1. The longest time between two twins being born is 87 days.
2. The world’s deepest postbox is in Susami Bay in Japan. It’s 10 meters underwater.
3. In 2007, an American man named Corey Taylor tried to fake his own death in order to get out of his cell phone contract without paying a fee. It didn’t work.
4. The oldest condoms ever found date back to the 1640s (they were found in a cesspit at Dudley Castle), and were made from animal and fish intestines.
5. In 1923, jockey Frank Hayes won a race at Belmont Park in New York despite being dead — he suffered a heart attack mid-race, but his body stayed in the saddle until his horse crossed the line for a 20–1 outsider victory.
6. Everyone has a unique tongue print, just like fingerprints.
7. Most Muppets are left-handed. (Because most Muppeteers are right-handed, so they operate the head with their favored hand.)
8. It costs the U.S. Mint almost twice as much to mint each penny and nickel as the coins are actually worth. Taxpayers lost over $100 million in 2013 just through the coins being made.
9. Light doesn’t necessarily travel at the speed of light. The slowest light ever recorded was moving at is 38 mph.
10. Casu marzu is a Sardinian cheese that contains live maggots. The maggots can jump up to five inches out of cheese while you’re eating it, so it’s a good idea to shield it with your hand to stop them jumping into your eyes.
11. The loneliest creature on Earth is a whale who has been calling out for a mate for over two decades — but whose high-pitched voice is so different to other whales that they never respond.
13. The spikes on the end of a stegosaurus’ tail are known among paleontologists as the “thagomizer” — a term coined by cartoonist Gary Larson in a 1982 Far Side drawing.
14. During World War II, the crew of the British submarine HMS Trident kept a fully grown reindeer called Pollyanna aboard their vessel for six weeks (it was a gift from the Russians).
15. The northern leopard frog swallows its prey using its eyes — it uses them to help push food down its throat by retracting them into its head.
16. The first man to urinate on the moon was Buzz Aldrin, shortly after stepping onto the lunar surface.
17. In 1567, the man said to have the longest beard in the world died after he tripped over his beard running away from a fire.
18. The Dance Fever of 1518 was a month-long plague of inexplicable dancing in Strasbourg, in which hundreds of people danced for about a month for no apparent reason. Several of them danced themselves to death.
19. Vladimir Nabokov nearly invented the smiley.
20. In 1993, San Francisco held a referendum over whether a police officer called Bob Geary was allowed to patrol while carrying a ventriloquist’s dummy called Brendan O’Smarty. He was allowed.
21. Sigurd the Mighty, a ninth-century Norse earl of Orkney, was killed by an enemy he had beheaded several hours earlier. He’d tied the man’s head to his horse’s saddle, but while riding home one of its protruding teeth grazed his leg. He died from the infection.
22. The Dutch village of Giethoorn has no roads; its buildings are connected entirely by canals and footbridges.
23. A family of people with blue skin lived in Kentucky for many generations. The Fulgates of Troublesome Creek are thought to have gained their blue skin through combination of inbreeding and a rare genetic condition known as methemoglobinemia.
24. Powerful earthquakes can permanently shorten the length of Earth’s day, by moving the spin of the Earth’s axis. The 2011 Japan earthquake knocked 1.8 microseconds off our days. The 2004 Sumatra quake cost us around 6.8 microseconds.
25. The first American film to show a toilet being flushed on screen was Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.
26. Melting glaciers and icebergs make a distinctive fizzing noise known as “bergy seltzer”.
27. There is a glacier called “Blood Falls” in Antarctica that regularly pours out red liquid, making it look like the ice is bleeding. (It’s actually oxidized salty water.)
28. In 2008 scientists discovered a new species of bacteria that lives in hairspray.
29. The top of the Eiffel Tower leans away from the sun, as the metal facing the sun heats up and expands. It can move as much as 7 inches.
30. You SHALL follow me!
