100 Mind-Blowing Before Facts

The Saturday before Christmas is the busiest shopping day of the year. Coincidentally (or not), this is also the day with the worst traffic of the whole year. Last-minute shoppers all rush in the spirit of capitalism. Turns out, it’s not the most wonderful time of the year.

Loofahs are vegetables. If you look at a loofah, you might think it came from a dried sea creature. However, this scrubbing sponge is made from a vegetable. Loofahs are made from the fibrous flesh of the mature Luffa aegyptiaca and L. cyclindrica gourd. They’re distant relatives of melons and squash. Before reaching maturity, luffa is also edible.

This Star Wars actor rolled around in the sand before shooting. To give Obi-Wan Kenobi a desert-worn, rugged look, Alec Guinness would lay on the Tunisian desert floor and roll around in his costume.

The voice of the Exorcist demon ate raw eggs, chain-smoked, and had herself tied to a chair during recordings. Mercedes McCambridge fully committed to her role as Pazuzu’s voice in the 70’s horror classic, The Exorcist. Before recording her vocals, she chugged raw eggs, chain-smoked and drank whiskey to make her voice harsher than normal. One of the most shocking funny facts: During the recordings, she had herself bound to a chair. After all of that dedication, she insisted not to have her voice credited in the film!

People used to dream in black and white. The world may not be black and white now, but there was a time when even dreams were. Before colour TV was invented, 75% of people said their dreams were in black and white. However, only 12% do now.

Before Alexander Fleming named penicillin, he called it “mould juice.” It may sound like a term someone coined on Tumblr, but Alexander Flaming did refer to penicillin as “mould juice” when he discovered it in 1928.

The longest hiccups lasted nearly 69 years. When Charles Osborne started hiccupping in 1922, he didn’t stop until 1990. Charles Osborne hiccupped non-stop for 68 years. He wasn’t even doing anything to trigger his decades-long hiccup – it just started while he was weighing a hog before slaughter. Initially, he hiccupped 40 times a minute. However, in his later years, it slowed to 20 hiccups per minute. After his long hiccupping episode, he managed to live a hiccup-less life for only a year until he died in 1991. One of the more unfortunate WTF facts.

Before “bloopers” was coined, there were “boners”. Commonly shown at the end credits of any show or film, bloopers are the outtakes of scenes with errors or funny mistakes. However, it didn’t always have such a tame name. In the 1950s, people referred to outtakes as “boners” (boneheaded mistakes) or “breakdowns.”

Beer was a soft drink in Russia. Before 2011, any drink in Russia with less than 10% alcohol content was legally classified as a soft drink.

In Slovakia, they have a Christmas Carp that lives in the family bathtub for a few days before they are eaten. A traditional Slovakian Christmas dinner is a main dish of breaded carp with sides of cabbage and sausage soup, and potato salad. However, the WTF facts twist is that the carp has to live in the family bathtub before it is cooked.

The shortest war in history lasted less than an hour. When the sultan of Zanzibar died and a new one took over without British approval in 1896, the Brits saw it as disrespect. When the unofficially appointed Sultan Khalid bin Barghash refused to step down, British warships spent 38 minutes bombing the palace before Khalid fled. This marked the end of the Anglo-Zanzibar War.

Before alarm clocks, there were human alarms. Knocker-Uppers originated in Britain during the Industrial Revolution. When people needed to wake up and get to work, a knocker-upper’s job was to take a wooden stick and knock on the door to wake them up.

A 100-foot asteroid nearly hit the Earth once. In January 2017, a 100-foot asteroid called AG13 passed by the Earth at less than ⅕ the distance between the Earth and the moon. Scientists only knew that it was coming two days before it could have made an impact.

No one knows how Edgar Allan Poe died. If his works were any indicator of who he was as a person, Edgar Allan Poe was a deeply disturbed man. Aside from his macabre writing, a lot of mystery surrounds Edgar Allan Poe. Even his death is unclear. He was last seen in Baltimore’s streets in 1849. He was wearing someone else’s clothes and in bad shape. 4 days later, he died in a hospital. Allegedly, he kept shouting “Reynolds” before his death.

Antonio López de Santa Anna held a state funeral for his leg after it was amputated. After being injured in battle, Mexican general Antonio López de Santa Anna buried his amputated leg with full military honours. Before you go all the WTF facts on us: It was a part of him, guys.

