Elvis was originally blonde. He started colouring his hair black for an edgier look. Sometimes, he would touch it up himself using shoe polish.
100 Mind-Blowing Look Facts
There is a company that sells mirrors that make people look 10 pounds thinner. Overall, the mirrors have contributed to 54% of total sales for retailers that use them.
There’s no period in “Dr. Pepper.” It was removed because the old logo font made it look like “Di: Pepper.”
“Opposites attract” is a common myth. People are attracted to people who look like family members or those with a similar personality type.
A group of horses will not go to sleep at the same time – at least one of them will stay awake to look out for the others.
Originally, cigarette filters were made out of cork, the look of which was incorporated into today’s pattern.
In the 1830s, the ruler of Egypt, Muhammad Ali Pasha, wanted to disassemble the Giza Pyramids and use them as pre-cut building materials. Thankfully, the Quantity Surveyor for the project fudged the figures and made it look like it would cost too much to save them.
Protons look like peanuts, rugby balls, bagels, and spheres. Protons come in all different shapes and sizes, with their appearance changing based on the speed of smaller particles within them: Quarks.
Pine trees can tell if it’s about to rain. Next time you see a pine cone, take a close look. If it’s closed, that’s because the air is humid, which can indicate rain is on its way.
The Golden Girls was supposed to have a different theme song. That’s right: Instead of Andrew Gold’s iconic “Thank You for Being a Friend,” the show’s producers wanted to use Bette Midler’s song “Friends,” according to Jim Colucci, author of the book Golden Girls Forever: An Unauthorised Look Behind the Lanai. But the rights to the Divine Miss M’s song were too expensive, and the rest is sitcom history.
Avocados were named after reproductive organs. You’ll never look at avocados the same way again. Indigenous people of Mexico and Central America used the Nahuatl word āhuacatl to mean both “testicles” and “avocado.” The fruits were originally marketed as “alligator pears” in the United States until the current name stuck.
T. S. Eliot wore green makeup. No one is sure why the poet dusted his face with green powder, though some guess he was just trying to look more interesting.
People used to say “prunes” instead of “cheese” when having their pictures taken. In the 1840s, a big—dare we say, cheesy—grin was seen as childish, so one London photographer told people to say “prunes” to keep their mouths taut. And that look predated today’s “fish face” selfie by, oh, about 180 years.
There’s a reason why passports come in four colours. Here’s a weird fact that might surprise you. Have you ever wondered why there isn’t a hot pink passport? The reasoning is that most countries prefer dark shades of red, green, and blue since these dark colours look more official and if they’re dirty, it’s not as noticeable.
Pigs can’t look up into the sky. The anatomy of their spine and neck muscles limits their movement and restricts their head from being able to look upwards.
Humans specifically have eyes that face forward to see in 3D. On the other hand, vegetarian dinosaurs such as the Triceratops had eyes facing both sides so they could look out for predators.
Giraffes have fewer neck bones than sloths. Another one of those fun facts that’ll make you go, “Are you kidding me?” I mean, one look at a giraffe and a sloth shows the very obvious… amount of neck on a giraffe compared to the sloth. However, giraffes have 7 neck vertebrae, while sloths have 10.
Manatees can get cold stress. These gentle giants may look like tough guys, but they can be pretty sensitive to cold. In waters below 20°C, manatees can get “Florida frostbite.” Manatee fat isn’t enough to insulate their body temperature in the cold – which is why manatee deaths spiked in the Florida cold snap of 2010.
Arnold Schwarzenegger once forgot to take off the Terminator look. During a break in filming Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger went to a restaurant in downtown L.A. to get lunch. However, he realized too late that he was still in Terminator makeup – missing eye, exposed jawbone, burned flesh, and all.
Henry Cavill’s muscles are the real deal. Henry Cavill refused to take steroids for his role as Superman. He also refused digital enhancements, so the hulking physique you see in the films is all-natural. He reasoned that it would have been dishonest to manipulate the Superman look.
Goats have rectangular pupils. Have you ever looked at a goat and thought, “Man, why do you look so weird?” Goats have been used for different religious imagery and have been associated with satanic or demonic themes. (Hello, Insidious demon.) One of the fun facts about goats is that their weird, rectangular pupils give them a wider range of vision to look out for predators.
Hitler’s nephew betrayed him. William Hitler attempted to blackmail his uncle with threats regarding his paternal grandfather being a Jewish merchant. After this failed, he fled Germany and wrote an article for Look magazine titled ‘Why I Hate My Uncle’. It was after this that William joined the US Navy.
Monty Python is one of the most requested songs for funerals in England. ‘Always look on the bright side of life’ is a common favourite during funeral services. This song was originally from the comedy classic Life of Brian.
