An Italian banker, Gilberto Baschiera, is considered a modern-day Robin Hood. Over 7 years, he secretly diverted 1 million euros to poorer clients from the wealthy ones so they could qualify for loans. He made no profit and avoided jail in 2018 due to a plea bargain.
100 Mind-Blowing Day Facts
Although GPS is free for the world to use, it costs $2 million per day to operate. The money comes from American tax revenue.
On one slow news day on April 18, 1930, a BBC radio announcer blatantly said, “There is no news.”
Rebecca Felton was the first woman to ever serve in the United States Senate – but she only served for one day.
The day after Thanksgiving is called “Brown Friday” by plumbers in America because it is their busiest day of the year.
In the United States, each person owns an average of seven pairs of blue jeans. That’s one for every day of the week!
December 3rd is known as “Roof Over Your Head Day” – a day to be grateful for what we have in life!
May 29th is “National Put a Pillow on Your Fridge Day.” It is celebrated in Europe & USA to bring luck & wealth to the household.
Employees at MillerCoors get three free cases of beer each month, in addition to having access to beer and cider on location after a work day.
When George Washington died, Napoleon Bonaparte of France gave a personal eulogy and ordered a ten-day mourning period for France.
January 17th is known as “Ditch New Year’s Resolution Day.”
August 21st is Senior Citizen’s Day – a day to honour the older generation.
Valentine’s Day in South Korea is a little different. Only women give gifts, not men.
March 3rd is known as “What if Cats and Dogs Had Opposable Thumbs Day.”
August 17th is known as Black Cat Appreciation Day.
A man, Ben Sliney, grounded 4,000 commercial planes across the United States on 9/11 due to the attacks – it was his first day on the job.
October 19th is “Evaluate Your Life Day” – a day to think about your situation in life & wonder how it could be improved. Be sure to weigh the good and bad!
September 25th is known as “World Dream Day” – a day about chasing your dreams, no matter how big or small they may be!
Each day on Neptune lasts for around 16 hours, 6 minutes, and 36 seconds.
It’s an Australian tradition to eat sausages at polling places on election day called Democracy Sausages. For many communities, this is the biggest fundraising event of the year.
Coca-Cola was first served in 1886. At that time, only 9 colas were served on an average day, 3,285 a year. Today, 19,400 Coke products are consumed every second.
People who eat breakfast feel better both mentally and physically throughout the day.
27,000 trees are cut down every day to supply the world’s toilet paper.
November 17th is known as “Unfriend Day.” On this day, you should unfriend anybody who you don’t know or speak to.
The least common day to be born is May 22nd.
There is such an expansive collection of books in the British Library in their archive that if a person could read 5 books per day, it would take 80,000 years to complete.
85% of Valentine’s Day Cards are bought by women.
The average person in France sleeps 8.83 hours per day, the most in the developed world.
Give something back to the Earth on March 12th – because it’s officially known as “Plant a Flower Day.”
September 3rd is International Bacon Day.
April 12th is known as “Grilled Cheese Sandwich Day.”
Every day in the U.S., more than 100,000 people get a speeding ticket.
December 12th is Ding-A-Ling Day – a day to call friends and family that you haven’t spoken to in a while.
July 3rd is International Plastic Bag Free Day – it’s a day about making a little change to make a big impact (for the better) in the future.
August 5th is known as National Underwear Day – the perfect day to add some new, confidence-boosting pieces to your underwear collection.
Most catfish are normally active at night; however, the Peppered Cory Catfish is active more often during the day.
Clinomania is the excessive desire to lay in bed all day.
Each day, your mouth produces anywhere from 2 to 4 pints of saliva.
World Kindness Day falls on November 13th and is a day to make the world a better place by showing just a little kindness to everybody.
January 10th is “Peculiar People Day” – a day to celebrate those of us who are a little quirky, weird, or eccentric.
Legoland Billund opened on June 7, 1968, and attracted over 3,000 visitors on the first day!
The inventor of Vaseline, Robert Chesebrough, ate a spoonful of the stuff every single day.
Liège, Belgium, tried to use 37 cats to deliver mail in the 1870s. Most of the cats took up to a day to deliver the mail, and the service was short-lived.
Earth’s rotation is changing speed. It’s slowing. This means that, on average, the length of a day increases by around 1.8 seconds per century. 600 million years ago a day lasted just 21 hours.
You travel 2.5 million km a day around the Sun without realising. The Earth’s orbit travels around 2.5 million kilometres around the Sun’s centre and around 19 million km around the centre of the Milky Way.
Someone left a family photo on the Moon. When Apollo 16 astronaut Charles Duke landed on the Moon in 1972, he decided to leave behind a photo of himself, his two sons and his wife. The photo remains on the Moon to this day.
Your brain burns 400-500 calories a day. That’s about a fifth of your total energy requirements. Most of this is concerned with the largely automatic process of controlling your muscles and processing sensory input, although some studies show solving tricky problems increases your brain’s metabolic requirements too.
Your brain alone burns around 400 to 500 calories each day.
Your heart beats an average of 100,000 times each day.
