A man with severe OCD and a phobia of germs attempted to commit suicide with a gun to his head. Instead of killing him, the bullet eliminated his mental illness without any other damage.
100 Mind-Blowing Man Facts
Between North and South Korea lies 155 miles of no man’s land, where hundreds of rare animal species thrive.
A man named Ronald MacDonald robbed Wendy’s in 2005.
Walter Hunt, a man from America, invented the safety pin back in 1849.
Russia has the most man-made satellites in orbit, with 1,324. There is a total of 2,271, and the U.S. is in second place at 658.
A man who was hanged for his part in the Guy Fawkes Gunpowder Plot had his skin removed, and it was used to bind a book that listed his offences.
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.
Frederick Douglass was the most photographed man of the 19th Century. He wanted to ensure an accurate depiction of Black Americans during the Civil War.
There was a man in the late 1700s who had such a constant and severe appetite that he was once kicked out of a hospital because they thought he ate an entire toddler.
Polygamy is the practice of having more than one husband or wife at the same time. Polygyny is when a man is married to more than one woman, and Polyandry is when a woman is married to more than one husband.
Deaf people are known to use sign language in their sleep. A case study of a 71-year-old man with rapid eye movement disorder and a severe hearing impairment showed him using fluent sign language in his sleep, with researchers able to get an idea of what he was dreaming about thanks to those signs.
The Moon looks upside down in the Southern Hemisphere. Compared to the Northern Hemisphere, anyway. This means that the ‘Man in the Moon’ is upside down in the Southern Hemisphere and looks more like a rabbit.
Buzz Aldrin (the second man to ever step on the Moon, in 1969) peed himself while walking on the surface.
Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and the Isle of Man all have claims to have the oldest parliament in history, all of which were founded in the 9th and 10th centuries.
Nearest Green (“Uncle Nearest”), a formerly enslaved man, taught Jack Daniel as a young boy how to make whiskey, and served as the first master distiller for Jack’s Distillery No. 7 following abolition. While you may have heard of whiskey giant Jack Daniels, there is now a whiskey label called Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey, honouring Uncle Nearest, “the best whiskey maker the world never knew.”
German chocolate cake was invented in Texas. The “German” part of German chocolate cake comes from an American man—not a European country. Specifically, it’s named after Sam German, who in 1852 created the formula for a mild dark baking chocolate bar for Baker’s Chocolate Company, which was subsequently named Baker’s German’s Sweet Chocolate. Fast-forward to June 13, 1957. The Dallas Morning Star published the recipe for the cake, invented and submitted by a reader identified as Mrs. George Clay, according to What’s Cooking America.
Armadillo shells are bulletproof. One Texas man was hospitalized when a bullet he shot at an armadillo ricocheted off the animal and hit him in the jaw. That’s a true animal tidbit.
The man with the world’s deepest voice can make sounds humans can’t hear. The man, Tim Storms, can’t even hear the note, which is eight octaves below the lowest G on a piano—but elephants can.
Glitter may have originated on a ranch. According to local lore, a man by the name of Henry Ruschmann from Bernardsville, New Jersey, invented glitter by accident in 1934 while working on a cattle ranch. The New York Times reports that in the popular origin story, Ruschmann, a machinist, was trying to find a way to dispose of scrap material by crushing it into tiny pieces. Plastic went in, glitter came out, and the rest is commonly accepted as history.
Frankenstein’s Creature is a vegetarian. Both Victor Frankenstein and the Creature are fictional characters in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. In the classic novel, Creature says, “My food is not that of man; I do not destroy the lamb and the kid to glut my appetite; acorns and berries afford me sufficient nourishment.” This is one of the interesting facts you should share with your vegetarian friends!
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.
Albert Einstein’s eyeballs are in New York City. They were given to Henry Abrams and preserved in a safety deposit box. Abrams was Einstein’s eye doctor. He received the eyeballs from Thomas Harvey, the man who performed the autopsy on Einstein and illegally took the scientist’s brain for himself.
