Facts That May Sound Normal But Are Actually Mind-Blowing

Life is stranger than fiction.

That is a mantra writers live by.

When we write outlandish things, we wonder if people will judge us with trepidation.

"That can't happen."

"That's not real!"

Then you do a little research and find information that shows even crazier things have happened.

And ALL of it's more real than one could write.

Life is full of outlandish truths that oftentimes seem like science fiction.

Redditor Candy-Peach-Brooks wanted to talk about the facts of life, so they asked:

"What’s the most normal-sounding fact you know that is actually mind-blowing?"

Order Later

"Lobsters never stop growing."

- 7cozykisses

"This is why you should wait as long as possible before ordering lobster in a seafood restaurant."

- JimmyBallocks

illustration jeremy sengly GIF Giphy

Origins of Fire

"Lighters were invented before matches."

- corcaighnj

"Yes, and a tangential fact is that matches are 'safety matches' and their big innovation is largely completely ignored in modern times. The amazingness of matches is that they are explosive but contained in a 'safety' buffer that keeps them from spontaneously combusting, and only lighting when heat from the friction is applied."

- Reasonable_Reach_621

3 Languages

"The Belgium National Soccer team communicates in English because Belgians speak 3 languages: French, German & Dutch. Some players who speak French don’t understand the other languages, while some who speak the other languages don’t understand French. To make sure everyone understands, they conduct meetings and communicate in English. I think this is kind of cool."

- DudeBello

Heavy Puffs

"Clouds can weigh millions of pounds ☁️⚖️."

- z_crimsontease

"There was a radio trivia question years ago, 'the average one of these weighs 100,000 tons, ' and I immediately guessed cloud, and my coworkers all laughed at me, but I insisted that was it. People were calling in guessing for over an hour and getting it wrong, so the DJs started dropping hints, and all of them pointed at it being a cloud. Finally, one of my coworkers called in and handed me the phone, and I won a couple of concert tickets."

- Docrandall

YEE

"Rubber is named that because the gum of that tree was used as a pencil eraser. A thing you would physically rub... a rubber. That was the only use for that tree's sap at the time, so the gum just came to be called Rubber, and the tree it came from was a Rubber Tree."

"The color orange is named after the fruit. Before that, we literally called it redyellow."

"Nobody ever pronounced Ye Olde Inn as 'Yee.' Printing presses were manufactured in Europe and did not include the /th/ letter, known as thorn. So English typesetters used the character y in its place, since that had no use in English at the time. Ye Olde Inn was pronounced The Old Inn. That's where all of that comes from."

- desertravenwy

Connections...

"You exist because of an unbroken lineage dating back to the beginning of time itself. Every ancestor, every survival, every chance meeting, and every decision across countless generations has led to you."

- mufasas_son

Pass It On Falling In Love GIF by Barbara Pozzi Giphy

1985

"The song '1985' by Bowling For Soup mocks a hypothetical woman stuck in an ordinary life who can't mentally move on from the culture of the 80s. The song was released in 2004. As of last year, the song now more effectively mocks you, the listener, than the person in the lyrics."

- Zeruvi

FACTS

"Julie Andrews was a few years old when Amelia Earhart went missing."

"Orville Wright was still alive until Neil Armstrong graduated high school."

"Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born on the same day in the same year."

"Anne Frank and Martin Luther King also shared a birth year."

" Betty White was nine years old by the time Thomas Edison died."

- UnicornVoodooDoll

Lessons

"Not so much mind-blowing as sobering: adults are more likely to die from choking than kids are."

"The reason being that kids are more likely to be supervised than adults. Adults are more likely to be alone, either accidentally or intentionally."

"The lesson: don't run away to a bathroom if you're choking! And if you live alone, learn how to do the Heimlich on yourself, or get a device designed for it."

- Immortal_in_well

Makes Sense

"A squirrel will give you the bubonic plague long before rabies. They can't transmit it, and even if they could, anything that would give it to them would likely kill them in the process. Makes sense, but I always get weird looks for that one."

- Kitti-3939

"This actually can be useful. My son thinks squirrels are cute and was thinking about feeding one. 'Ummm, no, don’t mess with rabies.'"

- biffbobfred

Get Together

"The players at Gallaudet University invented the football huddle. It is a school for the deaf, so this way they could communicate in sign language without giving away anything to their opponents."

- UjustMe-4769

Huddle Regroup GIF Giphy

The Void

"The Solar System is part of the Milky Way galaxy. Billions of stars, thousands of other systems, all tumbling through the void of space. Moving around millions of other galaxies. And what are we in this expanse and understanding we call the universe? Humanity and our planet are a blemish on a speck of dust."

- FairNeedleworker9722

Over 200

"Statistically, only about 1 in a billion people (about 8 on the entire planet) have an IQ over 200 at any one time. This has remained stable for over a century. However, AI has gained 100 'IQ' points in the last decade or so. It will soon surpass human IQ scores, and we have no way of retraining our brains to catch ourselves up to it."

- SageLeaf1

Off a Cliff

"The populations of many of the world’s countries are ageing. That means older populations such as 40-65 are growing rapidly, and 65 and above, but the birth rate is dropping off a cliff. This is true for countries such as America, European countries, and Japan. It is predicted that by 2100, only a handful of countries will have exponential growth (meaning enough births to replace deaths and then enough on top of that to sustain growth)."

- Careful-Button-606

Endless

"There are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on all the beaches on Earth."

- SparkleSwish

Outer Space GIF by BBC Giphy

A Blob

"Cone Snails aren’t sentient; they’re nothing more than just a blob of flesh moving around, with no sense of purpose or self-being."

- Not_A_Rage_Baiter

"I worked with someone like that."

- cant_think_of_one_

I've always been leery of squirrels.

They give off a shady aura.

Now I know that they carry plague, I'll run away faster.

What is a cone snail?

Who made this up?

This is a lot of info to absorb at once.

Maybe some of us could end up on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?"

All knowledge is useful if utilized correctly.