Our world is an incredible place , full of mystery and wonder. It’s also an incredibly strange planet, packed to the brim with odd and truly mindblowing facts.
Below are 15 weird facts that we definitely don’t need to know, but are worth sharing regardless. If nothing else, these will be sure to fill the gaps during your next dinner date.
Gargoyles were intended to terrify parishioners into attending church service.
“How better to enforce church attendance and docility than by providing a daily reminder of the horrors to come,” writes author Gary Varner in his book “Gargoyles, Grotesques and Green Men: Ancient Symbolism in European and American Architecture.”
The inventor of the frisbee lives on through his groundbreaking toy.
Walter Morrison invented the frisbee back in 1955, under the pseudonym of Pluto Platter . When he passed away, his family cremated him and had his ashes laid into the mold of a frisbee.
Vampires are OCD.
Did you ever wonder why The Count on Sesame Street was so obsessed with, well…counting? According to old Eastern European folklore , vampires are supposedly fascinated with counting. Should you ever find yourself being chased by one, be sure to throw bags of rice or coins to keep them occupied.
You’ll never be able to guess Mickey Mouse’s first words.
The first time Mickey Mouse ever spoke was all the way back in 1929, in a little film called The Karnival Kid . In it, Mickey works as a food vendor and his first words as “Hotdogs, hotdogs!”
A lobster’s bladder is actually next to its brain!
Right under the brain, to be precise. Not only that but urination is also used as a form of communication between lobsters. Some can propel their urine up to seven feet; that’s one power pee stream!
The amount of skin that the average human sheds in a year is disgusting.
This article written on kidshealth.org claims, “Though you can’t see it happening, every minute of the day we lose about 30,000 to 40,000 dead skin cells off the surface of our skin.” That’s close to 9lbs in a year!
The etymology behind the word “avocado” is both hilarious and borderline inappropriate.
So it turns out that the word “avocado” is actually an ancient Aztec word for ” testicle .” Clearly, the Aztecs (as well as being highly intelligent) were not without a sense of humor.
Wombats have cube-shaped poop.
This is going to sound disgusting but it’s true. Wombats use their feces as a way of establishing their territory and the cube shape allows for better stacking/prevents the established territory from rolling away.
The smell of freshly cut grass has an incredibly sinister origin.
According to an article on scienceabc.com, “The smell of freshly cut grass is caused by distress signals that plants release when damaged , marked by the release of volatile organic molecules like esters and aldehydes.”
You’ll never think about shuffling a deck of cards the same way again.
According to scientists at McGill University, there are more than 8×10^67 ways to shuffle a deck of cards. “To put that in perspective, even if someone could rearrange a deck of cards every second of the universe’s total existence, the universe would end before they would get even one billionth of the way to finding a repeat.”
Ducks are hung like horses.
The means of sexual reproduction varies greatly among animals. For instance, a duck penis can be over 40 cm in length; more than half the length of its body. Their genitals are also shaped like a corkscrew.
Eating a polar bear’s liver can kill you.
It’s safe to say that the overwhelming majority of us will never find ourselves facing starvation out on the arctic tundra. But should you find yourself in such a precarious position, avoid Polar Bear liver at all cost. The sheer amount of Vitamin A will cause you to overdose.
RELATED STORIES
The word for “fear of long words” is Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia.
I swear on my life I’m not making this up. You’d think that whoever came up with coining the name for the phobia would’ve perhaps shown a bit more sympathy and made it something shorter.
Hippos don’t swim.
What we mistake for swimming is in fact a kind of elegant underwater gallop . Hippos have just the right amount of buoyancy wherein the water creates a microgravity environment. Take a look at this video and see for yourself.
A spider’s web once had a very practical application.
Did you know that spiders are considered lucky in many cultures and that their webs have been used as bandages and to dress wounds since before the 1st-century AD? The practice continued even into Shakespeare’s day and age.
