Daniel Radcliffe was allergic to his Harry Potter glasses. He had an allergy to nickel, and they were quickly replaced with hypoallergenic specs. Also, did you know that his glasses had no lenses? This was to prevent reflections from anything happening behind the scenes. The glass lens was added in post-production.
100 Mind-Blowing Did Facts
The Japanese term for a Shotgun Wedding is “Dekichatta kekkon,” which translates to “oops-we-did-it-marriage.”
Every 10 years, the human skeleton repairs and renews itself. Essentially, you have different bones now than you did 10 years ago!
Young Tyrannosaurus rex probably had a thin coat of downy feathers to stay warm. They did not need them as they got older due to their size.
Pantheism is the belief that God did not create the universe, but rather the universe is God.
If the electors of the Holy Roman Emperor did not vote within 30 days, they were only allowed to eat bread and water and were forbidden to leave the city.
At his audition for The Office, John Krasinski told someone he was nervous about the producers ruining the show because of how great the British version was – little did he know, the person he was talking to was the show’s executive producer.
The T.rex likely had feathers. Scientists in China discovered Early Cretaceous period tyrannosaur skeletons that were covered in feathers. If the ancestors of the T. rex had feathers, the T. rex probably did, too.
In the UK in 2019, renewable energy generated more electricity than fossil fuels for the first time. Also, did you know Norway gets 0% electricity from coal? And Germany has installed 1 kW of renewable capacity per person in the last decade? a) (Climate change is the biggest global issue of our time, but there are some things to feel positive about!)
0.5% of the male population are descended from Genghis Khan. (Scientists did a study in 2003 showing that about 16 million dudes share a Y chromosome with the famous Emperor.)
A woman called the police when her ice cream didn’t have enough sprinkles. The West Midlands police in England released a recording of a woman who called 999 (the U.K. version of 911) because there were “bits on one side and none on the other,” she says in the recording. She was even more upset when the ice cream truck man did not want to give her money back.
Yes, bleach expires. Did you know that household bleach expires? It’s news to us, too! This home cleaning product lasts about six months.
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.
President Bush was re-elected by less than 31% of all eligible voters in the United States. Only 60.7 per cent of eligible voters participated in the U.S. presidential election of 2004. It was the highest percentage in 36 years, but more than 78 million people did not vote.
Tom Hanks was not paid for Forrest Gump. This may be surprising for one of his most iconic roles, but Tom Hanks did not receive a set fee for this film. Instead, he signed an agreement that entitled him to percentage points from the film’s profit. Ultimately, his part in the film’s earnings netted him at US$40 million.
Daniel Kaluuya was given the lead role on the spot after nailing his audition. According to director Jordan Peele, Kaluuya did five takes of a key scene where a character needs to cry. Each take was so perfect that the single tear came down at the same time.
The first roller coaster was invented to stop sinful behaviour. When LaMarcus Thompson created the first roller coaster in Coney Island, he did it to stop the sinful lifestyle of New Yorkers. The rise of brothels in the late 1800s disgusted Thompson who wanted to provide a family-friendly way to indulge.
Nikola Tesla did not like pearls. One of the fathers of mechanical electricity, Nikola Tesla’s love for groundbreaking discoveries let us harness electricity the way we do now. However, he did not love pearls. He once sent an assistant home for showing up wearing pearls.
The first baby stroller was pulled by animals. William Kent invented the first stroller for the 3rd Duke of Devonshire in 1733. However, it did not have handles for parents. Instead, the strollers were pulled by goats, dogs, or miniature horses.
‘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.
A janitor invented the flaming hot Cheetos. One of the janitors working at the Frito-Lay plant in Southern California pitched the idea of adding chilli powder to the regular product. Top Brass liked the idea and so did many consumers. This leads the janitor to a generous promotion where he is now an executive for PepsiCo.
Stephen Hawking held a reception for time travellers in 2009. However, he did not publish news of this until after the event so that only real-time travellers were able to know about it. No one attended the event.
You can burn calories just by standing. The average 150-pound person can burn 114 calories an hour just by standing still. Did this motivate you a little?
