Skip To Content

    185 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. Stop signs used to be yellow.

    A stop sign

    2. The casting team for the Harry Potter movies had a rule that every major role had to use a British actor...which meant that Robin Williams was turned down for Hagrid.

    3. Netflix was founded before Google.

    The Netflix logo

    4. Boxers and briefs were invented less than 100 years ago.

    Two men wearing briefs

    5. Sunglasses were originally prescribed to people with syphilis.

    Sunglasses hanging in a display

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

    Abe Lincoln sitting

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

    8. 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

    9. Reindeer and caribou are the same animal.

    A caribou/reindeer in a snowy field

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

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

    11. An orgasm can potentially stop incessant hiccups.

    12. "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

    13. Cows have accents.

    A cow in a field

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

    Al Gore holding a microphone

    15. "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."

    16. "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

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

    Whole strawberries

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

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

    An astronaut looking at Earth from the moon

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

    A Grand Theft Auto cover and The Price Is Right logo

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

    A person holding a ketchup container

    22. "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

    23. "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."

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

    A seatbelt clasp being inserted

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

    26. "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)."

    27. 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

    28. 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

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

    A pigeon

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

    The filling of a KitKat

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

    Illustration of a dinosaur drinking from a small body of water

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

    Illustration of Shakespeare

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

    The Six Flags logo

    34. 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

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

    A platypus

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

    Close-up of a person's face

    37. 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.

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

    39. George Washington never knew dinosaurs existed.

    Illustration of a dinosaur on a mountain

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

    Camels in the desert

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

    The Harvard campus

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

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

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

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

    An octopus underwater

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

    A person dancing in front of the Eiffel Tower

    46. We know next to nothing about our oceans.

    Rocks underwater

    47. 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.

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

    A large mushroom

    49. 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

    50. Polar bear hair isn't actually white.

    A polar bear

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

    A cat wearing a birthday hat

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

    A smiling woman using sign language

    53. 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

    54. 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.

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

    Coolidge sitting at a desk

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

    GW Bush and Bill Clinton standing together

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

    A squirrel climbing a tree bark

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

    US flags in a cemetery

    59. 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

    60. 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

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

    Three cows outdoors

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

    Mickey and Minnie Mouse with their voice actors

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

    Cans of Mountain Dew

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

    Uranus

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

    Elf slippers

    66. 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!)

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

    Women wearing period-era dresses

    68. Toilet seat covers are basically pointless.

    A hand raising a toilet seat cover

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

    The Union Jack

    70. 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.

    71. 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

    72. 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?

    73. "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

    74. 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

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

    Saturn

    76. 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?

    77. Ancient Romans paid a tax on pee.

    The Colosseum

    78. 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

    79. 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.

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

    A bunny hopping on the grass

    81. 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.

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

    Tires on a shelf

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

    A scale

    84. 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.

    85. 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

    86. 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

    87. 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

    88. 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."

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

    A happy dog looking at the camera

    90. Wombat poop is cube-shaped.

    A wombat

    91. 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.

    92. 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).

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

    Viscous liquid in a container

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

    An infant being held

    95. 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

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

    Absolutely mind-blowing.

    97. 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

    98. 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."

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

    Armstrong and Nixon sitting together

    100. 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

    101. The national animal of Scotland is the unicorn.

    A unicorn

    102. As of 2015, young adults in the US were more likely to live with their parents than with a spouse.

    103. For a brief time, Melbourne, Australia, had the best name on the planet: "Batmania."

    The Bat-Signal

    104. Of the eight planets in our solar system, Venus has the longest day, which lasts 5,832 hours. On the other hand, Jupiter has the shortest day, lasting 10 hours.

    So one day on Venus lasts 243 days on Earth, while one year on Venus lasts 225 days on Earth.

    105. In 1981, a black Lab named Bosco was elected honorary mayor of Sunol, California.

    A happy black Lab

    106. The inventor of the bra also helped guide the careers of writers including James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, and Henry Miller.

