There’s a restaurant in New York that employs grandmas instead of chefs. The menu at Enoteca Maria is a little unconventional, as half of it is a fixed Italian menu while the other half changes daily. This is because a different grandmother comes in every day with not just a new menu but a completely new cuisine! The owner decided to run his restaurant like this as he had lost all maternal figures in his life and wanted to re-create the feeling of eating in his grandmother’s kitchen.
100 Mind-Blowing Day Facts
It turns out that you don’t need to drink six to eight cups of water per day. Water is without a doubt one of the most important things on our planet, and since around the 1940s, it’s been popularly believed that you should drink about 84 ounces (2.5 litres) of the stuff every day to stay healthy. Researchers have since delved deeper into the issue and concluded that you don’t need to drink anywhere near that much, as you get a lot of water from the food you eat. Instead, you’re merely advised to drink when you’re thirsty and drink extra on particularly hot days.
In Japan, when a train leaves the station at the wrong time, the rail company apologizes. Back in 2018, a train in Japan left the station a full 25 seconds early, which probably sounds like nothing out of the ordinary to most people worldwide. The train operator admitted his mistake, exclaiming, “The great inconvenience we placed upon our customers was truly inexcusable.” Japanese trains are known for their punctuality, so there were a few passengers who missed their train that day!
The 2007 video game Halo 3 was so popular that film executives blamed its creators for a drop in cinema attendance the week it was released. When it was released, the game was so popular that it broke previous sales records, raking in an incredible $170 million in the first day alone. The weekend the game was released, box office numbers were down 27%, something which Microsoft wasn’t even surprised about. Microsoft advertised the game similarly to a movie, targeting the same demographic (18-34) that frequent cinemas the most.
When London taxi drivers tried to protest against Uber, they drove more customers towards their competitors. In 2014 as many as 10,000 London black cab drivers took to the streets and blockaded much of the city to protest against Uber. The drivers claimed not to be protesting against having competition. They protested because Uber drivers didn’t have to go through the 4-7 years of training a black cab driver must go through. In the end, Uber stated that the protest annoyed Londoners so much that, on the day of the strike, the Uber app was downloaded 850% more than normal.
Abercrombie & Fitch once offered the cast of Jersey Shore significant amounts of money to stop wearing their clothes. The American retailer feared that the association between the questionable reality TV series and their clothes would hurt their image overall. Ironically, the clothing brand’s stock value dropped by 9% on the first day of trading after the offer was sent to the cast of Jersey Shore, but this is said to have merely been a coincidence.
In their sales pitch, the inventors of silly string sprayed their interviewer with an entire can. The inventors were attempting to pitch to the children’s toy giant Wham-O, but the interview went south when they emptied the can of silly string all over the interviewer. The Wham-O representative got incredibly upset and promptly asked the inventors to leave the building. The next day, they received a telegram from Wham-O to send over 24 cans of the stuff for market testing.
Michael Jackson once had an entire supermarket closed so he could shop “like a normal person.” Being famous from a very young age, Michael Jackson was never able to do many completely normal (and rather tediously boring) day-to-day activities. When he mentioned that it was his dream to go shopping and put things in a basket, one of his friends shut down his store for a day and filled it with Jackson’s friends and family posing as employees. The superstar donned a single latex glove and went about his business up and down the supermarket’s aisles, later likening it to a trip to Disneyland.
Charles Dickens’s novels were so popular in his day that poor people who couldn’t read would collectively pay someone to read his stories out loud. Charles Dickens was undoubtedly one of the world’s greatest novelists, at least in the Victorian era. While his works filled the shelves of aristocrats’ libraries worldwide, one of his greatest feats was his ability to reach out and inspire all classes of society. Masses of impoverished and illiterate fans would each pay a halfpenny (£0.25/$0.35 today) to have each of his monthly updates read out to them.
M&Ms were exclusively sold to the US military during World War II. When they were first produced in 1941, they came in cardboard tubes, and the colours were violet, green, yellow, orange, red, and brown. By the time the US entered WWII, M&Ms had grown big enough to score a contract exclusively producing the conveniently easy-to-transport chocolate for the military. Following the war, M&Ms were wildly popular, as they were the best part of the day for many soldiers in the trenches.
