41 Obscure But True Facts That Will Teach You Something

In a world currently under lockdown, where parents are having to home school their children, it can get a bit tough finding fun things to do that are both educational and fun at the same time.

Which is where we come in!

1. You can’t breathe and swallow at the same time. Think we’re wrong? Try it and see.

2. Ketchup used to be sold as medicine. So did cocaine in Coca Cola, but that’s another story.

3. The oldest person on Earth was born closer to the signing of the United States Constitution than to now.

4. Also, when the oldest person on Earth was born, there was a completely different set of people on the planet.

5. Coconuts kill more people than sharks every year.

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So do cows.

6. German is the second most spoken language in North Dakota.

7. Norway once knighted a penguin.

King Penguin

Looking at this King Penguin, are you really that surprised?

8. If you are in a room with 23 people, there’s more than a 50% chance that two of the people have the same birthday.

9. A TI-83 calculator has six times more processing power than the computer that landed Apollo 11 on the moon. Imagine what your phone could do!

10. Cambridge University is older than the Aztec and Inca empires. Yes, really.

11. And Harvard University was founded before calculus was derived.

12. The last veteran of the American Civil War died in 1959, long enough to see the atomic bomb dropped in Japan.

13. There are more ways to shuffle a deck of cards than there are atoms on Earth. Just sit and think about that for a minute.

playing-cards

14. 111,111,111 × 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321. Don’tcha just love palindromes!

15. Horses cannot breath through their mouths.

16. Cows have best friends and they tend to spend most of their time together. Awww.

17. If you folded a piece of paper 42 times, it would reach to the moon.

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

19. Scotland is as far north as Alaska is.

20. A “butt load” is an actual unit of measurement, equivalent to 126 gallons. Wonder what a “shed load” is…

21. France is the country with the most time zones in the world — more than the U.S. or Russia.

22. There is less time between the existence of the Tyrannosaurus Rex and the existence of humans than there was between the Tyrannosaurus Rex and the Stegosaurus.

23. Crocodiles are more closely related to birds than to lizards.

24. Africa is bigger than the United States, China, India, Spain, France, and several other countries combined.

25. Butterflies taste with their feet.

26. A jiffy is an actual unit of time, not just an expression. It’s equal to 33.3564 picoseconds.

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

28. A cubic inch of bone is about four times as strong as concrete. You’re made of stronger stuff than concrete!

29. You can get a rough estimate of the temperature by counting the number of times a cricket chirps in 15 seconds, then adding 37.

30. “Will Will Smith smith?” and “Will Smith will smith” are sentences that make complete sense.

31. The voices of Yoda and Miss Piggy were done by the same person.

32. It’s possible to sail a boat from Pakistan to Russia if you sail in a completely straight line.

33. On average, astronauts are two inches taller in space.

34. Shakespeare and Pocahontas were alive at the same time.

35. And Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born on the same day.

36. There are some trees alive today that were alive before the pyramids were built.

37. It’s impossible to hum while holding your nose. Again, try it and see…

38. Wombat poop is square.

39. Albino snails exist

40. When you receive a kidney transplant, instead of the affected kidney being removed, it’s left in and a third one is put in your pelvis.

41. One million seconds is 11 days. One billion seconds is 33 years. A billion is a lot.

We have a lot of Acts on our books, but not nearly a billion – however, we are working on it!

Let us know what you need for entertainment.

Tel: +44 (0)7973 416 596

Email: hello@show-world.co.uk