25 Random but Fascinating Trivia Facts That You Probably Didn’t Know — 2nd ed.
Light is frozen in time, children ask up to 300 questions a day, men are legitimately younger than women, large numbers of female genetic bloodlines are on course to become extinct, and much more
Everyone loves a little bit of trivia, here are 25 random facts that you probably didn’t know.
Every time any person goes to sleep, they always wake up in a completely different place. This is because the planet is constantly rotating on its axis and circling the sun, while the solar system is constantly circling the supermassive black hole at the centre of the galaxy, and the galaxy is constantly moving through space. That’s a lot of movement, if you include the fact that we are constantly moving through time it is literally impossible to ever wake up in the same place you went to sleep.
Because light has no mass and as such moves at the speed of light — also known as the speed of causality — it does not move through time. That’s because all of its energy is spent moving through space — that’s why it goes at the speed of causality a.k.a. the speed of light. That means light is always and forever frozen in time. This is how it’s possible to look through a telescope and see the past, because light is basically a photograph of a moment in time and it retains that photograph forever.
Studies have shown that if you do four hours of daily life movement a day, which includes things like cooking, gardening, washing, vacuuming et cetera, you can cut your risk of death from a heart attack or stroke by almost two-thirds. That means basic things like housework, walking to the shops, can massively increase your longevity. Though any type of activity will make the difference, as long as you get a total of four hours a day at the minimum.
Everybody knows that person who constantly asks questions all the time about everything. That person is nothing compared to young children, studies have found that children between the ages of 2 and 4 on average between those years ask upwards of 40,000 questions. Even more crazily, studies have shown that 4-year-olds can ask upwards of 300 questions a day. They ask so many questions that the majority of parents struggle to answer even half of them, with the most difficult question mothers typically report being asked being, “Why is water wet?”
Between the years 1800 and 1900, the United Kingdom saw one of the most explosive population booms in human history. They went from a population of 4 million people to one of 40 million — a 10-fold increase in just 100 years. The explosion was caused by advances in healthcare that stopped children dying in such large numbers, and led to the invention of contraception among other things. It also caused a period of the most extreme poverty in human history.
Minnie the Mouse is not Minnie’s real first name. Her name is Minerva, Minnie Mouse is her nickname and was given to her by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, but as they preferred her nickname her real name is rarely used.
The 11 April 1954 is one of the most famous days mainly because a computer search program found that it is the only day in modern history in which no significant occurrences took place anywhere in the world. Because of this, it has been called the most boring day in history.
Men are legitimately younger than women. A study from Stanford University run by Peter Underhill found that men are technically a lot younger than women. Basically, they did a genetic analysis of DNA samples from the Y chromosome of more than 1,000 men from 22 different geographic areas and they found the most recent common ancestor was a man who lived in Africa around 59,000 years ago. However, when they did the same with women they found that they had to go back 143,000 years to find a single common ancestor. The difference is believed to be down to the fact that historically all women would procreate but typically they would only do so with the men at the top. This has led to men being far less diverse genetically than women due to the fact that far fewer men procreate than women.
For the entirety of the history of this planet, for any species to survive, every female has had to start getting pregnant from the moment they were able and continue on a yearly basis for as long as they were able. Until now. Thanks to the healthcare revolution of the 19th and 20th centuries, humans have created a world where women no longer have to get pregnant on a yearly basis for the human race to survive. In fact, quite the opposite. We are so good at keeping children alive now we have to limit pregnancies. Because of this, not only are large numbers of women not getting pregnant on a yearly basis, large numbers are choosing to have no children at all. That means for the first time in the history of this planet a large number of female genetic bloodlines from a species will become extinct. This is normal amongst the males of all species, with countless male bloodlines constantly dying out, but unprecedented amongst females. Because it is so unprecedented, nobody has any idea what it will lead to. But one thing is certain, whatever the traits of the men and women who have children are, will define the men and women of tomorrow.
Rather crazily, the eyes of an ostrich are bigger than its brain. Its eyes are around the size of a billiard ball, and because they are so big and take up so much space in an ostriches’ skull, there is not much room left for the brain — which is typically only 6 centimetres by 4 centimetres in size, smaller than a billiard ball. The small size of ostriches' brains is believed to be why they’re so bad at evading predators, and why they so often tend to run in circles.