Shakira was rejected from her elementary choir group. Her music teacher at the time stated that her vibrato was too strong and that she sounded like a goat. Little did she know that this student would grow up to become one of the most inspirational female pop singers of all time.
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.
It did not take more than $1M to build Mt. Rushmore. The construction of this famous monument, Mount Rushmore, took over 14 years to complete. Over 400 workers built this monument from the group-up from 1927 to 1941.
Humans did not come from monkeys. To be more precise, humans and monkeys had a common ancestor from 25-30 million years ago. From then, each species evolved differently.
French fries did not come from France. Originally they come from the country of Belgium. However, they are most popular in the United States.
An American man tried to fake his death so he wouldn’t have to pay his phone bill. In 2007, Corey Taylor attempted to fake his death to get out of his smartphone contract without paying for anything. However, despite his efforts, it did not work.
Marie Curie’s old notebooks remain radioactive until today. Curie’s long exposure to radioactive material did not only affect her but most of her belongings as well. This includes her clothes, furniture, and books. Scientists state that her belongings that remain in a lead box will remain radioactive for at least another 1,500 years.
10% of the world population is left-handed. Our first of our did you know facts are about left-handed people. It is said that men are more likely to be left-handed than women. Various studies have also suggested that the handedness of a person can be determined by the time they spend in the mother’s womb. Some studies also suggest that one’s heritage may also play a role in determining if someone will be left or right-handed.
The blood of lobsters is colourless. However, when their blood is exposed to oxygen, it becomes a blue colour. This is mainly due to the copper that is found present in the blue hemocyanin molecule in their blood. Now that’s some cool scientific did you know the facts?
Honey never spoils. Here’s one of our sweetest did you know facts about food. When honey is heated strained and sealed properly, it will not be able to absorb moisture and therefore will stay as it is forever. The oldest jar of honey ever found is stated to be over 5500 years old today.
A giraffe cleans its ears with its tongue. This is one of our most surprising did you know facts about these tall creatures. A giraffe’s tongue is over a foot and a half long or 21 inches. They also use their tongues to get around thrones and acquire the leaves they want to eat.
Coins in the Trevi Fountain are collected and given to charity. Do you know any did you know facts about the coins tossed in fountains? No? Here’s one! The coins thrown in the Trevi Fountain are collected privately and donated to non-profit organisations. Some of these organisations provide food to the poor and the homeless of Rome.
Monopoly is the most played board game in the world. Did you know facts about Monopoly? Here’s one. Over 275 million Monopoly board game sets have been sold worldwide. It has also been translated into 47 other languages apart from English.
Hugging trees is forbidden in China. Here’s one of our weirder did you know facts. Hugging trees was forbidden after the mass tree hugging that occurred outside of China’s imperial garden. The Chinese government speculated that the tree huggers were part of a suspicious cult and banned the activity in the country.
Only female mosquitoes bite you. Need some insects did you know the facts? No problem. Only female mosquitoes bite us because the required nutrition from their victim’s blood is needed to develop their eggs. Male mosquitoes feed on the nectar of flowers.
Until it blows against something, the wind makes no sound. Ready for more did you know the facts? The sounds you hear during a windy day are due to the speed of the wind coming into contact with various objects at the same time. The process of friction can also cause sounds at higher pitches depending on the speed of the wind.
Ice rinks will always go counter-clockwise. This is because the majority of people are right-handed. Those who do not know how to skate will often grab onto the railings on the outermost side of the ring. How’s that for cool did you know the facts?
The most commonly bitten body part by insects is your feet. Here’s the last of our did you know facts. The most common places to be bitten by insects are by the ankles. This is because this area is rarely noticed by us when insects land on our skin.
Swearing can relieve pain. A Keele University study revealed that volunteers who used profanity could endure pain 50% longer than those who did not curse.
The Fender Guitar company makes 90,000 guitar strings a day. Fender may be one of the biggest music companies, but its founder, Leo Fender, did not know how to play any instruments.
The inventor of the television banned TV from his home. When Philo Farnsworth invented the television in 1927, he intended for it to be a learning instrument that could end wars. However, once TV was commercialized, he came to regret his invention. As a result, he did not allow his household to watch television. One of the ironic yet interesting facts.
