- Flamingos are pink because of the shrimp that they eat. They're born gray.
- There are only 25 blimps in the world.
- There's common belief (especially in Korea) that sleeping with a fan on will kill you.
- No one knows how eels reproduce.
- After detonating nuclear bombs, all steel today is contaminated. We dig up WW2 submarines to harvest "low background radiation steel, which we use in devices like pacemakers and MRIs.
- The Empire State Building has a zeppelin mooring point on the roof. We kind of thought those would take off. It has never been used.
- Pirates stole the Metric system from America. We commissioned France to teach use about metric, but their spokesperson got kidnapped by pirates. By the time they sent another, we had a regime change to someone uninterested in learning about metric. (source)
- Preparing for injuries from a land invasion of Japan in WWII, the US manifested SO MANY Purple Hearts that we are still using that supply today (2019).
- Humans are (basically) the only mammals without a baculum (penis bone)
- Some biblical scholars argue that it was this, and not the rib, that God took from Adam to create Eve.
- Wayne Gretzky scored more assists than any other hockey player has scored goals + assists combined (true through 2022).
- Maine is the only monosyllabic state, AND the one closest to Africa
- Due to some soviet shenanigans, Pepsi briefly had the world's sixth largest navy (source)
- ~~Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No. 1 in G minor was so popular, it caused a piano to get haunted and refuse to stop playing it until it was chopped up and tossed into the fire.
...the piano, which is out of its mind, has no intention of paying him any heed either. He sends for holy water and sprinkles the keyboard with it, but in vain—proof that it wasn't witchcraft but merely the natural result of thirty performances of one concerto. They take the keyboard out of the instrument—the keys are still moving up and down by themselves—and they throw it into the middle of the courtyard next to the warehouse. There M. Erard, now in a fury, has it chopped up with an axe. You think that did it? it made matters worse. Each piece danced, jumped, frisked about separately—on the pavement, between our legs, against the wall, in all directions, until the warehouse locksmith picked up this bedeviled mechanism in one armful and flung it in the fire of his forge, finally putting an end of it...Such a fine instrument!~~
(UPDATE: I cannot find evidence for this on Wikipedia, so unfortunately had to remove it.) - Elephants are the only mammal that can't jump.
- John Adams (successfully) defended the British soldiers at the Boston Massacres, saying that if there's one thing a man should not (lack), it's a fair trial. This made him a lot of enemies, but we elected him president anyway.
- Speaking of the Boston Massacre, it happened in the middle of an intersection, and there was a big plaque there for MANY MANY YEARS. But then cars. More people died admiring the plaque than died in the massacre, so they relocated it to a nearby sidewalk (source (doesn't directly corroborate))
- Shaq only ever made one 3-pointer (in fairness to him, and the 11,000 other shots he made: he didn't really attempt very many (22 total))
- The wingspan of a 747 (224 ft.) is longer than the wright brother's first flight (120 ft.)
- Related, the guy who took the iconic picture of that first flight, John T Daniels had never seen a camera before that day. It was his first picture ever taken. (it was set up on a tripod for him, he just had to squeeze the bulb)
- Belgium has different glasses for each and every beer (and pubs with HUNDREDS of beers on tap). If a given glass is dirty, locals will order a different beer instead of being served in the wrong glass.
- Yellow road lines are 10' long! Stop signs are huge!
- 27 US states are further north than the southern-most bit of Canada. More precisely, they have at least SOME land further north, but this way is more fun.
- Disneyland, despite owing its existence to a large rodent, employs 200 feral cats to hunt mice.
- Due to maritime law conventions, if your boat is sinking, it's customary that you throw the tow rope to the rescuing ship. If they throw it to you, they could have a salvage claim on your ship.