30 Random Facts that Sound Fake But are True

Dr RosenRosen

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I got this off another site. Instead of posting the link, I'm just posting them inline. Some of these are pretty crazy:

1. Mammoths were alive when the Great Pyramid was being built.

2. Betty White is older than sliced bread.


3. From the time it was discovered to the time it was stripped of its status as a planet, Pluto hadn't made a full trip around the Sun.


4. The lighter was invented before the match.


5. Anne Frank and Martin Luther King Jr. were born in the same year.


6. France last used a guillotine to execute someone after Star Wars premiered.


7. Harvard University was founded before Calculus existed.


8. If you have 23 people in a room, there is a 50% chance that 2 of them have the same birthday.


9. It’s never said that Humpty Dumpty was an egg in the nursery rhyme.


10. The water in Lake Superior could cover all of North and South America in a foot of water.


11. North Korea and Finland both border the same country; Russia.


12. When you get a kidney transplant, they usually just leave your original kidneys in your body and put the 3rd kidney in your pelvis.


13. Oxford University is older than the Aztec Empire.


14. National animal of Scotland is a Unicorn.


15. The Ottoman Empire still existed the last time the Chicago Cubs won the World Series.


16. The lighter the roast of coffee, the more caffeine it has.


17. A speck of dust is halfway in size between a subatomic particle and the Earth.


18. If the timeline of earth was compressed into one year, humans wouldn't show up until December 31 at 11:58 p.m.


19. If you were able to dig a hole to the center of the earth, and drop something down it, it would take 42 minutes for the object to get there.


20. We went to the moon before we thought to put wheels on suitcases.


21. A human could swim through the arteries of a blue whale.


22. If you could fold a piece of paper in half 42 times, the combined thickness would reach the moon.


23. On both Saturn and Jupiter, it rains diamonds.


24. Saudi Arabia imports camels from Australia.


25. You can line up all 8 planets in our solar system directly next to each other and it would fit in the space between Earth and the Moon.


26. The youngest known mother was 5 years old.


27. The Earth is smoother than a billiard ball, if both were of the same size.


28. Nintendo was founded in 1889.


29. If you take all the molecules in a teaspoon of water and lined them up end to end in a single file line, they would stretch ~30 billion miles.


30. In Australia, there was a war called the emu war. The emus won.
 
31. @1,000,000 Earths would fit inside our sun. The largest known star in the universe - VY Canis Majoris - is approximately 2,000 times bigger than our sun. If placed in our solar system it's radius would extend all the way from Earth to Saturn.
 
32. Miley Cyrus has a fully functioning brain. :alien:

OK, OK, serious one:

32. The visual modeling of a rotating supermassive black hole in the film Interstellar was so complex and so accurate, that a scientific paper was published based on the work of the visual effects team.
 
I love random facts!
 
32. Miley Cyrus has a fully functioning brain. :alien:

OK, OK, serious one:

32. The visual modeling of a rotating supermassive black hole in the film Interstellar was so complex and so accurate, that a scientific paper was published based on the work of the visual effects team.

Isn't that for the other thread... "Sound true but are fake"?
 
If you doubled a penny for 30 days, the total would be $5.3 million.
 
Very cool, thanks for posting.

I'm having trouble understanding this one though...

8. If you have 23 people in a room, there is a 50% chance that 2 of them have the same birthday.
 
cool stuff
 
Very cool, thanks for posting.

I'm having trouble understanding this one though...

8. If you have 23 people in a room, there is a 50% chance that 2 of them have the same birthday.
I did too, so I googled it and there is a while article explaining it. I didn't read the article, but it exists.
 
It's called the birthday paradox.
Another fun probability paradox/problem is the Monty Hall Problem.

Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, "Do you want to pick door No. 2?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?

Answer:
Spoiler
The contestant should switch to the other door. Under the standard assumptions, contestants who switch have a 2/3 chance of winning the car, while contestants who stick to their choice have only a 1/3 chance.


Google Monty Hall Problem if you want the mathematical analysis. We went through it it in detail in Probability and Statistics.
 
8. If you have 23 people in a room, there is a 50% chance that 2 of them have the same birthday.

This is my favorite one - I use it for trivia all the time, it has won me beers on many occasions.

Edit: It doesn't mean YOUR birthday, just two people with the same birthday. That is what gets people confused.
 
8. If you have 23 people in a room, there is a 50% chance that 2 of them have the same birthday.

This is my favorite one - I use it for trivia all the time, it has won me beers on many occasions.

Edit: It doesn't mean YOUR birthday, just two people with the same birthday. That is what gets people confused.
The math works out. I hate dealing with probability haha.
 
Very cool, thanks for posting.

I'm having trouble understanding this one though...

8. If you have 23 people in a room, there is a 50% chance that 2 of them have the same birthday.

An article I found on google explains it pretty well. It comes down to 253 pairs of people when there are 23 people (23*22/2).
 
31. O'Carroll once left a 3 foot putt 9 feet short.


Seriously, though, 16. The lighter the roast of coffee, the more caffeine it has. NEVER would I have thought this.
 
31. O'Carroll once left a 3 foot putt 9 feet short.


Seriously, though, 16. The lighter the roast of coffee, the more caffeine it has. NEVER would I have thought this.
Pretty easy to believe. The longer it's roasted, the more caffeine is cooked out.
 
Pretty easy to believe. The longer it's roasted, the more caffeine is cooked out.

Not exactly. Caffeine doesn't cook out like alcohol. When heated it actually becomes more concentrated.

The "fact" isn't entirely true either. A light roast will only have more caffeine if brewed by volume (incorrect way to brew coffee.)

If both a dark and light roast are brewed by weight (correct way) they will contain approximately the same amount of caffeine, assuming the same bean/seed was used.

In home, most people brew by volume (one scoop) compared to a true coffee house brewing by weight. Makes a difference in the end if brewed properly.
 
Wow, some really cool facts in there.
 
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