Japan is the vending machine capital of the world. According to the Japan Vending Machine Manufacturers Association, there are approximately 5.5 million vending machines in Japan, which equates to approximately 1 vending machine per every 23 people.
Swearing actually makes you stronger. Research from Keele University which tested grip strength found that those who uttered expletives saw their grip strength increase by 8 percent. Also, they were able to support their weight for 10 percent longer when pushing themselves up from a chair after swearing. There are two theories for why this happens, the first is swearing increases aggression which increases adrenaline which increases strength, the second is that using bad language makes people care less about socially correct behaviour, which makes them less worried about what people are thinking, which makes them focus more on what they are doing rather than partaking in socially correct behaviour.
Sugar truly can heal cuts, Native Americans and tribes in Africa have long used the technique but it was unknown if it was beneficial. British hospitals found that it was. That means if you suffer a cut or a wound of some sort, pouring granulated sugar on it and then putting a bandage on top truly can help the wound heal more quickly. This happens because sugar draws water away which starves bacteria of water and thus kills bacteria. Killing bacteria helps wounds to heal more quickly. It should be noted, that for this to work it needs to be done consistently, at least once a day, potentially more. A tip to help make the process more efficient is applying honey to the wound first, as this makes the sugar stick better.
Countless studies have shown that having a high IQ and being highly intellectually and/or emotionally intelligent increases the probability of mental health problems and on average typically lowers the chances of happiness. That means that the evidence says resoundingly that those of average and lower intelligence typically are happier than those of high intelligence — in all areas. Nobody really knows why this is though many argue it’s mainly because, firstly, high levels of intelligence often lead to alienation i.e. it’s harder to find a person on the same wavelength as you; but more importantly, high intelligence is more often than not related to underlying mental health conditions. So, it’s not the intelligence per se that leads to lower happiness, often it’s what created the intelligence in the first place along with the difficulty of finding people on the same wavelength.
Studies have found that hugging genuinely does lower stress, but mainly in women. Recent studies by scientists tested to see if there was any difference between how cuddling a loved one affected stress levels. They found that women who cuddled their partners saw their stress levels reduced, with lower cortisol levels — the stress hormone — amongst other stress indicators detected. The same was not seen in men. This is believed to be because women have evolved to seek out their male protector when in danger, and so have evolved to be rewarded when finding that protector. Because it was men’s job to face the danger they have not developed the same reward structure. So, cuddling really does lower stress in women but only if they cuddle someone they see as their protector, but in men, it does not have the same effect. At least physiologically.
A study published in the journal Proceedings Of The Royal Society B found that traits associated with attractiveness, such as a symmetrical face and bright eyes, were associated with having a better immune system. So, the reason we find attractive people attractive is that they genuinely are more healthy than those we deem less attractive. That means when we look at a person and rate them what we are judging them on is how strong their immune system is and how fit and healthy they are. The stronger the immune system and the more fit and healthy they are, the more likely we are to see them as attractive. That means all of us can read a person’s immune system simply through their appearance. However, it’s believed that men are better at this than women which is why men are more looks orientated when it comes to mate selection.
When puberty hits many things start happening, we start getting sexual feelings and gaining sexual function, we start getting hair in places we did not have, we cease listening to our parents, and naïvely start thinking we can live without them. Also, we start to stink. Yep, we will never be more smelly than during this period. Due to hormones flooding our transitioning body, our newly activating apocrine sweat glands release oils that mix with the bacteria on our skin and unleash that horrific smell that all parents will know. That means those going through puberty really do stink, both male and female, and in fact, a bad body odour is the first of puberty. It’s believed this is because it alerts adults that this child is beginning the transition to sexual maturity. That means puberty actually has a smell, and it is the worst one of all the smells we will unleash in our lives, but one of the most important ones. Fortunately, by the end of puberty, the odour stabilises.
