Fruit stickers are edible, though the same as any fruit; washing before eating is recommended. The glue used for them is regulated by the FDA.
100 Mind-Blowing Before Facts
There were only 9 developers on the team for GoldenEye 007 for Nintendo 64. Only one of the developers had ever worked on a video game before. The game received multiple year-end awards, including the BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Games Award in 1998 and four awards from the inaugural AIAS Interactive Achievement Awards.
Johnny Cash took only three voice lessons before his teacher advised him to stop taking lessons and never deviate from his natural voice.
Hanna-Barbera pitched The Flintstones to networks for 8 weeks before it was finally picked up. It became the first-ever animated show to air during primetime.
Until 2016, the “Happy Birthday” song was not for public use. Meaning that before 2016, the song was copyrighted, and you had to pay a license to use it.
Chicken Run is the highest-grossing stop-motion animated film, even beating The Nightmare Before Christmas.
When Jorge Garcia first got the part on LOST as Hurley, he lost a total of 30 pounds in weight before filming started.
The thumbs-up sign is believed to have originated from Chinese pilots. It was used to communicate with the ground crew before take-off.
Will Smith owed $2.8 Million to the IRS and almost went bankrupt just before he signed the contract for The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air.
Before finally being accepted, J.K. Rowling’s original Harry Potter pitch was rejected by 12 publishers.
The military has used silly strings to detect tripwires in Iraq. Before entering a room, they can squirt it inside. If it hangs in the air, it may have revealed a wire.
A woman was elected to the House of Representatives four years before women even won the right to vote.
Snakes can help predict Earthquakes. They can sense a coming Earthquake from 75 miles away, up to five days before it happens.
Before Apple bought Siri, it was originally going to be released as an app for Android & Blackberry.
Writing down your worries before taking an exam can help combat test anxiety, improve performance and boost your test scores.
For almost 15 years, Vermont was technically its own country before joining the United States in 1791. It had its own coins and postal service.
There was a snail glued to a specimen card in the British Museum mid-1800s. It spent four years glued there before scientists realized it was still alive.
Using tanning beds before age 30 increases your risk of developing melanoma by 75%. Tanning beds and lamps are in the highest cancer risk category.
The longer you spend dating somebody before marrying, the less likely the marriage is to end in divorce.
Alexander Hamilton was shot and mortally wounded by Aaron Burr on the same spot where his son had been killed 3 years before and by the same set of pistols.
By using big data, Wal-Mart determined that people stock up the most on strawberry Pop-Tarts and beer before a hurricane.
The Lion King was originally called “King of the Jungle” before they realized that lions don’t live in jungles.
Makeup has been used by women since before Cleopatra’s time. They would use berries and other fruits to give their faces some colour.
Drink green tea before bed to burn calories while sleeping. Green tea will also increase your metabolism.
LEGO bricks withstand compression better than concrete. An ordinary plastic LEGO brick can support the weight of 375,000 other bricks before it fails. This, theoretically, would let you build a tower nearing 3.5km in height. Scaling this up to house-size bricks, however, would cost far too much.
Martial artists who smile before the start of a match are more likely to lose. This could be as a smile can convey fear or submissiveness.
Plants came before seeds. According to the fossil record, early plants resembled moss and reproduced with single-celled spores. Multicellular seeds didn’t evolve for another 150 million years.
Laughing came before language. How do we know? Some researchers tickled baby apes, which, beyond being adorable, showed that they share the same structure as ours and likely arose in our common ancestors millions of years ago. Language came about much later.
The American Revolution (1765-1783) came before the French Revolution (1789-1799).
No number before 1,000 contains the letter A.
To determine how far away a lightning storm is from you, National Geographic Kids says you can count the seconds between the flash and the crack and watch for the flash of lightning from a safe location. Time how many seconds elapse before you hear thunder. Divide the number of seconds by five and the answer is the approximate number of miles away.
In the 1932 World Series, Babe Ruth famously gestured toward centre field before hitting a home run in that precise direction.
Marla Gibbs continued to work as a flight attendant for two years after being cast on a hit TV show. Before taking her place on the stoop of 227, Marla Gibbs played the housekeeper Florence on The Jeffersons (a spin-off of All in the Family). In a 2015 interview, Gibbs told the Washington Post that despite it appearing as though she had gotten her big break, she kept her job as a flight attendant for American Airlines for two more years—just to be safe.