William McKinley was shot right after giving away his good-luck charm. President McKinley always wore a red carnation for good luck but sometimes gave it out as a memento. When greeting the crowd in 1901, he handed a 12-year-old girl, Myrtle, his the bloom off his lapel, saying “I must give this flower to another little flower.” Minutes later, he was fatally shot by a man in the crowd.
In 2014, there was a Tinder match in Antarctica. Two research scientists matched on the global dating app in the most remote part of the world – a man working at the United States Antarctic McMurdo Station and a woman camping a 45-minute helicopter ride away. What are the chances?!
The oldest verified man ever is Jiroemon Kimura (1897–2013) of Japan, who lived to the age of 116 years and 54 days.
Typing keyboards used to be arranged alphabetically. Have you ever wondered why keyboards aren’t arranged by the ABCs compared to the QWERTY keys we know now? You’d be surprised to know the uniform QWERTY keys we use were chosen at random. Before PCs and laptops, the typewriter was man’s first typing experience. The earliest typewriters had alphabetic keys, but people typed so fast that the mechanical arms got jammed and tangled up. To solve this, the keys were randomly positioned to slow down typing and prevent key jamming.
You can’t move or touch William Shakespeare’s bones. William Shakespeare’s legacy doesn’t stop at his plays and how many words he created – but even in the afterlife, he leaves a lasting display of his wit. Buried in 1616, the playwright was said to have written his tombstone inscription which reads: “Good friend, for Jesus’ sake forebearer, To digg the dust enclosed heare; Bleste be the man that spares thes stones, And curst be he that moves my bones.”
A man once won a horse race after he died. This one will have you saying, “What the fact?!” but this dark fun fact takes “winning spirit” to another level. Frank Hayes was a jockey who suffered a fatal heart attack mid-race. However, his horse still led and finished the race in first place. As such, Hayes was the first and only jockey to win a race posthumously in 1923.
The electric chair was invented by a dentist. In more shocking fun facts (perhaps literally): Alfred Southwick was a dentist who conceptualized electrical execution when he heard of an intoxicated man who died from touching a live electric generator. Realizing the man’s quick death, Southwick concluded that electricity could be an alternative to hanging for executions. However, he first intended for electrocution to euthanize stray dogs.
Frankenstein is a vegetarian. Turns out, this figure always seen along with Dracula and ghosts isn’t as scary as you think. Victor Frankenstein’s Creature is – in fact – a vegetarian. In the Mary Shelley novel Frankenstein, the Creature says: “My food is not that of man; I do not destroy the lamb and the kid to glut my appetite; acorns and berries afford me sufficient nourishment.”
Palindromes are the most difficult kind of phrase to form. According to language experts, the hardest phrase to create is a palindrome: a sentence or group of sentences that are the same when reading forward or backwards. Examples include 01 A man, a plan, a canal – Panama; 02 Madam, I’m Adam; 03 Never odd or even.
Subway footlongs don’t measure a foot long. Man, talk about false advertising. A fun fact you probably don’t know about this beloved sandwich joint is that Subway faced a 2013 lawsuit for their “foot” longs. The food chain explained that the Subway Footlong is merely a brand name and not meant to be the actual measure of the sandwich. The case was then promptly thrown out.
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.
Armadillos have bulletproof shells. One Texas man was even hospitalized after shooting an armadillo – the bullet ricocheted off the animal and struck him in the jaw.
New Zealand was once auctioned on eBay. In 2006, an Australian man auctioned the country on the e-commerce platform with a starting bid of $0.01. The bidding prices were raised to $3,000 before officials of the website shut it down.
A man in Florida once threw a live alligator through a drive-thru window. A 24-year-old man named Joshua James was being handed his order at a Wendy’s drive-thru before he randomly threw an alligator into the window. He was then later charged with assault, theft, and the illegal possession of an alligator.
Milk wagons are the reason why we have roadway lines. These lines were devised by a man who saw dots of milk spilling out from a moving milk wagon. These lines are considered to be the most important traffic safety device.
A man was once saved by a sea lion. During a suicide attempt, a man by the name of Kevin Hines survived jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. However, during his jump, he had broken his back thus causing him to drown. A nearby sea lion witnessed this and swam beneath the man to keep him afloat until the coast guards arrived.