The most popular car model in the world is the Toyota Hilux. This rugged pickup truck is known around the world for its incredible versatility. With that said, it should come as no surprise that half of the top-selling countries for Hiluxes are in Africa, where the true mettle of the cars is tested on a day-to-day basis. Four out of the top six car models worldwide are Toyotas – the other three are the Toyota Corolla, Rav4, and Land Cruiser.
The bee hummingbird drinks from up to 1,500 flowers a day.
Your height changes depending on the time of day.
Bamboo is the world’s fastest-growing plant. One species can grow up to 35 inches in a day.
Earth’s rotation is slowing and gaining 1.8 seconds in a day every century, meaning that 600 million years ago, a day lasted only 21 hours.
Google averages almost 3 billion searches per day.
The hardest working muscle in your body is your heart—it pumps more than 2,000 gallons of blood a day and beats more than 2.5 billion times in a 70-year lifespan.
Only two people have ever swam the entire length of the 2,350-mile Mississippi River: Slovenian long-distance swimmer Martin Strel in 2002 and American former Navy SEAL Chris Ring in 2015. Strel swam for 68 days in a row; Ring took one day off a week, taking 181 days.
According to statistics, Americans spend two hours and 54 minutes using their mobile phones per day.
There are 3.8 billion Internet users every day.
Approximately 8 billion gadgets connect to the Internet every day.
Close to 1 million websites are born every day.
IT Professionals Stress Out About Technology Just Like Everyone Else. Most people think of IT professionals as experts in hardware and software. 31% of them rated “keeping up with technology” as the biggest challenge in the workplace, though. Unsurprisingly, IT professionals constantly deal with new hardware and software. New products and services launch in the IT field every single day. IT professionals who work with multiple companies or clients may find themselves using dozens of different hardware and software solutions. For high-level IT professionals, “impact on work-life balance” takes precedence over technology woes. Many IT professionals pointed out they feel like they’re connected to work 24/7 but wouldn’t choose another profession.
Wikipedia is run and maintained by thousands of humans and hundreds of bots. Everyone knows Wikipedia is powered by thousands of human contributors. On the other hand, most people don’t realize hundreds of bots contribute to the effort, too. ClueBot NG catches vandalism on Wikipedia pages almost in real-time. A variety of other bots contribute standardised data to the online encyclopedia. This combination of humans and bots ensures Wikipedia runs without any problems 24 hours per day, 7 days per week.
Google’s Name Comes From A Spelling Error. Sergey Brin and Larry Page founded Google in 1998. 70% of search queries worldwide run through Google’s search engine. On occasion, people wonder where the name Google comes from, and its origin story comes from a spelling error. A “googol”, in mathematics, is the number 1 followed by 100 zeros. Page originally wanted to call the search engine googol. By the time the company was formed, it switched its name to Google. Perhaps the name is easier to spell and looks more friendly on the screen. People perform billions of search queries each day through Google. It’s such a popular name that it became a verb years ago among users. Most people refer to running an Internet search as “Googling” something.
How Many Computer Viruses Are Found Each Day? AV-TEST Institute identifies more than 350,000 new viruses and malicious programs each day. This includes malware, viruses, and unwanted applications. Millions of existing viruses continue to be identified every single day as well. In 2021, AV-TEST estimates a total number of 1191+ million total malware out there. Security researchers and antivirus software providers cannot keep up with the onslaught of new viruses. Creating and releasing a new virus requires little capital and little effort. It can take antivirus software months to catch up with current viruses. Nonetheless, the importance of a capable antivirus program cannot be overstated. Consumers need to protect themselves from viruses whenever possible.
How Much Does GPS Cost To Manage and Run? The average person doesn’t know GPS is funded by American taxpayers. Millions of people use GPS for navigation and location tracking each day. In 2020, $1.71 billion was required to fund the core program in the United States. The total budget for GPS tends to trend upward as the system is improved and updated. For 2021, the budget requested to run the GPS program and infrastructure is over $1.8 billion. Currently, the Department of Defence manages GPS as a whole. Extra funding is provided by the Department of Transportation for civilian upgrades to the system. US law ensures that GPS is available free of cost for direct users with no plans to privatize GPS in the future.
GPS is free… for some. Even though it is free to use GPS globally, it costs 2 million dollars to operate every day. This money comes from American tax revenue.
