99 facts that will blow your mind. Photo: Youtube

Today KnowInsiders has presented you with 99 interesting facts you never* knew. If you have a few minutes to spare, we promise you’ll learn about all kinds of interesting things.

Feel free to use them for future conversations and make your friends/family envious of your great knowledge!

1. Oranges were originally green.

Photo: Facts and Information - WordPress.com

The first oranges ever imported to the West were from Southeast Asia and were tangerine-pomelo hybrids that were green in color.

In fact, oranges grown in warmer parts of the world such as Vietnam and Thailand stay green throughout their lifetime.

2. Going to work is more dangerous than going to war.

Statistically, you are three times more likely to die traveling to or from work than you are if you were to be shipped out to war these days.

3. Russia has more surface area than Pluto.

With 6,601,668 square miles of landmass, Russia beats Pluto’s 6,427,805 square miles of surface area and dwarfs the world’s second-biggest country, Canada, which has a landmass of 3,855,103 square miles.

4. You can fire an arrow around an object to hit a target.

Photo: Wonderopolis

Both English and Arabic historic sources have mentioned skilled archers curving arrows around objects.

It has become a practice among some modern-day archers who have proved it can be done.

In fact, an arrow can even be fired with a 180-degree curve to hit an object on the other side of a wall – amazing right?!

5. There is no specific time zone at the South Pole.

This is because all the longitude lines on the planet meet up there (because the planet isn’t flat, yo).

The stations on the South Pole use the time zone of the country that owns them, meaning two stations near each other could be using two different time zones.

6. The first-ever 3D film was released in cinemas in 1922.

Released in September of that year, The Power of Love was a silent film and was released in cinemas worldwide.

It even came with an alternative ending that was decided by closing one eye or the other!

Sadly, the film is lost and hasn’t been found for decades!

7. Sandra Bullock was almost “Neo” in The Matrix.

Photo: Kino.de

The film’s producers had such a hard time finding the right man for the role before they found Keanu Reeves that they almost changed Neo to a female character.

8. Surfer slang “hang ten” means having all 10 toes over your board’s edge when riding a wave.

This is a move that can usually only be done on a heavy longboard.

9. There was a type of Pterodactyl with a bigger wingspan than a fighter jet.

The remarkable beast’s remains were dug up in Romania.

Standing as tall as a giraffe, it’s believed the flying reptile would have weighed about half a ton.

With a wingspan of 39 foot, it would have been bigger than the roughly 33-foot wingspan of an F16 fighter jet.

10. Scientists genetically modified goats to spin spider silk from their udders.

Photo: Popular Science

US Professor Randy Lewis transplanted a gene into the goats from a spider that allows the goats to produce milk containing an extra protein.

This is then extracted from the goat milk and spun into spider silk thread.

The Burj Khalifa is so tall you can see two sunsets from it in one day.

Scientists genetically modified goats to spin spider silk from their udders.

You can see the sunset happen at ground level, and then if you get the elevator all the way up the building you can see it set again from the top.

11. The British Queen’s handbag is a body language communication device.

It is used by her to relay secret and silent messages to her staff.

For example, if she is finished speaking to a guest she will move it from one arm to another and her aides will politely end the conversation, or if she wants to abruptly end a conversation she will put her bag on the ground.

12. There is a spacecraft graveyard in the South Pacific Ocean.

Known as “Point Nemo”, it is the furthest place on the Earth from land.

It is home to over 300 spacecraft and associated space debris, including the MIR space station, the first-ever object assembled in planetary orbit by Russian cosmonauts.

13. Broccoli is a “man-made” food.

Photo: Fill Your Plate

So human’s just engineered broccoli out of nowhere? Nope.

Well, not exactly.

Broccoli only came about after years and years of selective breeding between wild cabbage plants that started around the 6th century BC.

In fact, the word “broccoli” comes from the Italian for “the flowering crest of a cabbage”.

14. High heels were originally men’s shoes.

High heels came into circulation on the shoe circuit in roughly 10 BC.

They were worn by men of the Persian Cavalry to help their boots stay in their stirrups when riding horses.

