180 Random Facts You Didn't Know You Needed To Know

    Some random tidbits to whip out at your next party.

    Whether you're studying for trivia night, looking for conversation starters, or just plain bored, we have some random facts that will knock your socks off. Thanks to Reddit, BuzzFeed writers, and members of the BuzzFeed Community, we rounded up the most random facts so that you'll never need to google another icebreaker again.

    1. Abraham Lincoln is in the National Wrestling Hall of Fame.

    Abe Lincoln sitting

    2. More people have walked on the moon than have won the notoriously difficult Japanese competition show Sasuke, aka Ninja Warrior.

    3. The blinking light at the top of the Capitol Records building in Los Angeles sends out secret messages in Morse code.

    The top of the Capitol Records building, featuring the spire with the blinking light

    4. Reindeer and caribou are the same animal.

    A caribou/reindeer in a snowy field

    5. It's illegal to be drunk in a bar in Alaska.

    A man passed out drunk at a bar, surrounded by empty shot glasses

    6. An orgasm can potentially stop incessant hiccups.

    7. "Paul Winchell, the voice of Tigger in The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, invented an artificial heart."

    A person dressed as Tigger stands in front of a crowd

    8. Cows have accents.

    A cow in a field

    9. Tommy Lee Jones and Al Gore were friends in college.

    Al Gore holding a microphone

    10. "Penguins have glands under their eyes to extract and secrete excess salt. These are powerful enough that they allow them to drink seawater as their primary water source."

    11. "A second is called a second because it is the second division of the hour by 60, the first division being a minute."

    A man looking at his wristwatch

    12. "From a botanical standpoint, strawberries and raspberries aren't berries, but bananas and avocados are."

    Whole strawberries

    13. "The Atlantic Ocean is saltier than the Pacific Ocean."

    14. "You can fit all the planets of the solar system between Earth and the moon."

    An astronaut looking at Earth from the moon

    15. "The Price Is Right and Grand Theft Auto use the same font."

    A Grand Theft Auto cover and The Price Is Right logo

    16. "Ketchup was sold as medicine in the 1830s."

    A person holding a ketchup container

    17. "Ohio is the only US state that doesn't share a letter with the word 'mackerel.'"

    Two whole fish lying on a cutting board with condiments

    18. "Pirates wore eye patches so one eye would always be acclimated to the darkness, allowing them to see in the darkness below deck in an instant."

    19. Volvo invented the three-point seatbelt in 1962 but gave away the patent for free to save lives.

    A seatbelt clasp being inserted

    20. "Pope John Paul II is an honorary Harlem Globetrotter."

    21. "On Venus, a year is shorter than a day — meaning it takes Venus less time to orbit the Sun (year) than to complete one rotation (day)."

    22. The average British postage stamp glue contains 5.9 calories per stamp, while the average US stamp glue contains about one-tenth of a calorie per stamp.

    An old UK stamp of King George VI on an envelope from 1941

    23. Paul Revere didn't finish his midnight ride, but Sybil Ludington, a 16-year-old girl, did. Legend says she rode for 40 miles alerting people of a British attack in 1777.

    Close-up of a Paul Revere statue

    24. Doves and pigeons are pretty much the exact same animal.

    A pigeon

    25. The filling in between the wafers in a KitKat is...other KitKats.

    The filling of a KitKat

    26. We see, use, and drink the same water the dinosaurs did.

    Illustration of a dinosaur drinking from a small body of water

    27. Shakespeare invented a ton of words, like "gossip" and "lonely."

    Illustration of Shakespeare

    28. Six Flags is named that because six different flags have flown over Texas.

    The Six Flags logo

    29. We have no idea why the ABCs are in that order, but they've been that way for thousands of years.

    Letters of the alphabet

    30. Platypuses look funny and cute, but they can poison you with a spur on their feet.

    A platypus

    31. Most people only breathe through one nostril at a time.

    Close-up of a person's face

    32. Lee Jordan has the least amount of screentime in the Harry Potter movies in comparison with how often he appears in the book. But not to worry, Dobby had screentime proportionate to how many times he was mentioned in the books.

    Graph creator u/chartr said that Dobby had 11 minutes of screentime in the movies and was mentioned 469 times in the books, so he's represented in the cluster of dots to the left of Molly Weasley.

    33. You'll never know what your own voice sounds like without a recording of it.

    34. George Washington never knew dinosaurs existed.

    Illustration of a dinosaur on a mountain

    35. The world's largest wild camel population is in Australia, not in the Middle East or the Sahara Desert.

    Camels in the desert

    36. Early Harvard students didn't have to learn calculus.

    The Harvard campus

    37. You can always see your nose; you just don't always notice it.

    38. The national anthem stole its melody from an old British drinking song.

    Smiling man sitting in a pub and holding a glass of beer

    39. Some cephalopods have messed-up-looking brains.

    An octopus underwater

    40. In 1518, a “dancing plague” took over a French town.

    A person dancing in front of the Eiffel Tower

    41. We know next to nothing about our oceans.

    Rocks underwater

    42. While women are more selective than men on Tinder, they still get more matches.

    To be fair, 75% of Tinder users identify as men, while only 25% identify as women, according to Statista.

