101 Mind-Blowing Facts That Sound Like They're Big Huge Lies But Are Actually Completely, Totally, 100% True

1. Try to breathe and swallow at the same time. You can't.

2. It's also impossible to hum while holding your nose.

3. And your nose is always, ALWAYS visible in your field of vision.

4. Harriet Tubman was alive at the same time as both Thomas Jefferson AND Ronald Reagan.

5. No other animals have chins besides humans.

6. This is how big Plymouth Rock is in real life:

A medium-size rock behind bars
u/catbehindbars / Via reddit.com

8. The word 'nerd' was first coined by Dr. Seuss.

9. Not only were Donald Trump, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton born in the same year...they were also born in consecutive months.

10. Fingernails grow faster than toenails — about three times faster, in fact.

11. In Germany, Mr. Clean is known as "Mr. Proper":

Mr. Proper
u/dynamitexlove / Via reddit.com

12. The sun can fit about a million Earths inside it.

13. The shortest commercial flight available is only 57 seconds long.

14. The Pacific Ocean is less salty than the Atlantic Ocean.

15. The toy Barbie's full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts.

16. Oh, and Cookie Monster's real name is Sid.

17. South Korea and Ireland are almost the same size, although South Korea has 10 times Ireland's population:

Side-by-side of South Korea and Ireland (with Northern Ireland)
u/aaronhereee / Via reddit.com

18. Vending machines are twice as likely to kill you as a shark is.

19. Space Jam was released closer to the moon landing than to today.

Bugs Bunny and Michael Jordan shaking hands
Walt Disney Pictures / courtesy Everett Collection

20. There's only one number that has the same amount of letters as its numeric value, the number four.

21. There are multiple presidents in the National Wrestling Hall of Fame, including Abe Lincoln.

22. Wombat poop is shaped like a cube.

23. Even if it were traveling at the fastest speed a manmade spacecraft has ever achieved, it would take 19,000 years to reach the closest star to our solar system.

24. Every single letter in the alphabet appears in a least one US state...except for the letter Q:

The United States
Prospective56 / Getty Images/iStockphoto

25. The unicorn is the national animal of Scotland.

26. A strawberry isn't a berry, but a banana is.

27. Avocados and watermelons are also berries.

28. New York City is further south than Rome, Italy.

29. This is what Michelangelo's statue "David" looks like from behind:

The rear view of David, with bare back and buttocks

Folks.

u/ikillmyselfsometimes / Via reddit.com

30. Mammoths went extinct 1,000 years after the Egyptians finished building the Great Pyramid.

31. There are more fake flamingos in the world than real flamingos.

32. Double king-sized beds exist. They're called Alaskan Kings:

A giant bed
u/markgeorge_cov / Via reddit.com

33. Maine is the closest US state to Africa.

34. Anne Frank, Martin Luther King Jr., and Barbara Walters were born in the same year, 1929.

35. The name Jessica was created by Shakespeare in the play Merchant of Venice.

36. This is what the inside of a bag of microwave popcorn looks like:

Inside a bag of microwave popcorn
u/swoooooot / Via reddit.com

37. There are more tigers in Texas than the rest of the world.

38. John Tyler, the 10th president of the United States, had a grandson who was alive this year.

john tyler

39. The probability of you drinking a glass of water that contains a molecule of water that also passed through a dinosaur — you know, dinosaur pee — is almost 100%.

40. There are fewer atoms on Earth than there are ways to arrange a deck of cards.

41. According to astronomers, this is the average color of the universe:

"cosmic latte"

42. There have been studies that show that goats, like us, have accents.

43. In a deck of cards, every king except for the king of hearts has a mustache:

King cards
u/itsnoab / Via reddit.com

44. The difference in time between when Tyrannosaurus Rex lived and Stegosaurus lived is greater than the difference in time between Tyrannosaurus Rex and now.

45. The lint that collects in the bottom of your pockets has a name — gnurr.

46. Oxford University is older than the Aztec empire.

47. Beethoven and George Washington were alive at the same time — in fact, George Washington was in his 40s when Beethoven was born.

48. Pluto never made a full orbit around the sun from the time it was discovered to when it was declassified as a planet.

Pluto with a sad face drawn on it
Nasa / Getty Images

49. A thousand seconds is about 16 minutes.

A million seconds is about 11 days.

A billion seconds is about 32 years.

I'm tellin' ya, a billion is a lot:

tweet reading people don't have a strong inuitive sense of how much bigger 1 billion is than 1 million 1 million seconds is 11 days 1 billion seconds is about 31.5 years

50. There are more stars in space than there are grains of sand on every beach on Earth.

51. And there's enough water in Lake Superior to cover all of North and South America in one foot of water.

Lake Superior

52. There are more public libraries than McDonald's in the US.

53. It rains diamonds on Saturn and Jupiter.

54. Every two minutes, we take more pictures than all of humanity did in the 19th century.

55. This is what a mass of DNA looks like:

Clear liquid with a small clump in the center in a test tube
u/ssmunif / Via reddit.com

56. A "butt load" is an actual unit of measurement, equivalent to 126 gallons.

57. Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln have the same exact birthday — down to the year.

