We asked the BuzzFeed Community to share some of their favorite fun facts. Here are the fascinating results.
1. "The scent of fresh-cut grass is really the grass screaming in pain. The smell is a distress signal that tells insects not to eat the grass so it can heal its wounds."
NBC / Via media.giphy.com
2. "The word 'avocado' is derived from an Aztec word that means 'testicle.'"
NBC / Via media.giphy.com
3. "Lobsters' bladders are in their heads and they urinate as a form of communication."
Netflix / Via media.giphy.com
4. "There are more ways to shuffle a deck of cards than there are atoms on Earth."
TV Land / Via media.giphy.com
5. "Count von Count on Sesame Street is obsessed with counting because traditional folklore states that if you scatter a large number of small objects in a vampire's path (think coins, seeds, grains, that sort of thing), they are compelled to stop and count them all."
Hulu / Via media.giphy.com
6. "Gargoyles were invented because many ancient Europeans were illiterate and they needed a physical representation of hell to scare them into going to church."
NBC / Via media.giphy.com
7. "If you eat a polar bear liver, you will die from an overdose of Vitamin A."
CBS / Via media.giphy.com
8. "Spider webs were used as bandages in ancient times."
Red Table Talk / Via media.giphy.com
9. "The first thing Mickey Mouse ever said was 'Hot dogs!'"
Disney / Via media.giphy.com
10. "Echidnas have a four-headed penis. Ducks have a corkscrew-shaped penis."
Netflix / Via media.giphy.com
11. "US cicadas come out of the ground every 13 or 17 years after hatching."
NBC / Via media.giphy.com
12. "The distance between you earlobes is the same as the distance between your nipples."
Fox / Via media.giphy.com
13. "The fear of long words is Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia."
NBC / Via media.giphy.com
—cehy
14. "Wombats have cube-shaped poop."
NBC / Via media.giphy.com
15. "The man who invented the frisbee was turned into a frisbee when he died."
E! / Via media.giphy.com
16. "Every minute, we lose about 30,000 to 40,000 dead skin cells. That's about nine pounds of skin cells a year. You probably just lost 40,000 skin cells in the time it took you to read this."
NBC / Via media.giphy.com
17. "Hippos can’t swim. They almost always maintain contact with the bottom or they bounce off the bottom as they move through the water."
NBC / Via media.giphy.com
18. And: "Apple trees need to be grafted in order to grow into a specific type, so if you plant an apple seed, you may not know what kind of apple tree you are growing."
Comedy Central / Via media.giphy.com
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and clarity.