Computer Security Day is celebrated on November 30th. It was started in 1988 to help raise awareness of computer-related security issues. To celebrate Computer Security Day is easy and important – check your privacy settings on Facebook, and change your passwords to something stronger. You can also read the latest technology facts and make sure your data stored on your phone or in the cloud is secure.
The first word to ever be auto-corrected was “teh.” Back in the day, autocorrect wasn’t as efficient as it is now. To auto-correct “teh” to “the,” you had to press the left arrow and F3.
The first commercial text message was sent in 1992. On December 3, 1992, a software architect, Sema Group, used a computer to text “Merry Christmas” to a Vodafone employee who was using an Orbitel 901 handset. These days, over six billion texts are sent per day!
There are more likes than photos on Facebook. Every day, over 300 million photos are uploaded to Facebook, while 800 million likes are given out per day. By contrast, there are only 175 million “love” reactions each day.
Kids who are on social media for 1 hour a day have less chance of being happy. This is probably not much of a surprise, but studies have shown that the more time kids spend on social media, the less likely they are to be happy with their overall life by 14%. By comparison, this is three times higher than the effects of living in a single-parent household.
Millions of hours of TV and movies are watched every day on Netflix. Of course, Netflix is a massively popular company, so it’s not that big of a surprise. The world spends about 164 million hours every day streaming Netflix, which is equivalent to 18,812 years’ worth of TV and movies every 24 hours. Now my binge-watching habits don’t seem so bad!
The term “footage” comes from films being measured in feet when being edited in the early days of filmmaking. Why footage got its name is one of those questions that you have when taking a long shower or when you’re just starting to drift off to sleep. Fortunately, we have the answer for you and even an explanation! Back in the day, when movies were released without audio, they used to use 35mm film. During this era, the film was measured out and cut into foot-long (0.3 m) strips, which contained 16 frames in each. One foot of 35mm film was just one second of screen time. The amount of seconds in a film naturally became known as the footage.
There are twice as many pyramids in Sudan then there are in Egypt. When most people think of pyramids, they instantly think of Egypt, but this couldn’t be more wrong! Sudan has somewhere between 200 to 255 pyramids, while Egypt is home to just 118 to 138 of them. So how did so many pyramids end up down in Sudan? From 3,000 BC, Egypt’s armies were sent south to conquer whoever they found, reaching as far as modern-day Sudan. There they lorded over the locals until the Egyptian empire collapsed in 1,070 BC, but their influence remained for much longer. Less than three hundred years later, the new rulers of this region, the Kush, still believed in the Egyptian Gods and started constructing pyramids en masse.
The world record for the longest graffiti scroll is 7,366 feet and 9 inches. It was done in Dubai in 2014 by over 100 artists and contained scenes of history for the United Arab Emirates in celebration of their 43rd United Arab Emirates Union Day.
‘Day of Fate’. Important events in German history have frequently occurred on 9 November, dubbed Schicksalstag, ‘Day of Fate’. In 1918, Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated. In 1923, Adolf Hitler’s Nazis attempted the Munich Putsch, and in 1938 they attacked Jews on Kristallnacht. In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell.
Commitment to the cause. Colonel Sourd, Napoleon’s 2nd Lancers, fought all day on horseback at Waterloo. He’d had his arm amputated, no pain relief, the day before.
For King and Country. The last survivor of the defence of Rorke’s Drift, Frank Bourne, lived to be 91. He died on 8 May 1945 – VE Day.
Missed. In 1800 George III survived two assassination attempts in one day. On the morning of 15 May, he was shot in Hyde Park, but the bullet narrowly missed and hit a civil servant, who survived. That evening the king was shot at again at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, by a mentally disturbed army veteran, who also missed. George insisted that the play go on.
What is a quarantine? The word “quarantine” comes from quarantena, meaning “forty days” in 14th century Venetian. The Venetians imposed a 40-day isolation of ships and people arriving in their lagoon during the Black Death.
Prediction of death. Mark Twain kind of predicted his death. In 1909, he said: ‘I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with Halley’s Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt, “Now there are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together”.’ He died of a heart attack on 21 April 1910 – one day after the comet had come again and appeared at its brightest. Halley’s comet only passes by Earth approximately every 76 years and has been the subject of a string of predictions since 1705.
