and received in return 17 submarines, a cruiser, a frigate, and a destroyer as they were not accepting the Russian currency.
41. 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.
42. If you cook a penguin egg, the egg white remains transparent after cooking.
43. Milhouse’s second name from “The Simpsons” is “Mussolini”.
44. With a height of 8.23 inches, Sultan Kösen from Turkey is the tallest man in the world. He has shoe size 62 and the distance from his wrist to the tip of his middle finger is 11.2 inches.
45. In 2016, in an experiment, a monkey succeeded in moving a wheelchair in which it was sitting through its thoughts alone.
46. Uruguay is the only country in South America which is entirely outside of the tropics.
47. One study documents that many people, after two years of obtaining their tertiary qualifications, remember only ten percent of the content they have learned.
48. The Mongolian Empire under Genghis Khan extended from the Pacific to the Mediterranean in the 13th century.
49. Mars has about one tenth of the mass of Earth.
50. When Pluto has circled the sun once, 1028 years have passed on Mercury.
51. The Centennial Light is the longest-lasting light bulb in the world. It has been on since 1906 and is located at the Livermore fire station near San Francisco, California.
52. Beatles member Paul McCartney cannot read notes.
53. A male lion needs 15 pounds (seven kilogram) of meat a day whereas a female lion only needs 11 pounds (five kilogram) per day.
54. Three men from Yemen accused NASA for “settling” on Mars. According to the men, their ancestors gave it to them 3,000 years ago.
55. Athlete Mark Henry currently holds the world record in “5-Lift-Total”. His personal records in the five disciplines of weightlifting (snatch, clean and jerk, squat, bench press and deadlift) total 3,257.3 pounds, making him officially the strongest person ever to live.
56. Eminem holds the world record for the most words in a song. At a length of six minutes and four seconds, the song “Rap God” has a total of 1,560 words, resulting in an average of 4.28 words per second.
57. 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”.
58. John Cusack and Matthew Broderick were offered the role of Walter White in “Breaking Bad” before Bryan Cranston. However, both refused.
59. Vladimir Putin released a judo instruction DVD in 2008 called “Let’s Learn Judo with Vladimir Putin”
60. In China, not only the paper but also the printing has been invented. Apart from that the Chinese also invented the gun powder and the compass.
61. In order to protect Tokyo from being flooded by typhoons, a gigantic underground system of tunnels and water pumps was developed underneath the city. It can pump 220 tons of water into the underground per second.
62. If you search for “Atari Breakout” at images.google.com, you can play the game in the browser.
63. Although the story of the “Fifty Shades of Gray” books takes place in Seattle, the film was shot in Vancouver instead.
64. The classic film “One flew over the cuckoo’s nest” with Jack Nicholson was actually shot in a mental hospital. Many of the patients featured in the movie were actually being treated there at the time.
65. There are so many languages in the world that it is not known how many there currently are. Scientists believe that there are more than 6,500 to 7,000 different languages.
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66. In Alaska there is a sand desert with dunes up to 160 feet high.
67. A baby’s brain size doubles in the first twelve months.
68. Colombia’s Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is the world’s highest coastal mountain range. Scientist have found out that during the last 170 million years it has moved 1,367 miles from Peru into the territory of Colombia.
69. At the beginning of the 20th century, radium was often used as an ingredient in facial cream.
70. Originally, Grand Theft Auto was meant to be a racing game named “Race’n’Chase” but a glitch made police cars ram into the car of the player. This element was so popular with the game testers that a whole game was modelled on this principle and GTA was born.
71. In the last 3,000 years, there were only 268 years in which no wars occurred.
72. When a Fiat employee realized when the Google Street View car will record Södertälje in Sweden, he parked a Fiat in front of the Swedish Volkswagen headquarter to be present in Google Street View for the next years.
73. There is a type of jellyfish which is immortal.
74. “K’o K’ou K’o Lê”, the phonetically correct Chinese translation for Coca-Cola, literally means “A female horse fastened with wax”.
75. Walt Disney has received 63 Oscar nominations throughout his lifetime, of which he has won 26. Thus, he is the world record holder of most Oscar wins.
76. In one second an average of two people die.
77. In 2018, France was the most visited country by tourists in the world.
78. The PlayStation 2 was so popular that it was still in production until shortly before the launch of the PlayStation 4.
