100 Mind-Blowing Because Facts

The QWERTY keyboard was designed to slow you down because typing too quickly jammed the keys on the first typewriters.

Google Images was created after Jennifer Lopez wore the green dress at the 2000 Grammys because so many people were searching for the outfit.

Experiments in universities have been carried out to figure out how many licks it takes to get to the centre of a Tootsie Pop, both with the machine and human lickers (because this is important scientific knowledge!). The results ranged from 252 to 411.

This is one true animal myth: Eating parts of a pufferfish can kill you because, in a defence mechanism to ward off predators, it contains a deadly chemical called tetrodotoxin. There’s enough in one pufferfish to kill 30 people—and there’s no antidote. Still, pufferfish, called fugu, is a highly-prized delicacy in Japan, but can only be prepared by well-trained chefs.

Flamingoes are only pink because of chemicals called carotenoids in the algae and fish (which also eat the algae) they eat; their feathers are greyish-white when they’re born.

Pound cake got its name because the original recipe required a pound each of butter, flour, sugar and eggs. That’s a lot of cake—but it was meant to last for a long time.

Humans could never “land” on Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus or Neptune because they are made of gas and have no solid surface.

In the 1940s, a retired schoolteacher came up with Candyland to entertain children who were hospitalized from polio. Because its colour system required no reading, young kids could easily play.

At Medieval Times dinner attractions, you eat with your hands because people didn’t use utensils in the Middle Ages.

This isn’t exactly a “fun” fact, but there are over 200 dead bodies of climbers on Mt. Everest because it’s so difficult to bring them down.

The original name of Microsoft Windows was “Interface Manager”. In 1981, Microsoft began the development of a program called “Interface Manager”. Most people won’t recognise that name because Interface Manager became Windows in 1983. Microsoft released Windows 1.0 in 1985, and it’s now the most common operating system in the world. It’s hard to believe the OS would be successful with its original name. Interface Manager perfectly describes what Windows would become. In the marketing department, making that name sound interesting or useful would have been impossible. Everyone recognises Windows, and millions of computers run on Windows 10 today. Interface Manager should be considered a work-in-progress name and something best left in the past.

The first computer mouse wasn’t made from plastic. Back in 1964, Doug Engelbart invented the first-ever computer mouse! Back then, it was made out of wood. It was rectangular and featured a little button on the top right. He called it a mouse because the cord coming out of the back reminded him of the tiny rodents.

The government used PlayStation 3’s… but not for gaming. In 2010, the United States Air Force used 1,760 PlayStation 3 consoles to build a supercomputer for the Department of Defence. They used PS3s because it was more cost-efficient and “green.”

Apollo 11 astronauts couldn’t afford insurance. Life insurance for a space mission cost a fortune because the risks were extremely high back then. So instead, the astronauts of Apollo 11 signed hundreds of covers that their families could sell in case anything went wrong.

Yahoo’s original name was a mouthful. The original URL for Yahoo was akebono.standford.edu. The name Yahoo was selected because it was derived from Gulliver’s Travels slang, “Yahoo,” which was a fictional race of beings in the book. Bonus Fact: Amazon wasn’t always Amazon, either! Originally named “Cadabra.com,” Cadabra was an online bookstore only. CEO Jeff Bezos explored other options in the ’90s, some of which still redirect to Amazon, like Relentless.com. Amazon was registered in 1994 and has grown into the monolith that it is today.

Comic Sans is the most hated font in the world. Comic Sans was designed to be an unserious, handwritten style font to use in comic books. Although everyone loves to hate this tasteless font (including myself!), it is very useful for dyslexic people. Because of its asymmetrical style, the letters are much easier to discern.

Mark Zuckerberg is color blind. The founder of Facebook purposely chose a blue colour scheme because he has red-green colour blindness! To him, blue is the richest and most prominent colour that he can see.

Nearly one-third of divorces are because of Facebook. 33% of divorced couples have stated Facebook was a reason for the breakup. Some of these more specific reasons are things like inappropriate messages to other people; which causes couples to fight, secret social media accounts, and doubting the relationship.

Every advertisement for iPhones has 9:41 set as the time. This is because, in 2007, Steve Jobs first announced the iPhone at that time. The 41-minute presentation leading up to the reveal of the first iPhone was planned perfectly. And the first photo of the iPhone showed the time 9:41, at exactly 9:41 am.

The @ symbol was chosen kind of randomly. The man who was writing email programs had to determine how to determine the user and the machine that the user was on. He chose the symbol because it means “at,” and it wasn’t used as much as other symbols.

Donkey Kong got his name because his creator believed “donkey” meant “stupid” in English and wanted to convey the impression that the character was a “Stupid Ape.”

