Facts that sound false but are true — Page 14
Our highest surprise rating: the facts people most often refuse to believe until they read the explanation. Every one of them is documented.
1017 facts
A Maya royal tomb has been discovered in Belize that may belong to the founder of Caracol.
Archaeologists found a Maya royal tomb in Belize that may belong to the king who founded the city of Caracol. The…
The first evidence of an unknown funerary ritual 4,000 years old has been discovered in Sudan.
Archaeologists found traces of a funerary banquet in northeastern Sudan associated with the ancient Kingdom of Kerma…
A fungus that turns spiders into zombies has been discovered.
A new species of fungus was discovered in 2025 and infects spiders, controlling their behaviour before killing them…
Traces of iron-60 have been found in Antarctic ice.
Iron-60 is a radioactive isotope produced in supernovae that does not occur naturally on Earth. In 2025, scientists…
MIT engineers have created a chip that uses heat to perform calculations.
MIT engineers developed silicon microstructures that perform matrix multiplications using only heat flow, without…
Tridymite, a rare mineral, has been found in Gale Crater on Mars.
Tridymite is a silica mineral that forms under conditions of high temperature and low pressure. Its presence in Gale…
Comet 3I/Atlas originates from outside the Solar System.
Comet 3I/Atlas, discovered on 1 July 2025, is the third known interstellar object to cross the Solar System. Its…
The world's first telephone with built-in microphone and earpiece was invented by a Portuguese man.
Cristiano Bramão, a Portuguese telegraph operator, developed in 1878 a desk telephone that integrated the microphone…
The Antikythera mechanism may have been just a very elaborate toy.
A 2025 study concluded that the gear configuration of the Antikythera mechanism does not work correctly…
Self-learning mechanical circuits have been invented without electronics.
Stanford researchers created self-powered mechanical circuits that learn and adapt to their environment. The system…
Wild chimpanzees were filmed using plants as medicine to treat wounds.
In 2025, researchers filmed wild chimpanzees in Uganda applying crushed insects and plants to open wounds. The…
A new species of lanternshark has been discovered off Western Australia.
CSIRO researchers described the West Australian lanternshark, a small bioluminescent species that lives at depths…
The Harbin skull found in China belongs to an unknown human species.
In 2025, a team of researchers confirmed that the Harbin skull, at least 146,000 years old, belongs to a Denisovan…
The world's smallest tattoo has been made on a tardigrade.
In 2025, researchers used electron beams to engrave dots on a thin layer of ice covering a tardigrade's body. The…
The secret to a perfect cacio e pepe sauce lies in starch physics.
A team of Italian physicists won an Ig Nobel Prize in 2025 for studying the science of cacio e pepe sauce. They found…
A landscape with ancient valleys and rivers has been discovered hidden beneath Antarctic ice.
A team from Durham University identified a landscape of 32,000 square kilometres beneath the East Antarctic ice, with…
The city of Peñico in Peru was built by the Inca civilisation.
Peruvian archaeologist Ruth Shady discovered in 2025 the city of Peñico, 3,800 years old, built by the Caral…
An unknown green photoprotein has been discovered in a marine organism.
Researchers identified a set of natural green photoproteins in the marine organism Velamen parallelum. These…
A distant star that exploded twice has been detected.
In August 2025, the LIGO and Virgo detectors registered a gravitational wave signal suggesting a star exploding…
NASA s Perseverance rover found organic compounds in Martian rocks.
In 2025, NASA s Perseverance rover identified organic compounds and structures in Martian rocks that suggest the…
The first functional niobium-based battery has been created in Brazil.
Researchers at USP developed the first functional battery based on niobium, a metal abundant in Brazil. The battery…
A new species of blue octopus the size of a golf ball has been discovered in the Galápagos.
The new species, named Microeledone galapagensis, was found at a depth of 1,768 metres near Darwin Island. The…
The nerves of the clitoris have been mapped in 3D for the first time.
Researchers at the University of Amsterdam used X-ray imaging to create a three-dimensional map of the clitoral…
The first single-cell epigenetic map of the entire human body has been published.
An international team led by the Salk Institute published in the journal Science the first single-cell epigenetic map…