The majority of blind people in the U.S. and the U.K. cannot read Braille. Statistically, less than 1% of blind in the U.K. and under 10% in the U.S.
100 Mind-Blowing Read Facts
Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has such severe dyslexia that he didn’t read his first novel until he was 38.
There is such an expansive collection of books in the British Library in their archive that if a person could read 5 books per day, it would take 80,000 years to complete.
In general, people tend to read as much as 10% slower from a screen than from paper.
Coca-Cola owns all website URLs that can be read as ahh, all the way up to 62 h’s.
The average inmate at Alcatraz read 75-100 books per year.
Each limestone/granite block that makes up the Great Pyramid of Giza weighs 2.5 tons. And there are 2.3 million of them. Yes, you read that correctly.
Alaska had a cat mayor. Another interesting fun fact: The Alaskan town of Talkeetna had a cat as mayor for 20 years. You read that right – this feline was affectionately called Stubbs (for his lack of a tail) and served as the town mayor from 1997 to 2017. Stubbs didn’t have to do much official business, since the little town was merely a historic district and tourist spot.
Indians read the most out of any nationality. Indians spend an average of 10 hours and 42 minutes a week reading, which is more than any other country in the world. Other countries that read the most are Thailand, China, the Philippines, and Egypt.
Indians read the most in the world. On average, they spend 10 hours more of their time during the week just reading. In the age of digital media, this country still prefers an old-fashioned book rather than their phones.
A palindrome is a sentence that is the same when read backwards and forwards. A few examples include ‘Do geese see God’ and ‘Racecar’. This is also noted to be one of the hardest sentences to construct using the English language. Can you come up with your own?
The largest prime number has 17,425,170 digits. This new prime number is 2 multiplied by itself 57,885,161 and then subtracted by 1. This number can also be read as 257,885,161-1.
The Japanese have their word for book hoarders. ‘Tsundoku’ is the Japanese word for people who love to buy books but never read them. More often, these books are just left piled up inside their homes and never used.
The most difficult phrases to create are palindromes. These are sentences that read the same when reading backwards. Language experts state that forming an understandable sentence using palindrome is extremely difficult. A few examples include “Redrum, sir, is murder” and “He lived as a devil, eh?”.
Machu Picchu is 100% handmade. You read that right – Machu Picchu is the best remaining example of Incan engineering. No tools, wheels, or animals were used in constructing the royal estate. Instead, hundreds of men pushed up 50-ton rocks or scaled the mountain to form what we now know as the Incan ruins.
LEGO has an underground vault with all the LEGO sets ever made. Yup, you read that right. One of the fun but still WTF facts: LEGO has an underground bunker that holds all the LEGO sets made since the company started in the mid-90s. The Memory Lane vault contains 4,720 sets.
The universe is officially coloured “Cosmic Latte.” In 2002, scientists determined that all light in the universe has the average shade of beige colour coined the “Cosmic Latte.” The astronomer Peter Drum came up with the name while he read an article about the experiment in a Starbucks and realized that the colour was similar to his latte.
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.
In Vermont, there is one cow for every 3.8 people. You may have read that the cow-to-person ratio in Vermont is 10:1, but it’s not true.
Women blink nearly twice as much as men! This is a pure myth! Blink rates are pretty identical for both sexes. Scientists have suggested that the interval between blinks is nearly about 2-10 seconds so an average person blinks about 10 times per minute. Another interesting fact is that we blink less frequently if our eyes are focused on one thing. For instance, while you read, you only blink three times per minute because while reading you are very focused.
Frederick Douglass taught himself to read and write.
Reindeer like it cold! They are native to Arctic and subarctic regions as well as tundra and boreal (read: snow, snow, snow!) to northern Europe, Siberia and North America.
The Moon is drifting away from Earth. You read that correctly! The Moon is gradually drifting away from Earth at a rate of approximately 4 cm per year. This phenomenon is caused by the Moon pulling on Earth’s oceans creating tidal forces that produce a bulge of water on the side of Earth facing the Moon. This bulge in turn creates a gravitational pull on the Moon, causing it to accelerate slightly and move further away from Earth. Over time, this process has caused the Moon to move farther away from Earth each year. This gradual drift is not noticeable on a day-to-day basis, but over millions of years, it can have significant effects on Earth’s rotation. Today, most scientists believe the Moon is ‘Earth’s child’ – a large body collided with Earth, destroying our planet’s mantle and sending material into orbit from which the Moon formed. This ‘big splash’ theory would explain why the Moon’s rocks are similar to those on Earth. Bonus fun fact: Australia is wider than the Moon. The Moon sits at 3400 km in diameter, while Australia’s diameter from east to west is almost 4000 km. The Moon, as a sphere, has more surface area, but it’s still pretty impressive.