The O&H Danish Bakery in Racine, Wisconsin, makes 7,000 Kringles a day during the holiday season and has made landfall in all seven continents. A Kringle is Wisconsin’s State Pastry, originally hails from Northern Europe and is a sweet variation on a pretzel.
NASA believes liquid water flows intermittently on present-day Mars.
National Puzzle Day, which takes place on January 29, was started by puzzle enthusiast Jodi Jill over 25 years ago. In 2023, over seven million people around the world shared their love of puzzles online.
The first person processed at Ellis Island was a 15-year-old girl from Ireland. On January 1, 1892, Annie Moore was the first passenger to disembark at Ellis Island on its opening day. She had travelled to the United States with her two younger brothers aboard the SS Nevada after departing from Queenstown, Ireland (now known as Cobh). Another amazing fact? The busiest day at Ellis Island was April 17, 1907.
Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ron Wayne started Apple Inc. on April Fools’ Day. The three technology innovators signed the documents to form the Apple Computer Company on April 1, 1976. However, the company was not fully incorporated until January 3, 1977. Thirty years later, the company was renamed Apple Inc. and is no joke. In 2018, Apple became the country’s first trillion-dollar company. Of course, computers have come a long way over the years—here’s what computers looked like the decade you were born.
May 20, 1873, is the “birthday” of blue jeans. According to the Levi Strauss company, this was the day that Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis, the innovators behind the sturdy blue jeans we all love, got a patent on the process of adding metal rivets to men’s denim work pants. The pants were called waist overalls until 1960 when baby boomers began calling them jeans.
Irish bars used to be closed on Saint Patrick’s Day. You might associate Saint Patrick’s Day with wearing green and drinking so much you think you see leprechauns. But until 1961, there were laws in Ireland that banned bars from opening on March 17. Since the holiday falls during the period of Lent in the heavily Catholic country, the idea of binge drinking seemed a bit immoral.
Nikola Tesla hated pearls. The electrical engineer paved the way for current system generators and motors; the way electricity gets transmitted and converted to mechanical power is thanks to his inventions. But despite his patience with scientific experimentation, he had no tolerance for pearls. When his secretary wore pearl jewellery one day, he made her go home.
You can see four states from the top of Chicago’s Willis Tower. From the top of the former Sears Tower on a clear day, you can see about 40 to 50 miles away—beyond Illinois and out to Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
The Beatles’ song ‘A Day in the Life’ has a frequency only dogs can hear. It’s at the end of the song.
The bamboo plant is the fastest-growing woody plant in the world. They can grow up to 35 inches per day.
KFC is the meal of choice on Christmas Day in Japan. This happened following a successful marketing campaign over 40 years ago.
A cat spends on average 15 hours a day sleeping (jealous). This means the majority of its life is spent asleep.
You share your birthday with around 19 million people. Yep, not feeling so special now as given the global population of around 8 billion, there are at least nearly 20 million people who were born on the same day as you.
Cadbury Flakes were invented by accident. One day a factory worker realised that the excess chocolate which dripped down the side of the bars cooled into a ribbon-like shape aka a flake. The Cadbury Flake was then launched in 1920.
Australia has the most beaches in the world. A fun fact for beach lovers: at 10,000 beaches, you can visit one new beach in Australia every day for more than 27 years.
Australia has a bright pink lake. Lake Hillier is a pink lake on the West Coast of Australia. Although coloured lakes seem to be a norm in the world, Lake Hillier is the only one that scientists have yet to figure out. To this day, the reasons for its pink colouration remain to be theory.
Your heart beats 100,000 times a day. A fun fact for when you feel dead inside: your body is working hard to keep you from being dead on the outside.
Sleep cleanses your brain. When we sleep, more cerebrospinal fluid flushes through the brain to wash away the day’s worth of harmful, excess proteins and toxins. Think about that on your next Netflix binge.
Scientists don’t know what causes the shower curtain effect. Picture this: you hop into the shower after a long day. You close the curtains. As you run the shower, you notice that the curtain billows inward. Thus, you discover the shower curtain effect. Until now, scientists haven’t pinpointed what causes this strange phenomenon.
The Chanel Double C was the first designer logo of all time. The famous double C symbol was created by Coco Chanel in 1925. This famed Parisian brand’s symbol was the first ever designer logo and remains unchanged to this day.
27,000 trees are cut per day for the world’s toilet paper. Toilet paper doesn’t just wipe out whatever’s, but it also wipes out 27,000 trees a day. Similarly, about 500,000 trees are cut for daily newspapers.
May 22nd is the least common birth date. The 22nd of May is the least common day to be born. On the other hand, the 16th of September is the most common birthday. More people in the world are born in September than in any other month.
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.
Cats sleep for ⅔ of their lives. People have a love-hate relationship with cats. It’s somewhat understandable since cats tend to be the exact opposite of the warm, eager demeanour loved by many in dogs. Another stark difference is that cats spend a lot of time asleep. Like, a 15-hour average is kind of a lot. Cats sleep mostly during the day and only become active around twilight.
The Paris Agreement on climate change was signed by the largest number of countries ever in one day. The Paris Agreement (Accord de Paris) is an agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) which deals with greenhouse gas emission mitigation, adaptation, and financing. Initially signed in 2016, 195 UNFCCC members have signed the agreement as of November 2019.
