Although there is currently no drug proven to make someone tell the truth, some countries like Russia, Canada, and India use truth serums.
100 Mind-Blowing Someone Facts
In 2007, a 1000-gallon inflatable swimming pool was stolen from someone’s backyard without a single drop of water being found!
The “butterflies” you get in your stomach when you see someone you like is a stress response called adrenaline.
Even though smoking has been banned on aeroplanes, ashtrays are mandatory on every plane. This is for safe disposal in case someone breaks the law.
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.
Biting someone with false teeth in Louisiana, USA, is considered aggravated assault.
Geomelophagia is someone who has the urge to eat raw potatoes.
Someone left a family photo on the Moon. When Apollo 16 astronaut Charles Duke landed on the Moon in 1972, he decided to leave behind a photo of himself, his two sons and his wife. The photo remains on the Moon to this day.
Scientists say tears tell you the reason for someone crying. If the first drop comes from the right eye, it’s tears of joy. Otherwise, it’s because of pain.
The longest time someone has spent holding their breath underwater is 24 minutes and 37 seconds.
Mercedes invented a car controlled by a joystick. The joystick in the 1966 Mercedes F200 showcases car-controlled speed and direction, replacing both the steering wheel and pedals. The car could also sense which side the driver was sitting on, so someone could control it from the passenger seat.
An employee at Pixar accidentally deleted a sequence of Toy Story 2 during production. Ed Catmull, the co-founder of Pixar, wrote in his book, Creativity Inc., that the year before the movie came out, someone entered the command ‘/bin/rm -r -f *’ on the drive where the files were saved, and scenes started deleting. It would have taken a year to recreate what was deleted, but luckily another employee had a backup of the entire film on her laptop at home.
There is a word for someone giving an opinion on something they know nothing about. An ‘ultracrepidarian’ is someone who voices thoughts beyond their expertise.
Kim Kardashian has a ‘glam’ clause in her will. It states that if she’s ever in a position where she can’t get ready herself, can’t communicate, or she’s unconscious, someone has to make sure her hair, nails, and makeup are all perfect.
You could buy a town from eBay. Since eBay was founded in 1995, many unusual items have been placed on the online auction site. One of the weirdest fun facts is that someone even tried to sell the country of New Zealand on eBay. Turns out, it was part of the long-known rivalry between Australia and New Zealand – and Australia jokingly posted the auction. However, the bidding was stopped once the bid reached $3,000.
Mercedes invented a joystick-controlled car. In 1966, Mercedes released the Mercedes F200. One of its most defining features is its joystick controller that replaces the steering wheel and pedals. The car could sense which side the driver was sitting on, so someone could control it from the passenger seat.
Someone will write and recite a poem at your funeral if you die in the Netherlands. This is mostly the case for those who die without a next of kin. This practice is done so that there will be at least one person at their funeral.
Ravens are always aware when someone is watching them. These birds are known for being notoriously clever creatures and they display what is called the ‘theory of mind’. This is also known as the ability to attribute mental states to others.
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.
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.
There’s a company you can pay to kidnap you. The Ultíme Réalité is a French company that offers kidnapping services. If you pay them a fee, they will come to kidnap you when you least expect it – ropes, binds, and all. They won’t do it immediately, though. They’ll wait for a certain period so you won’t remember that you paid someone to kidnap you.
Movies have a disclaimer that they’re fictional because someone tried to sue Rasputin. Movies have to clarify themselves as works of fiction because of a 1930s lawsuit against Rasputin.
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.
Blood donors in Sweden get texts when their blood is used. To promote blood donation, the Swedish government implemented a text service for donors in 2015. The people who donate would initially receive a ‘thank you’ text after giving their blood. However, they would also get another message when their blood is transfused into someone else.
The butterflies in your stomach are a distress call. When you see someone you like and your stomach makes weird flips, it is a stress response caused by adrenaline levels.
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.
Toy Story 2 was almost deleted. A year before Toy Story 2 was released, someone entered the command, ‘/bin/rm -r -f *’ on the drive which started deleting the files for the movie. Thankfully, an employee had the entire film backed up on her laptop. If not, the deleted material would have taken a year to recreate.
People used to answer the phone by saying “Ahoy!” What would you do if you called someone and they answered with, “Ahoy!” I, for one, would throw my hands at how unnecessary that would be. However, when the public started using the phone in the 1800s, inventor Alexander Graham Bell decided that phone calls should be answered with “ahoy” instead of “hello.” However, Thomas Edison wanted users to answer the phone with “hello.” By 1880, “ahoy” was just something a pirate would say.
Kissing both cheeks is a common way of greeting someone in Spain.
In the early days of the telephone, operators would pick up a call and use the phrase, “Well, are you there?”. It wasn’t until 1895 that someone suggested answering the phone with the phrase “Number please?”
The sound of E.T. walking was made by someone squishing her hands in jelly.
Someone held their breath underwater for almost 25 minutes. On March 27, 2021, Budimir Šobat of Croatia held his breath for a total of 24 minutes 37.36 seconds.
Before alarm clocks, people would pay someone to knock on their windows and wake them up. They were called knocker-uppers.
If you are analytical, someone may have called you left-brained. Someone might call your more emotional friends right-brained. However, this theory is not based on fact. Both sides of your brain work together to create your personality.
Isaac Newton was a member of the British parliament for one year. He spoke only once, and that was to tell someone to please close the window.
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.
Someone who suffers from “anatidaephobia” believes that somewhere, somehow a duck or goose is constantly watching them.
Just 30 minutes of daily complaining can physically damage your brain. Listening to someone constantly complain also negatively affects brain function.
The longest time someone has held their breath underwater is 24 minutes and 37 seconds.
There’s a name for when you feel your phone vibrate… but it doesn’t. This is my favourite tech fact on this list! “Phantom Vibration Syndrome” is the name for when someone thinks their phone is vibrating, but it isn’t. Research suggests the cause for this is someone being over-involved with their phone.
We can thank Albert Einstein for a lot of our current understanding of the physics of time. Rather than viewing time as a set order, he proved that it’s relative. For example, according to Einstein’s theory of special relativity, there’s an inverse relationship between your speed and the speed of time. The faster you move, the slower time moves. This is why someone blasting through space will age slower than the people still hanging out on Earth: Astronaut Scott Kelly was born several minutes after his twin brother, Mark, but after Scott spent 340 days living on the International Space Station, he returned to Earth around an extra 5 milliseconds younger than his “big” brother. Had Scott been travelling at a speed close to the speed of light, that age difference would have become much more pronounced.
Chicken Tikka Masala is England’s national dish: You probably think of roast dinner, fish and chips or a steak and kidney pie when you hear someone saying, ‘British food’. Nevertheless, the UK residents voted the chicken tikka masala as the country’s national dish. Its popularity can be explained by its former colony and still strong ties with India. The dish was popularised by British-Asian cooks in the 1960s, but who came up with the recipe for this Indian mild curry is not known.
The National Dish of Britain Is Chicken Tikka Masala: Let’s be honest: when someone says “British food”, you generally picture roast dinner, fish and chips, or steak and kidney pie. Chicken tikka masala was chosen by citizens living in the UK as the national cuisine. Its strong ties to India and history as a colony may account for its appeal. Although British-Asian chefs popularized the dish in the 1960s, it is unknown who created the recipe for this mild Indian curry.
Though there has been research to develop AI that could detect depression from someone’s voice, it’s still not very accurate and tends to misdiagnose ethnicities that weren’t the majority in the group used for the ML development phase.