79. Hitler planned to celebrate his victory over Russia in the Hotel Astoria in Saint Petersburg.
80. Carde is the roman god for door handles, door sills and door hinges.
81. Blind people have nightmares, and have them four times more often than normal seeing people do.
82. Peter Vaughan – Maester Aemon’s actor in “Game of Thrones” is blind in real life as well.
83. Actor Steve Buscemi (Armageddon, Boardwalk Empire) was a firefighter from 1980 to 1984. After the events of 9/11, he volunteered and worked unpaid twelve-hour shifts for over a week to support the New York Fire Department.
84. The Empire State Building generates more revenue from the observation deck than from its renting income.
85. Ransom payments to abductors can be written off as taxes in Germany.
86. It can happen that storms are so violent that they cause earthquakes when they sweep across a landscape. That is why they are also called “stormquakes”.
87. Nombre de Dios in Panama is the oldest continuously inhabited European settlement in the continental Americas.
88. NASA has developed a device called “Finder” that can detect a person’s breathing and heartbeat even under a 16-feet-thick layer of concrete. It was used to find buried people after the 2015 earthquake in Nepal.
89. If you Google “elgooG”, you will get to a mirrored Google. In our article, you will find plenty more facts about Google.
90. Alert, a village in Canada, is the northernmost permanently inhabited place in the world.
91. 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.
92. “The Pineapple Incident” is the most watched episode of “How I Met Your Mother”.
93. The difference between East and West Berlin can still be seen from space due to the color of the street lighting.
94. While the mortality rate for cancer ten years ago was 215 deaths per 100,000 people, it has subsequently decreased to 172.
95. The moonwalk was not actually invented by Michael Jackson. Cab Calloway included similar movements in his performances as early as 1932. At that time, however, people called it “The Buzz”.
96. When Amazon’s website was unavailable for 49 minutes in 2013, the company lost $5.7 million in revenue.
97. In the Brazilian prison of Santa Rita do Sapucaí, inmates can ride stationary bicycles to generate electricity for the city’s inhabitants. For every 24 hours of cycling, their detention time is shortened by one day.
98. The seven wonders of the ancient world only existed concurrently for 60 years.
99. The highest temperature ever recorded in Antarctica was 63.5°F (17.5°C).
100. Male kangaroos flex their biceps to impress females.
101. In 1987 American Airlines was able to save 40,000 dollars because they used one less olive in their salads.
102. California is the only US state that has hosted both Summer and Winter Olympics.
103. The board game „Snakes and Ladders“ was invented in India already in the 13th century. The intention of that game was to show people that good actions take you to heaven while bad actions take you to hell.
104. There were already people living in Australia for at least 50,000 years before the British arrived. Therefore, scientist consider the Aborigines as the oldest living culture on Earth.
105. Uranus is the third-largest planet in the solar system and has the fourth-largest planetary mass.
106. More than one million planet Earths would fit inside of the sun.
107. The McDonald’s on the Champs-Elysées, in Paris is the only restaurant of the fast food chain with white arches instead of the traditional golden arches.
108. 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.
109. The longest beard ever measured on a woman had a length of 10 inches.
110. The former U.S. Marine soldier Guy Gabaldon was able to catch about 800 Japanese soldiers during World War Two. The Japanese soldiers were hiding in a cave and Guy Gabaldon sneaked in. He convinced them that their cave was surrounded. After everyone was handcuffed he called for support.
111. Based on the number of units sold, “Candle in the Wind” by Elton John is the most successful single of all times. All in all, more than 37 million CDs were sold worldwide.
112. For the prison scene of “Game of Thrones”, in which Cersei Lennister drinks water from the floor, a plastic replica stone was built to ensure adequate hygiene.
113. The “Medical Students Disease” describes the phenomenon of medical students suffering from the disease they recently have learned about in class.
114. In 2014 a woman was saved from her burning house. She then realized she had forgot her mobile phone in the house, ran back into her home and died.
115. Nutella has a sun protection factor of 9.5.
116. On the distant planet HD 189733b it rains molten glass at wind speeds of 4,350 miles per hour.
117. 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.