Marie Curie’s belongings still have radioactive residue in the present day. Marie Curie’s contributions to science had her named by many as the mother of modern physics. One of the works she was most known for was her study of radioactive materials and the discovery of elements such as polonium and radium. However, her research took a toll on her health. Radioactive exposure not only led to her death due to aplastic anaemia – but her clothes, furniture, and books remain radioactive to this day. Now, over a century later, her notebooks have to be stored in a lead box, as they will still be radioactive for another 1,500 years.
The Titanic film runs for as long as the ship sunk. Minus the present-day scenes and opening/ending credits, Titanic is 2 hours and 45 minutes long – which is also the time it took for the ship to sink in 1912. Additionally, the collision scene lasted 37 seconds, which is also how long the ship collided with the iceberg in real life.
Arnold Schwarzenegger practised with guns every day for a month to prepare for The Terminator. To achieve the mechanical motions of The Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger worked with guns daily for an entire month. During the first two weeks of filming, he practised stripping and reassembly while blindfolded until he was able to do it robotically and with both hands. He also practised using different weapons without blinking or looking at them when reloading.
The Kingsman underwater scene was not scripted. One of the most gruelling scenes in Kingsman is the underwater escape scene. The actors delivered a scene that even had you panicking. However, it’s closer to life than you think. The flooding was a technical mishap that derailed the rehearsed flow of the scene. Director Matthew Vaughn recalls it as a horrible first day of filming. The cut was still used in the film.
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.
Super Mario Land was the most popular game on the Game Boy during its release. It is also the first platform where the Mario games were released. To this day, Super Mario Land continues to be one of the highest-ranked games loved by retro gamers.
April 11, 1954, was recorded as the most boring day in the world. Statistics show that no significant occurrences took place in the world. This was calculated by a computer search program. This program could calculate the number of important events that occur all over the world simultaneously.
1,700 people become millionaires every day in the U.S. The United States has over 8 million families who have a yearly income of over $1 million.
‘OMG’ was first used in a letter to Winston Churchill in 1917. A retired British admiral of the Royal Navy one day became excited due to headlines regarding the mobilising forces of Britain. Excited to share this news with a college, the admiral quickly wrote a small acronym for ‘Oh My God!’ in his letter. Little did he know that he had just invented one of the most popular acronyms in today’s society.
An encrypted monument stands outside of the CIA headquarters in Virginia. This monument was created by artist Jim Sanborn and features four inscriptions. Three of four of the inscriptions have been cracked already. However, no one seems to be able to crack the final code to this day.
Many pets from the U.S. run away on July 4th. This is highly due to their fear of fireworks during America’s Day of Independence.
Around 30,000 rubber ducks were lost at sea in 1992. These ducks we included in a shipment from Hong Kong to the U.S. One of the crates that were filled with rubber ducks was lost in the Pacific Ocean. To this day, rubber ducks continue to pop up on the shores of Australia to Alaska.
May 29th is Put a Pillow on Your Fridge Day. This odd holiday dates back to the early 1900s when families would place a piece of cloth on top of their larders. This is regularly celebrated in Europe and the U.S. to bring luck and wealth.
The chicken is the closest relative to the T-Rex. Recent studies have now accepted that prehistoric dinosaurs have more in common with present-day birds than they do with reptiles. Research has found that their genetic makeup is shared more with chickens and ostriches rather than lizards.
A BBC radio announcer once stated that they did not have any news. This occurred on April 18, 1930, when no major events took place that day. The announcer blatantly said that there was no news.
The day after Thanksgiving is the busiest day for American plumbers. This day is also known by many plumbers as “Brown Friday”. Many other drain companies also prepare ahead for this day to avoid major problems in their pipe systems.
August 17th celebrates Black Cat Appreciation Day. This was declared by Wayne Morris as a way to remember his sister and her black cat. This day is meant to symbolize the bond between black cats and their owners.
Lightning strikes the Earth 100 times each second. Each bolt contains up to one billion volts of electricity. This calculates to about 8 million lightning strikes per day.
Your heart beats over 100,000 times a day. The average heart rate is 80 bpm.
Americans spend an average of $1,092 on coffee per year This breaks down to roughly $92 a month, which is about 3 dollars worth of coffee a day.
Every three seconds, there is a birth taking place somewhere in the world. There are approximately 360,000 births that take place per day. This is around 15,000 births per hour.
About 80,000 plant species are edible. However, in the present day, only 150 species are regularly cultivated. 30 of these products make up 95% of the human’s usual calorie and protein intake.
Being gassy is normal. It is considered normal to pass gas 6 to 20 times a day. The average person passes gas around fifteen times a day.
You can gain calories by licking stamps. Licking 1 stamp makes you consume 1/10 of a calorie. If you were to lick 3000 stamps a day that would equate to about 16 chicken nuggets from McDonald’s.
Keeping a goldfish in a dark room will cause it to go pale. If you were to keep a goldfish in the dark permanently, it would not be healthy for the fish. This is why most fish tanks include a light that is left on throughout the entire night and day.