15. Bowler Hats were originally invented as safety hats.

Bowler Hats were designed by London hatters Thomas and William Bowler (hence the name).

The hat was invented to keep horse riders’ heads safe from branches and other obstacles.

16. “OMG” was first used in writing in 1917.

Photo: Smithsonian Magazine

Although people might have said it before then, the popular acronym for “Oh My God” was first used in writing in a letter to Winston Churchill in 1917.

It was used by John Arbuthnot Fisher, a retired Admiral of the British Navy, who said in his letter “I hear that a new order of Knighthood is on the tapis, O.M.G. (Oh! My God!)”.

17. There is a smoke alarm for the deaf.

Invented by a team of Japanese scientists and engineers, this lifesaving device works by spraying vaporized wasabi into the air, which notifies deaf people of a fire – it will even wake them up if they’re sleeping!

This invention won one of the IG Nobel Prizes in 2011, a spoof of the Nobel Prizes, for inventions that “first make people laugh, and then make them think”.

18. Peanuts, walnuts, almonds, cashews and pistachios aren’t nuts.

They’re classed as seeds because a nut is defined as “a hard-shelled dry fruit or seed with a separable rind or shell and interior kernel”.

19. Armadillos have shells so hard they can deflect a bullet.

Photo: YouTube

One poor Texan man learned this the hard way when he shot at an armadillo only to have the bullet ricochet off the indestructible beast, and back at him into his jaw! The man was airlifted to hospital.

Amazingly, the armadillo just walked off unscathed.

20. Only a quarter of the Sahara Desert is sandy.

Most of this gargantuan desert is covered in gravel, although it also has its own mountain ranges and oases.

Also, it isn’t the world’s largest desert, because…

21. Antarctica is the world’s largest desert.

The Antarctic Polar Desert covers the Antarctica continent and covers roughly 5.5 million square miles.

The Sahara Desert covers roughly 3.6 million square miles.

22. In 1960, a cow got hit by a chunk of falling U.S. satellite in Cuba.

Photo: Global Facts

This was during a time where tensions between Havana and Washington were at their highest.

So the Cubans decided to make the best out of a bad situation and had a good laugh at their American neighbors.

They paraded a cow through the Cuban streets with a sign on it that said “Eisenhower, you murdered one of my sisters!”

23. Your nose and ears never stop growing.

They are the only two parts of your body that keep growing when all your other features’ growth comes to an end.

24. The Eiffel Tower “grows” in the summer.

Due to the heat expansion of the tower’s iron in the summer sun, the Eiffel Tower’s height can grow by up to 6 inches!

25. Bees can fly higher than Mount Everest!

Photo: Daily Mail

Bees can fly at levels up to 29,525 feet above sea level – higher than the planet’s tallest Mountain!

26. Until 2015, it was illegal to dance in Japan after midnight.

This was a law introduced in 1948 to crack down on dance halls that acted as fronts for illicit activities and it was only revoked in 2015.

27. In 1997 a cargo ship lost 4.8 million Lego bits in a storm. They are still washing up today.

The container ship Tokio Express was hauling cargo across stormy seas on February the 13th, when a rogue wave crashed over the decks and caused some of her cargo to become loose and wash overboard.

One such container contained a shipment of Lego including octopuses, dragons, flippers and flowers.

These pieces are often found on the beaches of Cornwall in the UK, whenever there’s a particularly bad storm.

28. In Tokyo, Japan, there is a hedgehog cafe.

Photo: Vice

You can go to this establishment and pay 1,000 Yen to go in, have a cappuccino and play with and cuddle some amazing hedgehogs!

Just be careful when you’re cuddling them because they aren’t exactly soft and fluffy!

29. In the 1990s, half of the world’s CDs were made for AOL sign-up discs.

For you young ‘uns out there this fact is going to blow your mind – you had to use a disc to sign up to an internet provider!

The world wasn’t always full of all 5G’s just knocking about in the planetary ether – hell, back then I think 3G would’ve been mind-blowing enough, let alone not having to use a disc to sign up to the internet!

