Skip to content
Search AI Powered

Latest Stories

People Share Their Absolute Favorite Random Fact

Make us preferred on Google

The world is a fascinating place. We should know-we live there.

In and above the world, we have so many exchanges of life; space; information; it feels impossible to ever fully grasp this incredible, strange thing called life that we live.


u/TheRebel2187 asked:

What's your favourite random fact?

Here were some of those answers.


It's Just A Dinosaur, NBD

In the production of the 2014 Godzilla movie the sound designers played Godzilla's roar through a whole lot of concert speakers and they got noise complaints from 3 miles away about people thinking there was an earthquake.

Neat-Guy

I'd Rather Watch Asparagus Grow

Asparagus grows so quickly during the spring (up to 10" in one 24 hour period, or almost half an inch per hour) that you could literally sit and watch it grow were you so inclined (or that bored).

panadolxtra1

Now I Can ALWAYS Get There

Alexander the great once built a permanent bridge to an island just because he was upset when they laughed at his offer for surrender on their part because he couldnt get there.

Zachfulger

Tried To Eat Some Bugs But Then I Got High

So certain millipedes secrete cyanide as a protective mechanism to kill predators. However lemurs are immune to this lethal effect and instead intentionally provoke millipedes to get them to excrete cyanide. The lemurs do this because instead of killing them, the cyanide produced by the millipedes gets them high (and I think they can also use it as insect repellent). TLDR: Lemurs eat millipedes cyanide to get high.

ChrisLetai

Bye Bye Miss Electron-Pie

Astronomer here! Magnetars are a type of neutron star (the core of a giant dead star where a ball of neutrons the mass of the sun are crammed into a 20km/12mi radius) that have the most extreme magnetic fields we know of in the universe. How extreme? Well if you got within a thousand kilometers/ 620 miles of one, the magnetic field itself would kill you, by basically pulling the electrons out of your very atoms.

Space is so cool!

Andromeda321

A Mysterious Spice

There used to be three staple seasonings for tables in ye olden days, salt, pepper and nobody knows, table sets from back then have been found with 3 containers consistently but no one ever bothered to write down what was in the 3rd one bc? Common knowledge right? What idiot wouldn't know what to put in the third container? Us apparently. Just another random bit of knowledge lost through the ages.

Taragharagharagh

That's What We Call COLD

During the Cold War, an American condom company was shipping, well, condoms to the USSR but they switched the sizes so that, for example, a XL size was labeled under medium on the box so that the Russians would think Americans had big d!cks.

_Oxygenstealer_

There And Back Again

There is approximately 2 meters of DNA packed into the average human cell. That means there is approximately 20,000,000,000 kilometers of DNA in the average adult human body, conservatively estimating 1013 cells in the body.

For reference, that is ~66 roundtrips between Earth and the Sun.

P0rtal2

Salt Fat Acid Heat

Tomato is a vegetable and a fruit. Vegetables is a culinary term while fruits are botanical.

The age-old question actually has an answer—it's both! Tomatoes are fruits that are considered vegetables by nutritionists. Botanically, a fruit is a ripened flower ovary and contains seeds. Tomatoes, plums, zucchinis, and melons are all edible fruits, but things like maple "helicopters" and floating dandelion puffs are fruits too. For some reason, people got hung up on tomatoes, but the "fruit or vegetable" question could also work for any vegetable with seeds.

Now, nutritionally, the term "fruit" is used to describe sweet and fleshy botanical fruits, and "vegetable" is used to indicate a wide variety of plant parts that are not so high in fructose. In many cultures, vegetables tend to be served as part of the main dish or side, whereas sweet fruits are typically snacks or desserts. Thus, roots, tubers, stems, flower buds, leaves, and certain botanical fruits, including green beans, pumpkins, and of course tomatoes, are all considered vegetables by nutritionists.