Coronation confusion. When William the Conqueror was crowned at Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day, 1066, his guard mistook a shout of acclamation for a defiant roar and massacred bystanders.
Bulgaria stands alone. For one day only, on 8 September 1944, Bulgaria found itself at war with all four major belligerents of the Second World War in Europe, the USA, USSR, UK and Germany.
Luckiest man in the world? Japanese engineer Tsutomu Yamaguchi survived the atomic bombings in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War Two. Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on a business trip when the first atomic bomb was dropped on 6 August 1945. Despite being only three kilometres away from the blast, Yamaguchi survived, though was seriously burned and temporarily blinded. The following day, he began the journey back to his hometown of Nagasaki, arriving on 8 August. On 9 August, he was a little over a mile from the epicentre of the second atomic bomb when it dropped on Nagasaki. He survived but was injured again, along with his wife and infant daughter.
Christmas is cancelled. A Christmas-themed one from the brilliant Joanna McCunn on that old chestnut, did Cromwell ban Christmas… In 1644 the Puritan parliament declared every last Wednesday of the month would be a legally mandated fast day. Christmas Day fell on the last Wednesday of the month so no feasting was to be allowed that year. Time should be spent in even more solemn humiliation, repenting of your sins for making Christmas a time of carnal and sensual delights in the past. In 1647 they went the whole hog, banning all celebrations of Christmas and Easter for good! (Charles II reversed this when he came to the throne in 1660).
Gravity’s effect on time isn’t limited to intergalactic travel. Here on Earth, gravity can vary for several reasons, including your altitude, since you’re changing your distance from the centre of the Earth. That means if you put a bunch of synchronised atomic clocks at various altitudes, eventually those clocks would fall out of sync. A clock at the top of Mount Everest and one at sea level would, over the entire 4.5 billion-year history of the planet, have diverged by about a day and a half.
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.
There are two ways to think of the length of a day on Earth. Though you probably learned that one day on Earth is 24 hours, it takes the planet 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4.0916 seconds to rotate on its axis. This is the difference between a solar day and a sidereal day—a solar day is 24 hours, whereas a sidereal day is roughly four minutes shorter. We measure solar time based on the sun’s position in the sky; a sidereal day is measured based on the location of the “fixed” stars. In other words, a sidereal day is the time it takes for a distant star or constellation to appear on the same meridian.
The length of a year on Earth can also get a bit complicated. The original Roman calendar was a bit of a mess, so much so that in 46 BCE Julius Caesar mandated a 445-day-long year to help bring the calendar back in sync with the seasons.
At the same time, Caesar asked the astronomer Sosigenes to help reform the calendar. Most years were set at 365 days, but to make up for the fact that the Earth’s revolution around the sun doesn’t take exactly 365 days, leap years were implemented. Every four years the month of February was given an extra day to make up for what is a sort of rounding error in the calendar.
But Sosigenes made a bit of a miscalculation, so the calendar continued to be a little off. He thought a year lasted 365.25 days. It’s around 365 days, five hours, 48 minutes, and 45 seconds, equivalent to about 365.242 days. This tiny error had some pretty big consequences: By 1577, the Julian calendar was off by 10 days, meaning key Christian holidays were being celebrated on incorrect dates. Pope Gregory XIII took issue with this and established a commission to get the calendar back on track. In 1582, the Gregorian calendar was created. Rather than having an extra day every four years without exception, years that are divisible by 100—like 1700 or 1900—skip leap year. Unless the year is also divisible by 400, like the year 2000, in which case the Leap Year is back on! Even this system isn’t perfect, though: It has an error of one day in 3236 years.
Each Day, More Than 560,000 Malware are Spotted. Every day, antiviruses globally detect over 560,000 malware attacks.
ESET Antivirus Blocked More Than 93% of Targeted Hacks in 2022. According to a report, ESET antivirus blocked over 100 million targeted attacks in 2022. In addition, the software stopped over 90% of zero-day attacks last year.
About 30.69 Million Antivirus Customers Used the Platform Daily in 2024. Over 30.69 million antivirus users use their software every day to scan for malicious files and folders. Some software programs run automatically, and some run in the background daily. So far, the most common kinds of malware are ransomware, adware, and Trojans.