Toy Story 2 was almost deleted. A year before Toy Story 2 was released, someone entered the command, ‘/bin/rm -r -f *’ on the drive which started deleting the files for the movie. Thankfully, an employee had the entire film backed up on her laptop. If not, the deleted material would have taken a year to recreate.

After you cut off its head, a chicken can run the length of an entire football field before it drops dead. That’s where the expression, “Running like a chicken with its head comes off” comes from.

The Wombat poops in cubes. Before you ask, no – their buttholes aren’t square. You’ve heard of cubed watermelons. Now, nature brings us cubed poop! Wombat poop is cubical because of their long, slow digestive process.

The founders of Hewlett-Packard flipped a coin to determine whose name would come first. Before HP was a well-known name in the computer industry, the owners flipped a coin to decide whose name would go first. No hard feelings.

Bears don’t poop during hibernation. You might wonder, “How do animals keep in their poop when they hibernate?” Before an animal goes into hibernation, they will eat a lot to sustain them until they wake. So, where does all the food go? Bears keep their food in by eating grass and twigs, creating a plug or stopper in their bowels. With this stopper, they can sleep continuously without having to poop. However, once they wake up, it all comes out.

The average American looks at eight houses before buying one. Now that’s a lot of choices. So much for the American dream house.

Before the computer mouse was known as a mouse, it was known as the turtle. Manufacturers of the early versions of the computer mouse called it a turtle, because of its hard shell and moving part underneath.

The remote control was invented earlier than the television. 30 years before the first digital television, Nikola Tesla invented a “teleautomaton” that could control certain devices at a distance through radio waves. His first remote-controlled device was a remote-controlled boat in 1898. Since then, people adapted the wired remote for television. However, due to injuries, they developed it further to be a wireless remote.

Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman star in the film. The legendary actors Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman portray two terminally ill men who embark on a journey to fulfil their dreams before they die.

The movie explores the concept of a “bucket list.” A bucket list is a list of things a person wants to accomplish or experience before they die. In the movie, the protagonists create a bucket list and set out to achieve their dreams.

In Slovakia, they have Christmas carp that live in the bathtub for a few days before they are eaten.

Jeannette Rankin was elected to the House of Representatives four years before women had won the right to vote.

Flying from London to New York by Concord, due to the time zones crossed, you can arrive 2 hours before you leave.

The cigarette lighter was invented before the match. In the 16th century, lighters were nothing more than just converted pistols. It was not until 1823, that a German chemist named Johann Wolfgang Doebereiner is credited as the first person to invent a lighter.

Three-quarters of SEO is off-page. Only 25% of SEO is on-page and the rest 75% of SEO is off-page. There are 3.8 Million searches on Google every minute. Check out these links for other surprising facts that you never heard before.

The heaviest football weighed almost 10 kilos and was used in the early 1900s before lighter materials were created.

Before we had toilet paper, Americans used corn husks. There’s no way that was comfortable.

The letter “J” was the last added to the English alphabet. It dates back to 1524. Shockingly, before it became a letter, the letter “i” was used for both “i” and “j” sounds!

Identical twins don’t have the same fingerprints. Even though they may look exactly alike, environmental factors before birth such as position in the womb and umbilical cord length impact your fingerprints.

Maine is the only state name with one syllable. How did we never notice this before?

LEGO bricks withstand compression better than concrete. Before you ask why the world isn’t just made of LEGO bricks, think about how much just one set costs!

Martial artists who smile before a match are more likely to lose. Some have suggested that smiling could make them seem submissive or scared.

The inventor of the Frisbee became one after he died. After Walter Morrison died and was cremated in 2010, his family turned him into the very toy he invented in 1955. It was known as the Pluto Platter before Wham-O renamed it the Frisbee.

Argentina is where the world’s first animated feature film was created. Before Disney’s Snow White was made in 1937, Argentina was home to the first full-length animated feature film called El Apóstol. It was a political satire consisting of 58,000 drawings and running for 70 minutes.

Chainsaws began to be used for woodchopping at the start of the 20th century. But before then, chainsaws were used for childbirth to speed up the widening of the pubic cartilage.

Before Americans had toilet paper, they used corn husks. This weird historical fact proves to be uncomfortable as well.

In 1524, the last letter to be added to the English alphabet was the letter “J.” Before it became a letter, the letter “i” was used for both “i” and “j.”

