71. Rare Find
In 1986, Romanian sewer workers accidentally discovered a cave which had been sealed for 5.5 million years. Movile Cave is filled with exotic and evolutionarily distinct creatures, including albino crabs and worms that feed off of sulfur-producing bacteria. In fact, to this day, less than 100 people have ever set foot in Movile Cave.
In case you're wondering, that's similar to the number of people who have walked on the moon.
72. A Chance Golden Ticket
Peter Ostrum starred as Charlie Bucket in the 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. This would be the 13-year-old’s film debut. It would also turn out to be his last and only film role, as Ostrum decided against a full-time acting career. Instead, he became a veterinarian.
73. One Deep Fact
Did you know that New York City has an underground network of tubes? No, we’re not talking about the subway—until 1953, NYC had a pneumatic tube mail network that spanned 27 miles and connected 23 post offices. At its peak, the system moved 95,000 letters a day at speeds of 30-35 miles per hour.
74. I Think, Therefore I Am Not
A group of people known as “metaphysical solipsists” believe that nothing actually exists except for their own brains. Try dropping that fact at a dinner party!
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75. Thicker Than Water
Coconut water—the liquid found inside coconuts, not to be confused with coconut milk, which is made of ground-up coconut flesh—is sterile, and has some other interesting properties. It contains electrolytes, making it ideal to rehydrate after a workout. But there are stories that suggest coconut milk might be far more magical than we even know.
Reportedly, some doctors used coconut milk during blood transfusions in wartime, such as during World War II, because it’s chemically similar to blood plasma. Other doctors are understandably dubious, but there is a story about a patient in the Solomon Islands being successfully given a direct transfusion of coconut water.
76. Where Am I?
There is a New York, Texas, as well as a Texas, New York. Technically speaking, that means that at any given moment, you could tell a friend that you’re in either Texas or New York, and they would have no idea where you actually were. I guess someone didn’t think that through before naming these places...
77. Below the Waist
“Pants” was considered a dirty word in Victorian England, and still means "underwear" there today.
78. Sacred Custom
Despite the two-term limit for any president of the United States seeming like a firm law since the country's founding, for a long time it was just a tradition. The nation decided to make the limit mandatory only after Franklin Delano Roosevelt broke from tradition and served four terms.
79. A Chance Encounter Twice in a Lifetime
The brightly lit Halley’s Comet is only visible to the people of Earth about every 76 years. In fact, the comet appeared in the year Mark Twain was born in (1835) and the year he passed away (1910).
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80. High and Low
Singapore has the world’s highest percentage of millionaires, with one out of every six households having at least $1,000,000 US in disposable wealth.
81. Time on Our Hands
Leading 20th-century philosopher Bertrand Russell introduced the world to the “Five Minute Hypothesis”—the idea that it is impossible to actually prove that the world is more than a mere five minutes old, since there’s no way of knowing that all of our memories weren’t just planted there artificially by some alien or other force.
Thanks, Bertrand. It's not like I wanted to sleep tonight anyway.
82. Accolades for Love
The Polish government awards a “Medal for Long Marital Life” (Medal Za Długoletnie Pożycie Małżeńskie in Polish) to couples who have been married longer than 50 years.
83. Opposites Attract
Many different species have bizarre mating rituals, but few rival the case of the billy goat. When a male billy goat wants to impress a female, instead of dressing up in a suit and buying flowers, he urinates on his own head. Apparently, the smell drives the female goats wild. To each their own, I guess!
84. Good Luck
Each year, more than 1.5 million Euros are thrown into Rome’s famed Trevi fountain by tourists. The money is used to subsidize a supermarket for the needy, so at least some wishes are coming true.
85. Unfortunate Inspiration
During a trip to New York City, Samuel Morse received a letter that warned of his wife’s illness. Morse left for home, but arrived to find his wife already buried. Heartbroken that he had been unaware of his wife’s illness and death for days, he developed an interest into communication technology so that no one would feel what he felt.
Eventually, this lead to his research and patent of the telegraph, a way to transmit information across long distances instantaneously.
86. Noble Sacrifice
Larry Lemieux, a Canadian sailor at the 1988 Olympics, was about to win a silver medal when he abandoned the race to save two other competitors who had capsized. Lemieux lost out on his chances at an Olympic medal but was awarded the Pierre de Coubertin Medal for sportsmanship.
87. Stinky Bowls
Many gourmet cooking techniques can seem like they’re total bunk—rinsing a Martini glass with too little Vermouth to possibly taste in order to make a dry martini, for example. The biggest prank played on foodies was by a writer for the Saturday Evening Post in 1936. George Rector published a recipe for green salad in the French style. It was a complete prank:
The recipe called for a leafy salad served without dressing in a bowl that had been rubbed with garlic and then never washed. The myth lasted until the 1960s, when people figured out that the salads they were eating out of musty, stinky unwashed salad bowls were far grosser than those smothered in ranch dressing.
New Hampshire Bowl and Board
88. Random Facts of a Lifetime
In 1963, San Francisco Giants Manager Alvin Dark joked, “they’ll put a man on the moon before [Giants pitcher] Gaylord Perry hits a home run.” On July 20, 1969, less than an hour after Neil Armstrong’s historic moonwalk, Perry hit the first home run of his career.