Wally Amos is responsible for making more than just cookies famous. You may be familiar with Wally “Famous” Amos, thanks to his packaged chocolate chip cookies. But before he worked his magic on the sweet treats, he was in the business of making people famous, Biography reports. He discovered and signed the folk duo Simon & Garfunkel and was a talent rep for acts like Diana Ross, Sam Cooke, and Marvin Gaye.
Professional athletes used to perform in vaudeville during the off-season. Before today’s big-league salaries, professional baseball and football players often had to take on jobs during the off-season, The Atlantic reports. Some of them took advantage of their name recognition and hit the vaudeville circuits, doing everything from comedy routines to reciting poems. Babe Ruth even sang—if you could call it that. Frankly, many of the athletes had no business being on stage, but it’s not like it was against the rules.
Kleenex tissues were originally intended for gas masks. When there was a cotton shortage during World War I, Kimberly-Clark developed a thin, flat cotton substitute that the army tried to use as a filter in gas masks. The war ended before scientists perfected the material, so the company redeveloped it to be smoother and softer and then marketed Kleenex as facial tissue instead.
No number before 1,000 contains the letter A. But there are plenty of E’s, I’s, O’s, U’s, and Y’s.
H&M stands for something. This is one of those interesting facts you’ve probably never thought about before. The clothing retail shop was originally called Hennes—Swedish for “hers”—before acquiring the hunting and fishing equipment brand Mauritz Widforss. Eventually, Hennes & Mauritz was shortened to H&M.
An employee at Pixar accidentally deleted a sequence of Toy Story 2 during production. Ed Catmull, the co-founder of Pixar, wrote in his book, Creativity Inc., that the year before the movie came out, someone entered the command ‘/bin/rm -r -f *’ on the drive where the files were saved, and scenes started deleting. It would have taken a year to recreate what was deleted, but luckily another employee had a backup of the entire film on her laptop at home.
Boars wash their food. National Geographic reported that at Basel Zoo in Switzerland, zookeepers watched adult and juvenile wild boars pick up sandy apples and bring them to a nearby creek in their environment to wash before eating. Though some items like sugar beets were eaten without human-like behaviour, the boars brought a whole dead chicken to the creek to wash before chowing down. One ecologist called this a “luxury behaviour.”
South American river turtles talk in their eggs. Turtles don’t have vocal cords, and their ears are internal, so scientists believed that turtles were deaf and didn’t communicate through sounds. However, research has found that turtles communicate at an extremely low frequency that sounds like “clicks, clucks, and hoots” that can only be heard through a hydrophone (a microphone used underwater). These sounds even come from the egg before the turtle hatches. Researchers hypothesize that this helps all the turtle siblings hatch at once.
Penicillin was first called “mould juice”. In 1928, bacteriologist Alexander Fleming left a petri dish in his lab while he was on vacation—only to return and find that some liquid around the mould had killed the bacteria in the dish. This became the world’s first antibiotic, but before naming it penicillin, he called it “mould juice.”
Martin Luther King Jr. got a C in public speaking. The world remembers Dr. King as a leader of the Civil Rights Movement, and people often quote his “I Have a Dream” speech, which he delivered in 1963. Yet more than a decade before that legendary speech, while attending Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, he earned a C in public speaking during his first and second terms.
A woman was elected to Congress before women’s suffrage. American women were given the right to vote in 1920, but Jeanette Rankin became the first woman in the U.S. federal office in 1916.
Adolf Hitler was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Don’t worry, the Swedish politician who sent the letter of nomination in 1939 meant it ironically and withdrew his nomination. In an even more ironic twist, Hitler had banned Germans from accepting the awards four years before his name was thrown in the ring.
Before toilet paper was invented, Americans used to use corn cobs. Alternatively, they’d use periodicals like the Farmers Almanac, which was designed with a hole so it could hang in outhouses. Necessity is the mother of invention, after all.