Neil Armstrong never said ‘That’s one small step for man’. The astronaut corrected that it was ‘that’s one step for a man, one giant leap for mankind’. No astronaut has ever uttered ‘Houston, we have a problem’ in real life as well.
A man once set a record by putting on over 260 t-shirts. After the 20th shirt, Ted Hastings required assistance until the 260th shirt. Around 150 shirts in, his team was concerned about his ability to breathe due to the amount of fabric hugging him. In the end, he was able to beat the previous record of 257 shirts.
The U.S. government issued Santa Claus a pilot’s license. They also gave the Jolly Fat Man a copy of airway maps in 1927 and promised to keep the runway lights on. Many believe that this airway route is what he mainly uses to deliver his presents so quickly.
A dentist invented the electric chair. In 1881 a dentist witnessed a man quickly die in a chair after touching an electric generator. After this experience, he soon realized that using electricity could be a more humane way of execution.
The fastest man in the world is not physically perfect. Usain Bolt suffers from scoliosis. However, he states that as long as he continues to keep his core and back strong, it does not bother him much.
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.
David Bowie once stated he was being stalked by a man in a pink rabbit suit. Bowie noticed a particular fan during his concerts who would always attend the events in a large pink rabbit suit. During one instance, he was alarmed to find the same rabbit onboard the plane he was on.
Buzz Aldrin is the first man to ever urinate on the moon. He released himself onto the moon shortly after stepping onto the surface. Now that’s one way to mark your territory.
The man with the longest beard in the world died from his beard. In 5767, the man who held this title was trying to run from a fire at the time. Due to his beard’s length, he tripped over it which caused him to die in the fire.
The smallest cell in a man’s body is the sperm cell. It is also the overall smallest cell in human biology. However, this is also one of the most complex cells in the male body as well.
A man once wore 60 shirts and 9 pairs of jeans to the airport to avoid extra fees. On a flight from China to Africa, a man wore 60 shirts and nine pairs of jeans because he didn’t want to pay for extra baggage. He wore it throughout an 11-and-a-half-hour flight.
A man once legally changed his name for losing a bet. After losing a drunken poker bet, a New Zealand man had his name legally changed to “Full Metal Havok More Sexy N Intelligent Than Spock And All The Superheroes Combined With Frostnova.” in 2009. After five years, the name was approved by the government. Now, all 99 characters of his new name are on his government documents.
A man once hired someone to slap him to avoid checking Facebook. Maneesh Sethi hired a woman to slap him in the face every time he tried checking Facebook at work. He paid the woman $8 an hour.
In Russia, competitive slapping is a sport. In March 2019, Russia held its first-ever competitive slapping contest. The winning contestant must deliver the hardest slap and endure the longest time being slapped. The contest was tournament-style, with winners for each match facing other winners until one man was left standing. The first-ever champion turned out to be Vasiliy Kamotskiy, nicknamed Pelmen or “Dumpling.” the 370-pound man won 30,000 Russian Ruble (US$470).
German chocolate cake is named after a guy. Contrary to its name, German chocolate cake is named after its creator – an English-American man named Sam German – not Germany.
The founder of Match.com lost his girlfriend to a man she met on Match.com. It may seem like another one of the darkly funny facts – but when his girlfriend left him for a man she met on his site, Gary Kremen didn’t even break a sweat. According to Match.com founder, Kremen knew his project was successful when his girlfriend left him for another man through Match.com.
Dogs like squeaking toys because they sound like their prey. Dogs are known to have a fixation on squeaky toys. Although dogs have been domesticated by man, they still retain some of their animal instincts – which is why squeaky toys stimulate them. Squeaky toys almost sound like small prey screaming for their life. Now that’s one of the WTF facts you could’ve lived without ever knowing.
The first man to pee on the moon was Buzz Aldrin. Shortly after stepping onto the moon’s surface, Buzz Aldrin had to take a leak. That’s one for WTF facts you never needed to know.