58. Scotland is farther north than Alaska.

59. Not only is Reno, Nevada, west of Los Angeles, but so are six state capitals.

map of reno and LA
Google Maps

60. If you're in Detroit and you walk south, you'll actually walk into Canada.

61. Every odd number has something in common:

every odd number has an "e" in it

62. One dollar bills did not have "In God We Trust" on them until 1957:

Dollar bills before and after 1957
u/1poundbookingfee

63. "Will Will Smith smith?" and "Will Smith will smith" are sentences that make complete sense.

64. The pyramids were as old to the Romans as the Romans are to us.

65. If you dug a hole to the center of the Earth and dropped a book down, it would take 42 minutes to reach the bottom.

66. There is 10 times more bacteria in your body than actual body cells.

67. And 90% of the cells that make us up aren't human but mostly fungi and bacteria.

68. This, my friends, is what a pregnant guinea pig looks like:

A pregnant guinea pig
u/oligarchyoligarchy / Via reddit.com

69: Turtles can breathe out of their butts.

70. This is what a human skeleton looks like compared with a gorilla skeleton:

The gorilla rib cage and pelvic bone are much wider
Universal History Archive / Universal Images Group via Getty Images

71. The "ueue" in "queue" is silent.

72. And so is the "ea" in "tea."

Prince William sipping tea
Wpa Pool / Getty Images

73. There are more atoms in a glass of water than glasses of water in all the oceans on Earth.

74. Emu eggs look like something straight out of Game of Thrones:

Emu eggs (looking like very large avocados) with a sign $35 each
u/Mingey_FringeBiscuit / Via reddit.com

75. At the time the current oldest person on Earth was born, there was a completely different set of human beings on the planet.

76. And at the time you were born, you were briefly the youngest person in the entire world.

77. Cleopatra lived closer to the invention of the iPad than she did to the building of the Great Pyramid.

78. Speaking of Ancient Egypt, the Great Sphinx of Giza...has a tail!!!

The back of the Great Sphinx of Giza
Janek / Getty Images/iStockphoto

79. There are more trees on Earth than stars in the galaxy.

80. Some of the apples you can buy in a grocery store are over a year old.

80. Every Froot Loop tastes the same. The color doesn't matter.

81. Speaking of which, because they don't allow artificial coloring, American Froot Loops and European Froot Loops are totally different:

Comparison of Hungarian and American Froot Loops
u/calvindehase / Via reddit.com

82. Not once in the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme does it mention that he's an egg.

83. Armadillos nearly always give birth to identical quadruplets.

84. The words "Pacific Ocean" are a good example of how difficult English can be:

"Every 'C' in 'Pacific Ocean' is pronounced differently"

85. If you could fold a piece of paper in half 42 times, it would reach to the moon.

86. Coconuts kill more people than sharks every year. Same with cows.

87. "umop apisdn" is "upside down" spelled upside down with different letters of the alphabet.

88. This is how pineapples grow:

Pineapples
Kynny / Getty Images/iStockphoto

89. Babies are born with almost one hundred more bones than adults.

90. Since 1950, the United States has completely lost three nuclear bombs. Like, no one knows where they are.

91. A basketball court is so much smaller than a soccer pitch that a whole court only covers a bit over half a penalty box.

92. Before he died, Abraham Lincoln had a "life mask" made of his face. This is what it looked like:

Close-up of Lincoln's craggly face and sunken eyes
Print Collector / The Print Collector/Heritage Images

93. Sharks have been around 50 million years longer than TREES.

94. If you're 35 years old, you've already spent about 12 years of your life sleeping.

95. American Froot Loops and Froot Loops from other countries are totally different colors:

American Froot Loops and Froot Loops from other countries are totally different colors:

The non-US box's Loops are less pastel and varied (light yellow and shades of red and purple) than the US label (with green, blue, orange, purple, yellow, and red)

96. According to the New York Times, people over seven feet tall have a 16% chance of playing in the NBA.

97. Miss Piggy, the Muppet, was originally going to be called "Piggy Lee."

98. This is what it looks like when a whole bunch of horses fly on a plane:

Horses in individual crates on a plane
u/nintendoge21 / Via reddit.com

99. Joe Biden was born closer to the Civil War than today.

100. Rats can laugh.

101. And, finally, this is what Shaq looks like holding a chicken wing:

shaq dwarfing a chicken wing

Mind. Blown.

youtube.com

This post is an update of a 2014 article by the same name.