30. The smallest dinosaur ever discovered is only 16 inches long.

Discovered in China, the Microraptor is one of the most recent dinosaur discoveries and is the smallest ever found.

Most of the specimens that have been found have also been fully grown, so the baby Microraptors would have been even smaller!

31. In England, pigeon poop is the property of the Crown.

Photo: wanna fact ph

This is because pigeon poop could be used to make gunpowder.

Because of this, King George I declared all pigeon poop to be the property of the Crown in the 18th Century.

32. The letter ‘E’ is the most common letter in the English language.

It appears in roughly 11% of all words used in the English language, and is used 12 times in this very sentence alone!

33. New Zealand is actually part of a much bigger, sunken landmass.

Dubbed Zealandia, it was only discovered after humans had traveled to space as they were able to easily see it from above the Earth.

Some scientists believe it should be formally recognized as the world’s 8th continent.

34. The word "sneeze" came about through a misspelling of the original word "fneze" or "fnese."

Photo: YouTube

"Sneeze" is definitely a silly-sounding word. But it's not quite as silly-sounding as "fneze" or "fnese," which is how this bodily function was once spelled. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word "sneeze" originates from the Middle English word "fnese" and came about due to a "misreading or misprinting" of the original term. The dictionary writes that despite that, the word sneeze was "later adopted because it sounded appropriate."

35. Benjamin Franklin only received two years of formal education.

After spending just two years at the Boston Latin School as well as a private academy while he was young, Benjamin Franklin left formal education behind to work at his family's candle and soap-making business before becoming an apprentice at his brother's printing shop.

However, Franklin continued his education independently by reading whatever books, essays, and articles he could get his hands on. His studious ways not only helped him become a revered writer, politician, and inventor, but also allowed him to earn honorary degrees from Harvard, Yale, Oxford, the College of William and Mary, and the University of St. Andrews.

36. Whether or not you dream in black and white depends on whether you watched black-and-white television.

If your dreams look more vintage than HD, there's a high chance you grew up watching black-and-white television. According to one 2008 study published in the journal Conscious Cognition, most people born after the year 1983 said they almost never dream in black and white, whereas people born in the year 1953 and earlier said they dream in black and white about a quarter of the time. Overall, 12 percent of people dream entirely in black and white, leading the researchers to suggest that "true greyscale dreams occur only in people with black and white media experience."

37. The word "unfriend" was first used in 1659.

Photo: TopYaps

When you disconnect with someone on social media, you might say that you've "unfriended" them. The now-common word was even the New Oxford American Dictionary Word of the Year in 2009. But it turns out that "unfriend" is much older than you might expect. According to The Globe and Mail, the word "unbefriended" is cited several times in the Oxford English Dictionary beginning in 1629. But it wasn't until 1659 that Thomas Fuller used the word as we know it today. In his book The Appeal of Injured Innocence, Fuller wrote, "I hope, sir, that we are not mutually Unfriended by this Difference which hath happened betwixt us."

38. It's against the law to die in the town of Longyearbyen, Norway.

According to IFL Science, "Even if you've lived [in Longyearbyen, Norway] all your life, if you are terminally ill, you will be flown off the island to live out the rest of your days. If you do happen to die suddenly in Longyearbyen, your body will be buried elsewhere."

39. There are a ton of misspellings on the Stanley Cup.

Winning the Stanley Cup is the ultimate goal for anyone in the National Hockey League. And if you do win it, you'll have your name etched onto the trophy itself. Unfortunately, whoever is responsible for that task has committed plenty of errors over the years, including accidentally spelling the Toronto Maple Leafs as "TORONTO MAPLE LEAES" and the Boston Bruins as "BQSTQN BRUINS." Hall of Fame goaltender Jacques Plante won the Stanley Cup for five consecutive years and his name is spelled differently each time, according to the NHL.

40. NASA thinks it's detected the first "marsquake."

Photo: Los Angeles Times

Earthquakes are expected in many places on Earth, but it turns out they can happen on other planets as well—although they're obviously not called "earthquakes." On April 6, 2019, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory recorded a tremor that they believe was a "marsquake," making it the first quake recorded outside of either the Earth or the Moon.

