100 Fun Facts That Are Really Fun To Tell

You've probably heard that Google comes from the word Google, the number one followed by 100 zeros, but the way they landed on it was a total accident. In 1996, Larry Page and Sergey Brin almost called their search engine BackRub based on web backlinks. I know, it's not exactly brandable, right? A year later, during a brainstorming session, Stanford grad Sean Anderson suggested Googleplex. Larry liked Google better and asked Sean to check if the domain was free. When Sean typed it in, he accidentally spelled it G-O-O-G-L-E. They liked the mistake and ran with it. Honestly, it was actually probably one of the luckiest typos ever because BackRubbit just doesn't have the same ring. Sticking with tech for a moment. So, you've been buried alive. Well, tough break, but help is at hand with the safety coffin. Yes, because medical science wasn't at its finest several hundred years ago, this practical solution was devised. Those accidentally buried could pull on a string that rang a bell topside. Fear of a premature burial is called taphophobia. Safety coffins happen due to a real case involving Alice Blunden, who in 1674 was thought to be dead and given a funeral, when in fact, she was only sedated. Black holes are cosmic death traps. They swallow up passing objects, but they also do other terrible things. It's possible for a black hole to mess up a star like an angry salesman putting a document through the office shredder. Stars can be shredded? They sure can, and it happens approximately every 10,000 years. A slow motion flash was observed in 2015 by a team from MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They'd been aware of this patch of space for a while, yet it was only when the flash grew alarmingly bright that they then realized something violent was going on. It was a TDE, or tidal disruption event. This is where a star gets too close to a supermassive black hole and is just torn to pieces by gravity. The star winds up as a loose stream of gas with everything else circling the hole like space rubble. Have you ever heard someone say there's a bug in the system? Well, that phrase started with an actual bug. In 1947, a team of engineers working on Harvard's Mark II computer found a moth jammed inside the machine, causing electrical issues. They taped it to the logbook and wrote, first actual case of bug being found. Rear Admiral Grace Hopper actually helped popularize the story, and debugging became the term for fixing code ever since. That story's true, by the way. And here's another one that catches people off guard. Not all black holes are way out in space. Some fear that a rogue hole will one day come close to us and suck the planet into its event horizon, where it will be ripped to pieces like a dog with a newspaper. The good news is, though, we'd probably all be dead by that stage, with the Earth being stabilized to hell. Thankfully, the chances of a rogue black hole are one in 100 billion. You're probably aware of how things like water behave in space. They start floating around in big globules. The fact is, in outer space, wet things form a spherical shape. Why is that? Because there's little in the way of gravity to pull it down to ground level. That explains the floating. In the meantime, the water has to do something with itself. Surface tension draws it together on a molecular level, where it balls into a small, compact shape. Not sure how that's terrifying, but there you go. It rains diamonds on Saturn. There's a rainbow you can only see at night. It's called, fittingly, a moonbow, and it's basically a rainbow made by moonlight. Same process, light bouncing off raindrops, just with a lot less wattage. They only show up around a full moon, and even then, they're so faint, they usually look white. Your eyes just can't pull color in the dark like that, so the full ROYGBIV thing doesn't quite hit the same. But if you are in the right place at the right time with just the right weather, well, you might just spot one. Anyway, do you know what's a lot less peaceful than a moonbow? A microwave. If you're scared of wasps, you might wanna look away now. A sting from an Asian giant hornet is enough to affect your internal organs. They were dubbed murder hornets by the Japanese, and this is no exaggeration. For example, its potent poison can fatally damage your kidneys. That's one heck of a sting, like if you've been attacked by an insect version of Muhammad Ali. Float like a butterfly, sting like a murder hornet. Do you know your galaxies? Well, you've got your elliptical galaxies, your irregular galaxies, and your spiral galaxies. As you may have worked out, these types are determined by their shape. However, the content is highly significant as well. Elliptical galaxies can be spheres. It can also be long and thin, like bananas. I'd love to visit a banana galaxy. If you're looking for a bunch of old stars, the elliptical galaxy is where you find them. An irregular galaxy has no defined shape. Surprise, surprise. You can find old and new stars inside there. For a collection of brand spanking new stars, go to a spiral galaxy. They look like a trippy, spirally whirlpool in space. Despite their appearance, the galaxies are all created the same way through the power of gravity. Squids have a donut-shaped brain because their esophagus splits it through the middle. Everybody's favorite kitchen device only exists because an engineer named Percy Spencer noticed a candy bar melted in his pocket while he was working near a radar machine. He was like, huh, I'm just guessing here, and started experimenting. By 1945, he'd invented the microwave, and Raytheon paid him a massive total of $2 for it. Well, that's about 35 bucks today. Yeesh. The first commercial model dropped in 1947, and today, you and I can reheat