Learning new information is a wonderful thing. Every single day, we expand our knowledge at least a little bit.
Sometimes, we put ourselves into environments that cultivate learning at quite the pace. It could be a new and challenging job, an undergraduate or graduate program at a college, or a day long workshop.
Experiences like that bring the reward of new skills and understanding in exchange for our commitment of time and money.
But what about the other stuff we learn: the strange tidbits we hear from a friend, those tiny morsels that have stuck with us ever since ninth grade history class, the statistics we come across in the occasional TED Talk.
They may not make us more hireable or change our lives, but they sure are fun to spout off when we have the opportunity.
Winologue asked, "What's the most ridiculous fact you know?"
Proportions Askew
"A blue whales throat is the size of a coke can despite being the largest known animal." -- MalFibber
"And that's largest known ever." -- ILoveLongDogs
"Blue whales have liver parasites the size of bananas." -- Madhighlander1
Those Guys Have Been Busy
"Of the 195 nations in the world, Britain has invaded 173 of them." -- No-regerts136
"I believe this includes nations that were once controlled by Britain but have not been invaded since officially becoming their own nation such as Canada but still an interesting fact." -- Tom_Bombadil_Ret
Collective Conscious
"It is estimated that one in 10 Europeans are conceived on an Ikea bed." -- Winologue
"In the store?" -- whisperingrabbit
"Yea those are all the people that gave up finding the exit" -- YeetMeatToFeet
Heck of a Show
" Disney is the world's second largest buyer of explosives, behind the US Department of Defense." -- Vinny_Lam
"Mickeys got to enforce his copyright laws somehow." -- Distant_Past
"The last WW2 Japanese soldier to surrender did so in 1974" -- haasbrein
"He surrendered but he didn't give himself away." -- oldmannew
Plenty of Reasons Not To...
"The average ejaculation travels at roughly 27 miles per hour, which technically would make ejaculating illegal in school zones." -- Herobrinedanny
Largest of the Smallest
"Lego is the world's largest tire distributor" -- AshtonH06
"And also the number one cause of excruciating foot pain in adults with two kids under 5." -- unnaturaldisorder
A Very Powerful, Life-Changing Strawberry
"The entire internet weighs about as much as a large strawberry." -- BullishFinances
"What? The internet is a computer network made up of all of the computers and networking infrastructure on it. Your home router is apart of the internet. So I the cable to it...."
"Myth busted." -- Altruistic-Fun-8278
"They tend to mean the charge differences and photons currently encoding the information, exchanging the energy for mass." -- arcosapphire
Banished
"A Russian bell was convicted of treason and exiled."
"That's not a euphemism for a beautiful but seditious Russian woman but an actual bell that rang cacophonously when prince Dimitri, son of Ivan the Terrible, was assassinated in 1591."
"Local authorities banished it to Siberia where it was appropriated by congenial company in Tobolsk; its fellow exiles subjected it to confinement, rehabilitation, and restoration before it hung in the Tobolsk church."
"Finally, in 1892, its conviction was rescinded and it was restored to its original tower with full pardon by repentant Uglichians."
New Plan: Commit All Crimes in the Jungle
"Human fingerprints and Koala fingerprints are nearly identical - so close that they can be confused at crime scenes!" -- Mahina_Mele
"I don't think koalas have enough brain capacity to commit any crime" -- stellargd
"So they don't have all the koalafications?" -- ShredderTony
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Jane Rosenberg
Jane Rosenberg