    43. Millions of years ago, Earth was covered with giant mushrooms instead of tall trees.

    A large mushroom

    44. We never see ourselves with our own eyes, so we'll never get an accurate look at our own faces.

    Woman looking in the mirror

    45. Polar bear hair isn't actually white.

    A polar bear

    46. It's pretty easy to find someone who shares a birthday with you.

    A cat wearing a birthday hat

    47. It's possible to use sign language with an accent.

    A smiling woman using sign language

    48. T-shirts were originally marketed to unmarried men who didn't know how to sew buttons back on collared shirts by themselves.

    A man buttoning a shirt

    49. Texas has the highest speed limit of any state at 85 mph. Specifically, you can drive 85 mph down Texas State Highway 130 (SH 130), between SH 45 and Interstate Highway 10. The 41-mile toll road between Austin and San Antonio was built to alleviate the traffic on I-35 — especially after truck traffic increased due to NAFTA in the late '90s.

    Enacted in 1973, the National Maximum Speed Law required states to agree to a universal 55 mph speed limit (which was increased to 65 mph in the late '80s) if they wanted to receive federal funding for highway repair. The law was repealed in 1995, and states are now allowed to enforce their own speed limits.

    50. There's a sexual phenomenon named after President Calvin Coolidge, of all people.

    Coolidge sitting at a desk

    51. Donald Trump, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton were born in consecutive months of the same year.

    GW Bush and Bill Clinton standing together

    52. Prior to the 20th century, squirrels were one of America's most popular pets.

    A squirrel climbing a tree bark

    53. One of the first Memorial Day commemorations was organized by enslaved people who had recently been freed.

    US flags in a cemetery

    54. April 18, 1930, was such a slow news day that at 6:30 p.m., the BBC's radio announcer said, “There is no news."

    Black-and-white photo of people at an old radio news show

    55. Before the 1800s, people had "first" and "second" sleep. They would sleep three to four hours, wake up for two to three hours to do some type of activity, then go back to sleep until morning.

    A child sleeping with a teething ring

    56. Cows have "best friends" and get stressed when separated.

    Three cows outdoors

    57. The people behind the voices of Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse got married IRL.

    Mickey and Minnie Mouse with their voice actors

    58. A can of Mountain Dew can dissolve a mouse 😳.

    Cans of Mountain Dew

    59. For a short time, the planet Uranus was named...George.

    Uranus

    60. Iceland has an elf whisperer who inspects construction sites before anything gets built to make sure no elves are hanging around.

    Elf slippers

    61. At its peak in January 2005, Blockbuster Video had 5,734 store locations across the US. In August 2020, it listed the last Blockbuster Video store on Airbnb for private sleepovers.

    The last Blockbuster Video store is located in Bend, Oregon. Here's the Airbnb listing

    A movie, The Last Blockbuster, was also released in 2020 to "look back at the era of video rentals and the story of how one small town video store managed to outlast a corporate giant." (Catch the trailer here!)

    62. Women in several US cities organized Anti-Flirt Clubs in the 1920s to combat catcalling.

    Women wearing period-era dresses

    63. Toilet seat covers are basically pointless.

    A hand raising a toilet seat cover

    64. Most American movie villains have British accents because we associate them with having high intellect and being unfriendly.

    The Union Jack

    65. Based on this survey, "creepy-crawlies" is the sexual fetish with the least reported sexual interest but is not the most taboo.

    The survey was conducted by the plot creator, u/AellaGirl, who received responses via Twitter and Tumblr.

    66. Mother's Day was quite literally invented to be anti-commercialism.

    A person kissing a smiling older woman and giving her a bouquet of flowers

    67. For a week in the middle of spring 2018, this is how the population of Manhattan changed, hour by hour.

    Does Times Square surprise anyone?

    68. "Honey is the only food that never expires. The same honey that was buried with the pharaohs in Egypt is still edible."

    Honey and honeycomb on a cutting board

    69. The colors of the twist ties on bread aren't random — they tell you what day the loaf was baked on.

    Loaves of bread on grocery store shelves

    70. Pan, a moon of Saturn, is walnut-shaped because it absorbs some of Saturn's rings.

    Saturn

    71. When this person's child asks, "Wanna know something?" they are most likely going to talk about Minecraft.

    Is this representative of your kid too?

    72. Ancient Romans paid a tax on pee.

    The Colosseum

    73. Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup was a 19th-century medicine for crying and teething babies...that had alcohol, cannabis, morphine, and chloroform in it.

    A crying baby

    74. The biggest one-hit wonder on Spotify is Norman Greenbaum with "Spirit in the Sky." As of April 2021, the song had 283,552,742 listens on Spotify. "Marcy," Greenbaum's second-most-played song, had 332,424 listens.

    His third-most-played song ("Skyline") had 157,464 listens.