    Three bras hanging in a shower stall

    107. There are lowercase numbers in addition to lowercase letters.

    Rows and rows of digital numbers

    108. Of these 14 chip brands, Cheetos has the highest percentage of air per bag. According to this study, the average bag of chips is 43% air.

    To be fair, the "air" in snack bags is a taste-preserving nitrogen to prevent the chips from turning stale or getting squashed. Plus, food for thought, the shape of Cheetos may skew their air percentage relative to flatter chips.

    109. In the 19th century, experts warned men and women (but especially women) about a disease called "bicycle face," which meant getting stuck with the awkward faces they made while biking.

    Black-and-white photo of a woman riding a bike

    110. Turns out, the male equivalent of "Karen" is "Terry"!

    111. The Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, has so many cats on its grounds that it employs a "press secretary to the cats."

    A person holding. three cats

    112. While this isn't a huge surprise, the exact inflation percentage of US college tuition from 1980 to 2020 is more than five times the percentage of overall US inflation.

    Other things to consider: The Federal Family Education Loan Program, through which private lenders offered parents or students federally guaranteed student loans, began in 1965 and ended in 2010. Some argue that loans normalize increasingly high college tuitions, which in turn increase the demand for loans.

    113. Ancient Greeks came up with the idea of cyclops after they found a mammoth fossil and had no idea what it was.

    A drawing of cyclops

    114. A whopping 0% of restaurants featured in Season 2 of the US version of Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares are still open.

    Not Giuseppi's...

    115. Until the Great Depression, movie theaters hated popcorn.

    A hand in a box of movie theater popcorn

    116. You may have heard that the Mercator projection distorts land sizes. More specifically, it inflates the size of land the farther it is from the equator. However, the Mercator projection is used for navigation, so even though the sizes are (purposely) distorted, the longitude lines are all parallel.

    Map projections generally distort land sizes, since they have to flatten the globe's surface. 

    In case the visual alone isn't enough: Russia has an area of 6.6 million square miles, Canada has an area of 3.8 million square miles, China has an area of 3.7 million  square miles, the United States has an area of 3.6 million square miles, and Brazil has an area of 3.2 million square miles.

    117. Dressing rooms have curtains or half doors so that customers are extra aware of people passing by, which puts pressure on them to choose an item.

    118. Unsurprisingly, the top 10 richest people in the world got richer during the pandemic.

    Graph creator u/Sandyrandy54 explained that they chose March 13, 2020, as the start date because it was when the stock market crashed, putting each person at their lowest net worth.

    If you don't recognize some of these names, here's a cheat sheet: Elon Musk is currently the founder, CEO, and CTO of SpaceX, CEO of Tesla, founder of the Boring Co., and cofounder of Neuralink and OpenAI; Jeff Bezos is the founder and previous CEO of Amazon; Bernard Arnault is the chairperson and chief executive of LVMH Moët Hennessy — Louis Vuitton SE (the largest luxury-goods company in the world); Bill Gates is the cofounder of Microsoft; Mark Zuckerberg is the cofounder, CEO, and chairperson of Meta, parent company of Facebook; Zhong Shanshan is the founder and chairperson of Nongfu Spring (China's largest bottled water producer) and majority owner of Beijing Wantai Biological Pharmacy Enterprise; Larry Ellison is the cofounder, executive chairperson, and CTO of Oracle; Warren Buffett is the chairperson and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway; and Larry Page and Sergey Brin are the cofounders of Google.

    119. The dot over the lowercase letters 'i' and 'j' is called a tittle.

    120. If "I Didn't Vote" ran as a candidate in the 2020 US presidential election, they would have received 195 Electoral College votes, and no candidate would have received enough to win the presidency.

    Graphic creator u/Prunestand noted the historically high 63.8% national voter turnout — from 79.6% voter turnout in Minnesota to 48.7% voter turnout in New York. They also pointed out that "the nonvoting bloc would mainly win in the Southern nonswing states."

    (Note: This data used then-current ballot counting, prior to certified results.)

    121. "Antarctica is the largest desert in the world."