118. Goats have rectangular pupils.
119. The English term “Goodbye” is a shortening of the religious phrase “God be with ye” that has developed over time.
120. A Pinocchio paradox arises when Pinocchio says “My nose is currently growing” and is an example of the more general liar paradox. This refers to a sentence that describes its own statement as false, such as “This sentence is false.”
121. The 2022 World Soccer Championship will be opened in Lusail (Qatar), a city which did not exist till recently.
122. There is a disease in which boys are born with testicles, but these remain inside the body after birth. The child’s penis is also so underdeveloped that the genitals resemble a vagina. Regular male genitals do not develop until puberty. 90 percent of all those affected live in the Dominican Republic, where the disease is also known as “Guevedoces”, which roughly translates as “balls at twelve”.
123. “Almost” is the longest word in the English language in which all letters are arranged in alphabetical order.
124. The terms “Great Britain” and “United Kingdom” are not interchangeable. The United Kingdom includes Northern Ireland, while Great Britain does not.
125. Due to its small size, Mercury has too little mass and gravity for building a stable atmosphere. Solar winds can therefore easily blow away attracted gases.
126. Uruguay legalized same-sex marriage in May 2013. This was even before the U.K. did so.
127. Mars is the only other planet besides Earth that has polar ice caps. The same applies also to Pluto or other moons in our solar system however these are no planets.
128. From water depth of 33 feet and more there is no more red light. For this reason blood seems to be green at this depth.
129. Canada contains 10 percent of the world’s forested land.
130. Jesse Pinkman was originally supposed to die in the first season of “Breaking Bad”. The authors’ strike, however, shortened the season so that he remained in the show.
131. Louis XIV of France had a coat with 123 diamond buttons on it.
132. In 2010, General Electrics made profits of 14 billion dollars and paid not a penny in taxes.
133. The Colombian river “Caño Cristales” is commonly called the “River of Five Colors” or the “Liquid Rainbow” as it appears in five different colors which are caused by a special type of plant living on the riverbed. Interested in more Facts about Colombia?
134. There is a type of fungus that grows on ants and controls their behavior. The ant then has no control over its own body.
135. Nintendo originally did not develop consoles and video games, but rather started off producing playing cards.
136. The Japanese word “karate” means “empty hand”.
137. The real name of the Michelin mascot is “Bibendum” or “Bib” for short.
138. In 1964, San Francisco’s cable cars were declared the first moving Landmark on the National Register of Historic Places. The San Francisco cable cars are the only ones still operating in a U.S city.
139. The Weihenstephan brewery in Germany is the oldest beer brewery in the world. It has been in continuous operation since the year 1040.
140. There are about 300 species of spiders that can mimic the behavior, appearance or even fragrance of ants. Few of them deceive their prey in this way and then attack them from behind.
141. An American married the Eiffel Tower in 2007.
142. Most accidents at work happen on Mondays.
143. Coca-Cola is the most widely distributed product on the planet. There are only two countries in the world where Coca-Cola cannot be bought or sold. They are Cuba and North Korea.
144. Every year approximately 40,000 people a bitten by cats in the USA.
145. The average distance from the Moon to the Earth is 238,857 miles (384,403 kilometers). This equals about 30 Earths.
146. Only 14 percent of all billionaires have no degree.
147. The drug lord Pablo Escobar had so much cash in his home that rats ate about a billion dollars of his wealth per year.
148. 50,000 people die a year in the U.S. from the effects of passive smoking.
149. When in England the packaging of the drug Tylenol was changed from a bottle to a blister pack, the suicide rate involving the drug decreased by more than 50 percent. Instead of taking several tablets out of the container at once, each tablet had to be squeezed out of the blister pack individually, giving people more time to reconsider their suicide attempt.
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150. The explosion of a modern nuclear atomic bomb in London would produce such a large pressure wave that glass panes in Berlin would also shatter.
151. The British pound is the oldest currency still in use in the world. It’s more than 1,200 years old.
152. Female kangaroos have three vaginas.
153. A baby’s head makes up about a quarter of its total length, while in adults it is only around a seventh. This is one reason why babies cool down particularly quickly.
154. On the first day that same-sex marriage was legal state-wide 823 same-sex couples were married in New York City.
155. Reading reduces your stress level much more than listening to music or walking.
156. The Atlantic Ocean is saltier than the Pacific Ocean.
157. 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.
