Trivia!

[Sojourner]

I thought I'd create a thread devoted to posting fun and interesting (if useless) facts. Feel free to contribute.


John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died July 4, 1826, just hours apart.

The oldest person ever to have lived (whose age could be authenticated), was a French woman named Jeanne Louise Calment, who was 122 years old when she died in 1997.

The oldest-known living land animal is a tortoise named Jonathan, who turned 191 or 192 in 2024.  He was hatched in 1832 and has lived on the island of St. Helena in the Atlantic Ocean since 1882. His many visitors include several members of the UK's royal family.

The original name for the search engine Google was Backrub. It was renamed Google after the googol, which is the number one followed by 100 zeros.

The sandwich was invented by the Earl of Sandwich, John Montagu, who lived in the 1700s. In order to avoid leaving his extended poker games, he had meat place between slices of bread brought to him.

The first college football game was played on November 6, 1869, between Rutgers and Princeton (then known as the College of New Jersey) in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Rutgers won.

The Four Corners is the only spot in the US where you can stand in four states at once: Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico.

Driving from Detroit, Michigan into Canada, you actually travel south.

Wombats are the only animal whose poop is cube-shaped. This is due to how its intestines form the feces. The animals then stack the cubes to mark their territory.

The adult Blue Whale, which weighs up to 200 tons, has a tongue as big as an elephant and blood vessels large enough for a person to swim through.

The platypus doesn't have a stomach at all. Their esophagus goes straight to their intestines.

Polar bears have black skin. Their fur hairs are transparent, only appearing white as they reflect light.

A tiger's skin is actually striped, just like their fur. And like fingerprints, no two patterns are identical.

[Sojourner]

Flamingos are only pink because of chemicals called carotenoids in the algae and algae-eating fish they consume.  They're born with grayish-white feathers.

Because of the diseases they carry, mosquitoes kill more people every year than any other creature.

Miss Piggy and Yoda have something in common: both were voiced by puppeteer, Frank Oz.

The green code in "The Matrix" was actually created from symbols in the code designer’s wife’s sushi cookbook.

The human heart pumps more than 2,000 gallons of blood a day and beats more than 2.5 billion times in a 70-year life span.

If all of an adult human’s blood vessels were laid out end to end, they would stretch out about 100,000 miles, and could encircle the earth four times.

According to recent research, the human nose can distinguish at least a trillion different odors.

The longest fingernails ever measured over 42 feet long.

Until the mid-1800's the tomato was believed to be poisonous.

[Sojourner]

German chocolate cake didn't originate in Germany. It was named for Sam German, who created a mild type of dark chocolate for the Baker’s Chocolate Company in 1852.

Pound cake got its name because the original recipe required a pound each of butter, flour, sugar and eggs.

The biggest pizza ever created was 13,580 square feet, made in Rome, Italy, in 2012.

The tallest building in the world is the Burg Khalifa in Dubai, standing at over 2,700 feet, which is just over half a mile high.

It takes longer for Venus' to rotate on its axis once than the year it takes the earth to revolve around the sun. 

[Sojourner]

While we seem to be stationary, at any given moment, we're all zipping around the sun at over 67,000 miles per hour.

"Freelancers" originally referred to sword-wielding mercenaries who hired out their skills.

Guinness World Records was founded by the managing director of the former Guinness Brewery in the 1950s.

You can still stay at the world’s oldest hotel, Nishiyama Onsen Keiunkan in Japan, which was founded in 705 AD.

The longest place name in the world is: Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu, New Zealand. Locals just call it Taumata Hill.

The coldest temperature ever recorded on earth occurred in Antarctica: -144 Fahrenheit, as reported by researchers in a scientific journal in 2018.

The hottest temperature ever recorded occurred in Furnace Creek, Death Valley, California, at 134 degrees Fahrenheit on July 10, 1913.

 Each year, 16 million thunderstorms happen around the world, and at any given moment, there are about 2,000 thunderstorms in progress.

A bolt of lightning is hotter than the surface of the sun.

Sweden has 267,570 islands, the most of any country in the world.

the highest point on Earth is Mt Everest at 29,000 feet. The deepest point is the Mariana Trench at 36,000 ft.

Over 200 dead bodies of climbers remain on Mt. Everest because it’s so difficult to bring them down.

Fred Bauer, the man who designed the Pringles can, had some of his ashes buried in one.

[Sojourner]

Sliced bread was invented a year after the invention of TV.

If you keep a goldfish in a dark room, it will eventually turn white.

The Hawaiian alphabet only has 12 letters.

The world’s termites outweigh the world’s humans about 10 to 1.

Mr. Potato Head was the first toy to be advertised on TV.

Boanthropy is a psychological disorder in which a patient believes he is a cow.

Camels have three eyelids.

There is a McDonald's on every continent except Antarctica.

Mosquitoes are attracted to people who just ate bananas.

Children tend to grow faster in the spring.

Bullfrogs do not sleep.

A snail breathes through its foot.

Fish cough.

[Cloudwalker]

Roy Rogers house-trained Trigger so that the horse wouldn't dump while on the parade route.  He never told anyone how he did it.

[Sojourner]

While Mt Everest is the highest point on earth, it's not the tallest mountain. That honor goes to Hawaii's twin volcanoes Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea. Counting the underwater portion of the mountains, they measure over 33,464 feet -- making them over 6 miles high! 

[Sojourner]

The octopus is a very intelligent creature. They've been observed unscrewing the lid of a jar in order to get to the bait inside.

[Sojourner]

On March 27, 2021, Budimir Šobat of Croatia broke a world record by holding his breath for 24 minutes and 37 seconds. (I can barely do the 37 seconds).

[Sojourner]

The largest butterfly in the world is the Queen Alexandra's Birdwing, found in Papua, New Guinea, and has a wingspan of just over 12 inches.

[Sojourner]

Deaf people have been observed using sign language in their sleep while dreaming.