Sonic the Hedgehog’s full name is Ogilvie Maurice Hedgehog. This is a bit of a contentious one, though, as some fans claim that it isn’t canon. This is because Sonic’s full name was never published. Archie Comics, who published two different Sonic comics, released a comic that mentions that Sonic’s middle name is Maurice but never mentions his first name. One of the Archie Comic writers has since shared that Sonic’s first name is Ogilvie. Fans disagree, as they say, that Archie Comics’s Sonic isn’t true canon, only the video games and the Japanese manga are.

Warner Bros cancelled “Home Alone” because they didn’t want to spend $14 million on it. 21st Century Fox continued the production, and the film grossed $476 million worldwide.

In 1862, the King of Siam offered Abraham Lincoln many elephants because a “Country as great as the United States should not be without elephants.” Lincoln politely declined.

All dogs are banned from Antarctica since April 1994. This ban was made because of the concern that dogs might spread diseases to seals.

Restaurants can sing “Happy Birthday” now because the copyrights’ claims are invalid. Judge George H. King ruled that a copyright filed in 1935 granted only the rights to specific piano arrangements of the music, not the song itself.

Since 2014 the Welsh government has donated a fruit tree to families in Uganda for every child born or adopted in Wales. In 2008 the “Plant!” scheme was announced, which would celebrate the birth or adoption of a child in Wales by planting a tree. Creating new woodlands for future generations, was already a magnificent scheme, but it became even better with the changes in April 2014. In Uganda, fruit trees are planted because they can provide vital fruit and timber in a region which has been decimated by deforestation.

There are many different forms of tagging, one called “pissing,” in which one refills a fire extinguisher with paint which allows for tags as high as 20 feet. Because it is such a difficult style, the outcome is usually wavy and sloppy.

A “Heaven spot” is a piece of graffiti done in an area that’s hard to reach, such as a rooftop or overpass. The name has a double meaning – one because it’s so high up that it’s towards the “heavens.” The other meaning refers to the fact that it is often a serious challenge in a dangerous location, and in case of an accident, the artist could die and “go to heaven.”

A black book, or piecebook, is a graffiti artist’s sketchbook. It’s often closely guarded from authorities because it could be used as evidence in vandalism cases.

Race at war. In World War One, France’s black soldiers suffered a death rate 3x higher than their white comrades, because they were so often given suicidal tasks.

Surprising the sexists. Suffragist life partners, Flora Murray and Louisa Garrett Anderson, both qualified doctors, attempted to join the armed forces medical services on the outbreak of war in 1914 but were not allowed to serve because of their sex. So they set up an independent hospital to treat wounded soldiers, with all-female staff, surgeons, anaesthesiologists and nurses. It rapidly became regarded as the best in the UK.

Outcast. DH Lawrence was thrown out of his village during World War One because he was allegedly signalling to German U-boats with laundry on his clothes!

Throughout history, different cultures around the world have experienced time in different ways. In the Western world, we tend to think of time as linear and flowing from left to right. But this isn’t the case for everyone. Language affects how people conceptualize time, particularly the spatial metaphors they use to describe and map it. Those who read languages that flow from right to left, such as Arabic and Hebrew, generally view time as flowing in the same direction. The Aymara, who live in the Andes Mountains in South America, consider the future to be behind them, while the past is ahead. In their view, because the future is unknown, it’s behind you, where you can’t see it. Some Indigenous Australian cultures, which rely heavily on direction terms like north, south, east, and west in their languages, visualise the passage of time as moving from east to west. If they’re facing north, for example, the past would be to their right, or east, whereas the future would be to their left, which would be west.

Individual people can experience time differently, too. You’ve probably noticed how time seems to speed up when you’re racing against a deadline or having fun, and how it tends to drag when you’re bored. This is because when you’re focused on something, like a big work project or a party, your brain pays less attention to how time passes. But when you’re bored, or your brain is less stimulated, you become more aware of the passing of time, making it feel slower. One study proposed that dopamine—the neurotransmitter and hormone that helps us feel happy—may be an additional culprit. It showed that increased dopamine production, which happens when you’re enjoying something, may slow down your body’s internal clock, making time feel like it’s flying by.

Gravity is also the reason why our days are getting longer. Over a billion years ago, a day on Earth lasted around 18 hours. Our days are longer now because the moon’s gravity is causing Earth’s spin to slow down. In Earth’s earlier days, the moon wasn’t as far away, which caused Earth to spin much faster than it currently does. Longer days also mean shorter years—kind of. The time it takes the Earth to orbit the sun hasn’t changed, but the amount of days within a year has. Back when the dinosaurs ruled 70 million years ago, days were only around 23.5 hours long, and a year was made up of 372 of those slightly shorter days.