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41. If you were to write out every number (one, two, three, etc.), you wouldn't use the letter "b" until you reached one billion.

You'll have to trust us on this one: If you spelled out every number, you'd get all the way to one billion before you'd need the second letter in the alphabet.

42. Casu Marzu cheese is purposely infested with maggots.

If you ever come across maggot-infested food (yuck!), the best course of action is usually to throw the item into the trash as quickly as possible. However, those who make Casu Marzu cheese welcome the fly larva. With a name that literally translates to "rotten cheese," the Sardinian delicacy starts as Pecorino Sardo. But, instead of being soaked in brine, it's left out so that Piophila casei cheese flies can lay their eggs inside of it. The larva eventually hatches from the eggs and eats the cheese, which produces enzymes that lead to fermentation and decomposition in what will become the Casu Marzu.

I Love Cheese describes it by saying that it's a "highly pungent, super soft cheese that oozes tears ('lagrima'), and fittingly so, as it tends to burn on the tongue."

43. Queen Elizabeth II invented a new breed of dog.

Photo: Guff

It's a well-known fact that Queen Elizabeth II is a fan of dogs, particularly one breed: corgis. She got her first corgi when she was seven years old after meeting those that belonged to the children of the Marquess of Bath. She's also credited with the introduction of the "dorgi," a corgi-dachshund cross.

Over her lifetime, the royal has had more than 30 pet corgis, all of whom were descendants of a dog named Susan, who the then-princess received as a gift for her 18th birthday in 1944. Sadly, Willow, the Queen's last corgi, passed away in 2018 and the aging monarch will not be getting any new dogs because she doesn't want to leave any behind when she passes away.

44. "Witzelsucht" is a condition that causes people to have an uncontrollable urge to make jokes.

Comedians, clowns, and comics like to make people laugh. But for people with witzelsucht, telling silly stories and making groan-worthy puns is an uncontrollable impulse. According to a 2016 article published in The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, patients with the condition can't resist "excessive and often inappropriate joking and facetious humor" as well as "a childish or silly excitement."

45. There are 10 quintillion (10,000,000,000,000,000,000) insects alive at any time.

Unfortunately for anyone who's afraid of bugs, the creepy (yet crucial) critters certainly hold their own population-wise. There are around 900,000 known species of insects on Earth and an estimated 10 quintillion (10,000,000,000,000,000,000) of them alive at any given time.

46. In Medieval Europe, a moment was exactly 90 seconds.

Photo: Wikipedia

If you were whisked back in time to Medieval Europe and someone asked you if you had a free moment, you'd better be sure that you had 90 seconds available before saying yes. That's because, as late as the early 19th century, a moment was exactly 1/40th of an hour long.

47. Ben & Jerry's was going to be a bagel company but the equipment was too expensive.

These days, Ben & Jerry's may be a beloved brand that offers all kinds of ice cream, but when Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield first started their business in the late 1970s, it was originally going to be a bagel company. However, the cost of the necessary equipment was too high, so they instead decided to take a $5 ice cream course that was being offered at Penn State. And the rest, as they say, is delicious dessert history.

48. In Back to the Future, the time machine was originally an old fridge.

When you watch 1985's Back to the Future, you'll see that the main character, Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) travels back to the '50s in a DeLorean car that's been turned into a time machine. And while the DeLorean became a signature part of the film, we have to wonder what the movie would have been like if the producers had gone with their original concept, which was to make the time machine an old refrigerator.

According to HuffPost, "Ultimately, it was determined that it probably was not a good idea to use a refrigerator in such a manner as kids might want to re-enact the scene." Parents everywhere are grateful.

49. "Overmorrow" is the day after tomorrow.

Photo: Pinterest

You can accurately refer to the day after tomorrow as "overmorrow." For example, you might say, "We're leaving on vacation overmorrow."

50. Stephen Hawking once hosted a party for time travelers but didn't send the invitations until after the fact.

In 2009, renowned theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking decided to throw a party, but none of his guests showed up. However, they weren't being rude. It turns out that they didn't receive an invitation for the event until well after the fact—which was the plan… to test time travel.

