20 “Stupid Facts” That May Sound Fake, But Are In Fact, Very Real
It always seemed strange that Bald eagles are named so inappropriately. Until this collection of ‘Stupid Facts’ came along to explain that in fact, the word Balde is the term for white in old English, hence bald eagle.
There are many things which may sound ridiculous but are incomprehensibly factually correct. One Redditor, inspired an interesting thread online when they invited everyone to share the “stupid facts” they were aware of. Folks obliged and oddly suspicious as they may sound, as it turns out most of the facts mentioned in the below gallery are in fact, correct!
#1 The original name for the color orange was “geoluhread,” which means “yellow-red” in Old English
#2 If you open your eyes in a completely dark room, the name of the color you will see is eigengrau, a kind of dark grey shade
#3 The vikings, who came from Scandinavia, used iron as their main ingredient for forging weaponry, but it was also common practice to add the bones of dead animals to the mix. The belief was that it would infuse the weapon with the spirit of the creature, making it stronger, but they ended up making a primitive version of steel because of the carbon in the bones mixing with the iron making the weapon stronger, just as they thought it would.
#4 When basketball was first invented, at every game, they would have a man who would go up a ladder to retrieve the ball after every basket. It took them around 20 years to figure out maybe it would be a good idea to cut the bottom of the basket out to make retrieving the ball a lot easier. 20 years!!!
#5 Bald eagles are not actually bald. Balde is old english for white.
#6 Im always seeing my nose ..its just that my brain ignores it
#7 You can go the rest of your life without breathing.
#8 Some invader (don’t remember specifics) sent a letter to sparta saying that “If I invade Lakonia you will be destroyed, never to rise again” and the Spartans sent a letter back with a single word in it. “If”
#9 Redheads require more anesthesia than non-redheads.
#10 There are more planes in the ocean than boats in the sky
#11 Cows have best friends and can become stressed when they’re separated from them.
#12 For every single human being on Earth, there are 2.5 MILLION ants. Yes, this means that there are about 20 QUADRILLION ants on this planet. If the ants decide to take over, are you strong enough to handle the 2.5 million that you’ll be responsible for killing? If you’ve got kids, you might have to kill more because a 2 year old isn’t going to accomplish a god damn thing if millions of ants are marching towards them.
#13 Male rhesus macaques will pay to see pictures of female monkey butts. Payment is in the form of trading their juice rewards.
#14 A lot of averages. Example: The average number of legs humans have is less than 2.
#15 Bananas are berries, but strawberries are not true berries (in botanical terms berries are defined by their structure, and bananas fit the bill while strawberries don’t)
#16 Someone named the fear of long words hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia.
#17 The longest place name in the world is Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu
#18 New Mexico (the state) got its name before Mexico (the country)
#19 Coffee is not a bean it is the pit of the coffee plant which is a fruit.
#20 Pink is really just a light shade of red, but we think of it as a distinct color because we have a word for it that stuck. Not all languages have that. In Italian, they have a similar word for light blue, called “azzurro,” and it’s so common they actually think of it as a separate color from blue. We have the word “azure” in English, but it isn’t nearly as common, so we tend to think of that color as just a shade of blue.
Shanilou Perera
Shanilou has always loved reading and learning about the world we live in. While she enjoys fictional books and stories just as much, since childhood she was especially fascinated by encyclopaedias and strangely enough, self-help books. As a kid, she spent most of her time consuming as much knowledge as she could get her hands on and could always be found at the library. Now, she still enjoys finding out about all the amazing things that surround us in our day-to-day lives and is blessed to be able to write about them to share with the whole world as a profession.
