25 Random But Fascinating Trivia Facts That You Probably Didn’t Know — 1st ed.

Swearing acts as a genuine painkiller, everyone on earth has links to both slaveowners and slavery, and much more

Trivia is awesome because it has the power to make you sound extremely clever. Here are 25 pieces of random but fascinating trivia that will make you appear the smartest in the room.

If the power goes out and you have no candles, check to see if you have any crayons. If you put a crayon upright in a small glass and use a lighter to ignite it, the crayon should burn for up to 30 minutes depending on its size. Just remember to open a window.

Ever heard of the famous nursery rhyme “Mary Had A Little Lamb?” It is actually based on a true story. Mary’s real name was Mary Sawyer, and the rhyme came about when she was an 11-year-old girl who lived in Boston. One day she was followed to school by her pet lamb. However, her teacher — who was Sarah Josepha Hale, the woman who coined the poem — inevitably refused to allow it into the classroom and so it stuck around outside — just like in the poem. So Mary really did have a little lamb and it really did follow her to school one day, and the teacher really did turn it out and yet it really did stick around. It’s believed that Hale wrote the poem because the children in the class asked why the lamb loved Mary so, and she wanted to convey a moral point to them about love in a fun way. The poem was how she did this.

La Paz, Bolivia, due to it being 12,000 feet above sea level, is deemed a fireproof city. This is because the amount of oxygen in the air is barely enough to support a flame.

As scary as it may seem, and as hard as it may be to believe, we are genuinely living in the most peaceful time in human history and nuclear weapons are the things we have to thank.

All GPS units sold in the civilian market are programmed by law to deactivate themselves if they detect that they are travelling faster than 1,200 miles an hour or above 60,000 feet in altitude. This is done to prevent them from being used in intercontinental ballistic missiles. That means if you took your phone onto a fighter jet, and tried to use the GPS, it wouldn’t work.

In a random experiment, it was found that holding a vibrator against your throat relaxes the vocal muscles, and thus improves voice quality. Meaning vibrators not only make people moan, but they can also improve the quality of that moaning.

It is believed that swearing genuinely acts as a painkiller. So if you get hurt, swearing can actually help nullify the pain a little or at least help you better handle it. It’s believed it does this by provoking aggression or anger, which leads to “stress-induced analgesia” — a natural form of pain relief. The craziest thing is swearing is believed to be the fastest pain reliever in our arsenal.

Technically it is not possible to swear in Japanese. There are no actual swear words, so no F word or even S word. However, unlike popular belief it is possible to curse in Japanese it is just seldom done and the curse words available do not carry the same impact as the ones in other languages.

The only real place in Japan you will find people consistently cursing is in the red light district and in Japanese cartoons a.k.a. animes.

The Spanish word esposa means wife. However, the plural, esposas, means handcuffs. The wife meaning came first. Despite how this looks using an English translation, it is not believed that the meanings came about as a result of wives and handcuffs being linked. Perhaps that serves as a lesson in how things can become lost — or found depending on your perspective — in translation.

The space between your eyebrows has a name. The glabella.

Drinking moderate amounts of alcohol before writing can actually enhance some people’s creativity. Not for the reasons you think, what holds many peoples’ creativity back is fear along with overthinking. Alcohol reduces fear along with thinking, freeing people to embrace their creativity. So it is not alcohol per se that improves creativity, it is combating fear and overthinking.

Tic Tak’s were originally called Refreshing Mints, but in 1970, management felt they needed to come up with a new name for them — they felt they needed a more fun and memorable name. The name they came up with was inspired by the sound made when you open and close the little plastic container the mints come in. No jokes. That’s actually true. Open the container and you hear a tic, close it and you hear a tac. The craziest thing is the name change turned out to be an inspired move as it helped them to become iconic. The power of branding.

Only two countries have the colour purple on their flag: Dominica, which uses purple in its flag’s central image of a Sisserou parrot, and Nicaragua, which includes a purple stripe in a rainbow that’s featured on the national coat of arms at the centre of the flag. The reason for the lack of purple is not due to a dislike of the colour, but simply because in the past it used to be a really difficult and expensive colour to procure — so it wasn’t cost-effective to have it in your flag.

The longest measurement in the world is a gigaparsec (Gpc) which is one billion parsecs a.k.a. 3.26 billion light-years (a light-year measures 5.88 trillion miles). The smallest is a Planck length which is the equivalent of around a millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a centimeter (or a decimal point followed by 34 zeroes and a one).