There is no hard-and-fast rule that clearly designates a botanical fruit as a vegetable, but, given that tomatoes are generally not used in desserts and are closely related to other fruit-vegetables (e.g., eggplants and peppers), it is not too counterintuitive for tomatoes to be classified as vegetables. So go ahead and call a tomato whatever you want—it's super tasty either way.

calitreexsweet

A Natural Radiation Site

There existed a natural nuclear reactor in Africa 2 billion years ago. And 30 km from the site of the reactor were find the oldest fossils of animals, also aged of 2 billion years ago. There doesn't appear to be any link though.

Dr_Peter_Venkman_84

More from Trending/best-of-reddit

Donald Trump, Mark Zuckerberg, Jay Clayton,  Elon Musk, and David O. Sacks
Tierney L. Cross/Pool/For The Washington Post via Getty Images

Elon Musk Dragged After Making Embarrassingly Predictable Move To Please Trump

At the end of September, MAGA Republican President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled "Inaugurating The Era Of Super Intelligence," mandating all executive branch departments and agencies use his new term, "super intelligence" or SI, for the technology known the world over as "artificial intelligence" or AI.

Trump, who seems obsessed with renaming things, had unveiled his new name for AI in a speech before the United Nations General Assembly after previously complaining that he didn't like AI because he hates the word "artificial." Trump's latest rebrand came during a luncheon with tech leaders to discuss the technology.

Keep Reading Show less
Screenshot of Robert De Niro; Donald Trump Screenshot of Mark Ruffalo
Hands Off Our Vote (left and right); Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images (center)

Robert De Niro And Mark Ruffalo Epically Unload On Trump During 'Hands Off Our Vote' Event

Actors Robert De Niro and Mark Ruffalo gave their most brutal criticism of President Donald Trump yet during a "Hands Off Our Vote" event on Saturday in New York City, warning attendees that Trump and his administration are trying to demoralize people and cast doubt on the electoral process at a time when voting in full force is more important than ever before.

Both actors are prominent critics of the president and De Niro, a film legend for decades, is known for his blunt and profanity-laden statements; here he not only referred to Trump as a "coward" but also "f**king stupid."

Keep Reading Show less
Screenshot of Donald Trump
@realDonaldTrump/X

Trump Just Urged MAGA To 'Vote By Mail' To Help Out Republicans In New Video—And The Hypocrisy Is Off The Charts

President Donald Trump's hypocrisy is off the charts after he urged MAGA voters in a video on Saturday to vote by mail to help Republicans win the midterm elections despite years of claiming mail-in ballots are used by Democrats to rig elections.

Republicans have railed against early voting and vote-by-mail procedures in recent years, spurred by Trump's lies that they helped Democrats "steal" the 2020 election.

Keep Reading Show less
Gypsy-Rose Blanchard and Ken Urker shared a daughter, Aurora, before Urker’s sudden death at age 34.
Gypsy-Rose Blanchard/Instagram

Gypsy-Rose Blanchard Breaks Her Silence After The Sudden Death Of Her Ex-Partner At Age 34

Gypsy-Rose Blanchard has broken her silence following the sudden death of her longtime partner, Ken Urker, who died on his 34th birthday. Urker was found dead at his home in Raceland, Louisiana, on October 1 after deputies with the Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office responded to the residence at approximately 6:15 p.m. An investigation into his death remains ongoing.

Blanchard later told People that she believes Urker died from an overdose, though she said she does not know whether it was intentional.

Keep Reading Show less
Rafael Cruz; JD Vance
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images; Kevin Lamarque-Pool/Getty Images

Ted Cruz Calls JD Vance 'Insecure' As Feud Heats Up Over Potential 2028 Presidential Race Clash

In a phone interview with Politico, Texas MAGA GOP Senator Rafael "Ted" Cruz called Republican Vice President JD Vance "insecure."

The comment came in response to Vance criticizing Cruz in an interview with NBC News, saying:

Keep Reading Show less