Facts that sound false but are true — Page 25
Our highest surprise rating: the facts people most often refuse to believe until they read the explanation. Every one of them is documented.
627 facts
There is a giant cloud of alcohol in space, specifically ethyl alcohol, near the center of the Milky Way.
Astronomers have detected a massive molecular cloud in the Sagittarius B2 region, near the center of our galaxy. This…
The Son Doong cave in Vietnam is so large it has its own weather system.
Its volume is so immense that the air inside cools and condenses, creating underground clouds and localized rain. It…
The eruption of the Krakatoa volcano in eighteen eighty-three produced the loudest sound ever recorded.
The explosion was heard nearly five thousand kilometers away and the shockwave circled the globe multiple times. It…
There is enough gold in the Earth's core to coat the surface of the planet.
Heavy and siderophile elements sank to the center during Earth's formation. It is estimated there is enough gold down…
Nintendo was founded when the Ottoman Empire still existed.
Nintendo was founded in eighteen eighty-nine as a playing card company. The Ottoman Empire was only officially…
The password for US nuclear silos was eight zeros for twenty years.
To ensure rapid launch, the code for all bases was set to 00000000 from 1962 until the mid-eighties, against the…
The oldest known writing comes from Mesopotamia and is five thousand years old.
The Sumerians developed cuneiform writing around 3400 BC to record commercial transactions and administer cities.
We know the surface of Mars better than the ocean floor.
Only about twenty percent of the ocean floor has been mapped in detail, while the entire surface of Mars has been…
Light takes eight minutes to reach Earth from the Sun.
Traveling at about three hundred thousand kilometers per second, light covers the one hundred and fifty million…
Human skin completely regenerates every month.
The human body produces about three hundred and forty thousand new skin cells every minute, completely replacing the…
The pressure at the bottom of the Mariana Trench is one thousand times greater than at the surface.
At a depth of about eleven thousand meters, the pressure reaches over one thousand atmospheres, equivalent to having…
Liquid helium can climb up the walls of its container.
At temperatures near absolute zero, helium becomes a superfluid, losing all viscosity and managing to escape from…
Albert Einstein was offered the presidency of Israel.
In 1952, the Israeli government invited the physicist to assume the country's presidency, but he politely declined…
The first person killed by a robot was in 1979.
Robert Williams, a Ford factory worker, was struck by a one-ton robotic arm in a Michigan plant, becoming the first…
Peanuts are one of the ingredients used in the manufacture of dynamite.
Peanut oil can be processed to produce glycerol, which in turn is converted into nitroglycerin, the explosive…
Rainwater contains small amounts of vitamin B12.
Bacteria present in the atmosphere and soil produce this vitamin, which is then swept into clouds and falls with…
Blue eyes do not contain blue pigment.
The colour results from the Tyndall Effect, the same scattering of light that makes the sky blue. The lack of melanin…
On Pluto, it snows methane on the highest mountains.
The dwarf planet's thin atmosphere contains methane that freezes and falls as snow in elevated regions, creating a…
A large part of the Apollo missions code was written by women.
Teams of female programmers at MIT, led by Margaret Hamilton, developed the flight software that allowed the…
The mantis shrimp has sixteen colour receptors in its eyes.
While humans only have three, this crustacean possesses sixteen, allowing it to see polarised and ultraviolet colours…
The Great Emu War was a real military operation in Australia.
In nineteen thirty-two, the Australian army sent soldiers armed with machine guns to control the emu population that…
A woodpecker's tongue wraps around its brain to protect it.
The tongue is extremely long and forks, wrapping around the skull and acting as a seatbelt and shock absorber to…
Sleep deprivation causes the brain to start consuming itself.
Chronic lack of sleep causes glial cells to go into overdrive, starting to devour unnecessary synapses and neural…
Heroin was originally marketed as a children's cough syrup.
In the late nineteenth century, the pharmaceutical company Bayer sold the drug as a non-addictive cough suppressant…