Dr Pepper does not have a period. This is mainly due to the font of the logo that would make it look like ‘Di: Pepper’. Many were confused by this, hence the change.
A glacier called Blood Falls exists. In Antarctica, this glacier is known to regularly pour out red liquid. This makes it look as if it is bleeding, hence the name.
Pigs can’t look upwards. Their necks physically cannot bend to look up. This is because the body of the pig is designed mainly to prioritise finding food.
Shoes can take up to 1,000 years to break down. If you thought clothes took crazy long to decompose, you’d have to look down at your shoes. Depending on different materials such as EVA and other foams, the average shoe will take 1,000 years before it is fully broken down.
Dolly Parton once lost a Dolly Parton look-alike contest. Dolly Parton once entered a celebrity look-alike contest as herself – and lost. The contest was held in a San Francisco club. To somewhat disguise herself, Parton exaggerated her features with makeup. However, she got the least applause of all contestants and ultimately lost to a drag queen.
The Simpsons creator intended for Homer Simpson to be Krusty the Clown. If you follow The Simpsons, you’ll notice how Homer Simpson and Krusty the Clown look almost identical. Simpsons creator Matt Groening was planning to reveal Homer Simpson behind all that clown makeup. However, to avoid the plot from getting too complex, he scrapped the idea.
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.
Camels have straight spines. One look at a camel would have you thinking, “What are you talking about? These funny facts are lies!” However, camel spines are no different than ours in structure. The hump on their back is not their spine – but an energy reserve entirely made of fat.
There’s a hilarious continuity error in the opening scene of Sex and The City. If you look closely, you’ll notice how in one shot, the bus that splashes Carrie is full of passengers. However, in the next frame, the same bus appears empty. One of the funny facts that’ll make you realize the devil is in the details.
If you look strictly at statistics, you’re more likely to win an Olympic Medal than the lottery. According to statistics, your chances of winning an Olympic gold medal are about 1 in 3.5 million. However, the chances of you winning the lottery is 1 in 14 million.
Pigs can’t look up. You can’t tell a sad pig to look up – they physically can’t do that. Since their bodies evolved to prioritise finding food, pig necks can’t bend to let them look up at the sky.
The Mona Lisa may have had eyebrows. The famous portrait may look relatively facial hair-less, but in October 2007, Pascal Cotte claimed that Leonardo da Vinci originally painted eyebrows and eyelashes on the Mona Lisa. Using a high-definition camera, the French engineer and inventor zoomed in 24 times on Mona Lisa’s face and found a single brushstroke of hair. However, whether or not this is true is one of the many mysteries of the Mona Lisa.
The Pirates of the Caribbean ride in Disneyland used to have real skeletons. In the 1960s, the skeletons on the Pirates ride at Disneyland were real. Why? They thought the fake skeletons didn’t look spooky enough. How? They contacted the UCLA medical department and bought skeletons usually found in anatomy classrooms. However, they stopped when they realized that the fake skeletons were cooler (and probably cheaper.)
Madame Tussaud used real heads for her first wax creations. Madame Anna Maria Tussaud started her waxing during the French Revolution. She would grab heads from the guillotine pile, look for the most interesting faces, and create wax masks with their faces for the revolution.
Mars’ sunset is blue. Mars has less than 1% of the Earth’s atmosphere. Sunsets on Mars look blue because its atmosphere captures mostly blue light from the sun.
The Matrix Code means sushi. The intricate green digits scrolling down the screen in The Matrix may look cryptic, but they were symbols from a scanned sushi cookbook.
All cereal box characters look down, and it’s because of psychology. You may have a lot of fond memories of your favourite childhood cereal, but we bet you missed this detail: all the characters’ eyes on the boxes look downwards. It’s not decreed in the cereal code, but they are illustrated like that to make eye contact with children from the grocery shelf. Doing this would grab kids’ attention and make it more likely for them to ask their parents to buy cereal.
Babies are born without kneecaps. Turns out, babies are as soft and delicate as they look. Babies may have more bones than the average fully-grown human, but they definitely won’t be doing any stunts anytime soon. Babies are born with a cartilaginous structure in their knees that will eventually develop into kneecaps by the time they are four years old.
It is physically impossible for pigs to look up into the sky. The anatomy of a pig’s neck muscles and spine has certain limitations to the movement of their head and restricts them from looking upwards. This makes it impossible for them to look up straight to the sky.
Pigs can’t look up into the sky – it’s physically impossible.
Martian sunsets and sunrises look blue because the Martian dust in the air scatters blue light.
