22 Things I Learned This Week That Sound Fake But Are 100% True

    Would you believe me if I told you the oldest water ever discovered is 1.6 billion years old?

    Andrew Ziegler
    by Andrew Ziegler

    BuzzFeed Editor

    1. These terrifying-looking animals lived about 300 million years before the dinosaurs existed:

    2. Much like humans, each and every chimpanzee has a unique fingerprint:

    3. Believe it or not, Bluetooth really was named after a Scandinavian king who united Norway and Denmark in the year 958:

    4. The water inside this vial is 1.6 billion years old. It was discovered inside an old mine on the Canadian Shield, which is an ancient geological formation that was part of the ocean floor many millions of years ago. Not only is this water teaching us about what life was like on Earth all those years ago, but it's also providing hope that a similar discovery — ancient, life-supporting water — could be found on Mars:

    5. Goosebumps are typically an involuntary reaction that's triggered by such things as temperature or emotion. For some people, however, it's not involuntary at all. There's a phenomenon called Voluntarily Piloerection where a very small percentage of people can actually give themselves goosebumps on command. Some estimate that only 1 in 1,500 people possess this mysterious ability — do you?

    Closeup of someone's arm as they get goosebumps
    Taken By Roberto Gomez / Getty Images

    6. The Kowloon Walled City, which was demolished in 1994 to make room for a park, was once the most densely populated place on Earth. Upward of 40,000 people, crammed into roughly 200 tightly packed towers, lived within an area that amounted to little more than a city block. It wasn't just a living space; it contained bars, restaurants, brothels, slaughterhouses, factories, and much more. Because it was built around an old Qing dynasty fortress, the British government — which ruled over Hong Kong at the time — had no jurisdiction over the Walled City, making it a completely autonomous and lawless enclave:

    7. And here's a photo of one of its thoroughfares:

    8. This is Martin Laurello, who had various stage names such as "Revolving-head man," "the Human Owl," and "Bobby the Boy with the Revolving Head" due to his very unsettling ability to turn his head 180 degrees. He was also allegedly able to sip this beer with his head turned around:

    Martin Laurello with his head turned completely around and facing backwards
    John Phillips / The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images

    Here's the caption that Getty provided for this photo: Revolving-head man Martin Laurello, turning his in complete opposite direction as he take a glass of beer fr. a bartender, which he is able to drink while maintaining this freakish position at party held for Robert Ripley's oddities.

    9. In 1961, Gus Grissom became the second American ever to go to space on a flight that lasted only 15 minutes and 30 seconds. As the capsule plummeted back toward Earth and landed in the Atlantic Ocean, everything was going exactly as planned — that is, until the escape hatch blew open way earlier than expected. The capsule filled with water and sank, and Grissom nearly drowned in the process. The Liberty Bell Capsule spent 38 years on the ocean floor, at a depth of 16,000 feet (4876.8 meters). In 1999 it was salvaged and restored, and it's currently on display in the National Air And Space Museum in Washington, DC:

    10. These are Vietnamese mossy frogs, and they're masters of camouflage:

    11. You've of course heard of Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison, but you may not have heard of Lewis Latimer, one of the first Black inventors in the United States. Latimer was a brilliant inventor in his own right whose contributions helped catapult Bell and Edison into the pantheon of great American inventors — only, Latimer was self taught because he didn't have the same access to education as these other two did. Thomas Edison's lightbulbs, which he patented and claimed full credit for, had one major flaw: they would blow out almost immediately. It was Latimer who found that carbon filaments would last longer, a discovery that would revolutionize the world:

    12. Kurt Cobain's daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, is now older than he was when he died:

    13. Last week, the Ingenuity helicopter made history by becoming the first aircraft to ever fly on Mars. Here's a photo Ingenuity took of the Perseverance rover during its historic flight:

    14. Michael Collins, who was a part of the historic Apollo 11 mission that put humans on the moon, died this week at the age of 90. Though Collins never got to step foot on the lunar surface, he played a pivotal role in the mission's success. In his memoirs he described what it felt like to be all alone in the Columbia as it orbited the moon. His isolation was intensified during the blackouts he'd experience when he'd pass over the far side and lose all contact with his crew and mission control, writing, “I am alone now, truly alone, and absolutely isolated from any known life”:

    R Kawka/ Alamy Stock Photo

    15. This is how small a baby swordfish is:

    16. The steppe bison was an ancient bison species that's been extinct for many thousands of years now. There used to be so many of them that researchers are finding more and more of their bones every single year — oftentimes when they're hoping to find something a bit more exciting. Blue Babe is a mummified steppe bison that was found almost perfectly preserved. It was discovered with gashes in its back left by a lion, though no flesh was missing, which means it didn't become that lion's meal:

    17. Binturongs, also called bearcats despite the fact that they're neither a bear nor a cat, are a type of mammal that apparently smell like buttered popcorn all the time:

    18. The wreck seen in the movie Titanic was actually a lot smaller than it looked — and a lot more upside down:

    19. These metals have different densities, which is why 10 ounces of aluminum looks like so much more than 10 ounces of gold:

    20. Road signs are a lot bigger than you might think:

    21. This is the Burj Al Babas, a luxury housing development in Turkey that was started in 2014 and abandoned, unfinished, in 2018 after the country fell into a recession. Now it's a ghost town:

    And last but not least...

    22. This cuirass belonged to Philip II of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great. It was discovered inside his fully intact tomb, which was discovered in 1977 at the royal necropolis of Vergina:

    Want to see what I learned last week? Click here to find out. And click HERE to see what I learned in April.