Bananas don’t have seeds. This is one of the interesting facts that can send you into an existential crisis: If bananas don’t have seeds, where did they come from? Bananas grow from the small bulbs called suckers that grow from the plant. Once the current crop dies, they can replant these suckers to reap a new plant.
U.S. President Coolidge used to sound emergency bells as a joke. The 30th U.S. president made a habit of sounding the emergency bell placed on his veranda and then hiding when the Secret Service came. He did this enough times to make them remove the bell altogether.
The Great Reality TV Swindle is exactly what it sounds like. In 2002, 30 people were conned to join a fake reality TV show in the U.K. Nik Russian, a bookstore clerk at the time, posed as a TV producer who offered a 1-year show. Russia persuaded the participants to leave their homes and quit their jobs and partners. However, there was no program deal or prize money. As a result, most of the 30 contestants went bankrupt. Since then, Nik Russian has not been convicted (since he did not take money from anyone) and nobody has been able to track his whereabouts.
An Australian engineer once sued his ex-boss for farting on him. In March 2017, David Hingst sued his ex-boss for repeatedly farting on him in his former job. He sought 1.8 million Australian dollars ($1.28 million) worth of damages. His boss would fart on him 5 to 6 times a day, but his former supervisor insists he only ever did it once or twice.
An octopus can eat its tentacle. When an octopus is stressed, it may suffer from autophagy or self-cannibalism. In some cases, a stressed octopus can eat its arms. However, an octopus can lose an arm without pain and regrow it with no problem. Imagine if we did the same when we got stressed. Now that would be one for funny facts.
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.
There’s an apartment inside the Eiffel Tower. When Gustave Eiffel designed the tower, he added a hidden apartment on the third level—but he never lived there, nor did anybody. Instead, Eiffel used this space to entertain guests such as Thomas Edison. Though it wasn’t big, the apartment was decorated with wallpaper, furnished with wooden cabinets, and even had a grand piano. Nowadays, you can get a peek at the unique space through a window if you ride up the tower.
Scientists detected a radio signal in space from 5 billion light-years away. 5 billion light-years mean the Earth did not exist at the time the source transmitted it! How strange.
The heart symbol was inspired by ancient birth control. Do you remember how shocked you were when you discovered in biology class that our hearts weren’t shaped like the cute symmetrical shape we see everywhere? Your next question probably would’ve been, “Well, how did they come up with that butt shape?” A theory suggests that the shape came from the silphium, a type of now-extinct plant that the ancient Greeks and Romans consumed for medicine, food, and birth control. Silphium seeds were shaped like our modern heart icon.
Mary Shelley allegedly lost her virginity on her mother’s grave. It is widely believed that the author of Frankenstein did the devil’s tango with her would-be husband, Percy Shelley, on her mother’s final resting place. Does it get any more gothic than that?
Jane Barbie was the woman who did the voice recordings for the Bell System.
Like fingerprints, everyone’s tongue print is different Did you know that everyone has a different tongue print like fingerprints? Our tongue prints also have unique identifying marks. As reported by researcher David Zhang, the tip of the tongue has a unique physiological texture and geometric shape that can be used for verification purposes.
The Easter Island heads have bodies. We’ve seen those iconic stone heads, but did you know that in the 2010s, archaeologists found that two of the Pacific Island figures had torsos?
Maine is the only state name with one syllable. How did we never notice this before?
The world’s largest snowflake was 15 inches wide and 8 inches thick. It fell in Fort Keogh, Montana, in 1887. What did that look like!?
Octopuses have three hearts. And their blood is blue! By the way, did you know that both octopuses and octopi are acceptable plurals for octopuses?
Thomas Edison did not invent the light bulb.
Uranus is the coldest planet in the Solar System. Some facts about space seem to defy simple logic. Neptune is the farthest planet from the Sun, so you might expect it to be the coldest planet. But it’s not: Uranus is. The question is, why is Uranus the coldest planet in the Solar System? Could Uranus’s plummeting temperature be related to the planet’s atmosphere? Did Uranus lose most of its primordial heat early in its life? Or could it be related to the planet’s strange tilt, relative to the rest of the planets that orbit our Sun?