30 per cent of known zero-day vulnerabilities targeted mobile devices in 2021. (Purplesec)
On average, a financial services employee has access to nearly 11 million files the day they walk in the door. For large organisations, employees have access to 20 million files. (Varonis)
French was the official language of England for over 300 years: After William the Conqueror of France completed the Norman Conquest of 1066, French became the official language of England. However, the language was mainly spoken by noblemen, whilst lower classes spoke English. French continued to be the official language of England until 1362. Historians believe that the country reverted to being English-speaking due to King John’s loss of the French region of Normandy in 1294. This was encouraged further by the 100-year War against France, which started in 1337. Despite this, French names were popular throughout England, with Richard, Robert and William still being common names to this day!
A handful of world-renowned scientists were born in England: Another intriguing fact about England is that it’s been the birthplace of several iconic scientists! Sir Isaac Newton, a household name, was born in Lincolnshire in 1643 and went on to write the laws of motion, gravity and the theory of colour. More recently, Stephen Hawking was born in 1942 in Cambridgeshire. The professor is best known for his theory of exploding black holes which has revolutionised the field of astronomy. These English scientists’ findings are still very relevant for science to this day, with their works being used frequently in education and the industry.
Liverpool is England’s tea capital: Typhoo revealed in a Facebook post that a key finding from their recent survey was that people living in Liverpool drink more cups of tea than anyone else in the country! On average, Liverpudlians sip nine brews per day. When it comes to the bigger picture, Statista shows that coffee is tied with tea as the nation’s favourite drink. So, who knows, perhaps Liverpudlians will favour an espresso over a brew this time next year?
Brits drink a lot of tea… about 100 million cups every day!: The stereotype that the British drink a lot of tea is immediately confirmed with this fun fact. They drink around 100-160 million cups of tea daily, which is about 36 billion every year. The difference from most of the countries in the world is that almost all the tea drinkers in the UK (98%) add milk to their cup of tea.
On average, Americans tend to eat about 100 acres of pizza every day.
The Longest-Running Show in the World Is in London: The longest-running performance in the world is being performed at St. Martins Theatre in London’s West End. Considering that Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap debuted in 1952, the show has been airing for over 70 years to this day. The plot of the show, which began as a radio play named Three Blind Mice, centres on seven strangers who become stuck at a rural house due to snowfall.
Martha Washington Is the Only Woman to Appear on a US Bill: America’s first First Lady, Martha Washington, is to this day, the only woman to have her likeness on a U.S. paper currency note. Her image appeared on the $1 Silver Certificate, first issued in 1886 and discontinued in 1957. It was the country’s second-longest issued paper money.
Between 1118 and 1307 The Knights Templar used a cheque system to provide their pilgrims with travel funds. They worked much like modern-day traveller’s cheques.
The term “check” or “cheque” is derived from the game of chess. Putting the king in check means his choices are limited, just like a modern-day cheque that limits opportunities for forgery and alteration.
In Ireland, we are moving out of money and into debit and credit cards. For the quarter up to June 2024, 85.5% of point-of-sale payments were contactless. In 2023, there were 4.1 billion payments made – 11 million payments per day – the majority of which were through payment cards and mobile and online banking, while cheque usage in 2023 fell to less than half the volume in 2019.
7 Tons of Ink Is Used to Print Money Every Day
Every April Fool’s Day, YouTube plays a prank on its millions of users.
Every month, YouTubers watch 6 billion hours of videos per month and 4 billion videos every day.
The video to reach the most views on the first day of being uploaded is Star Wars: The Force Awakens Official Teaser #2. It reached 112 million views in 24 hours.
Every day, over 150 years of YouTube are watched on Facebook.
When the site launched in May 2005, it only attracted 30,000 visitors per day.
YouTube had 8 million users per day by December 2005.
By 2017 users watch around a billion hours of videos on YouTube every day.
On Valentine’s Day 2019, GPT-2 was launched with the slogan “too dangerous to release.”
ChatGPT receives more than 10 million queries per day and, in November 2023, hit 100 million weekly users.
Voice-Search Feature Is Gaining Widespread Popularity: AI-powered voice-search features on smartphones, smart speakers, and other voice-enabled gadgets are becoming increasingly mainstream, thanks to technological advancements in the field of speech recognition. Current Artificial Intelligence stats point out that 41 per cent of people who use smart devices utilise the voice-search feature as often as once a day.