If ever there was a tale that proves why cannibalism is bad, it is the tale of the Fore people of Papua New Guinea in the 1950s. This Oceanic tribe was hit by an epidemic of a condition called Kuru disease, which is a rare, incurable, and fatal neurodegenerative disorder that is also known as “laughing death.” It is called this because literally, individuals suffering from it experience random bursts of uncontrollable hysterical laughter. The condition is so bad that within a few months not only do sufferers lose the ability to speak and walk, they die. This is because it causes a hole in the sufferer’s brain. At first, nobody could understand why the Fore people were so susceptible, especially the women and children. But US Doctor Daniel Carlton Gajdusek worked out the answer. It was because of their practice of funerary cannibalism. Deceased family members were traditionally cooked and eaten because they believed it would free the spirit of the dead, women and children usually consumed the brain. However, it was discovered that the disease was caused by a virus-like organism called a prion — prions are made up of prion protein and make normal proteins in the brain fold abnormally while attacking nerve cells — and these prions are located in the brain, meaning inevitably, when they ate it they got infected. Needless to say, the Fore people stopped consuming human meat in the 1960s and over the years a rapid decline of the condition ensued, but due to the long incubation period of the virus, the last death from the epidemic was back in 2010.
Despite sex addiction being classed as a mental health disorder, many still stubbornly refuse to believe it is real. However, a study by Karolinska University Hospital in Sweden that looked into whether sex addiction is real in men found that it does exist. The study which compared male sex addicts to males with a healthy sex drive found that the sex addicts had higher levels of oxytocin. The belief is that because men already get high levels of dopamine from sex, and because they already have high levels of testosterone, higher levels of oxytocin make the sex even more satisfying and enjoyable making them want it even more, which compels them to go back for more and more. So, the higher levels of oxytocin push them far beyond the limits of what is healthy when it comes to being rewarded physiologically speaking. The hope is the research will lead to drugs to help combat the problem.
Endorphins released during sexual activity create a euphoria similar to opioid drug use. This is one of the reasons why drugs like heroin can be so addictive. Basically, at the rawest level, humans are biological procreation machines, and such drugs manipulate the reward process around our most raw and instinctual purpose, so sex and our instinctual need to have it as a means of survival. So, they make us think to survive we need to have the drugs, when in fact the drugs are killing us.
Giving birth can cause an involuntary orgasm. The enormous release of hormones during delivery along with other incidental factors of birth can and does push some women to climax. It is not a pleasurable experience but it does have its plus sides, sexual arousal acts as a natural painkiller making a person more able to handle pain. Something very beneficial to a person going through childbirth.
Breastfeeding can cause sexual arousal along with orgasm. Sexual arousal during breastfeeding is an involuntary bodily response to either the flow of oxytocin, which is needed for milk release, or the actual stimulation of baby sucking. It is nothing to be ashamed or distressed about, it is just one of those totally normal things that happens that nobody talks about and so people mistakenly think it is not normal, when it is.
You can’t burn fat cells off. Yep, no jokes. Your fat cells are permanent. Basically, the number of fat cells in our bodies increases regardless of our size up until we hit our 20s. After that point, the number of fat cells we have will be the same for the entirety of our lives. In terms of how fat cells get bigger, when we eat too much we store things called lipids in our fat cells, the more lipids in our fat cells, the bigger we get. That means you can’t burn off your fat cells but you can burn off your excess lipids.
Whenever a person starts feeling that they need to pee, their bladder is never full. This is by design. Once the bladder reaches half its capacity it sends signals to the brain telling us it is time to go. It does this to give us time to find a suitable place to go. But because it does this if our brains become distracted the urge can disappear, but only temporarily. This is how we can suddenly feel so desperate. Because the urge has come, but we have been distracted and so missed the signal and by the time we realise, we are bursting.
There are bright blue lobsters. No jokes. The blue colour is caused by a genetic mutation. Basically, they have too much of a protein called crustacyanin. That’s why they have an outer blue shell. But if you are thinking of catching one, your chances are slim, it’s believed you only have a one in two million chance of doing so. Though there are not just blue lobsters, there are orange, yellow, and even crystal-coloured lobsters. The odds of catching an orange lobster are believed to be 1 and 10 million, a yellow lobster, 1 in 30 million, and a crystal lobster (also known as albino), 1 in 100 million.
That’s all from me, thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, you may also enjoy the following:
25 Random But Fascinating Trivia Facts That You Probably Didn’t Know — 1st ed.
30 Things That Happen To Our Bodies As We Grow Older
We Are All Having Fewer Children Than Ever — That’s Not a Good Thing
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