89. Bogged Down
A "Bog Body" is a human cadaver that has been preserved by a bog. This natural preservation can be insanely effective. In 1952, researchers discovered a man who had live around 300 BCE that was so well-preserved that they could determine his cause of death: His throat had been slit.
90. Didn’t Understand the Food Chain
From 1958-1962, Chairman Mao Zedong of China launched the “Four Pests Campaign,” which would exterminate rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows. What they didn’t realize was that sparrows ate a large number of insects. Without the sparrows to eat them, locust populations grew, and helped to create an ecological imbalance that exacerbated the Great Chinese Famine.
This famine then resulted in 15-30 million deaths. That's right, when Chairman Mao ordered the extermination of sparrows, he accidentally sentenced 15 million citizens to death, all because he didn't realize that sparrows were mission critical for pest control.
91. Ah, Those Awkward Teenage Years
It was the 1970s, and Mattel decided they needed to really amp up Barbies. They ended up releasing the "Growing Up Skipper" doll, which was supposed to depict Skipper on the verge of adolescence. Naturally, then, when you turned Skipper's arm, her boobs grew. What can I say, no one made it out of the 70s with their dignity intact—not even plastic dolls.
Confessions of a Doll Collector
92. Alternate Universe
Orion Pictures originally proposed OJ Simpson to play the Terminator before the part went to Arnold Schwarzenegger. However, he was passed over for the role because he was “likable, goofy, kind of innocent”— this was of course before he was accused of his wife’s murder. Perhaps now he’d be considered ruthless enough to play the role?
93. Talk About Bad Luck
Japanese engineer Tsutsomo Yamaguchi happened to be in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the time of their respective atomic bombings during World War II. Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on business, when American forces dropped the Little Boy atomic bomb on the city center. He sustained burns, temporary blindness, and ruptured eardrums in the blast.
Afterward, he returned to his hometown of Nagasaki, only to be witness to the dropping of the Fat Man atomic bomb. Yamaguchi is the only person recognized by the government of Japan to have survived both atomic attacks.
94. Hydrogen Is Flammable
The Hindenburg disaster marked the end of the airship era, killing 35 passengers, and one member of the ground crew. The airship caught fire because of a spark that ignited leaking hydrogen. As the Germans discovered, hydrogen is an extremely flammable and dangerous substance, and using it to fill airships perhaps wasn’t the smartest idea.
95. How Apt
The three main characters of the Harry Potter films were perfectly cast, even better than the casting directors knew: Before the filming of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, director Alfonso Cuarón had Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson write essays about their characters. The results were telling:
Watson turned in a 16-page essay, Radcliffe gave a single page, and Grint forgot to turn his in.
96. Mani/Pedi Takes on a New Meaning
A Memphis resident was given steroids for an allergic attack in 2009. Over the next three years, her body suffered one of the strangest allergic reactions in medical history. On the surfaces of her body which would normally grow hair, she started to grow nails, due to a change in the number of skin cells that were produced.
She is the only person of record to suffer from this rare disorder.
97. Indestructible
A 19th-century railroad worker named Phineas Gage had an iron rod rammed through his head—and survived. In one of the most bizarre medical anomalies in history, Gage lived another 12 full years despite having had his brain’s left frontal lobe mostly destroyed in the accident. His story does have another interesting twist to it, though.
Though he was technically still alive, his friends said that his behavior was virtually unrecognizable from this point on, describing him as “no longer Gage,” and claiming he was violent and moody. Nonetheless, researchers have since argued that these claims were exaggerated, and that the personality changes, though present, were not as remarkable as they've been made out to be.
His case has since been very popular for psychologists and neurologists to study, for obvious reasons. After examining his remains, scientists believe that the personality changes were not caused solely by the damage to his frontal lobe. Instead, modern researchers believe that Gage also damaged the white matter in his brain, which connects different parts of the neural system.
With this discovery, scientists posit that our personality is not located in just one part of our brain, but is more about how different parts of our mind interact with one another.
98. Victory After Death
In 1923, jockey Frank Hayes suffered a fatal heart attack in the midst of a race at Belmont Park in New York. His horse, named Sweet Kiss, finished first and won the race with his lifeless body still atop. Hayes became the first, and thus far, the only jockey to win a race after death. Hayes was only 35 at the time. The horse never raced again, having acquired the nickname “Sweet Kiss of Death” for the remainder of her life.
99. Some Like It Hot
Alcatraz used to be the only prison where the inmates got to take hot showers. This seems nice, but in fact, they didn't want potential escapees to get used to the cold water in case they tried to swim to shore.
100. Is This a Dagger I See Before Me?
When King Tut’s tomb was unearthed, researchers found an iron dagger that was still remarkably sharp thousands of years later. Having a sharp dagger is not strange in itself, but the dagger’s origin is quite mysterious. Scientists have tested the metal and determined it came from a meteorite, and the ancient Egyptians most likely didn’t have the technology to craft a weapon from meteorite debris.
As a result, it either came from another more advanced civilization or, as some are convinced, it might have been left behind by aliens.
Looking for more facts like this? We made a special list with all of our most fun facts together.
Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, , 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93
