50 more incredible facts to make you seem cultured
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So, you want to impress your pals? Have the air of someone who is well-traveled, well-read, and would be great in a pub quiz? Well, you’re in the right place. A great way to seem more cultured is to show off your varied knowledge at every chance.
We’re here to help you boost your internal encyclopedia. Here’s a collection of incredible facts to help you out in any social situation. Fascinate your friends with these wild food finds, surprise them with your knowledge of scientific discoveries, and hand out some historical highlights.
Once you’ve memorized these 50 weird and wonderful nuggets, you’ll be sounding oh-so-cultured and saying “well, actually”, and “did you know?” non-stop. Be gone, awkward silences! Thank us later.
Category 1: Food
Bananas are radioactive. But the levels are so low you’d need to eat 10 million at once for the radiation to kill you.
The country that eats the most ice cream per person is New Zealand — over 28 liters per person each year, apparently! Pass the spoon.
The most stolen food in the world is cheese.
Around 60 gallons (272 liters) of water are needed to grow a single avocado.
Carrots were originally white. Around 5,000 years ago, Europeans started to selectively breed carrot plants to grow with purple, yellow, and the iconic orange roots that we love today.
In Japan, it’s become popular to celebrate Christmas with a KFC fried chicken bucket for dinner.
Thanks to their genes, one in five people say that coriander (or cilantro, for my friends across the Atlantic), tastes like soap.
Some figs eat wasps. Seriously — to pollinate the fruit, a female wasp will crawl inside, where it dies and gets completely digested by the plant.
A bunch of bananas is called a “hand”, and each individual one is known as a “finger”.
Category 2: Travel
The world’s tallest mountain isn’t Mount Everest. Technically the title goes to Mauna Kea in Hawaii, which is taller than the Himalayan giant when measured from base to peak — it’s just that the bottom few thousand meters are below sea level.
In Monaco, there are more mobile phones than people in the entire country.
Italy has an annual food fight. Each year, over 900 tons of oranges are thrown in the city of Ivrea, during the Battle of Oranges.
The longest commercial flight in the world is between Singapore and New York, and averages 18 hours and 40 minutes.
The shortest commercial flight takes less than two minutes, and connects two of Scotland’s Orkney Islands.
The country with the tallest average height is the Netherlands, and the shortest is Timor-Leste.
In Ethiopia, it is currently 2017. The country’s calendar is around 7 years behind the Gregorian calendar, which is used by much of the rest of the world.
The painting of the Mona Lisa in Paris receives so much fan mail that the Louvre gave it its own mailbox. Send your own love letter to: Musée du Louvre, Service des publics, A l’attention de Mona Lisa, 75058 Paris Cedex 01, France
Category 3: Nature
By shutting down only one half of their brain at a time when they rest, dolphins sleep with one eye open.
Scientists have found species of fungi in the Ecuadorean jungle that can literally eat plastic.
The sun has a heartbeat. With the right equipment, we can now hear the pulsing solar sounds produced by the sun’s pressure waves.
Hippos can’t swim. They’re too dense and heavy. Instead, they sink and run along the bottom of a waterbody.
In the 1940s, wildlife managers in Idaho relocated beavers by parachuting them into remote parts of the state using parachutes left over from World War II. They all survived their aerial descent.
A single teaspoon of healthy soil can contain more living creatures than people on the whole planet. Think: several billion bacteria and kilometers of fungi.
Octopuses have not one, but three hearts.
In the eastern Pacific Ocean, a new species of shark was recently discovered that glows in the dark. Can this bioluminescent sea dog get cooler? Yes – they named it the ninja lanternshark.
Category 4: Culture and history
There are over 7,000 languages spoken in the world today.
The oldest painting in the world is over 51,200 years old. It depicts three humans and a pig, and is hidden in a cave in Indonesia.
In Roman times, rich women would buy the sweat of their favorite gladiator to use as perfume or moisturizer. We’re all relieved that science and social norms have moved on.
The biggest wave ever surfed was 93.73 feet (over 28 meters) tall, by Sebastian Steudtner, off the coast of Portugal.
In the 16th century, the Aztecs believed cacao was a gift from the gods, and they used cacao beans as currency.
Coca-cola is older than the Eiffel Tower.
The biggest arts festival in the world is the annual Edinburgh Fringe Festival, which packs in over 50,000 performances — from comedy to circus acts — over 25 days.
People in the United States spend more time reading (357 hours per year) than any other country.
Category 5: Us
Men in India have the smallest average shoe size in the world, while Germany and Austria have the largest.
Identical twins share the same DNA but still have unique fingerprints.
We also all have a unique tongue print.
Your brain burns around 400-500 calories each day. It consumes slightly more when you’re concentrating and less when you’re sleeping.
We shed over 30,000 dead skin cells every minute.
When you blush, it’s not just your cheeks that turn red. Blood also rushes to your stomach lining.
Stomach acid is so strong it can dissolve metal. Don’t put this to the test, though.
Over the course of a lifetime, your body will make enough saliva to fill a small swimming pool.
Your skin cells die and are replaced regularly — you’ll likely have a thousand new skins before you die.
Category 6: Technology
In the ‘90s, the CIA created a robot fish. We don’t know what it was used for (that’s still classified), but we do know that they named it Charlie.
There are jellyfish astronauts. In 1991, NASA sent moon jellyfish (yes, really) into space to learn more about how human babies might handle being born in space’s microgravity. Not well, by the way.
Over a billion people use TikTok every month worldwide.
On average, a ChatGPT search needs ten times as much energy as a standard Google search.
The microwave oven was invented by an American engineer who noticed that his chocolate bar had accidentally been melted by a radar he was working on.
The first-ever computer ‘bug’ wasn’t a software glitch, it was an actual moth that got caught in the machine at Harvard University.
The world’s first computer programmer was a woman. English mathematician, Ada Lovelace, wrote the first algorithm intended to be processed by a machine in 1843. The programming language Ada was named after her.
Instead of “Hello,” Alexander Graham Bell thought that the right way to answer the telephone (after he invented it in 1876) should be “Ahoy.” Ain’t that fun?
Commit these 50 facts to memory and you'll be armed with some fantastic fodder for your next conversation!
Sources
Category 1 (Food): Forbes, Newswire, LiveScience, BBC, pmg, Science Focus, San Diego Zoo, World Population Review
Category 2 (Travel): Aviation Week, Science Focus, World Population Review, DataReportal, Amazing Museums, Deccan Herald, CNN
Category 3 (Nature): Smithsonian Magazine, NASA, WDC, Yale Alumni Magazine, Boise State Public Radio, NHM, BBC, Forbes, Discover Wildlife
Category 4 (Culture & History): BBC, BBC, NYTimes, Ethnologue, Wikipedia, Redbull, History Extra, History, World Population Review
Category 5 (Humans): World Population Review, Science, PubMed Central, Skin Cancer Foundation, Associates MD, Healthline, Independent, IFLScience, NIH
Category 6 (Tech): Backlinko, National Space Centre, CIA, CHM, Britannica, Science Museum, MIT Technology Review