our pizza in less than a minute. Thanks, Percy, you truly deserved more. So microwaves changed everything, but so did the little metal ring. We're used to watching lots of horror movies today. Some of us, maybe not so. However, back in the 70s, things weren't so desensitized. When The Exorcist came out, it shocked audiences with its terrifying story of child possession. The release was so controversial, even the trailer got a big reaction. Can you believe it made folks vomit and was actually banned? And this was just a teaser trailer. What's more, it was in black and white. If you dare to be scared, then Warner Brothers made it available to watch on their YouTube channel. Be warned, it does contain flashing strobe-like images. Here's a tricky problem you might not have thought of. How does an astronaut scratch their nose? There's a big old visor in their way. It's just a lot of, ah. Enter Velcro. The rough part of this material is perfect for leaning forward and getting rid of that aggravating itch all within the relative comfort of your own helmet. That still sounds miserable. I wouldn't hate to have an itch and not be able to scratch it. Evian, spelled backwards, is naive. The whole point of fast food is predictability. Same taste, same look, same everything, no matter where you are. Unless you happen to be me, because no restaurant can ever get my order right. It's a thing. Never order food with me. Sorry, anyway. But that didn't happen by accident. Back when chains like McDonald's were growing fast, a whole idea of consistency became their mission. So they invented the bun gauge, a small tool used to measure the height, thickness, and width of hamburger buns. A version of it has been in use since the 50s, and it's still in use today. In fact, it's such a big deal in fast food history that the Smithsonian literally has one in its collection. Yeah, there's a national bun tool. And also a guy who can talk to elephants. I just had the worst nightmare. I was trapped in a building with a ton of creepy ventriloquist dummies. Oh wait, it was real. This is the Vent Haven Museum, located in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky. It was founded by the late William Shakespeare Berger, well, that's a name, who was a title magnate and ventriloquist enthusiast. You could say he had a hand in everything. His enormous collection of dolls and related items has been on display since the 70s. The museum features well over 1,000 freaky characters to meet. Actually, not that afraid of ventriloquist dolls, are you? Red and dwarf are two words familiar to many, thanks to a popular sci-fi franchise. A real red dwarf, however, is a small and extremely common star that burns hydrogen. They're colored red due to the fairly low temperatures. These stars also burn for a really long time. And I mean a really, really long time. A red dwarf could take 10 trillion years before finally saying goodnight. They make the sun look like a teenager. You see, suns only last around 10 billion years. Plus, size isn't everything for a red dwarf. The smaller they are, the better they burn. Pigeons can count, while dogs can't. Tim Storms doesn't just have a deep voice. He has the deepest voice ever recorded. Born in 1972, Storms holds the Guinness World Record for the widest vocal range, a full 10 octaves. For comparison, most singers have a three octave range. Mariah Carey, around five. Storms can hit notes so low, humans can't hear them, literally. His lowest, a G minor seven, clocks in at 0.189 hertz, which is a full eight octaves below the lowest G on a piano. It can only be picked up using low-frequency microphones and verified through sound analysis. However, and here's a fun fact, elephants can actually hear him. His vocal cords are nearly double the usual length, and according to his doctors, his special gift is made possible by the surrounding muscles that give him that deep, rumbling tone. ♪ Amazing grace ♪ It's a voice that should come with a fortune. Speaking of, there are such things as vampire moths, my friends. Part of the Calyptra genus, they're found in Asia, Africa, and Europe, and they're hungry. Reportedly, these things can feed for up to an hour. Where are they putting this stuff? There's an American and Canadian variety, but don't panic, it doesn't appear to be a bloodsucker. Something beautiful and freaky happens to a comet when it gets within the range of our sun. We usually think of a comet as a chunk of space material with a long tail. There's actually more going on than you realize, because much of the comet is made up of gas. A rocky-looking nucleus becomes coated in ice as it travels through deep space. Close proximity to the sun turns the ice into a gas cloud, which surrounds the nucleus. This cloud is called the coma, and it's typically hundreds of times the size of the comet's core. The coma is then shrouded in a hydrogen layer that expands, making the comet even bigger. While all this is happening, it's worth remembering that the solid material of the comet has actually reduced. It kind of shrunk, becoming the center of a huge gaseous ball. The term used here is sublimation, where the form alters, yet the essence of the object remains the same. To determine if female giraffes are fertile, the males headbutt them in the abdomen until they urinate. Then they taste the urine. They're not even from China. Fortune cookies, that is. Despite being handed out with every egg roll, they were actually invented by Japanese Americans in California. The whole idea actually started in Kyoto in the 1870s, where shops were selling sesame miso crackers with fortunes tucked inside. When Japanese immigrants came to the U.S., they brought the concept with them. And by the early 1900s, bakeries in L.A. and San Francisco were serving up a sweeter, vanilla-flavored