Researchers have found that laughter comes before language.

Plants were formed before seeds. Moss-like plants most likely reproduced with single-celled spores. Then 150 million years later, multicellular seeds finally began to evolve.

If martial artists smile before a martial arts tournament, it increases the likelihood of losing. Doing so can convey weakness or submissiveness.

No number before 1,000 has the letter “A.”

A sea lion is the first nonhuman mammal with a proven ability to keep a beat. Scientists trained a female sea lion named Ronan to do it, and she then showed she could transfer that skill to a song with a different beat that she had not heard before.

Before alarm clocks, people would pay someone to knock on their windows and wake them up. They were called knocker-uppers.

No number before 1,000 contains the letter “A” when spelt out.

Before becoming president, Abraham Lincoln lost 5 different elections.

In 2011, ten-year-old Kathryn Aurora Gray discovered a supernova (a star that has run out of energy, explodes and then collapses before it dies) that no one else had seen before.

Abraham Lincoln lost five separate elections before he became president of the U.S. (Never, ever, ever give up!)

Before European contact (which caused populations to diminish rapidly ) California indigenous tribal groups spoke more than 200 unique dialects.

Abe Lincoln was a professional wrestler long before he became the 16th President of the United States.

Eyelashes live for about 150 days before falling out.

In 1992, after a record amount of snow, the government of Syracuse, NY, declared any additional snowfall before Christmas Eve illegal. Unfortunately, Mother Nature didn’t take the threat too seriously. It snowed two days after the move was announced.

Before there was Beats by Dre, there was something else altogether. In the 60s and 70s, the Beatles teamed up with inventor John C. Koss to create their brand of headphones. They were known as “Beatlephones.”

Earth’s magnetic pole is creeping westward. Unlike our geographic North Pole, which is in a fixed location, Earth’s magnetic north wanders. Until the early 1990s, the magnetic North Pole was known to lie some 1600 km south of true north, in Canada. Yet scientists realised that the location of the magnetic north wasn’t fixed and was drifting at a rate of 15 km a year. Since the 1990s, however, the drift of Earth’s magnetic pole has turned into more of a sprint. Its present speed is around 50-60 km a year and is making a dash towards Siberia at a pace not seen before. Why? Scientists studying the drift of Earth’s magnetic north pole, using data from ESA’s Swarm mission, have pinpointed a change in the circulation pattern of magnetic blobs deep below Earth’s surface. They learned a change in the flow underneath Canada has caused a patch of magnetic field at the edge of Earth’s core, deep within the Earth, to be stretched out. This has weakened the Canadian patch and resulted in the pole shifting towards Siberia.

Trees are breathers. Trees are one of the most effective tools we have to combat climate change. Forests are home to around 80% of biodiversity on land and tropical forests alone produce over 40% of the oxygen we breathe. Covering around 30% of Earth’s land surface, we depend on forests for our survival. Forests absorb around 8 Gigatonnes a year of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and play a crucial role in the carbon cycle and climate system. However, climate change, forest degradation and deforestation are causing much of this stored carbon to be released back into the atmosphere. Recent research found that recovering tropical forests was only successfully combating a quarter of the current carbon emissions which indicates the importance of preserving and restoring our tropical forests. To better understand the role of trees in regulating our planet’s carbon cycle, ESA’s upcoming mission called Biomass will use advanced radar technology to measure the amount of carbon stored in Earth’s forests and other biomass, providing a more accurate assessment of carbon storage and uptake than ever before. By monitoring changes in biomass over time, scientists will be able to assess the effectiveness of forest conservation efforts and better understand the impact of deforestation on our climate.

An asteroid about the size of a car enters Earth’s atmosphere roughly once a year – but it burns up before it reaches us. Phew!

Due to scientific advancements and life today, more twins are being born now than ever before. In the early 1980s, there were 9 twin births per 1,000. Today, there are 12-14 twin births per 1,000. More and more families use fertility treatment which results in a higher chance of multiples. Many adults are also delaying childbearing to accommodate careers. Doctors also associate twins with older maternal age.

M&M are one of the most beloved candies in the world. But, unknown to many, the Ms stand for Mars and Murrie, the two men who developed the candy. Rations given to soldiers during the Spanish-American War inspired this candy. Traditional chocolate bars would melt before soldiers could eat them. The candy coating ensured soldiers could enjoy their chocolates in the field.