In 2017, Chau Smith decided to celebrate her 70th birthday by running seven marathons on all seven continents in seven days. Her amazing feat almost did not happen due to travel delays, however.
If you are having trouble finding motivation or lacking creativity, then consider taking a shower. In scientific studies, directors asked participants to solve hard problems. The participants did better after a relaxing activity, like showering.
The last man to walk on the moon, Gene Cernan, promised his daughter he’d write her initials on the moon. He did, and her initials, “TDC,” will probably be on the moon for tens of thousands of years.
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!
The person who proved the existence of radio waves thought they were completely pointless. Between 1886 and 1889, Heinrich Hertz did a series of intricate tests that proved the existence of a previously theoretical form of wave – electromagnetic waves. When asked about the practical uses, he responded, “It’s of no use whatsoever[…] this is just an experiment that proves Maestro Maxwell was right—we just have these mysterious electromagnetic waves that we cannot see with the naked eye. But they are there.” Hertz’s name is now used to indicate the various degrees of electromagnetic frequency despite calling them pointless.
Sloths don’t fall out of trees when they sleep because of how their claws evolved. Fortunately for many a sleeping sloth, their claws evolved quite the opposite of how ours did. While our hands are naturally open, and it takes force to clench them, this isn’t the case for sloths. Instead, their claws’ “relaxed” position is a tight grip, and it takes quite a lot of force for them to unclench their claws.
Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, wasn’t the first to introduce Christmas trees to Britain from his native Germany—Queen Charlotte did that in the late 1700s. But, Victoria and Albert are credited with popularizing the custom in the mid-1800s.
This man threw a hard drive loaded with 7500 bitcoins into the trash. James Howells mined 7,500 Bitcoins in 2009 and stored them on a hard drive. At that point, Bitcoin’s value amounted to almost nothing. The cryptocurrency slowly started to grow in value after a few years, and Howells thought he owned a small fortune. Only then did he realize he accidentally threw away the hard drive sometime in 2013? Howells lives in Wales and contacted the Newport City Council to excavate the local landfill. He offered the City Council over $70 million if the hard drive was recovered. Based on today’s rate, the hard drive is worth more than $375 million. The City council baulked at the offer due to environmental regulations and the required cost.
A Petabyte is a lot of data. We all know 1 GB is the same as 1024 MB, but did you know that 1 petabyte (PB) is equivalent to 1024 terabytes (TB)? To give an example of how big this is, a 1 PB hard drive could hold 13.3 years of HD-TV video. A 50 PB hard drive could hold the entire written works of mankind, from the beginning of recorded history, in all languages.
People read faster or slower depending on what they read. Not only do you blink less when you’re on a computer, but reading from a screen also slows you down. On average, people read 10% slower from a screen than from paper! As for the blinking part, did you know that during everyday life, people normally blink at a rate of twenty times per minute? But put them in front of a computer, and that number drops way down to seven times per minute!
Which came first, Spam mail or Spam meat? Spam mail was named after the canned meat! In a Monty Python skit, they said Spam meat was “horrible and being ubiquitous and inescapable.” Sounds pretty accurate to the annoying junk mail I get! Also, did you know that, on average, for every spam email sent, they only get one reply for every twelve million spam emails sent? Is it even worth it at that point?
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 QWERTY keyboard was originally designed to slow you down. When typewriters were introduced, typing too fast would jam the keys. Using a QWERTY keyboard spaced out commonly used characters to slow typists down and prevent jamming. If you want to learn a more efficient keyboard, Dvorak is made for speed. While we’re on the subject of keyboards and typing, did you know that on a typical workday, a typist’s fingers will “travel” about 12.6 miles?
The dark region on the north pole of Pluto’s moon, Charon, is called Mordor. In July 2015, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft became the first spacecraft to fly past Pluto, the formerly ninth planet in our solar system. NASA called on the general public to aid them in giving names to the many new features of Pluto they expected to find, and the general public certainly didn’t disappoint. Not only did they name a dark spot on Charon’s moon after Sauron’s holdout in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth, but they also named a dark spot on Pluto’s south pole Cthulu from H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulu Mythos!