If you have children, you likely read them Dr. Seuss’s books. These favourites have been around for generations. But, you are likely saying the famed author’s name incorrectly. According to friends and family, the name rhymes with voice, not deuce.
Get this – axolotls can regrow their body parts. Yep, you read that correctly and this isn’t the stuff of science fiction. If axolotls become injured they, like some other species of salamanders, can regrow missing limbs, including hands, feet and even tails. They can also regrow organs. This unique ability means they’re regularly used for scientific research.
Ancient Romans left graffiti on Egyptian pyramids that said, “I didn’t like anything but the sarcophagus,” and “I can’t read the hieroglyphs.”
The fear of running out of something to read is called “abibliophobia.”
According to a Yale study, people who read books live on average 2 years longer than those who do not read at all.
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.
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.
Harry Potter is the third most-read book in the world, coming behind only The Holy Bible and The Holy Quran.
The first Apple logo isn’t what you would think. Originally, it featured Sir Isaac Newton sitting beneath a tree, with an apple about to fall on his head. It was designed back in 1976 and featured a phrase around the border that read “Newton…A mind forever voyageing through strange seas of thought…alone”.
Google rents out goats. You read that right; instead of mowing their lawn, Google rents goats to eat the grass at their Mountain View headquarters. A herder will bring 200 goats which are herded by a border collie named Jen.
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!
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.
Blind people can use cell phones. There is special Braille technology and accessories for blind people to use cell phones. It uses special pins that go up and down so the user can touch and read the info.
Ancient Romans left graffiti on the pyramids that says, “I didn’t like anything but the sarcophagus” and “I can’t read the hieroglyphs.”
Throughout history, different cultures around the world have experienced time in different ways. In the Western world, we tend to think of time as linear and flowing from left to right. But this isn’t the case for everyone. Language affects how people conceptualize time, particularly the spatial metaphors they use to describe and map it. Those who read languages that flow from right to left, such as Arabic and Hebrew, generally view time as flowing in the same direction. The Aymara, who live in the Andes Mountains in South America, consider the future to be behind them, while the past is ahead. In their view, because the future is unknown, it’s behind you, where you can’t see it. Some Indigenous Australian cultures, which rely heavily on direction terms like north, south, east, and west in their languages, visualise the passage of time as moving from east to west. If they’re facing north, for example, the past would be to their right, or east, whereas the future would be to their left, which would be west.
Sundials read differently depending on the hemisphere you’re in. In the Northern Hemisphere, the sun casts a shadow that moves from north to east, to south, to west. In the Southern Hemisphere, the shadow moves in the opposite direction. Our concept of “clockwise” is based on the way sundials in the Northern Hemisphere told time.
Linus was born in Finland, a bilingual country, and considers Swedish to be his “mother tongue”. He says he’s often “uncomfortable” speaking in English because of pronunciation differences but prefers to read English books.
Linux isn’t just used on Earth. To get insights into life on Mars, a crucial mission was planned by NASA in 2020 where the robotic helicopter that accompanies the rover on Mars runs on Linux. Essentially, Linux landed on Mars and is flying as you read this.
As per Distrowatch, there are more than 75 active Linux distributions that are based on Ubuntu. While you are reading this – there could be more potential additions. You can read about some less-known Ubuntu-based Linux distributions as well (if you’re curious).
Each Ubuntu release has a code name made up of two words starting with the same alphabet. These alphabets are incremented in each release. The first word of the code name is an adjective and the second word is an endangered species or a mythical character. Read more about the Ubuntu release schedule, version name, and codenames.
Cheese rolling is a sport: Yes, you read it correctly, cheese rolling is a sport. It is estimated that the sport started in the 15th century. Once a year, competitors compete in a cheese rolling competition at Cooper’s Hill in Gloucestershire. During these competitions, participants chase a 3.2-kilogram (7lb) wheel of Double Gloucester cheese down a steep hill. It is certainly a sport at risk, but it is a tradition not to be missed in the region. The winner, the one crossing the finishing line first, wins the wheel of cheese as their prize.
The development of machine learning is expected to be increasingly automated. Some sectors that best exemplify this fun fact about technology are agriculture, cybersecurity (you can read more about it from our expert interview on ransomware attacks and cybersecurity), fintech, manufacturing, and many more.