version. Unfortunately, when Japanese Americans were sent to internment camps during World War II, their businesses shut down. So the Chinese restaurants stepped in and took over production. Today, one New York factory pumps out over 4 million cookies a day. Now, let's talk about the day women in France got the vote and Hitler died. Acclaimed actor and Obi-Wan Kenobi himself, Sir Alec Guinness, wasn't actually that big a fan of Star Wars. However, he did possess some Jedi-like powers. May the force be with you. When meeting fellow screen icon James Dean outside a restaurant in 1955, he had a chilling premonition of the future. Upon seeing Dean's car, Sir Alec warned him not to drive it or he would die within a week. Dean ignored him. A week later, he was killed in a car crash. Now, I just talked about a comet's tail, and you may be wondering why that happens. It gets its tail through pressure exerted by solar winds and the sun's magnetism. Together, these blast chunks off the comet, which then stretch out and trail behind. And things don't end there. A comet actually has a couple of tails. One is made of dust particles and is curved in shape. The other comes from a reaction of ionized gas. Basically, gas where the atoms and molecules are charged with electricity. This second tail is blue and sticks out at an angle. So, basically all comets are tails from Sonic the Hedgehog. That's what I'm getting at. Stretching and yawning at the same time is called pandiculating. On April 29th, 1945, French women were allowed to vote for the first time in history. That alone would have been monumental. But what happened next makes it even more surreal. Less than 24 hours later, Adolf Hitler was dead in his Berlin bunker. The timing was pure coincidence. But you can't ignore the symbolism. Just as France opened the door to democracy for half its population, one of history's worst dictators exited stage left. It was a 24-hour stretch that reshaped Europe, one way or another. For women in France, the future finally started. For Hitler, it very much did not. Okay, without sounding too blasé, let's move on to pencils. Billions of them. No, the Judas Cradle isn't some crazy experimental rock album. It's a brutal torture device used in medieval times. Simple and gruesomely effective, it consisted of a wooden pyramid and ropes operated by gears. They were stripped down, tied up, and then gradually lowered until your sensitive areas touched the tip of the pyramid. I won't go too far into the gory details, but let's just say victims of the Spanish Inquisition suffered a truly horrific and painful experience. Worst of all, it was invented by a lawyer, as if lawyers didn't have that enough rep. The surface of Pluto is reportedly rocky and mountainous. And where there are mountains, you often have fog. Pluto's fog is made of nitrogen, which maybe sounds strange, but this stuff really isn't that different from our own. It hangs at a distance of 60 miles from the ground, according to NASA research. And the sight of fog strengthens the idea that Pluto isn't dissimilar to the surface of Earth. Elephants can move their skin to crush mosquitoes between the rolls. That is a lot more efficient than just doing that over and over again. Ow. Two billion pencils are made in the United States every single year. Worldwide, that number goes up to over 14 billion. That's enough to circle the Earth more than 40 times. And the best part? Every one of those little sticks can write about 45,000 words, or draw a line that's roughly 35 miles long. In fact, one pencil could knock out the entire Great Gatsby with words to spare. And while I'm on the subject of little things that have a big impact, remember that scene at the start of Halloween where a kid in a scary clown costume commits murder? This isn't as bad as that, but it's still pretty unsettling. It's been scientifically proven that children get up to more mischief when their identities are disguised. Specifically, they become more light-fingered due to feeling emboldened by the costume and being part of a group. Seems that you need to hold on to more than just your candy on October 31st. Europa is a moon orbiting Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. One of the four large Galilean moons, it was named after Zeus's lover, the Phoenician princess Europa. That all sounds pretty great, but what's even more impressive is the possibility that it holds alien life, hidden from view in a secret ocean below Europa's icy surface. This surface is thought to be up to 15 miles thick. Much of the mass below could well be saltwater. It's estimated that Europa's ocean is as deep as 100 miles. All experts need to do now is find it, get down there, and see what might be waiting to greet them. Would you go? When your face touches water, your heart rate slows down. Known as the mammalian dive reflex, this phenomenon allows for being able to stay underwater longer. A few years ago, physicists figured out how to teleport a quantum state from one atom to another over a whole meter of space. Not the atom itself, but its exact state, energy, spin, the whole quantum fingerprint. That's huge because atoms can hold quantum information longer than light particles, making them way more useful for quantum computing. And all it took was two ytterbium atoms, laser pulses, a beam splitter, and some wild quantum entanglement. It only worked about once every 12 minutes, but still, scientists move quantum information without moving matter. But if you're more into hands-on puzzles than theoretical physics, all this next one's for you. Crows just got scarier. We associate them with hanging around graveyards, but we now know they also recognize human faces. In 2009, a weird study happened where scientists put on different rubber masks and recorded how crows reacted to