The man who created Comic Sans used it once. Universally known as the world’s most hated font, Comic Sans was designed by Vincent Connare in 1995. Turns out, even Vincent Connare can’t take it seriously and only used it once for a complaint about his broadband service.
The man with the longest beard tripped and died because of it. Hans Steininger once became famous for having the world’s longest beard at almost 5 ft long. However, he became even more famous for dying because of his beard. One of the morbidly funny yet unfortunate WTF facts: he tripped on his beard during a fire, which made him fall downstairs and break his neck.
One man’s sperm can impregnate every woman on Earth. In two weeks, a single human male produces enough sperm to impregnate every fertile woman on the planet.
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.
A Japanese man married a video game character in 2009. This guy took cuffing season to a whole other level: Sal 9000 lived the gamer’s dream when he “married” Nene Anegasaki over livestream.
A man reached level 90 in World of Warcraft without leaving the starting zone, ever. The player Double agent spent 173.5 days mining and picking herbs for XP. Technically, he was stuck in the Wandering Isles for life – he couldn’t even play PvP since you’d need to have a faction for that.
A man once ate an entire plane. You read that right. Michel Lotito was a famous French entertainer known for eating inedible things. Lotito ate metal, glass, rubber and other industrial materials. He disassembled, cut, and ate items such as bicycles, shopping carts, televisions, and – most notably – a Cessna 150. The 680kg plane took roughly two years to be “eaten” by Lotito from 1978 to 1980.
You can’t see the Great Wall of China from space. You may have seen fact sites claiming that the Great Wall is the only man-made structure visible from space, but this is not the case. According to the Apollo astronauts, the Great Wall cannot be seen from space. However, city lights at night, roads, and the Pyramids of Giza are said to be visible.
You spend 92 days of your life on the toilet. Based on a study with 2,500 respondents, the average man spends 1 hr and 45 min on the toilet, which is 92 days a week.
The tallest man in recorded history was 8’11.
The first person selected as the Time Magazine Man of the Year – was Charles Lindbergh in 1927.
The earliest recorded case of a man giving up smoking was on April 5, 1679, when Johan Katsu, Sheriff of Turku, Finland, wrote in his diary “I quit smoking tobacco.” He died one month later.
Texas is where German chocolate cake originated. The “German” in German chocolate cake is an American man, not a member of the European Union. Sam German, who developed the recipe for a mild dark baking chocolate bar in 1852, is specifically remembered in the name of the product.
The world’s tallest man was Robert Wadlow from Michigan, America. He measured 8 feet and 2 inches (or 272cm).
A hippopotamus can run faster than a man.
Deaf people use sign language in their sleep. During a 2017 case study, a 71-year-old man with severe hearing impairment and “rapid eye movement disorder” was observed using fluent sign language in his sleep.
The moon looks upside down in the Southern Hemisphere. While the Northern Hemisphere sees the “Man in the Moon,” it looks more like a rabbit in the Southern Hemisphere.
German chocolate cake is not from Germany. German is the last name of the man who invented a kind of baking chocolate (Sam German).
The highest mountain known to man is on an asteroid called Vesta. Measuring a whopping 22km in height, it is three times as tall as Mount Everest!
One Japanese man, Tsutomu Yamaguchi, was in Hiroshima for a business trip on August 6, 1945. This just happens to be the day the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city. He somehow survived with burn injuries and went back home to Nagasaki. Then, on August 9, 1945, another atomic bomb hit that city. Yamaguchi and his family survived this attack, as well.
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.
When adjusted for inflation, John D. Rockefeller is the richest man in the history of the world with a net worth 10 times more than Bill Gates.
A man named Charles Osborne had the hiccups for 69 years.
The man who invented pop-up advertisements deeply regrets it and says he’s very sorry. In 1997 Ethan Zuckerman wrote the code for the first pop-up and added it to a website. This, he believes, was the Internet’s equivalent of the original sin. While he understands that many websites and services on the Internet wouldn’t function without getting funding from advertisements, he believes that it’s high time to find an alternative that doesn’t involve an invasion of our privacy.