    The Arctic

    122. Music revenue in the US peaked in 1999, the same year that Napster was founded. According to Pitchfork, "In 2000, per-unit sales of CDs, cassettes, and vinyl averaged $18.52. By 2014, measuring CDs, vinyl, and downloads, that number fell to $11.97."

    In August 2000, attorneys general in 41 states filed an antitrust lawsuit in federal court claiming that five major US distributors and retailers conspired to inflate the price of CDs. They ultimately settled for $143 million.

    123. Novelist Patricia Highsmith kept snails as pets and would bring them to parties in her handbag.

    A snail on a bag

    124. Before the invention of color TV, 75% of people said they dreamed in black and white.

    Black-and-white photo of a man and a woman sitting on a couch and looking at a small black-and-white TV on a stool

    125. Restaurants don't use dollar signs on their menus because they don't want to remind you that you're spending money.

    A table setting with utensils and napkins

    126. McDonald's had to discontinue its coffee stirring spoons because people used them to snort cocaine.

    127. Most residents in California born out of state were born in New York. The most born-out-of-state residents in Texas were born in California, and the most in Florida were born in New York.

    Map creator u/demivus shared some interesting facts: "Technically, DC exports the most residents to Maryland, more than Pennsylvania, but I didn't include it. There are only 1.3 native-born Nevadans for every Californian living in Nevada. 

    "Likewise, there are only 1.7 native-born New Hampshirites for every Massachusettsan living in New Hampshire. As expected, many states have several foreign countries whose native-born people outnumber those of the leading American state."

    128. There's a contest called the "Bad Sex in Fiction Award" that ranks the worst sex scenes written for the year.

    129. Despite seeming like a timeless character, the tooth fairy is a recent invention. The first written reference to her appears in 1927.

    A drawing of the tooth fairy

    130. Pumpernickel was originally a German insult that means "farting bastard."

    Slices of pumpernickel

    131. The speed of light in a vacuum is 299,792,458 meters per second. Here's how you can visualize light traveling through space:

    In more familiar units, the speed of light is approximately 107,925,284 kph, or 670,616,629 mph.

    132. Duracell AA batteries last the longest of these 11 AA batteries tested in identical flashlights.

    These results were gathered from this NBC article, in which the authors tested the batteries at home by leaving them in a flashlight until they died — so this isn't necessarily conclusive data, but take it for what you will.

    133. Vatican City has its own bank and the only ATM in the world that allows users to perform transactions in Latin.

    The Vatican

    134. Water bottles have an expiration date because the bottle will leak nontoxic chemicals into the water that makes it taste funny.

    Water bottles seen from above

    135. The logo for Chupa Chups lollipops was designed by none other than Salvador Dalí.

    Black-and-white photo of Dalí

    136. There are gold nanoparticles in your hair.

    Woman throwing confetti in the air

    137. Author Shel Silverstein also wrote Johnny Cash songs.

    Johnny Cash playing guitar

    138. People used to believe that eating dead bodies could cure illness.

    139. Turns out, paper bags aren't any better for the environment than plastic ones.

    Person holding a paper bag of produce

    140. Scientists studied 200,000 galaxies to determine that the color of the universe is...beige.

    A beige blank background

    141. The Hawaiian islands are actually the peaks of the Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain, a mostly undersea mountain range. As such, Mauna Kea, a volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii, is the highest point in the state of Hawaii and tallest mountain on Earth. It originates beneath the Pacific Ocean and rises over 33,500 feet from base to peak.

    Lōihi, in the bottom right of the map, is the youngest volcano in the Hawaiian Ridge. It's an active submarine volcano that's still growing and is the only volcano in the chain in the submarine pre-shield stage (which means it has infrequent, small-volume eruptions).

    142. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was created by a department store in 1939.

    143. Japan has the lowest per capita rate for people killed by police, while Honduras has the highest.

    The rate of Black Americans killed by police forces (at an annual rate of 10 million people) is twice that of people in the US overall.

    144. "Horses can't vomit."