Hawking explained in 2012 to Ars Technica, "I gave a party for time-travelers, but I didn't send out the invitations until after the party. I sat there a long time, but no one came."

51. Birth control for men exists.

Taking birth control is not just for women. In 2016, scientists announced that they had developed an injectable male contraceptive that was found to be 96 percent effective in the men who used it. Using the hormones progestogen (which affects sperm production) and testosterone (which reduces the effects of the progestogen), the treatment could help equalize the burden of control between the sexes.

52. World War I boosted the bra market.

Photo: Roads to the Great War - blogger

During the First World War, the U.S. War Industries Board asked American women to forgo their corsets—which required significant amounts of metal to construct, according to NPR. Instead, they were expected to switch to the less-demanding bra. The ladies did their part for the cause, freeing up to 28,000 tons of metal—enough to build two battleships—and changing female fashion from that moment forward.

53. Eating pistachios can help reduce erectile dysfunction.

For a 2011 Turkish study published in the International Journal of Impotence Research, 17 men with erectile dysfunction were given 100 grams of pistachios to eat for lunch every day for three weeks. The subjects were then measured on the International Index of Erectile Function—and the pistachios proved to improve blood flow and the dilation of blood vessels. Hey, it's certainly a cheaper option than Viagra!

54. Caterpillars turn into the soup before becoming butterflies.

We all know that caterpillars create a cocoon in which they transform into beautiful butterflies, but what actually goes on inside that cocoon is pretty gross: The insect actually "digests itself, releasing enzymes to dissolve all of its tissues," as Scientific American explains. Once it's fully disintegrated (excluding some "imaginal discs"), it then begins "the rapid cell division required to form the wings, antennae, legs, eyes, genitals, and all the other features of an adult butterfly or moth."

55. The oldest still-operating amusement park in the world opened in Denmark in 1583.

Photo: slate.com

The Guinness World Records lists Bakken in Klampenborg, Denmark, as the oldest still-operating amusement park in the world. The park, which opened in 1583, features more than 150 attractions, including a wooden roller coaster that was built in 1932.

According to the records book, Bakken wasn't totally unique in its time. "In medieval Europe, most major cities featured what is the origin of the amusement park: the pleasure gardens," they write. "These gardens featured live entertainment, fireworks, dancing, games, and some primitive amusement rides."

56. Penguins used to be almost seven feet tall.

Researchers from the La Plata Museum in Argentina found fossils in the Antarctic of a "colossus penguin," measuring six feet, eight inches in height. According to the researchers, the larger penguins would have been able to dive underwater for 40 minutes at a time!

57. Nicolas Cage and Jake Gyllenhaal could've been Aragon and Frodo in The Lord of the Rings.

It may be hard to imagine anyone else as Frodo or Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings film franchise, but before Elijah Wood and Viggo Mortensen nabbed the coveted roles, many famous actors were considered. For example, Nicolas Cage was offered the role of Aragorn but turned it down, telling Newsweek, "There were different things going on in my life at the time that precluded me from being able to travel and be away from home for three years."

And Jake Gyllenhaal might have been Frodo, but he bombed the audition for one not-so-small reason. "I remember auditioning for The Lord of the Rings and going in and not being told that I needed a British accent. I really do remember [director] Peter Jackson saying to me, 'You know that you have to do this in a British accent?'" he recalled to The Hollywood Reporter. "We heard back it was literally one of the worst auditions."

58. And Sean Connery turned down the role of Gandalf.

Photo: IGN.com

The wise wizard of The Lord of the Rings almost had a bit of a 007 vibe. Sean Connery was originally offered the role that Ian McKellen would make into a classic but turned it down—despite the offer of a 15 percent stake in the franchise's box office profits.

59. Notre Dame's 180,000 rooftop bees survived the 2019 fire.

When a massive fire destroyed a large part of Paris' Notre-Dame cathedral in April 2019, almost 200,000 bees that were set up with homes on the roof survived the blaze. The hives were built in 2013 as a part of a city-wide initiative to increase the bee population.