Because astronomical time and atomic time don’t always line up, every so often, we get a leap second. Earth’s spin speed can be a bit unpredictable. Atmospheric winds, Northern Hemisphere winters with heavy snow, and other big weather systems can affect how fast the planet rotates. To keep the difference between astronomical time and atomic time to less than .9 seconds, the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service will occasionally announce the need for a leap second. Most people won’t notice a leap second, but they can be a huge pain for tech companies. Because leap seconds are added irregularly, developers have no way of working them into their codes, which has caused websites like LinkedIn and Reddit to crash in the past. A bug caused by 2012’s leap second created so much chaos on Qantas’s servers, more than 400 flights wound up being delayed.

Linus was born in Finland, a bilingual country, and considers Swedish to be his “mother tongue”. He says he’s often “uncomfortable” speaking in English because of pronunciation differences but prefers to read English books.

Did you know that Android is built on top of the Linux Kernel? Even if it is heavily modified, Android functions because Linux exists.

The Vastness of Linux Code: As of November 2023, the Linux kernel has over 36 million lines of code, by the latest stable version available at that time is – Linux Kernel 6.5. The vastness of code is because the Linux kernel is responsible for a wide range of tasks, including manageing the hardware, memory, and processes of a computer system.

Ubuntu releases an LTS version every two years, which is supported and updated for five years. These LTS releases are perfect for companies, organisations, and individuals looking for a dependable operating system because they are made for stability, reliability, and long-term deployment in production environments.

The cost of hacking is increasing (FBI and McAfee): The FBI revealed that although they considered the cost of cybercrime to be around $3.5 billion for the US in 2019, the actual toll could be a lot higher because many exploits and attacks go unnoticed. Even without a clear view of unreported crimes, the cost of cybercrime is increasing significantly every year. McAfee found the costs of an attack are increasing, but that the costs of manageing an event before and after an attack are higher now too.

The Queen didn’t have a passport: During her 70 years on the throne, Queen Elizabeth II has visited over 100 countries on official duties. Although every person in the world needs an identity card, she does not need a British passport during her travels. This is because passports are issued in the name of the Queen.

In 1647, the Puritan Government banned Christmas Celebrations because it promoted gambling, promiscuity and other forms of excesses. The ban was lifted in 1660 after the restoration of the Monarchy.

The Queen Did Not Possess a Passport: In her 70 years as queen, Queen Elizabeth II has travelled to more than 100 nations for official business. Even though everyone on the planet requires an identity card, she can travel without a British passport. This is so because the Queen’s name appears on every passport.

Only 8% of the world’s currency is in cash: The vast majority of the world’s currency exists in electronic form. Economists estimate that coins and banknotes make up just 8% of the world’s currency. The rest sits on a computer hard drive in electric bank accounts all over the world. Because of the worldwide acceptance of the Internet and online payments, people are making and spending money without actually touching it.

A Banknote Can Be Folded 4,000 Times: Our currency is pretty durable. The Bureau of Engraving and Printing, the sole producer of U.S. paper currency, says it would take 4,000 double folds, forward and backward, for a dollar bill to tear. It might be because paper money isn’t made of paper. It’s a blend of 75% cotton and 25% linen with tiny blue and red synthetic fibres of various lengths evenly distributed throughout the bill.

There’s a Reason US Dollars Are Green: Dollar bills weren’t always green. Colonial money, for example, was tan with black or red ink. It wasn’t until the Civil War the government started using green ink to print paper money that it got the name greenbacks. The colour was selected because the ink didn’t fade or easily decompose, which protected against counterfeiting.

The first banks were likely religious temples because the security was always tight.

In 1932, wooden bills were temporarily made and used in Tenino, Washington because there was a major cash shortage at the time and wood was readily available.

The Chinese invented paper money in the 9th Century AD. Its original name was ‘flying money’ because it could easily blow away.

Aside from the US, most YouTube views come from Saudi Arabia. This is because TV, Facebook, and Twitter are banned in Saudi Arabia, but YouTube is unrestricted.

Because of concerns over data privacy, the EU has created a draft of ethics guidelines for AI. It outlines points like how developers should ensure that their AI will respect fundamental human rights.

‘The “Big Tech” companies, namely Amazon, Google, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft obtained 13 AI startups in 2020. This is because, in recent years, AI startups have been considered a “prime acquisition target” in the sector.

In the medical world, the TUG robot can carry nearly 1000 lbs of medication to any location in a hospital. Because of this innovation, doctors can spend more time with patients.

In the 1970s, the capabilities of AI were limited because of limited computational power, but with the decreasing size of transistors and increase in the computational power of devices, it has become possible to create machine and deep learning algorithms capable of voice recognition, self-driving cars, and MUCH more.

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