30 Interesting Facts That Blew People’s Mind

Contrary to popular belief, the human brain is not a muscle. It is an organ, and it houses the learning machine that is the human mind. Just as a machine needs oil, the human mind needs stimulation that can only come from millions of daily tasks and facts – from memory to attention and problem-solving exercises.

IQ scores are not “fixed” — which means based on brain training and cognitive development, it is possible, even for adults, to have a strong cognitive ability and brain power. Fortunately, along with the development of technology came opportunities to ‘exercise’ the brain and develop cognition and memory. Trivia is one of them.

To promote brain power, a Reddit user with the handle u/RyanBlitzpatrick decided to roundup the most interesting facts that will blow your mind away.

#1.

When you dream, one part of your brain is making up the story, and another part is experiencing those events and is genuinely surprised by all the twists in the plot.

#2

Fourteen years ago, in 2006, two extremely old tortoises — Harriet and Adwaita — passed away. The first tortoise, Harriet, was reportedly collected by Charles Darwin when he visited the Galápagos on the HMS Beagle. She belonged to Steve Irwin at the time of her death. Charles Darwin and Steve Irwin shared a “pet.” Estimated to have lived 176 years.

The second, Adwaita, was born before the United States declared its independence from England. Think about it, just 14 years ago, there was a land creature alive that was older than our country.

#3

November 2, 2000 was the last time all humans were on the planet together. Since then at least one person has remained on the international space station.

#4

A parking spot in Hong Kong sold for almost $1 million.

If you think parking is expensive in your area, you’ll be shocked by how much a spot can cost in Hong Kong. A 135-square-foot parking spot in front of the city’s fifth tallest building, The Center, was purchased for $969,000. This was the fourth lucrative transaction for businessman Johnny Cheung, who made six figures off of his first three parking spaces. Midland Commercial district sales director James Mak said, “There aren’t many car park lots … for sale, so prices have always been kept high.” It might be worth sticking to public transportation.

#5

The oldest living tree in the world methuselah is 4851 years old.

#6

The University of Oxford in England was founded in circa 1096. At 924 years old, it is way older than the Aztec Empire.

#7

The sound made by the Krakatoa volcanic eruption in 1883 was so loud it ruptured eardrums of people 40 miles away, traveled around the world four times, and was clearly heard 3,000 miles away. That’s like you standing in New York and hearing a sound from San Francisco.

#8

Clams have feet.

While it might look like clams have a big tongue that sometimes protrudes from their shell to poke around the ocean floor, what you’re actually seeing is a foot. The appendage, relatively long in comparison to the overall size of the creature, is used to dig in the sand.

#9

The International Space station is closer to the earth than San Francisco is to L.A.

#10

Arctic foxes can survive temperatures as low as -70 degrees Celsius

#11

If an underwater bubble is collapsed by loud sound, light is produced and no one knows why.

#12

Some people don’t have an inner monologue, like they literally don’t have a voice in their head. They actually need to voice it out, sometimes, while using a mirror.

#13

A lucky woman lived after jumping off the 86th floor of the Empire State Building. How? Because the wind pushed her back and she landed on the 85th floor.

#14

Nobody can tell if everybody sees the same color the same way.

#15

That there are people in the world who don’t like music. Not one specific type, but music as a whole. That both blows my mind and disturbs me

#16

The Ethiopian calendar is seven years behind the rest of the world.

In Ethiopia, things are done a little differently when it comes to calculating the year that we’re in. While most countries around the world follow the Gregorian calendar, the African nation uses its own. And although both systems “use the birthdate of Jesus Christ as a starting point for their calculations,” according to Culture Trip, the birth of the first humans also plays into the discrepancy. “The Ethiopian Orthodox Church believes Jesus Christ was born in 7 BC, 5,500 years after God’s promise to Adam and Eve.” Because of this, Ethiopia is actually around seven years behind the rest of the world.

#17

Ant biologists still don’t know the maximum life span of most ant queens. They just live too long to keep track, and they’re not too easy to keep in captivity. The longest one on record is like 30 years old, and there could easily be species that live longer than that.

#18

There is a termite colony in the Amazon Rain Forest that is the size of Great Britain and is almost 4,000 years old. There are also hundreds of millions of termite mounds.

#19

The U.S government has an official plan for a Zombie apocalypse. CONPLAN 8888 also known as Counter-Zombie Dominance was written in 2011. And just in case you think it’s weird bureaucratic humor, the first line reads, ‘This plan was not actually designed as a joke.’

#20

There are more trees on Earth then there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Confirmed by NASA.

#21

A neutron star is so dense that a teaspoon of material from one would weigh around 10 million tons.

#22

If the timeline of the universe (up to now) was compressed into a year starting on new year’s day, Homo sapiens would appear at 11:54 pm on December 31st. So yeah, humanity is barely a blip in the grand scale of the universe.

#23

Mitochondria is only passed down by mother so there’s a concept of mitochondrial eve, all humans today have their mitochondrial DNA derived from her and she’s referred to as ‘the mother of us all’.

#24

Strawberries aren’t berries. But bananas are.

#25

The Fermi Paradox.

There are billions of stars in the Milky Way similar to the Sun. With high probability, some of these stars have Earth-like planets. Many of these stars, and hence their planets, are much older than the sun. If the Earth is typical, some may have developed intelligent life long ago. Some of these civilizations may have developed interstellar travel, a step humans are investigating now.

With the number of potentially habitable Earth-like planets in our galaxy alone, it’s very strange that we haven’t detected alien signals of any kind so far.

There’s lots of theories as to why that is, but my favorite is called the Dark Forest (which sounds way cooler). Basically everyone else out there is being quiet and not transmitting because they know of some danger that we are unaware of, and they don’t want it to find them. Or they may be transmitting in an entirely new form which we don’t possess. Gives me chills.

#26

The biggest bacteria species known, Thiomargarita namibiensis, can have a maximum diameter of 0.7 millimeters, which is big enough for you to see it without a microscope.

That’s insane if you consider that your average bacteria species has a diameter of 0.001 millimeters.

#27

A pig will eat a whole human body except for the teeth.

#28

The way the human brain works. These cells that are powered by tiny jolts of electricity are collectively having conscious thoughts, coming up with morals and empathy and every human behavior.

#29

The kangaroo mouse never needs to drink water. Despite being named after an Australian animal, the kangaroo mouse lives in the Nevada desert. And since it resides in such a dry area, it’s learned to adapt by getting all of the hydration it needs via the seeds it eats. This means that the kangaroo mouse never drinks water.

#30

If you folded a piece of paper 42 times, it would be thick enough to reach the moon. Yep, you read that correctly. According to Gizmodo, all it takes to verify this is some simple math. If you fold a piece of paper in half, it doubles in thickness. And if you fold it in half again, it doubles in thickness again. With that type of exponential growth, it would take just 23 folds for a .1-millimeter piece of paper to be one kilometer thick, and 30 folds for it to be thick enough to reach outer space (100,000 kilometers). Unfortunately, the world record for the number of folds is 12.

Believe it or not, there are more things to learn out there. So, if you enjoyed reading through this list or wish to add more interesting trivia to it, please feel free to share it with us.