them. A caveman's face proved especially effective. The bird saw it as dangerous and physically attacked the wearer. So next time you walk past some crows, make sure you have a happy expression. In 2020, something was spotted that made a supermassive black hole even more terrifying. Objects described as large shape-shifting blobs were picked up in the middle of the Milky Way. Hovering in the vicinity of the black hole, these are believed to be stars. So why can't they keep their form? The power of their enormous gaping neighbor leads to them being stretched and reshaped, twisting them out of the shape that nature intended. Still, their misery probably won't last long. Like anything that comes close to a black hole, it's only a matter of time before the blobs are consumed. Scientists have genetically modified a cat with jellyfish genes to make it glow in the dark or meow in the dark. Nope, that didn't work. In 1974, Hungarian architect Erno Rubik created what we now know as the Rubik's Cube. But at the time, he wasn't trying to invent a toy. He built it as a teaching tool to help his students understand how 3D objects move and rotate through space. And it worked. Maybe a little too well. His students were obsessed. So Rubik decided to patent it, originally calling it the Magic Cube. A few years later, toy companies got interested, and by 1980, it went global. Moving on, allow me to introduce you to the kid who made dihydrogen monoxide sound terrifying enough to ban. There's a dark backstory to Pirates of the Caribbean. Johnny Depp is nowhere to be seen. Reportedly, the dead sea dogs seen during this iconic Disneyland attraction were a little too authentic for comfort. Back in the days before health and safety, the House of Mouse went to the anatomy department of the University of California and brought back some actual skeletons for decoration. You'd expect a Texas Chainsaw Massacre family to do that, but not Uncle Walt. Hey, strive for reality, I guess. Cousin Walt to me. For real. Turns out I'm related to Walt. Who knew? The exoplanet OGLE-2005-BLG-390-LB was discovered in 2005 and is over five times the size of Earth. And I'm just gonna call it OGLE, even if it isn't the most wholesome name in the cosmos. OGLE lies beyond our system at an approximate distance of over 21,000 light years. It's also a gas giant, meaning it has levels of hydrogen or helium as part of its makeup. So there's no point in trying to land on it because you'd probably just fall straight through its cloudy surface. And it would be a freezing cold experience too. It's thought to be negative 364 degrees Fahrenheit. All the Gore-Tex in the world couldn't handle those temperatures. Otters hold hands while they sleep so they don't drift apart from each other. Tristan, hold my hand. Most science fair projects play it safe and come with the usual baking soda volcanoes, potato-powered clocks, maybe some invisible ink if somebody's feeling bold. But in 1997, 14-year-old Nathan Zahner went in a very different direction. His project warned classmates about a dangerous chemical called dihydrogen monoxide. He handed out a report listing legit sounding risks, sweating, bloating, metal corrosion, acid rain. All of it was true. And 43 out of 50 classmates voted to ban it. What they didn't realize, dihydrogen monoxide is just water. His actual project title, How Gullible Are We? was a perfect lesson on critical thinking. And yes, it won him first place. All right, time for something completely different. Imagine thinking you're dead and the body you're walking around in is kind of a zombie body with bits missing. This is Cotter's or walking corpse syndrome. It takes its name from Jules Cotter, the French neurologist who introduced the idea in the late 19th century. The delusion, which has been linked to extreme depression, is so powerful, it can convince you that you're not there. Thankfully, walking corpse syndrome only has 200 recorded cases as of 2024. Now, if you feel like you need to warm up after that last entry with Ogle there, then why not visit TOI-1431-B? Another exoplanet and gas giant, it's several hundred light years from our planet. With a sun-facing surface temperature of 4,892 degrees Fahrenheit, you wouldn't get so much as a tan as a melt into a bubbling pool of goo. That is hot enough to liquefy metal. And there's not much respite on the dark side of the planet either. Double the size of Jupiter, it gives a whole new meaning to the expression hot and heavy. A top fuel dragster could go from zero to 300 miles per hour before I finish reading the sentence. Venus might be about the same size as Earth, but well, that's where the resemblance ends. It's basically our evil twin. Surface temperatures hit 900 degrees Fahrenheit. The air pressure is 100 times higher than ours and the clouds, full of sulfuric acid. So if the crushing heat doesn't get you, the acid rain probably will. Oh, and then there are the winds. At the cloud tops, about 40 miles up, they tear around the planet at nearly 250 miles an hour, faster than the planet itself rotates. Earth's winds don't even come close. Venus, total overachiever in the worst way. And because language is just as weird as space, well, let's go there next. Mountaineers die trying to climb Mount Everest. That's the risk you take venturing into extreme conditions. With this stark fact comes the unnerving idea that we can't recover the bodies. Between 150 and 200 people are thought to be lost among the snowy peaks. This is out of a reported 330 intrepid explorers who met their end way up high. Did you know that a human being is actually buried on the surface of the moon? You see, this individual was Gene Shoemaker, widely seen as the father of astrogeology. So in other words, he's shown a light on the terrain of objects such as our moon. So who