7 Things To Blurt Out During Awkward Silences This Week

These random facts will make you the most interesting person in any room.

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Conversations are hard. Each week, two-time Jeopardy! winner and awkward-silence warrior Terri Pous makes small talk a little easier by giving you random things to blurt out when you don’t know what else to say. Catch up on last week's here.

1. The original pride flag had eight colors, but two were dropped because not enough material was available to include all eight.

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Artist Gilbert Baker hand-dyed all of the colors for the very first pride flag in 1978, which was comprised of hot pink for sexuality, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for the sun, green for nature, turquoise blue for art, indigo for harmony, and violet for spirit. The flag company that began mass-producing his design, though, didn't have enough turquoise and hot-pink dye, so he dropped those stripes and kept the six that remain on the flag today.

2. Snakes can belch fire.

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Okay, this can only happen if the conditions are just right, but it's still pretty cool. Basically, if an animal a snake has eaten bursts while being digested and fills the snake's stomach with enough hydrogen, a nearby spark can turn the snake into a fire-breathing, armless, legless dragon.

3. The "dog days of summer" refers to the position of the constellations during June and July, not heat.

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Turns out, the "dog days of summer" are actually the time when the constellation Sirius rises just before the sun. Ancient Greeks and Romans thought that the astrological alignment would bring war, disaster, fever, and, obviously, extreme heat. Now it's just a fun song lyric.

4. "She sells seashells by the seashore" was written about an actual person.

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It's not just a fun little tongue twister, it's a story about Mary Anning, an amateur paleontologist who discovered some of the earliest dinosaur fossils in England. Sixty years after her death, she was immortalized in the still-popular play on words.

5. Mr. Rogers announced that he was feeding his fish on every episode of his show because a blind viewer once asked if they were okay.

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A 5-year-old girl named Katie once wrote into the show, saying, "Dear Mister Rogers, Please say when you are feeding your fish, because I worry about them. I can’t see if you are feeding them, so please say you are feeding them out loud." Ever the kind and friendly neighbor, Rogers started making a point of saying he was feeding his fish on every single episode.

6. Red Sour Patch Kids are the exact same candy as Swedish Fish, just with some sour sugar sprinkled on them.

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And a different shape, of course. The two candies were originally manufactured by the same company, which apparently found a red flavor it liked and stuck with it.

7. Baby puffins are called pufflings.

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As if puffins couldn't get any cuter, amirite?!