The moon has its Catholic bishop. You read that right; the Catholic church does claim the moon to be a part of their religious jurisdiction and has done so since man first landed on the moon. This is due to a Catholic law that states that any newly discovered territory falls under the jurisdiction of the bishop from whence the expedition departed. Because Apollo 11 was launched from the jurisdiction of Bishop William Donald Borders in Orlando, Florida, he became the bishop of the moon.
Stan Lee created the character for Iron Man as a challenge. Stan Lee had been playing around with the idea of a businessman superhero for a while and finally bit the bullet in 1963 when he came up with the concept for Iron Man. Marvel’s readers at the time were very much against war, so he thought it would be a unique challenge to create a character who fans would originally hate but come to love – and it worked!
According to Plato, wine may be tasted in moderation until age 31, but when a man reaches 40, he may drink as much as he wants to cure the “crabbedness of old age.”
A British man found £100,000 of Roman gold coins 20 minutes after buying his first-ever metal detector.
The Tin Man original actor in The Wizard of Oz was replaced after suffering health issues from ingesting aluminium into his lungs from the costume makeup, his skin turned blue and he struggled to breathe.
The tallest man ever recorded was American giant Robert Wadlow (1918–1940), who stood 8 feet 11 inches. Wadlow’s size was the result of an abnormally enlarged pituitary gland.
The tallest living man is 39-year-old Sultan Kösen, from Turkey, who is 8 feet, 2.8 inches, and set the record in 2009. His growth is also due to a pituitary issue.
Michelin stars are highly coveted by elite and upscale restaurants the world over—but they’re given out by the Michelin tyre company, the same one whose mascot is the marshmallow-like Michelin Man. If you want to get fancy, pronounce it in the original French, “mich-LEH.”
The man who designed the Pringles can, Fred Bauer, is buried in one—or at least some of his ashes are.
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.
The @ symbol was chosen kind of randomly. The man who was writing email programs had to determine how to determine the user and the machine that the user was on. He chose the symbol because it means “at,” and it wasn’t used as much as other symbols.
Admiral Ackbar from Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi was not a man in a suit; he was a giant puppet.
The Boston Marathon didn’t allow female runners until 1972. The first woman to finish the Boston Marathon, Roberta Gibb, actually ran the race a few years earlier in 1966. She hid in some bushes until the race started to avoid detection and then ran the marathon without any official sanction. Another woman, Katherine Switzer, didn’t declare herself a woman when she competed in 1967 and was allowed to enter the race. When it became apparent that she wasn’t a man, the officials unsuccessfully tried to stop her from competing. It wasn’t until the fall of 1971 when the Amateur Athletics Union allowed women to compete, which made 1972’s marathon the first to officially allow female entrants. Eight women competed in the 1972 Boston Marathon, and all eight completed it, with Nina Kuscsik claiming the first official female victory.
In October 2015, United Airlines made a man with Cerebral Palsy crawl off one of its flights. The flight attendants just watched as he struggled.
An iconic moustache. As a young man Hitler wore a larger, bushier moustache; he trimmed it to its iconic shape so that it could fit under a gas mask during World War One.
To the last man. Pavlov’s House held out for two months at Stalingrad. The Germans lost more men attacking it than taking Paris.
Take your time. Homosexuality has been legal in Italy since 1870, England in 1967, Scotland in 1980, Northern Ireland in 1982, the Isle of Man in 1992 and Tasmania in 1997. It has now been legal in 14 US states since 2003.
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.
Slow down! On 28 January 1896, Walter Arnold drove his ‘horseless carriage’ through Paddock Wood, Kent, at a reckless 8mph – four times the 2mph speed limit. He also had no man with a red flag preceding him, as required by law. Arnold was chased down by a police officer on a bicycle, and later fined £4 7s, of which 10 shillings was for speeding – the world’s first recorded speeding ticket.
An innovative clock was built in China in 1090. A man named Su Song created a water-powered clock tower that measured time and tracked the movements of the planets and stars in the night sky. Su Song built a giant water wheel within the clock tower. Buckets attached to the wheel would fill with water and then tip once full, causing the wheel to rotate, demarcating time.