"Right after the fire I looked at the drone pictures and saw the hives weren't burnt but there was no way of knowing if the bees had survived," Nicolas Geant, Notre Dame's resident beekeeper, told CNN. "Now I know there's activity; it's a huge relief!"

60. The Olympic games were originally a religious festival.

These days, the Olympics represent the ultimate achievement for many of the world's top athletes. But when the prestigious games first started in Ancient Greece in 776 B.C., they were part of a religious festival in honor of Zeus, the father of Greek gods and goddesses. The athletes were all male citizens from every corner of the Greek world, according to the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

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61. Humans move their eyes more 100,000 times a day.

Photo: Medical News Today

If your eyes tend to feel tired at the end of the day, it's because they do a ton of work. Humans generally move their eyes around three times a second, which is more than 100,000 times every single day.

62. One Brazilian island has so many venomous snakes that the government banned visitors.

The government of Brazil has banned tourists from visiting Ilha de Queimada Grande, an island that has the highest concentration of venomous snakes in the world. By some estimates, there's one snake for every square meter.

The island is crawling with thousands of golden lancehead vipers. And when these snakes strike, their venom can kill the victim in under an hour. So yes, you're better off vacationing elsewhere!

63. Montana has a super toxic lake.

If you're looking for a place to go swimming in Montana, avoid Berkeley Pit at all costs. This super toxic lake opened in 1955 as a copper mine, which operated until 1982. Now, the lake is a mix of chemicals and heavy metals, such as copper, arsenic, cadmium, iron, and zinc.

To understand just how toxic the lake is, know that in 1995, a flock of geese settled near the pit. Within a few days, their insides had been charred and some 340 birds were found dead, according to the Washington Post. Yikes!

64. The world's largest plane is wider than two football fields.

Photo: NPR

The largest plane in the world is the Stratolaunch. With a 385-foot wingspan and six engines, the plane made its maiden voyage over the Mojave Desert on April 13, 2019. In the future, the Stratolaunch is expected to be used as a stratospheric launch platform for space rockets.

65. Hippos produce a natural skin moisturizer and sunblock.

Hippopotamuses spend their days under the blazing hot sun, which means their skin could really start to feel the effects of sun damage if they didn't do anything about it. Fortunately, the creatures produce an oily substance that acts as both a natural moisturizer and a sunblock. The secretion, known as "hippo sweat," contains microscopic structures that scatter light and protect the animals from burns.

66. The word "Pez" comes from the German word for peppermint.

Eduard Haas III first invented Pez candy in Vienna, Austria, in 1927, as an alternative to smoking. And when it came to naming his tiny treats, which were originally a minty flavor, he looked to the German word "pfefferminz," which means peppermint. He took the "p" from the first syllable, the "e" from the middle syllable, and the "z" from the last syllable to form the word "Pez."

67. Japan has a roaming deer infestation.

Photo: My Modern Met

Because of this, the Japanese government has set up the National Wolf Association, which is focused on reintroducing wolves to Japan to help reduce the amount of wild deer.

68. The pH scale was invented by the Carlsberg brewery.

It was the brainchild of one Søren Sørensen who invented it in 1909 while researching the best proteins, amino acids and enzymes in the Carlsberg brewery laboratory.

69. Most perfume is made from Sperm Whale puke.

Known as Ambergris, this waxy secretion belched out by Sperm Whales is a core component to making any perfumes due to its pleasant smell and is often found floating in tropical seas.

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70. In the Californian White Mountains, there are trees older than history.

Photo: Treehugger

These wise old trees, known as Pinus longaeva, have been aged at up to 5,060+ years old!

Written history is believed to have begun roughly 5,000 years ago – back then these magnificent trees would have just been starting out their long lives!

71. “Mountain Dew” was originally a slang term for moonshine.

Used as a bit of slang for mountain-brewed moonshine, the hella sugary drink we know and suffer through today was originally marketed as a whiskey chaser.

