If you’re feeling positive and optimistic today, we’ve got some facts that might change that somewhat.
Thanks to the r/AskReddit thread “What are some not so fun facts?”, we’ve got all kinds of information about the world we live in that aren’t exactly happy.
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You’re more likely to survive being shot in the head than rabies.
“Rabies was a big thing in the Philippines back in the ’90s. We had a hospital dedicated for it and there were so many PSA on tv showing rabies victims tied to bed convulsing, screaming, and foaming in the mouth. It made me not trust dogs for a long time.”
The most dangerous thing in Australia is the sun.
“People joke about Australia having dangerous animals of all kinds. However, no. 1 enemy to Australians is the sun.
“Australia has the highest skin cancer rate in the world. An average Australian is four times likely to get skin cancer than any other type of cancer, and two thirds of Australians will probably get it by the age of seventy.”
Autoimmune disorders don’t always make sense.
“At any time, your body could make a mistake while fighting an infection/virus and register a vital type of cell as unwanted for the rest of your life.
“Source: I never have enough platelets anymore.”
Orcas can skin penguins.
“They also skin seals and sea lions! The way they do it is by tail flicking them to the f***ing moon (not really that far, but they do launch them like 150 feet up in the air sometimes, iirc). When they do this, the landing force will tear the skin off the animal.
“And why do they do this? Apparently, for fun.”
There’s a wasp that hunts spiders.
“It doesn’t eat them, though. It paralyses them, makes a little mud cocoon for each one, and before sealing it off, lays a single egg on the now trapped spider.
“The egg hatches, the larva eats the still alive (and still paralysed) spider, and then breaks out of the cocoon as a wasp.”
Not all war criminals get punished.
“Shiro Ishii, director of Unit 731 who tortured, experimented on and murdered 600,000 innocent civilians was paid the equivalent of $3 million dollars (adjusted for inflation) by the US Government for his research papers and granted him complete immunity.”
Drowning is silent.
“Movies etc. don’t portray drowning people very accurately. This has led to a common misconception of what a drowning person actually looks like. Since a lot of people don’t really know what to look for, a large number of tragic incidences of children drowning while swimming occurred with the child’s parents right there… close by… near enough to save them… if only they had realized before it was too late.”
Every cruise ship has a morgue.
“My brother in law works on a cruise ship that retired people live on full time (after they sell their houses and move in). About 700 passengers.
“It just keeps sailing around the world.
“They have 4 body compartments in their morgue, and at least one person dies every voyage.”
Male angler fish have a tough existence.
“Male Angler Fish are rarely spotted in the wild, and took a long time to find at all. Eventually, they were discovered latched onto the females, and one of them (Can’t remember if the male or the female) releases an enzyme to break down the male body, leaving only his Testes that she can now use when she needs them for babies.”
Porcupine fights are gross.
“Male porcupines fight for their mates by peeing on each other. Porcupines also poop where they sleep so if you find a porcupine home at the base of a hollowed out tree there’s likely a large pile of feces there.”
Anteaters don’t mess around.
“The funny T Pose that an anteater does? Yeah that’s Mr. Anteater telling you he’s seconds away from literally disemboweling you with one swipe. Next time you see an anteater doing the funny pose just remember they are trying to give you a free C-section with one singular claw slash.”
We lost a nuke.
“A bomber accidentally dropped 2 nukes on North Carolina. One of them was found with only 1 safety left intact, keeping it from detonating. The other one buried itself 200 feet deep underground when its parachute failed to deploy, causing it to break apart. Most of the parts of this thermonuclear bomb were recovered. Most is the key word here. There are still parts of a thermonuclear bomb buried somewhere near Goldsboro, NC.”
A math error could lead to death in space.
“If calculations were off even by a tiny amount, the Apollo capsules would have either crashed into the moon, or skipped out of lunar orbit and have drifted into space forever. Both of these scenarios would involve the crew being very aware of their imminent deaths as there would have been no realistic way to slow down or be rescued.”
We aren’t as human as we think.
“Only about 1 in 10 cells in your body are genetically human.
“It’s not your body.
“There are so many microorganisms living in and on your body that they vastly outnumber you. You are not mostly human. Largely bacteria. Gross right?”
Lead poisoning is sneaky.
“After being exposed to lead, your body absorbs it and stores it in your bones in place of calcium, which is undetectable by blood tests, making it harder to determine your lead-levels. It’s not until you get older and your bones start to de-mineralise that the lead goes back into your bloodstream and you suffer from sudden lead poisoning.”
Harriet Tubman got a really raw deal.
“Harriet Tubman was a spy for the Union army and gave them lots of good information but she never received a pension or got military burial due to her race and gender.”
Some of our medical knowledge comes from a dark place.
“A disproportionate amount of important medical discoveries were made by Nazi doctors or doctors affiliated with Nazi policies.
“Which is why in the last few decades we’ve had to change a ton of disease and organ names because we didn’t want people who experimented on concentration camp survivors to be remembered forever.”
We killed the oldest living thing.
“In 2006, a team of scientific researchers in Iceland were gathering clams in order to study the effects of climate change. They froze the clams, which ended up killing them. They ended up killing the oldest known clam still left alive, nicknamed, ‘Ming’, which was 507 years old.”
The Civil War could have included elephants.
“Abraham Lincoln turned down an offer from the prince of Siam to loan the union army a division of war Elephants to use in the Civil War. The Civil War would’ve arguably been more ‘fun’ with some elephants in the mix. Although it would be very cruel.”
Solitary confinement ruins people.
“Solitary Confinement is a surefire way to turn a halfway decent individual into a raving lunatic. It is also not seen as cruel and unusual punishment and prisons are allowed to stick people into tiny rooms with no human contact indefinitely. There’s seriously no limit. A person can spend a 20 year or even lifetime sentence in solitary.”