better to receive the honor of having a lunar burial? Though I should actually point out that it was his ashes that went into space, which, you know, it's much more practical. Shoemaker also has a comet named after him together with astronomer David Levy. This comet became unique in human history when the super rare sight of it colliding with Jupiter was observed by experts. While he sadly died in a car accident, Shoemaker's legacy is recognized through his final resting place. Elephants suck on their trunks like babies suck on their thumb. Have you ever been called out for saying something like deafening silence or jumbo shrimp? Someone probably couldn't wait to tell you that it's an oxymoron, two contradictory words mashed together. But here's the kicker. Oxymoron itself is an oxymoron. In Greek, oxy means sharp or smart and moron means, well, dull. So yeah, the word that describes a contradiction is a contradiction. Luckily, not all confusing words come from ancient Greek. Some just come from telecom engineers. Did you know mites can get on your eyes? Meet the Demodex mite. They're big fans of the face. However, you tend to notice them if they start irritating your eyelids. Hair follicles are susceptible to them, so the lashes are somewhere they call home. This can be tricky in large numbers, causing the skin condition Demodichosis. It's a freaky thing, but don't worry, it can be treated. If there's one place where you shouldn't lose your wedding band, space is definitely it. The Apollo 16 mission of 1972 threw up unexpected challenges for Ken Mattingly, who was pilot of the command module. His journey into space involved exciting stuff like landing on the moon and going for a spacewalk. This incredible experience may have been affected, however, by the fact that his wedding ring was missing. The wonders of the cosmos kind of pale into insignificance if you think your better half is gonna kick your butt when you get home. Mattingly's ordeal lasted until day nine of the mission when the ring was finally spotted floating out the door during the spacewalk. Charlie Duke, who'd been part of the iconic Apollo 11 crew, made a failed attempt to grab the ring and all seemed lost until the ring ricocheted off Mattingly's helmet. Duke managed to get a hold of it and hubby's bacon was saved. Every sea otter keeps a special rock in its pouch that it uses to break open clams and shellfish, and yet when I do it at a seafood restaurant, it's considered inappropriate. Fortunately, this next one isn't about acid rain or logic traps, it's the hashtag symbol, or at least that's what most people call it now. Technically, it's called an octothorpe. Octo refers to its eight points, but thorpe, well, that part's a mystery. Some say it comes from the old English word for village. Others think Bell Labs engineers just made it up to sound official. And you should know that before Twitter got a hold of it, it already had a full resume. It's been the pound sign, the number sign, even a chess move and a proofreading mark. Next up, something a bit more existential. When eating your own was more popular in society, the threat of Kuru was never far away. This neurological disease is transmitted via infected brain tissue through prions, basically harmful proteins. Kuru then attacks your nervous system, affecting your muscles and leading to mental degeneration. I never thought I'd feel so sorry for Dr. Lecter, but I guess I do. A star is born when gravity mixes with gas and dust to generate heat, leading to a super intense process known as fusion. Because our universe is chock full of stars, it's safe to say we live in the middle of a giant star factory. The Milky Way has impressive numbers when it comes to star production. However, it's actually a slacker compared to Cosmos AZTEC1, or I'm going to call it Aztec. Situated at 12.4 billion light years away from us, this starburst galaxy is believed to churn out 1,000 times the amount of stars. This is also a fairly young galaxy, or rather, we're looking into its past from far, far away. Aztec1 is actually an ancestor galaxy. Uncopyrightable is the only 15-letter word that can be spelled without repeating any letters. The sun has officially joined AARP. No, really, it's about halfway through its life, which makes it about 4.6 billion years old. In stellar terms, that's middle-aged. However, it's still got another 4.5 billion years to go before things get weird, like expanding into a red giant and eventually collapsing into a white dwarf about the size of Earth. When that happens, its mass will stay the same, but its volume will shrink big time. At that point, if there are any humans left, we'll probably need a new solar system or a really good SPF. Oddly enough, we're already spending millions to survive space, even without the whole exploding sun thing. Any climate change skeptics who are also arachnophobes may want to pay attention. A 2009 study observed that wolf spiders living in Greenland got larger when the snow melted earlier. It sounds like some sort of conspiracy theory, yet science says differently. How crazy is it that spiders live in the frozen Arctic anyway? It's nowhere safe from these eight-legged freaks. I like spiders. They're into insects. Spiders are, look at the one on YouTube with the adorable Lucas the spider. It's adorable. This list is all about terrifying, beautiful things and who we are as a species. Nothing captures this more than our belief in alien life forms. It's a mystery we may never solve. On one hand, it's a no-brainer. Of course there are aliens because of the sheer number of planets and exoplanets we've seen through telescopes over the centuries. On the other hand, the Earth could simply be a fluke. That said, it's entirely possible that life exclusively formed on this planet. We are increasingly