When it comes to tornadoes, no country on earth gets as many as the United States of America which gets on average 1,200 a year. However, despite this rather crazily England is considered to be the tornado capital of the world. This is despite the fact that they only get hit with an average of 34 tornadoes a year. The reason for the title is the fact that per kilometre squared they get more than any other country. England gets approximately 2.2 tornadoes for every 10,000 kilometres squared whereas the US only gets 1.3 using the same metric.

Charles Darwin, the father of the theory of evolution, once had a pet tortoise called Harriet. He adopted her in 1835, bringing her back from the Galapagos Islands. Harriet outlived her adopted father by 124 years, going on to live to a mind-blowing 175 years old. She lived the last days of her life in the Australian zoo, which was owned by Steve “Crocodile Hunter” Irwin.

Marie Curie, the first female Nobel prize winner and the first and only winner in multiple scientific disciplines, is known as the mother of modern physics. Her most famous contributions were her work with radioactive materials along with the discovery of elements like polonium and radium. However, because the dangers of radiation were not known back then, inevitably, she conducted her research of radioactive elements without wearing protection, something that took a hefty toll on her health, leading to aplastic anemia — which caused her death. And the radiation did not just affect her, it also affected most of her belongings so much so that even now, a century later, her notebooks are still radioactive and as such have to be stored in a lead box. They will not lose their radioactivity for another 1,500 years.

Because slavery has been so widespread throughout human history, scarily, every person alive — no matter who they are or where they are from — if they trace back their lineage far enough will in all probability find they have links to both slaves and slaveowners. Meaning we are all children of both slaveowners and slavery.

The largest pyramid in the world is actually in Mexico not Egypt. It is called the Great Pyramid of Cholula and is located in Cholula, Puebla, Mexico. It has a base four times the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza which makes it the largest monument ever constructed.

Ever seen expiration dates on water bottles and wondered what the heck they are for? Not the water. The bottles. After a while, the plastic from the bottles starts leaching into the water meaning the water gets flooded with plastic. It should be noted that this won’t harm you per se but if possible it’s best to avoid flooding your system with plastic, at least with more than we already get flooded with, hence, why the expiration dates exist.

Australia and New Zealand have had a friendly rivalry since the day they were formed. But in 2006 an Australian man managed to hit New Zealand with the ultimate prank. He put the country up for sale on eBay, starting the bids at $0.01. The funniest thing was people actually started bidding, with bidding climbing to $3,000 before eBay officials shut it down, stating that “clearly New Zealand is not for sale.” New Zealand’s foreign minister — likely displeased with the low price — called the prank “nonsensical stupidity.”

OMG meaning oh my God is one of the most used phrases in the world. What is not well known though is that the first known use of the acronym was in a letter to Winston Churchill back in 1917. A retired British admiral and former First Sea Lord called Lord Fisher wrote to Churchill to share his take on the headlines of the day, and he used the acronym “O.M.G. (Oh! My! God!)” to express his excitement at how good they were.

The inspiration for the first McDonald’s drive-through was born from a desire to allow the US military to get a McDonald’s. Military rules meant that soldiers were not allowed to wear their uniforms in public, this was a problem for those at the Fort Huachuca military installation in Sierra Vista, Arizona. If they wanted to go get a McDonald’s, they would have to get changed into civilian clothes, head to McDonald’s, buy the burger or whatever and then on returning to the base get changed back into military attire. This made getting a McDonald’s a mighty hassle for the military personnel, something which irked them but also meant that the local McDonald’s was missing out on revenue. Step in McDonald’s restaurant manager David Rich. His solution was to cut a hole into the wall and allow members of the military to pick up their orders without stepping out of their cars. The idea swiftly caught on and soon became global and thus the McDonald’s drive-through was born.

A study commissioned by ale maker Guinness found that in the UK alone an estimated 163,000 pints of Guinness go to waste every year as a result of beards and mustaches. No jokes. It was found that 0.56 millilitres of Guinness gets trapped in facial hair with each sip a person takes — it typically takes 10 sips for the average person to finish a pint. That means the best way to get the most out of your pint is to shave before having it.

Sunglasses were first invented by the Chinese back in the 12th century. But they weren’t for protecting your eyes nor were they a fashion accessory, made out of smoky quartz, their purpose was to mask the emotions of judges while they were questioning witnesses.

That’s all from me, thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, you may also enjoy the following:

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