THERE USED TO BE THOUSANDS OF BLUE WHALES IN THE ANTARCTIC. It’s estimated that there were over 225,000 Antarctic blue whales before their exploitation in the 1900s. Today, there are estimated to be less than 2,000 Antarctic blue whales left in the world.

The “O” before an Irish name, such as “O’Reilly,” means “descendant of.”

The word “queue” sounds the same even if the last four letters are removed. Before it meant “line,” a queue meant the tail of a beast in medieval pictures and designs.

Before colonial rule, Africa comprised up to 10,000 different states and autonomous groups with distinct languages and customs.

Stephen Hawking was rumoured to run over the toes of people he didn’t like. The world-renowned physicist used a wheelchair from the age of 22 due to a severe form of motor neuron disease. This didn’t stop this from having a bit of fun, crushing the toes of many who drew his ire – including the UK’s Prince Charles himself! When confronted about this tendency, Hawking passed it off as a “malicious rumour” before jokingly threatening to run over the toes of anyone who repeated it.

Nintendo used to have a hotline you could call if you were stuck in one of their games. Back in the days before the Internet, video games were much more challenging, and finding the right way to beat them sometimes seemed impossible. Nintendo was well aware of this, and in the US, at least provided a service called the “Powerline,” which struggling gamers could call for tips and tricks.

Only one married couple has ever been sent to space. Mark Lee and Jan Davis met during their astronaut training programs but decided to keep their relationship secret. NASA had an informal policy against sending out married couples on missions. Nine months before their mission, they got married, and by the time NASA found out it was too late to begin training replacements. Instead, they made their informal policy formal to prevent it from happening again!

The Internet has its very own patron saint. St. Isidore of Seville may not seem at first to be the best patron saint of the Internet, considering he lived back in the 7th Century. While he certainly lived well before the Internet was invented, he shared many values with it. He tried to record all the knowledge he could get his hands on during his life, which isn’t that far from what the Internet is – a great big collection of knowledge!

The FBI had a 1,427-page file on Albert Einstein. When Albert Einstein moved from Germany to the US in 1933, he was already an internationally renowned physicist. One year before that, the FBI began keeping tabs on him because he was outspoken against various social issues, such as nationalism and racism. Later, Einstein took a stand, particularly against the US nuclear ambitions, which led the head of the FBI to become deeply suspicious of him and even label him as a communist.

J. R. R. Tolkien invented the languages of Middle Earth before he even thought of writing stories in the fictional universe. Tolkien was without a doubt a natural polyglot, learning more than 35 languages throughout his life. When he was a teenager, he invented his first language, which would inspire the 20 or so languages he ultimately created for Middle Earth. Once he began inventing the languages, he realized that he needed people to speak them, and it was only from this point that he thought to write The Lord of the Rings and his other works.

One of Fleetwood Mac’s founding guitarists disappeared just before a show and was found days later as a newly initiated cult member. Jeremy Spencer was with Fleetwood Mac from the very beginning, but during a tour to the US in the 70’s he became quite disillusioned with his career and life in general. He met members of Children of God, a religious cult in California, and decided to join them instead of continuing on the road to stardom. Jeremy Spencer is still affiliated with the cult, now known as Family International.

The Pentagon has twice the number of bathrooms it needs. The US Department of Defence’s headquarters was constructed during the time of racial segregation, and as such, an extra set of facilities was created for African American employees. In 1941, before the Pentagon’s construction was complete, President Franklin D. Roosevelt prohibited racial segregation within federal organisations. Not only did the Pentagon end up with twice as many bathrooms as necessary, but twice as many cafeterias too!

Three towns in Scotland, Australia, and the US are united by how boring they are. The towns themselves probably aren’t that boring, really, but their names sure are. Dull, Scotland; Boring, Oregon; and Bland, Australia, teamed up back in 2014 to get a much-needed tourism boost by creating the tongue-in-cheek League of Extraordinary Communities. It wasn’t long before the three towns’ union gained a new nickname – the Trinity of Tedium.

No number before 1,000 contains the letter A, the second most commonly used letter.

3 Musketeers candy bars are so named because they used to come in three flavours — chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry — before sugar was rationed during the 1940s.

The email came before the Internet.