discovering conditions that could potentially support life, such as on the Martian surface. You probably remember me talking about the so-called secret ocean on Pluto too. Now, if we find these aliens, we may become terrified if they have an Independence Day-style invasion planned. Or maybe we'll have a beautiful close encounters type experience. Whatever happens, there are obviously far more questions than answers at the present time. All the calculations required to land on the moon were done by hand because computers weren't powerful enough yet. A full NASA spacesuit costs about $12 million, and roughly 70% of that goes straight into the backpack. And it makes sense, because the backpack is in charge of managing an astronaut's body temperature. It provides oxygen, filters out carbon dioxide, and keeps them from dying in what is, let's just say, a very uncomfortable way. The rest of the suit handles pressure, radiation, and micrometeorite protection. In short, it's basically a miniature spaceship wrapped around a person. So yeah, when astronauts say suiting up is a process, they're not exaggerating. Of course, technology's come a long way, though some tools stuck around way longer than they should have. Those cute, squeaky dog toys, well, they're not as cute as they look. You see, they make that squeaky sound because a man's best friend likes the thing in his mouth to be noisy. I'm not talking about rubber cartoon characters. I'm talking about live prey that's screaming for its life. Our pet toys and their high-pitched sounds remind the animals of this. It helps the dog feel good for a totally morbid reason. This next section concerns the CMB, or Cosmic Microwave Background. Otherwise known as fossil radiation, it represents the earliest light that appeared when our reality was created. Everything got started as the result of the infamous Big Bang. So think of the CMB as the blue-touch paper being lit on the universe. How do you measure something like this? You do it by using anisotropic calculations. I'm sorry, come again? An anisotropic measurement is one where your surroundings are different in different directions. Basically, the opposite of being the same measurement in every direction. It all takes a fair amount of explaining. Luckily, we only need to worry about what these calculations mean. By studying the slight variations in the Cosmic Microwave Background, we're beginning to figure out the basics regarding how things evolved following the Big Bang. A ginormous subject and a complicated process for sure, but no one said the nature of the universe was a quick study. Honey is the only food that doesn't go bad. Under ideal conditions, it can last for thousands of years. Most people think of the guillotine as a brutal relic from the 1700s, but it stuck around way longer than you'd expect. France was still using it into the 1970s. In fact, the very last person to be executed by guillotine was Hamida Jandubi, a convicted murderer on September 10th, 1977. That's the same year Star Wars hit theaters. So while George Lucas was reinventing sci-fi on the big screen, France was still using a centuries-old execution device. Thankfully, Jandubi was the last person ever beheaded by legal execution in the Western world. Okay, let's pivot to something a little more unexpected and way more wholesome. Back in the early 70s, a young University of Washington psychology student named Ted would show up at the Suicide Hotline Crisis Center in Seattle. Was Ted, a good-hearted young man looking to help those in dire need? Doubtful, because he was none other than Ted Bundy, a notorious serial killer who went on to murder at least 36 people. A little earlier, I mentioned fog made of nitrogen on Pluto. Weather features such as fog and clouds are essentially water vapor, though you get a different kind of cloud altogether on Karat 7b. Another exoplanet that behaves in a weird, wild way, Karat 7b rains rocks instead of water. This happens because on this world, you have rock vapor rather than water vapor. As you can imagine, the temperatures here are extremely toasty, 4,220 degrees Fahrenheit to be precise. Interestingly, Karat 7b has a massive supply of oxygen due to all those rocks being vaporized in the inferno. Kangaroos can't jump backwards. Mike from List25, however, can. You know how some people talk in their sleep? Well, deaf people sign in theirs. I mean, it actually makes total sense when you think about it. Sign language is how they communicate all day long, so just like we use spoken words. And since we use language constantly, it's not that weird that the brain keeps doing its thing even after we nod off. Researchers first spotted this during a sleep study on a 71-year-old deaf man with REM sleep disorder. Once he hit deep sleep, he started signing fluently. And since the scientists could read it, they knew exactly what he was dreaming about. Cool. And it was just a little bit creepy. Our next fact rewrites what you probably learned about the printing press. A nuclear missile is a powerful thing, but like any object, it can go missing. It takes some talent, of course, but the problem is more widespread than you might think. It's thought as many as 51 nukes are currently unaccounted for. Some say approximately 100. Even if you dismiss that as a conspiracy theory, you can't deny this happens. When a nuclear weapon vanishes for whatever reason, it's referred to as a broken arrow. The USA reportedly has 32 of these, far less than 100 and a little less than 50, but still rather concerning. We know the sun is hotter than Florida asphalt, but what about surrounding regions? There's a spherical zone around that big blazing ball called the heliopause. This in turn forms the boundary for something known as the heliosphere. Instead of going around the sun, the heliosphere