The shortest war in history lasted 38 minutes. When the sultan of British-protected Zanzibar died and a new one took over without British approval in 1896, the Brits were not happy. Tension escalated when Sultan Khalid bin Barghash refused to step down, but the British warships spent less than 40 minutes bombarding the palace before Khalid fled, marking the (very quick) end of the Anglo-Zanzibar War.
Queen Elizabeth II had a stand-in to make sure the sun wouldn’t get in her eyes. Ella Slack has a similar height and stature to the queen, so before big events, she’ll rehearse to avoid any royal pains like the sun getting in Her Majesty’s eyes. Slack had been doing it for three decades but wasn’t allowed to sit on the throne, so she had to squat above it.
NASA uses countdowns because of a sci-fi film. The countdown Fritz Lang used to create suspense in the rocket launch scene of his 1929 silent film Frau im Mond didn’t just change film history—it also inspired NASA to use countdowns before its blastoffs. It’s not exactly a race against the clock though.
M&Ms are named after the businessmen who created them. But what do the M’s stand for? Forrest Mars and Bruce Murrie didn’t have the best relationship as Mars leveraged Murrie out of his 20% share of the business before it became the biggest-selling sweet in the US. Ouch.
The last letter added to the English alphabet was ‘J’. The letter dates back to 1524, and before that, the letter ‘i’ was used for both the ‘i’ and ‘j’ sounds.
Typing keyboards used to be arranged alphabetically. Have you ever wondered why keyboards aren’t arranged by the ABCs compared to the QWERTY keys we know now? You’d be surprised to know the uniform QWERTY keys we use were chosen at random. Before PCs and laptops, the typewriter was man’s first typing experience. The earliest typewriters had alphabetic keys, but people typed so fast that the mechanical arms got jammed and tangled up. To solve this, the keys were randomly positioned to slow down typing and prevent key jamming.
Tomato ketchup was used as medicine for 16 years. Whether you love it or hate it, this condiment once had a place in the world beyond hotdogs. However, you’d be surprised to know that ketchup only had tomatoes in it starting in 1834. Before, ketchup was made with a mix of fish and mushrooms. When Dr John Cooke Bennet added tomatoes to the mix, he claimed that the antioxidants gave it a medicinal property. He had a pill salesman turn his tomato ketchup into pills and claimed it could treat diarrhoea, indigestion, jaundice, and rheumatism.
February used to be the last month of the year. We may know January and February as the first two months of the year, but these months were the last couple of months added to the Gregorian calendar. Before, the Roman calendar only recognised 10 months. However, the winter period was measured in these two months – making February the last month of the calendar. This is also why February has the shortest number of days in a month.
Shoe shops used X-ray machines to measure shoe sizes. Way before radiation was fully understood, shoe shops measured sizes through X-rays in the 1940s.
Insects are attracted to light because of the moon. Bug behaviour can be especially strange, but scientists predict that night insects (like moths) are attracted to lights because they used the light of the moon to navigate the Earth way before artificial lights were made.
No one knows for sure how dinosaurs mate. It’s easy to get caught up in a dinosaur’s grotesque features, but have you ever wondered how dinosaurs mated in the first place? With all those spines and armour, how did they do it enough to roam the world before us? So far, no dinosaurs have been found with their reproductive organs intact. Until then, only cross-referencing from existing descendants (birds and reptiles) as well as computer modelling can give us hints as to how they’d done the deed.
Hershey’s Kisses were named after the kissing sound, the chocolate makes on the conveyor belt. Before discovering this fun fact, I thought Kisses were named after the shape your mouth makes when you place the chocolate on your lips, tip-first. However, Hershey’s is named for the sound it makes during the manufacturing process. A machine squirts the chocolate mixture onto the conveyor with a “kiss” sound. Another Hershey’s fun fact? The paper-strip plume on top of Hershey’s Kisses is trademarked.
Chickens are eaten for their whole life cycle. A not-so-fun fact for the chickens, but one of the fun facts to ponder: when you’re eating chicken katsu or a chicken omelette, you could be eating a whole family. You’re essentially eating a chicken before (AKA, the eggs) and after its birth. Oh, not to mention day-old chicks.
Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho was the first American film to show a toilet being flushed on screen. The groundbreaking flushing took place right before Janet Leigh’s character’s iconic shower scene.