The idea of doctors washing their hands before surgery or delivering babies was laughed at in the mid-1800s.

Play-Doh started as a wallpaper cleaner before the head of the struggling company realized the non-toxic material made a good modelling clay for children and rebranded it.

Electronic mail already existed before the birth of the World Wide Web.

Jeff Bezos named his company Cadabra Inc. before renaming it Amazon.

Which is the older email or www? Most people don’t realize email came long before the World Wide Web. Before the web came along, email worked much differently than today. Users needed to dial a rotary phone to connect to Micronet and access the email webpage. Academic researchers and government entities used email at the time. Consumer usage simply didn’t exist until the Internet came to fruition. Considering what email is today, its original form is archaic and almost confusing to see in action. For that reason, not a single person wants to return to the email systems of the past.

Domain Names were free before 1995. Domain name registration often costs a few dollars (or more) these days. Before 1995, registering a domain didn’t cost a penny, though. The National Science Foundation gave Network Solutions permission to charge for domain registration that year. Two-year registration for a domain initially cost $100. Prices trended downward for .COM domains after that. Available, unparked domains often cost $20 to $30 for a two-year registration. Purchasing a parked or popular domain name can, of course, cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars. By 1995, only a few thousand domain names existed, so not many companies received free domains.

IBM 305 RAMAC: The Supercomputer That Weighed A Ton (Literally). In September 1956, IBM announced and released the IBM 305 RAMAC supercomputer. It was the first supercomputer to use magnetic disk storage. More than 1,000 systems were built and sold before the 305 RAMAC became obsolete in 1962. The machine weighed more than a ton and required multiple people to set up or move. IBM charged companies and organisations $3,200 per month for the IBM 305. That amounts to nearly $30,000 in today’s dollars. For that reason, government organisations and large corporations were the main customers of IBM’s supercomputer. Subsequent supercomputers were released by IBM. The company releases a new supercomputer every few years on average.

Steve Jobs used sleight of hand at the first iPhone presentation. The first iPhone presentation happened six months before the iPhone was set to hit the market. At that time, the phone was too buggy to use, so Steve Jobs often had to switch phones behind his desk. Otherwise, it would run out of RAM and crash.

The first online gaming was before the year 2000. Sega Dreamcast was the first 128-bit console to hit the market. Released in 1999, it was the first console that allowed real-time online play. Unfortunately, it was a little too early for its time, as back then, most Internet connections were not reliable enough.

Nintendo didn’t start as a video games company. Founded in 1889, Nintendo was around long before computers! So what did they sell? From 1889-1956, Nintendo was a playing card company. They still manufacture playing cards in Japan and even have a bridge tournament called the “Nintendo Cup.”

The Apple Lisa was the first commercial computer with a Graphical User Interface (GUI) and a mouse. Before The Apple Lisa, all computers were text-based, meaning you had to type out commands from a keyboard. The name “Lisa” stands for “Logical Integrated Software Architecture.” Lisa was also the name of Steve Job’s daughter.

MySpace lost all of its content before 2016. Due to a faulty server migration, every photo, song, and video that was uploaded to this once-popular social network was accidentally deleted. That accounts for 50 million songs from 14 million artists like Lily Allen and Arctic Monkeys. Of course, many of these have backups that are probably on Spotify by now, but those that didn’t are now lost forever.

There is a machine that can predict heart attacks. Researchers “trained” a machine-learning algorithm that was able to predict heart attacks. It can predict heart attacks up to four hours before they happen – with 80% accuracy.

The stage before frostbite is called “frostnip.”

In Slovakia, they have Christmas Carp that live in the family bathtub for a few days before they are eaten.

The Flintstones was the most profitable network cartoon franchise for 30 years, that’s before The Simpsons came along.

C-3PO and R2-D2 had their own 1985 single-season 13-episode spin-off TV series called Star Wars: Droids. The season showed the adventures of R2-D2 & C-3P0 before they joined Luke Skywalker.

Shoe shops used X-ray machines to measure shoe sizes in the 1940s before the risks of X-rays were fully understood.

Traditionally, when a US aircraft landed on the wrong carrier, it would be covered in graffiti before being sent back to the right one.

Graffiti bombing is when a large graffiti piece is put up over a short period. Train bombing is one common form where a group of writers will quickly cover a train in graffiti before the authorities arrive.

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