kind of encloses the whole solar system. Both contain magnetic fields and solar winds, which are charged particles flowing from the sun. So now you know what the helio is going on up there. Most people are under the impression that Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press, but that's not quite right. While the Gutenberg Bible was the first mass-produced printed book in Europe, it wasn't the first printed book in the world. It wasn't even the first to use movable type. Chinese and Korean inventors have been printing books with movable type centuries before Gutenberg was even born. Granted, Gutenberg made waves in Europe around 1455, but the very first printed book, that dates back to China in the year 868. Yeah, 868, I didn't miss a digit. It was called the Diamond Sutra, and it was printed from wood blocks nearly 600 years before Gutenberg even picked up a press. Now let's fast forward to 1815, when the earth decided to make some of its own history. Next time someone tells you to slow down, you might wanna speed up. You see, even a snail can be a predator of sorts. It's not that they're gonna crawl all over you and eat you or drown you in slime or anything like that, but freshwater snails are considered as dangerous as sharks due to the nasty infections they carry around. The parasitic condition, Schistosomiasis, causes fever, irritated skin, and bowel problems. It can be fatal, so swim away from the snails. Radio waves are invisible, yet they help us in all sorts of ways. For example, they can offer us protection. Strange as it sounds, radio waves are cocooning us, fending off things from outside like solar flares. We already have a magnetosphere, or a layer coming from the planet's magnetic field. All the low-frequency radio waves we've created complements that, acting as an additional space shield. When the Van Allen probes were launched back in 2012, they were able to observe to what extent these waves had affected the upper reaches of the planet. Yoda and Miss Piggy are both voiced by the same person, Frank Oz. That was the year that Mount Tambora on Sambala Island in Indonesia erupted so violently that it became the biggest volcanic eruption in recorded history. It lasted two full weeks, and the worst hit between April 10th and 11th. The eruption was four times more powerful than Krakatoa, and 52,000 times stronger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Trees were obliterated, the island was stripped bare, and ash rafts floated all the way to India. 92,000 people died, mostly from starvation. Global temperatures dropped, weather spiraled, and 1816 ended up in the history books as the year without a summer. Now, I know you've all been waiting for this one. Yeah, I'm finally getting to the Beach Boys, and that one song they probably wish didn't exist. Here's a particularly worrying fact. Over 250,000 deaths per year in America are due to medical error. As reported in 2017 by the National Library of Medicine, this makes them the third leading cause of death. Shocking stats indeed. It appears to be a big problem in the US compared to other countries with a functioning healthcare system. There is matter in our universe. Then there's dark matter. Well, at least theoretically. Scientists have been trying to get a glimpse of this powerful yet unseen force since the late 19th century. They haven't succeeded so far, though dark matter being visible may explain a few things there. How can they be sure it exists at all? A bullet cluster is one intergalactic feature that gives them hope. Studying these colliding space clusters up close seems to reveal a discrepancy whereby one type of matter is in a different position to the other. An overall view of the mass appears to indicate the presence of two types. Collectively, your nieces and nephews are known as niblings. Before it became one of the most infamous people in modern history, Charles Manson was just a guy trying to make it in the music business. In the summer of 1968, he managed to befriend Beach Boys drummer, Dennis Wilson, and for a little while, Manson was just hanging around trying to get his big break. At one point, Dennis got him some studio time in his brother Brian's recording space, but Manson didn't exactly crush it. Still, Dennis bought one of his songs anyway. It was called Cease to Exist. When the Beach Boys finally recorded it, they changed a bunch of the lyrics to fit their sound and released it under a new title, Never Learn Not to Love. Manson wasn't exactly thrilled about the changes and definitely not about the fact that they didn't credit him. So he mailed Dennis a single bullet. Years later, when Rolling Stone asked Wilson about the whole thing, his reply was short and final. As long as I live, I'll never talk about that. Fair enough. Serial killers and failed music careers aside, did you know your brain actually eats itself when you don't get enough sleep? You've probably heard that ancient people performed human sacrifices to honor their gods. Some of these unfortunate victims were children. Yet things get even scarier when you hear why they selected children. Take the Aztecs. Several hundred years or so back, they wanted to please Huitzilopochtli, the god of the sun and war. Little ones were slaughtered to appease drought. When the children cried, it was hoped their tears would summon water to the land. Yikes. Speaking of things colliding, check out this awesome Tadpole Galaxy. The Tadpole Galaxy was found 420 million light years away in the Draco constellation. Its weird shape is the result of being hit by a compact galaxy, which led to a 280,000 light year long tail stream. This distorted the appearance of a poor unsuspecting spiral galaxy, but on the bright side, it produced a true cosmic oddity. Hopefully I'm looking at it. If not, it's