Nebraskan drivers had the flashiest traffic situation back then. In 1912 a Nebraska law stated that night drivers must do the following: stopping every 150 yards, sending up a skyrocket, then waiting eight minutes for the road to clear before proceeding – while blowing their horns and shooting off flares.
There were 25 snakes found on The Maze Runner set. The grassy plains of the first Maze Runner film create a fearful anticipation of what lies within – and for the film’s cast and crew, it would have been snakes. Before shooting, the production team had to hire snake wranglers to clear out the area. They located a total of 25 venomous snakes – with the biggest one they found at 5 feet long.
The longest-running primetime animated series is The Simpsons, which began in 1987. Before the reign of The Simpsons, there were the Flintstones. However, towards the end of the 90s, a new family was in town. Matt Groening’s The Simpsons quickly overtook the Flintstones in terms of profit. The show is currently in its 19th season, with a running total of 672 episodes.
Kids ask about 300 questions a day. A 2013 study showed that the average kid asks one question every 2 minutes and 36 seconds. Of all types of children, girls aged four are the most curious, asking 390 questions per day. Interestingly, 82% of children would ask their mother first before their father.
Before the 1800s, people slept in batches. Before, people had a “first” and “second sleep.” Towards the evening, they would sleep for 3-4 hours, wake for 2-3 hours to do some activities, and then go back to sleep until morning.
The design for the seatbelts we use now was given away by Volvo. Before 1966, seatbelts were not mandated. During this period, seatbelts just secured the lap but offered no upper-body protection. When Nils Bohlin of Volvo invented the three-point seatbelt design, he gave away the patent for free to keep drivers safe.
Flyting was the original rap battle. Way before flip-top and rap battles, there was “flyting”: the artful exchange of witty, insulting lines. Flyting was popular in the 5th to 16th century England and Scotland.
Garfield used to own G-Mail. Before Google launched Gmail in 2004, “G-Mail” was a free email service on the Garfield website. Garfield Mail operated from 1998 to 2001.
Abraham Lincoln was a wrestling champion. Before he was president, Abraham Lincoln was the wrestling champion of his country. Abe fought in almost 300 matches, losing only once.
Neptune was the first planet that was discovered before being seen through a telescope. Neptune stands out from the rest of the solar system because it was the first planet discovered by Urbain Le Verrier through mathematical prediction rather than an encounter.
Kleenex tissues were supposed to be for gas masks. During a cotton shortage in World War I, Kimberly-Clark devised a thin, flat cotton substitute to use as a filter for army gas masks. However, the war ended before scientists could perfect the material. In turn, the company constructed a thinner and softer material that eventually became Kleenex tissues.
No number contains the letter A before 1,000. Spelled out, one thousand is the first number that has the letter A in it.
Wild boars wash their food. At the Basel Zoo in Switzerland, zookeepers observed adult and juvenile wild boars bringing sandy apples to a nearby creek to wash before eating. They’re even neater than some people.
170-year-old champagne was found under the Baltic Sea. The bottles would have been travelling from Germany to Russia in the 1800s before sinking into the sea. With temperatures between 2-4°C, the ocean floor was perfect for wine ageing. Oenologists described the flavor profile as “sometimes cheesy,” with “animal notes,” and elements of “wet hair.”
A dime has 118 ridges on its edge. The ridges allow the coin to determine if it is real or fake. This was implemented on all coins before the 18th century. The ridges also make it harder to make counterfeit coins.
Sailors working for the Royal Navy need special permission to grow their beards. Once this is approved, they are given two weeks to grow a full set before presenting themselves to a Master at Arms. This person then decides if the beard looks presentable enough to keep.
Watching horror movies before viewing abstract art will enhance the experience. This comes from a recent study that proved our reaction towards abstract images improves when frightened. This is especially so for those who are not big fans of the movie genre.
There was a fifth member of the Beatles. Stuart Sutcliffe was a painter and bassist who was an original member before the band came to fame. He soon later died due to a brain haemorrhage.
New Zealand was once auctioned on eBay. In 2006, an Australian man auctioned the country on the e-commerce platform with a starting bid of $0.01. The bidding prices were raised to $3,000 before officials of the website shut it down.