72. There is a black market for illegal skin trade.

Nowadays there’s a black market for most about anything! This one is particularly grim though.

In India, women from poor backgrounds are being trafficked and duped into selling their skin for use in the global cosmetic surgery world for operations like penis enlargements and breast enhancements.

73. Roughly half a human body is red blood cells.

Photo: Illinois Science Council

We have roughly 50 – 75 trillion cells in our bodies, and almost half of those are red blood cells.

It takes one of these little red blood cells just 20 seconds to travel around our entire body.

74. 10 gallons of carrot juice will kill a person.

That is because the Vitamin A content of that much juice is high enough to make your brain swell and kill you, along with a load of nasty other symptoms!

You can also overdose on Vitamin A by eating 1 pound of polar bear liver.

75. The movement of falling cats is used as part of an astronaut’s training.

The way cats try to correct themselves when falling was studied and analyzed by NASA scientists.

They then used their findings as a means to teach falling astronauts how to correct their movements in zero gravity.

76. We have a house fire to thank for The Sims.

Photo: BeyondSims

Will Wight, creator or the iconic gaming franchise, suffered a tragic house fire in 1991 where he lost everything to the flames.

Afterward he had a vision of rebuilding his house, which led him to thinking of a game where one would create a “virtual dollhouse”, and from that The Sims was born.

77. Three types of Australian birds deliberately spread wildfires.

Why would they do that? Well, it’s Australia, what did you expect?!

Black kites, whistling kites and brown falcons all purposefully aid the spread of wildfires by picking up and dropping flaming sticks just so the fire will flush out their prey and make it easier for them to catch.

78. An Italian punk band once ate spaghetti on stage instead of playing any songs.

In 1979, at the height of punk, Italian comedy punk band Skiantos wheeled a kitchen, a table, a TV and a fridge onto their set stage, boiled up some spaghetti and then sat there eating it.

Unsurprisingly, the audience was less than pleased at the “gig”!

79. Woodpeckers eat brains when they get too hungry.

Photo: Twitter

Nope, not zombie woodpeckers, just normal woodpeckers.

If they’ve gone too long without food, they will pin down other birds and peck at the back of their heads until they crack through their skulls and then eat their brains. Freaky.

You might also like to read these 6 reasons why woodpeckers peck wood!

80. Italy has 34 native languages in use today.

Surprisingly, most of these different languages are not, in fact, dialects of Italian.

Rather they are evolved independently from common Latin.

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81. Amsterdam’s Royal Palace sits on 13,659 wooden poles.

Because of the thick layer of fen and clay present in Dutch soil, all the buildings in the Netherlands are built on wooden poles.

82. These wooden poles are fixed into a sandy layer over 35 feet below ground-level!

Photo: Food and Agriculture Organization

Amsterdam’s Royal Palace sits on 13,659 wooden poles.

It was placed there after a child’s “design a carving” competition was held in the 80s to decide what character should adorn the Cathedral.

83. Dolph Lundgren has an IQ of 160.

That’s right; the “If he dies, he dies” meme fellow from Rocky IV is actually a super genius!

He has a Master’s Degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Sydney and the Royal Institute of Technology, alongside a Fulbright scholarship to MIT.

Oh, he was also the European Champion of Karate in 1981.

84. Two stealth nuclear submarines once bumped into each other by accident.

In 2009 in the Atlantic Ocean, two stealth-cloaked nuclear submarines (one from France and one from Britain) bumped into each other out of sheer coincidence.

They were both cloaked so well from each other that neither submarine could detect the other, even when they were only a couple feet apart.

85. The Hawaiian flag purposefully looks like a combination of the British and American flags.

Photo: Wikipedia

The Hawaiian flag purposefully looks like a combination of the British and American flags.

This is because it was designed by then-King Kamehameha I in 1812, and he wanted a flag that would appeal to both the Americans and the British.

86. NASA’s internet speed is 91 GB per second!

This means on NASA’s internet you could download a high-quality 1080p movie in mere milliseconds!

Normal household internet speeds are roughly 25 MB per second, which is dwarfed by NASA’s hugely superior internet speeds.