just me staring off at nothing. Greater Tokyo has more people than all of Canada. It's a real process called phagocytosis. Basically, certain cells in your body, including the brain, engulf and break down weaker or damaged cells. It sounds intense, but it's totally normal. Most of the time that job's handled by single-celled organisms like amoebas or by white blood cells when it's happening in your body. However, in the brain, this self-cleaning system is surprisingly active. Old or broken cells get cleared out so new healthier ones can take their place. But here's the catch. If you don't get enough sleep, that process speeds up and not in a helpful way. Without rest, your brain goes a little too hard on cleanup duty and can start breaking down the good stuff too. So sleep isn't just beauty rest. It's your brain keeping itself from going full zombie. The next spot on today's list is about three legends and one surprising timeline. In 2016, a Danish arsonist made headlines. Not because he'd set fire to something, though of course he did do that. No, he managed to attract greater attention for what he did after the blaze. This individual felt the need to take care of business. He was then caught thanks to some vital evidence left at the scene. If the idea of a sexually aroused fire freak sounds scary, then brace yourself. It's a documented phenomenon that some arsonists treat it as a sex thing. I know the Danish enjoy making bacon, but this takes it to a whole new level. Gamma rays are powerful things, as anyone who's watched The Hulk should know. In real life, however, gamma rays are producing bigger surprises than giant green men with a colossal trouser budget. In 2023, the Hess Observatory noted the highest energy gamma rays on record from their location in Namibia. These emanated from a pulsar, or the remains of a dead star. The rays were measured at an extraordinary 10 trillion times the energy produced by regular light. No amount of concrete walls could protect us from that. Cows have best friends. You're my best friend, Tristan, and I'm not a cow. I have another best friend. It's incredible to think that three of the most influential minds in human history may have been alive at the same time. I'm talking about Confucius, Socrates, and Buddha. Now, historians aren't totally sure. I mean, this was a long time ago, but the dates line up surprisingly well. Buddha is believed to have died around 483 BCE. Confucius followed just a few years later in 479, and Socrates, well, he was born in 469 BCE. So that's 14 years where all three could have been breathing the same planet's air. Sure, they lived on opposite sides of the world, but still, the idea that tiny baby Socrates was crawling around while the other two were finishing their legacies is 100% amazing. Now, bringing us to the end of today's list, did you know researchers actually found something at the bottom of Loch Ness? You've heard about acid rain, but what about acid seas? That's the scary consequence of the high amount of carbon dioxide produced by humanity. When the CO2 mixes with the water, it results in hydrogen ions, basically atoms or molecules with an electric charge. This leads to the ocean becoming acidic to the extent that it can damage marine skeletons and generally harm many organisms. I mean, it's acid. Of course it's gonna be harmful. A white dwarf star named JO9276335, God, they've gotta get better at naming things, has been awarded the title of fastest star on record after blazing a trail in 2023. This stellar core, formed after its surrounding mass was essentially burnt out, moves at a rate of 1,420 miles per second. Known as a hypervelocity star, and with good reason, it was shot out into the universe following a Type Ia supernova. MASH, the hit TV series set during the Korean War, lasted longer than the actual Korean War. And no, sadly, it wasn't Nessie. It was golf balls, thousands of them. In 2009, researchers did a deep scan of Loch Ness, hoping to find something that might prove the legendary monster real. But instead of ancient creatures or mysterious shadows, they found over 100,000 golf balls sitting at the bottom of the lake. Apparently the area around Loch Ness is home to several golf courses. And for years, people have been taking off straight into the water for fun. So while the legend of Nessie still lives on, she's currently buried under a mountain of bad drives and mulligans. To this day, I am terrified of Freddy Krueger, and it doesn't help that Nightmare on Elm Street was based on a harrowing true story. Director Wes Craven was inspired after reading grim reports about a young Cambodian child who died in their sleep. That child and his family had been through hell in their home country during the 70s under the rule of the brutal Khmer Rouge. Whatever the child had been dreaming of, it was incredibly traumatic. Craven then took this terrible idea and turned it into a horror fantasy. A weird passerby in a fedora Craven had seen as a kid was the model for Krueger's look. If you click on the first lowercase link in a Wikipedia article and keep repeating that, you will eventually get to the Philosophy article 94.52% of the time. This last fact is easily the scariest. In order for sound to travel, there needs to be air vibrations. Imagine you're out in space and you need to scream. Well, I'm sorry to say that no one will hear you. Actually, that sounds a little familiar from a certain sci-fi horror movie, doesn't it? You know what? Okay, how about in space, no one can hear you belch? Space has no air, and because of this vacuum, it's impossible for sound to be picked up, which I guess in the case of belching is actually a blessing? Australia once lost a war fighting against emus. It was actually called the Great Emu War. What are your favorite facts? Tell us below.