A man in Florida once threw a live alligator through a drive-thru window. A 24-year-old man named Joshua James was being handed his order at a Wendy’s drive-thru before he randomly threw an alligator into the window. He was then later charged with assault, theft, and the illegal possession of an alligator.
North Korean teachers were required to play the accordion. This musical instrument is also known as the “people’s instrument” due to its convenient size suitable for taking to marches. Students from all schools in the country are required to learn them. This explains why teachers need to pass an accordion exam before they get their teaching licenses during the 1990s.
SEARS once sold houses. SEARS once offered kit houses that you would have to assemble yourself. The original instruction manual was 75 pages long. This was much before every city and state in the U.S. had Walmart.
The Baseball Hall of Fame had a secret inductee. In 1988, a surreptitious addition to the Baseball Hall of Fame was made without anyone knowing. A bar owner visiting the hall slipped a photo of his father in a baseball cap into one of the glass cases. This photo remained in the hall for over 6 years before being discovered.
Snakes can predict Earthquakes. Studies have found that most species of snakes can detect Earthquakes before they occur. They are also able to sense quakes that occur as far as 75 miles away and up to five days away. I guess you could say, they’re just that down to Earth.
Movie trailers were originally shown after the movie. Trailers were first introduced during the 1910s, hence the name. But now modern marketing finds that it is more efficient for trailers to play before a film rather than after.
Lemurs were one the size of gorillas. They were a common sight before in Madagascar and used that land as its stomping grounds. This species of giant lemurs is now sadly extinct.
The Titanic included dogs as their passengers. When the ship sank in 1912, 3 dogs were able to survive. Before the ship sank, they had all been travelling with their owners in first-class cabins.
Tanning beds increase your risk of developing melanoma. If you were to use one of these machines before the age of 30, your chances increase by 75%. Tanning beds and lamps have been proven to be the highest cancer risk according to research.
The chicken came before the egg. At least, according to the Christian bible. This is stated in Genesis 1:20-22.
A pineapple plant can only produce one pineapple a year. After fruiting, the plant dies. However, before it dies it also produces an offspring. These plantlets were then grown into another pineapple.
The oldest wine bottle can be found in Germany. This wine dates before to AD 325 and can be found displayed in the Speyer Historical Museum.
Rain has a smell. The smell comes from a slightly pungent scent that comes from the ozone. Specifically, the one that comes from fertilizers and natural sources that are carried in a storm’s draft from a higher altitude. This is why some people can smell rain right before it starts to pour.
Taxi drivers in London are called cabbies. If you find yourself in a taxi cab in London, you can expect that they have memorized all the paths and roads in the city. This is due to the mandatory test that all cabbies are required to take before being offered the job.
Large banks use computers to process checks and debit card charges by the highest amount first. This is because checks with higher amounts of value need to be thoroughly double-checked first before clearing. This explains why it may take a few working days before clearing can be issued.
French fries were invented in Belgium. Historians claimed that the first instances of potatoes being cut and fried began in the late 1600s. Street vendors would often sell this before the outbreak of the French Revolution.
Apollo 11 only had 20 seconds of fuel when it landed. Before the Apollo landing was confirmed with, “The Eagle has landed” the crew nearly didn’t make it. The Apollo crew had to fly manually instead of following the plotted trajectory to avoid dangerous areas. As such, it cut down on their fuel. Before the successful landing, the 30-second fuel warning had already passed.
People used bread as an eraser before. Before Edward Naime invented the eraser in 1770, people used rolled-up pieces of white bread to erase things.
Shoes can take up to 1,000 years to break down. If you thought clothes took crazy long to decompose, you’d have to look down at your shoes. Depending on different materials such as EVA and other foams, the average shoe will take 1,000 years before it is fully broken down.
Cookie Monster’s real name is Sid. You’ve heard about villain origin stories, but we bet you haven’t seen this one yet: Before eating his first cookie, Cookie Monster was Sid. What this implies has not been confirmed, as well as who he was as Sid. How’s that for dark, interesting facts?
Clothes can take 40 years to decompose. Depending on the material, the average piece of clothing will take about 40 years before it breaks down fully. Unfortunately, the methane released as well as the dyes and chemicals that can pollute the soil and water.