87. For their first month of living, babies only see in black & white.

They also only see silhouettes and are unable to focus on items just after their birth.

This is because their retinal nerve cells aren’t fully established yet and they lack the capability to process visual information.

88. In 1783, a volcanic eruption killed 80% of the Earth’s sheep.

Photo: YouTube

The Laki volcanic fissure in the South of Iceland erupted over an eight-month period back in 1783, releasing some straight-up nasty hydrogen fluoride into the atmosphere to shower down on the Earth’s inhabitants.

Because of this, roughly 25% of the world’s human population was wiped out.

However, that pales compared to the 80% of the world’s sheep population that died as a result!

89. Malta has never experienced weather below the freezing point.

Malta is quite the popular tourist trap in summer and with good reason!

It has never experienced temperatures below freezing point (32°F) and it is the only European country to own this claim!

90. The Pentagon has its own private island off New York.

It’s used to run war games for the possibility of a massive cyber-attack and resulting in massive loss of power.

It’s completely forbidden for anyone to go there.

91. Cheetahs love Calvin Klein.

Photo: Love Wrexham Magazine

Wildlife crews trying to film these skittish big cats tried testing a range of scents of their cameras and equipment in order to draw cheetahs in closer for filming.

Of all the scents they tried, Calvin Klein’s “Obsession for Men” proved to be the one the cheetahs loved the most.

Now there’s an advertising campaign that needs to be run!

92. There’s a Big Mac Museum in Pennsylvania.

It was opened by McDonald’s themselves in 2007 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Big Mac, and features exhibits such as a 14-foot tall Big Mac!

93. The US has more millionaires than Sweden has people.

There are over 10 million millionaires in the US, whilst Sweden has a population of less than 10 million people.

94. The letter “A” doesn’t appear in a written number until you reach One Thousand.

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Photo: Reader's Digest

Well, that’s if you don’t count the “and” in numbers like “four hundred and twenty” for example.

Also, the letter “M” also doesn’t appear until you reach “one million”!

95. “Sombrero” is just a generic Spanish word for “hat”.

Rather than describing the iconic hat of the stereotypical Mexicans, the word is literally just a word used for any hat.

The word “sombrero” derived from the word “sombra”, meaning “shade”.

96. Ireland’s population still hasn’t recovered from the Great Potato Famine in 1845.

The population of Ireland prior to the devastating famine was roughly between 8.5 million and 9 million people.

Modern-day Ireland’s population is estimated at roughly 4.85 million people.

97. Camels don’t actually store water in their humps.

Photo: YouTube

It’s one of those age-old myths that you hear as a kid and take as fact, but it’s not true I’m afraid!

Their lovely camel humps are actually used to store fat.

But amazingly that’s not the only reason, check out these other reasons why camels have humps!

A man once tripped over his beard during a fire evacuation and died.

Camels don’t actually store water in their humps.

98. Psycho (1960) was the first film to ever show a toilet flushing.

Alfred Hitchcock is practically a household name when it comes to films – especially horrors.

His 1960 horror flick Psycho captivated audiences and is one of the go-tos when people talk about the invention of the slasher genre.

It was, for certain, a film of firsts, and one of those firsts just so happened to be the first time a toilet was seen flushing on the big screen!

99. Then-Mayor of Braunau am Inn back in 1567, Hans Steininger, was the proud owner of the world’s longest beard (at the time) with a four-foot hairy wonder.

When he was caught up in a fire evacuation drill.

On his way out of the flaming building, Hans’s beard got tangled around his feet and caused him to trip and fall down a flight of stairs, breaking his neck and killing him.

100 Fun and Interesting Facts about Everything Would Blow Your Mind! (Part 2) There are endless mysteries that have yet to unveiled. From amazing natural phenomena to unpredictable inventions. Stay tuned with KnowInsiders to know more about our ...

100 Fun and Interesting Facts about Everything Would Blow Your Mind! (Part 1) Our large world contains truly a lot of mysteries and interesting things. From amazing natural phenomena to unpredictable inventions. Stay tuned KnowInsiders to know more ...