    Chart creator u/cremepat noted that while most one-hit-wonder analyses look at how long an artist spends on music charts, they wanted to analyze one-hit wonders based on current listening data — that's why they used Spotify listens.

    75. When a rabbit gets happy and jumps around for joy, it's called a binky.

    A bunny hopping on the grass

    76. If only people under age 45 had voted in the 2020 US presidential election, Joe Biden would have won 32 states and Washington, DC.

    Map creator u/BLAZENIOSZ added that they forgot to color Alaska and Hawaii, both of which would have been blue.

    77. The largest tire manufacturer in the world is...Lego.

    Tires on a shelf

    78. A "buttload" is a real measurement of weight.

    A scale

    79. While heart disease is the leading cause of death, according to the CDC, Google Trends suggests that people worry most about dying from cancer. In 2019, the CDC reported 659,041 deaths due to heart disease in the US, and 599,601 due to cancer. For comparison, that same year, they reported 19,141 deaths due to homicide in the US.

    If you looked at causes of deaths represented in media headlines, you might be led to believe that there's an incredibly high risk of death by homicide or terrorism.

    80. Four percent of the sand on Omaha Beach in Normandy, France, is made up of shrapnel from D-Day that has broken down.

    Omaha Beach in France

    81. Dr. Seuss wrote Green Eggs and Ham because someone bet him it was impossible to write a children's book with fewer than 50 different words in it.

    Dr Seuss's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

    82. If someone gives opinions on topics they know nothing about, they're an ultracrepidarian.

    A woman sitting on a couch looking skeptical as she listens to another woman

    83. The majority of 16- to 24-year-olds in the UK said that their main sources of sex education are lessons at school and friends.

    Chart creator u/theimpossiblesalad explained, "The Natsal surveys are some of the largest surveys of sexual behavior in the world. Since 1990, the surveys take place in Britain once every 10 years. The respondents are selected randomly, and thus the results are broadly representative of the British general population. 

    "For the chart above, I used data from the Natsal-3 survey, conducted between 2010 and 2012. The younger respondents (16–24 years old) were peripubescent between 1998 and 2008, when the internet was not a part of their everyday lives. 

    "As such, just 4% of men and 2% of women list the internet as their main source of sexual education. This will be further explored on the Natsal-4 survey, which was previously planned for May 2020 and is now scheduled for the upcoming summer."

    84. There's a high school in Minnesota that gives service dogs yearbook photos.

    A happy dog looking at the camera

    85. Wombat poop is cube-shaped.

    A wombat

    86. In the US, the most common birthday between 2000 and 2014 is Sept. 12. The least common birthday is Dec. 25.

    The second-, third-, and fourth-least-common birthdays are Jan. 1, Dec. 24, and July 4.

    87. Jack Dorsey, the cofounder and former CEO of Twitter, gave the highest COVID-19 donation relative to his net worth (21.74%).

    If you're interested in tracking Dorsey, he put all of his donations in a public Google sheet to be transparent, and you can find it here.

    Also important to note — this graph looks at personal donations. However, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provided $100 million in funding for frontline workers, prevention measures, and treatment effort worldwide; helped fund factories for coronavirus vaccine candidates; and pledged $1.6 billion to GAVI (a global partnership that aims to increase access to immunization in lower-income countries).

    88. Asphalt is actually a liquid that's 2 million times more viscous than honey.

    Viscous liquid in a container

    89. And humans are born to be pretty much fearless.

    An infant being held

    90. People wore fake moles made of velvet, silk, or mouse skin in the 18th century as a fashion statement.

    A close-up of a person's face with a mole near one eye

    91. The lyrics of Daft Punk's "Around the World" consist of three words: "around" (33%), "the" (33%), and "world" (33%).

    Absolutely mind-blowing.

    92. Michael Caine's birth name is "Maurice Micklewhite." He didn't legally change it to "Michael Caine" until he was 83 years old.

    Michael Caine

    93. This animation simulates how currents carry things that float on the surface of the Pacific Ocean — namely showing how litter ends up accumulating in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which is a collection of "marine debris" (aka litter) in the North Pacific Ocean. The trash vortex spans from North America's West Coast (the Eastern Garbage Patch between Hawaii and California) to Japan (the Western Garbage Patch between Hawaii and Japan).

    Creator u/bradyrx explained, "These are results from a simulation of the Model for Prediction Across Scales. We released 1 million virtual particles throughout the global ocean, from the surface to deep, to better understand fluid pathways in the ocean. This is showing the fate of surface 'drifters' in the North Pacific, which collect in the famous 1.6 million–square–kilometer garbage patch."

    94. Richard Nixon once smuggled a suitcase full of weed through the airport for Louis Armstrong.

    Armstrong and Nixon sitting together

    95. The first person to perform a successful C-section in South Africa was Dr. James Barry...who was actually a woman.

    A pregnant person holding their belly as they shit in a doctor's office

    96. The national animal of Scotland is the unicorn.

    A unicorn