    145. It's illegal to own just one guinea pig in Switzerland because they get lonely.

    Two guinea pigs eating grass

    146. In November 2010, Nigahiga was the most-subscribed-to YouTube channel. In November 2019, T-Series was the YouTube channel with the most subscribers.

    Although, in 2019, PewDiePie was the most-subscribed-to channel made by a YouTuber.

    147. A female architecture student prevented a Manhattan skyscraper from collapsing in the 1970s when she caught a massive design flaw.

    The downtown Manhattan skyline

    148. At its peak in March 2001, Toys R Us had 1,077 store locations across the US. The toy company was founded in 1948 and closed between 2018 and 2019 in Europe. There were two locations left in the US until financial losses from the COVID-19 pandemic caused them to close in 2021.

    In August 2021, the company announced its comeback and opened up several stores across the nation.

    149. Rapper Pusha T wrote the "I'm Lovin' It" jingle for McDonald's...but he doesn't own any publishing rights.

    Pusha T onstage

    150. Texaco Star Theater was the most popular TV series in 1951, and The Big Bang Theory was the most popular TV series in 2019.

    Other most popular shows throughout the decades include I Love LucyThe Beverly HillbilliesHappy Days, Laverne & Shirley, 60 Minutes, The Cosby Show, Cheers, ER, CSI, American Idol, and NCIS.

    151. This is a visualization of what the values of the unit circle represent:

    All trig teachers should show this to their classes.

    152. The first socks were created to be worn with sandals, making this the original (proper?) way to wear socks...

    Three pairs of feet wearing socks and sandals

    153. Searches for “International Men’s Day” annually peak on International Women’s Day.

    154. Approximately 80% of the 50 largest public companies are connected through at least one shared board member.

    Graph creator u/qwerty2020 clarified that of roughly 1,100 board member positions across the 50 companies, around 1,000 are occupied by a unique person.

    You can find an interactive version of this visualization here.

    155. The inventor of the sewing machine came up with the idea for the zipper.

    A person pulling up a jacket zipper

    156. Buttons were used as decoration centuries before anyone thought to create holes for them.

    Multicolored buttons on a surface

    157. As of July 2017, Uber overtook yellow taxis in the number of monthly trips given in New York City.

    Uber still overtook New York taxis even though #DeleteUber caused 200,000 people to delete their Uber accounts in 2017.

    158. Jeans were invented by Levi Strauss in 1873.

    The exterior of a Levi's store

    159. This graphic shows how herd immunity works depending on what percentage of the population is vaccinated. The red represents infection, the yellow represents vaccinated people, and the blue represents unvaccinated people.

    The creator, u/theotheredmund, explained that it was created using simulated data with percentages that were "calibrated with the effectiveness of real herd immunity in diseases based on research from Epidemiological Reviews, as cited by PBS."

    160. George Washington is protected by law from being outranked by any other military officer, even now. If we ever have a six-star general, Washington would posthumously be promoted to a seven-star general to maintain the top rank.

    Statue of Washington

    161. Mike Myers originally recorded his lines in Shrek in a thick Canadian accent. After seeing some footage, he decided that a Scottish accent would be better. The change ended up costing roughly $4 million.

    Shrek

    162. Netscape was the most popular web browser in 1994, before Internet Explorer took over in 1998, followed by Chrome in 2012. Chrome is still the most popular web browser.

    Shoutout (and throwback!) to Firefox getting close to overtaking Internet Explorer, though. 

    It's also interesting to note that this data looks at web browsers used on both desktop and mobile — so browsers that are default on mobile devices (like Chrome on Android devices) are more popular than browsers like Firefox.

    163. The forbidden fruit that Adam and Eve eat in the Bible is never identified as an apple.

    A person reaching for a green apple on a tree

    164. Human babies are born with roughly 300 bones. Once you become an adult, you're down to 206 bones.

    X-ray of a child's and an adult's hand

    165. This graphic shows the vegetation intensity (or the normalized difference vegetation index) across Africa throughout the year. It is caused by the Intertropical Convergence Zone, a region near the equator where the trade winds of the Northern and Southern hemispheres come together. This affects rainfall in many countries near the equator, causing wet and dry seasons (instead of cold and warm seasons).