158. To find out which films and TV series are the most popular on the Internet, Netflix is investigating illegal streaming portals like BitTorrent. This data is then used to decide which productions should be added to the range.
159. Deep down in the Sala silver mine in Sweden, there is a hotel room 509 feet underground, making it the deepest hotel in the world.
160. 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.
161. If Prince Charles becomes King of the United Kingdom, he will be the oldest monarch ever crowned in Britain.
162. The astronomer Eugene Shoemaker is the only human whose ash was transported to the moon after his death.
163. Currently, there are about seven billion people on earth who make experiences and memories every day. A total of 220 years of new human memories are generated per second.
164. Nearly 65 percent of all autistic people are left-handed.
165. London is currently the only city that has hosted the Olympic games three times. Paris will follow in 2024 and Los Angeles in 2028.
166. Louis Chevrolet, co-founder of the Chevrolet Motor Car Company, died bankrupt and poor working as a mechanic for the company he started.
167. The clock on the facade of the building housing the Bolivian congress in La Paz turns anti-clockwise. The government has put this in place in 2014 as a way to encourage people to think differently.
168. In 2018, Las Vegas raised over 7.2 billion Dollars from gambling.
169. In the U.S., a man stole several million dollars after having beaten a security system consisting of security guards, infrared sensors, motion detectors and a safe door. He was arrested when DNA traces were discovered on the remainders of a sandwich that was found in a trash can next to the crime scene.
170. The people who voiced Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse in the 1930s were married in real life.
171. The paw print of a dog is very generic however their nose print is as unique as the human fingerprint.
172. During World War II, a Canadian soldier smuggled his bear “Winnipeg” to Britain, and it later became an attraction at the London Zoo. Young Christopher Robin Milne loved this bear so much that he gave his teddy bear the same name. This in turn inspired his father to write the stories about the bear Winnie the Pooh.
173. Based on a fan petition, LEGO launched the production of a special Big Bang theory set in 2015.
174. Tidarren sisyphoides is a spider species of the family of tangle web spiders. The females of this species are one hundred times larger than males.
175. 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.
176. Facebook has a billion more users a month than Twitter.
177. The inventor of the gin comes from Hanau near Frankfurt in Germany. He made the brew as a remedy over 400 years ago.
178. During the 18th century, Bolivia was only known as Upper Peru.
179. New-born dogs grow to half their final body weight in the first four to five months.
180. California is the most populous state in the USA. One in eight US residents live there.
181. 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.
182. If you live in the continental US, you are never more than 115 miles (185km) away from a McDonald’s. Out of 48 states the spot that is farthest away from a McDonald’s restaurant lies in the state of Nevada.
183. The Amazon is home to pink dolphins.
184. The highest wind speed recorded in Antarctica was 199 miles per hour (327 kilometers per hour) in July 1972.
185. The hair above a cat’s eyes is called tactile hair.
186. 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.
187. With a market share of about 60 percent China is the world’s largest producer of cement.
188. Leonid Rogozovy is the only human to do an appendectomy with local anaesthesia on himself.
189. Each year about 100 million bikes are produced worldwide.
190. Almost 95 percent of China’s population lives in the eastern third of the country.
191. Sunsets on Mars appear in a blue tone.
192. The deaf cannot get seasick.
193. The lion from film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer is called “Leo the Lion”.
194. You need at least 17 given numbers in a Sudoku to ensure there is a single, unambiguous solution.
195. A 20 second hug increases the oxytocin level of people so much that afterwards there is a much greater trust between them.
196. From 2015 to 2016, Englishman Ben Smith ran 401 marathons on 401 days to raise money for the victims of bullying. With his “401 Challenge” he set a world record and covered a total of 10,506 miles.
197. In Surabaya, Indonesia, residents can also use plastic waste to pay for their bus ticket. The objective of the campaign is to reduce plastic waste in the city and at the same time get more people interested in public transport.
198. About every eight days, sloths climb down to the ground to have a bowel movement.
199. With 673,238 registered Italians residing in the country Argentina has the largest Italian population outside of Italy.
200. In 2007, a Greenland whale was killed during a whaling expedition. In the animal’s body, the tip of a harpoon was found which must have been there since 1885. This discovery proved that the animal must have been more than 130 years old and confirmed the hypothesis that the Greenland whale is the mammal with the highest life expectancy.
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