Pigs can’t look up into the sky. Due to the anatomy of their neck muscles and spine, pigs are unable to look upwards.
IKEA rugs were used for the Night’s Watch cloaks in Game of Thrones. They shaved and dyed the rugs to make them look like medieval cloaks.
The sun and moon are not the same size. While they might look the same size as Earth, the moon is actually 400 times smaller than the sun. It just looks bigger because it’s also 400 times closer to us!
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.
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!?
There’s no such thing as a straight line. No matter how hard you try, if you look closely, there will always be irregularities. We say things are “laser-focused,” but even laser beams are slightly curved!
Pigs cannot look up at the sky. It’s all due to the anatomy of their neck muscles and spine.
Ripe bananas look blue under black lights.
Maine is the closest state to Africa. (Time to look at the globe again.)
Clouds look white because they are reflecting sunlight from above them.
Axolotls vary in colour from brown to pink to green. They have webbed feet and a long tail to aid with swimming, while many people say they look like they’re always smiling due to the shape of their mouths.
As dogs were domesticated, their eyes evolved to look cuter. Have you ever seen a picture of a wolf’s eyes and seen something mysteriously menacing in them compared to those of a dog? Well, there’s a good reason for that. Dogs evolved muscles around their eyes, allowing them to change their facial expression slightly, commonly known as “puppy eyes.” It’s believed that they evolved so because dogs that looked cuter and friendlier were more likely to be looked after.
Elephants can swim up to six hours at a time. When you look at an elephant, the last thing you would think is that it’s particularly good at swimming, but it turns out that they’re incredibly capable! One of their greatest advantages is their trunk, which they use just like a snorkel to stay underwater for longer periods. Elephants also have great stamina, which allows them to swim for lengthy periods. When they’re tired, they can just float along thanks to their high buoyancy!
It’s physically impossible for pigs to look up at the sky.
Canada is south of Detroit (just look at a map).
The name “robot” has dark origins. If you look into the etymology of “robot,” comes from the Czech word “robota,” which translates to forced labour or work. The word was first used to refer to a fictional humanoid in a play in 1920.
World’s first skyscraper. The story of skyscrapers often begins in New York and Chicago from around 1884 with increasingly tall buildings. However, what is technically the world’s first skyscraper was built in Shropshire in 1796–7. Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings may not look like a skyscraper, but its Main Mill was the first building in the world to have an iron frame supporting the weight of the structure, the formula for every skyscraper ever built so that it has been dubbed the ‘Grandparent of Skyscrapers’.
Hitler’s half-nephew’s service in the US Navy. The son of Adolf Hitler’s half-brother, Alois, William Patrick Hitler was born in England in 1911 but moved to Germany in the 1930s. He was something of a problem for the German Führer, and in July 1939 he published an article in Look magazine titled ‘Why I hate my uncle. . .’ He moved to America in 1939. It has been reported that in 1944 he appealed directly to President Roosevelt to join the fight against his uncle and the FBI deemed it sincere. Though he never saw combat, Hitler served until 1947. He changed his name to William Stuart-Houston and died in 1987.
Though a lot of people believe daylight saving time was adopted to keep farmers happy, that’s a myth. The first person to seriously advocate for daylight saving time was an entomologist who wanted more sunlit hours to look for insects after work in the summer. He proposed his idea to a scientific society in New Zealand in 1895.
New clocks are set at 10:10 for a reason. If you’ve bought a new clock or watch recently, you may have noticed that the default setting was 10:10, give or take a few minutes. There are various theories behind this particular choice of time, but really, it all comes down to aesthetics. Setting the time to around 10:10 allows the hands of an analogue clock to be displayed in a neat, symmetrical way that doesn’t obscure any logos in the centre of the clock’s face. Clocks were once set to 8:20, and occasionally still are, but the hands’ downward angles can make it look like the timepieces are frowning.
Need proof of how successful Linux is? Take a look at its long-time arch-rival, Microsoft . The company who famously tried to ‘extinguish’ the project in the late 90s and early 00s now leverages Linux in its server business. It even contributes to kernel development!
You Can Make Your Money Crisp by Ironing It: Ready for a surprising money fact that involves a little bit of fabric know-how? If you’ve got a creased, crumpled, or wrinkled dollar bill, you can make it look new by pressing it with your iron. As mentioned earlier, U.S. dollars are 75% cotton and 25% linen, so it’s fabric. To iron the money, dampen the dollar bill slightly with a spritz bottle, sprinkle water by hand, or use the spray function on the iron itself. Set the iron to low heat, put a towel under the bill and another on top of it, and then iron the money in a circular motion. Set aside to air dry. Presto! You should have a nice flattened bill.