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.
Thomas Crapper’s toilet. Contrary to popular belief, Thomas Crapper did not invent the flushing toilet, though his name is often associated with it. Crapper did play a significant role in popularising the flushing toilet and developed related inventions like the ball cock. However, the word ‘crap’ does not come from his name; it has Middle English origins and first appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1846.
Old McDonald’s. The oldest operating McDonald’s is located in Downey, California, and was opened in 1953. As it was franchised by the McDonald brothers, not Ray Kroc, it did not modernise alongside the McDonald’s Corporation until its acquisition in 1990, when it was the only remaining independent McDonald’s.
The Churchill myth. Of Winston Churchill’s most famous 1940 speeches: ‘Blood, toil, tears and Sweat,’ ‘Fight Them on the beaches’, ‘Finest Hour,’ and ‘The Few,’ only one, ‘Finest Hour’ was broadcast on the radio at the time. All of them were delivered to the House of Commons, but only after his ‘Finest Hour’ speech did Churchill record a version later for the BBC. The other speeches he only recorded in 1949.
Dancing mania. In July 1518, Frau Troffea began dancing in chaotic fervour on the streets of Strasbourg. She danced for a week straight, and soon others joined her. Within a month, the Dancing Plague of 1518 claimed between 50 and 400 victims. Historical sources make it clear the victims danced, but why they did so remains unexplained. Mysterious outbreaks had occurred before: in 1020s Bernburg, Germany, a Christmas Eve service was disturbed when revellers inexplicably danced around the church. In Aachen, 1374, a large-scale outbreak was recorded that spread to Cologne, Flanders, Hainaut, Strasbourg, Utrecht and other towns. In 1428 in Schaffhausen, a monk even danced himself to death.
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).
After an engineer named Sandford Fleming missed a train in 1876, he set out to change the way time worked. Fleming originally proposed a concept he called “Cosmic Time,” in which the world would run off an imaginary clock located at the planet’s centre, essentially a line from the centre of the planet to the sun. He then suggested splitting the world into 24 time zones labelled with a letter of the alphabet, with each zone spanning 15 degrees of longitude. His original plan to create a standard “Cosmic Time” was rejected, but it did lay the groundwork for a similar standardisation, so-called Universal Time. Nations present at the 1884 International Meridian Conference laid the groundwork for dividing the world into 24 time zones, with the Prime Meridian, also known as Longitude 0°, running through Greenwich, England.
Linux is the most famous example of open source software but did you know that it wasn’t always that way? Early versions of Linux were distributed with a license forbidding commercial use or redistribution. It was version 0.12, released in 1992, that saw Linus adopt the GPL, making his code freely available to all.
Did you know that Android is built on top of the Linux Kernel? Even if it is heavily modified, Android functions because Linux exists.
The most Instagrammed mountain is Scafell Pike: Represent Clothing published a study in July 2022 where they found the most Instagrammable mountains in the UK. They did this by investigating the number of geotags photos of the mountains had on the app, and the top English mountain was Scafell Pike with 85,100 tags. Across the UK Scafell Pike came in third place, with Snowdon sitting in first place with 168,000 tags and the Brecon Beacons peak of Pen y Fan in second place with 146,000 tags. There was little doubt that a Lake District mountain would make the list, with the national park sporting a wealth of beautiful peaks. If you want to explore Scafell Pike yourself and snap a picture from the summit, why not give the Scafell Pike Circular Walk a go?
Queen Did Not Possess a Passport: In 70 years as queen, Elizabeth II has visited over 100 countries for official business. Her name is on every UK passport, thus she doesn’t require one.
The Queen Did Not Possess a Passport: In her 70 years as queen, Queen Elizabeth II has travelled to more than 100 nations for official business. Even though everyone on the planet requires an identity card, she can travel without a British passport. This is so because the Queen’s name appears on every passport.
Did you know that money has a short life span? On average a $1 bill lasts only 18 months, a $5 bill will last two years, and a $10 bill will last three years. This is why the US Bureau of Engraving & Printing has to reprint $541 million worth of currency each year.