    166. Sloths go without pooping for five to seven days on average, and as much as one-third of their body weight is poop by the time they finally "go."

    A sloth hanging off a tree

    167. The oldest unchanged national flag is the flag of Denmark.

    The flag of Denmark hanging

    168. The top three US fast-food chains with the most store locations are Subway (with 23,494 locations), Starbucks (with 15,350 locations), and McDonald's (with 13,651 locations).

    The data was collected in 2019.

    169. The gender-neutral word for "niece" or "nephew" is "nibling."

    A boy and a girl lying on a bed resting their faces in their hands

    170. A woman from North Carolina bought a scratch-off lottery ticket to prove to her husband that they were never winners, but the ticket won her $1 million.

    A scratch-off ticket

    171. A single spaghetti noodle is called a spaghetto.

    A person twirling spaghetti on a fork

    172. German chocolate cake is named after a guy whose last name was "German."

    German chocolate cake

    173. Pineapples were once so rare that people used to rent them for decoration at fancy parties.

    Two whole pineapples

    174. Star Wars: The Last Jedi has the greatest ratings difference between Rotten Tomatoes critic and audience ratings. Critics rated it much higher than the audience.

    As of April 2021, Star Wars: The Last Jedi had a 90% Tomatometer rating ("the percentage of professional critic reviews that are positive for a given film or television show") on Rotten Tomatoes, and a 42% Audience Score.

    175. The word "boycott" actually comes from a guy named Charles Boycott, whom everyone hated.

    Drawing of Boycott

    176. The Statue of Liberty was originally a copper color on the outside, but it developed its green patina after being exposed to the elements.

    The flame of Lady Liberty

    177. Yoda and Miss Piggy are voiced by the same person.

    178. NASA was sued for trespassing...on Mars.

    The surface of Mars with the Rover on it

    179. There are no bridges across the Amazon River. Not even one!

    The Amazon River seen from above

    180. Texas is so huge that El Paso is actually closer to San Diego (in California!) than it is to Beaumont.

    Highway sign for El Paso

    181. The cost of one Coca-Cola bottle in the US will buy you 20 Coca-Cola bottles in Iran — but it's not enough to buy one Coca-Cola bottle in Australia.

    If ya like this, you'll be interested in the Economist's Big Mac Index. Created in 1986, the index is a survey created to measure purchasing-power parity in different countries. (PPP is a popular metric that's used to compare currency in different countries by comparing the price of the same goods in each country.)

    The Big Mac Index compares the price of one McDonald's Big Mac in different countries. As of April 2021, a Big Mac cost £3.29 in Britain and US$5.66 in the US. That implies the exchange rate is 0.58, but the actual exchange rate is currently 0.74. So according to the Big Mac Index, this suggests that the British pound is 21.6% undervalued.

    182. Lucille Ball is basically the sole reason that Star Trek exists.

    183. In 1957, a Phillies fan was struck by two foul balls in the same game, breaking both her nose and her knee.

    A baseball sitting on the foul line

    184. New Zealand had an official wizard.

    Ian Brackenbury Channell wearing wizard robes and a pointy hat, and holding a wooden staff

    185. Between 2018 and 2020, certain top Google searches trended simultaneously in every state, such as "Fortnite," "Billie Eilish," "Baby Yoda," "Prince Harry," "Tiger King," and "George Floyd."

    Others include "Joker," "The Mandalorian," "Jojo Rabbit," "Elon Musk," and "Bubba Wallace."

    "Coronavirus" and "pandemic" didn't even pull that off.

    Note: Some entries have been edited for length and/or clarity.

    This article contains content from Andy Golder, Terri Pous, Victoria Vouloumanos, Stephen LaConte, Andrew Gauthier, and Alana Mohamed. It was compiled by Kelly Rissman.