Free Weird Facts


  1. Icelanders have no family names. Instead, their surname is just their father’s name plus “son” or “dottir”. Source
  2. The Nobel Peace Prize medal depicts 3 naked men with their hands on each others shoulders. Verified
  3. Fortune cookies were actually invented in America, not China! Verified
  4. Of the 17k+ words Shakespeare used, over 1700 are recorded there for the first time. Verified
  5. There are three things that your brain cannot naturally ignore: food, attractive people, and danger. Source
  6. The United States has more bagpipe bands than Scotland does. To be verified But would appear to be true since Scotland has a population of only 5,000,000, compared to the U.S. at 304,059,724
  7. 10 percent of electricity in the US comes from "dismantled nuclear bombs, including Russian ones." Read More
  8. In the 1940s, the FCC assigned television's Channel 1 to mobile Services (two-way radios in taxicabs, for instance) but did not Pre-number the other channel assignments. That is why your TV set has channels 2 and up, but no channel 1. Verified
  9. The San Francisco Cable cars are the only mobile National Monuments, in the United States. False But they are a National Monument.
  10. The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days when the fire engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and soon figured out how to walk up straight staircases. Verified
  11. On average, 100 people choke to death on ballpoint pens every year. To be verified
  12. When blindfolded, people often can’t tell the difference between the smell of Parmesan cheese and vomit. Source
  13. A man single-handedly planted a 1,360-acre forest at 16. He now lives in his own forest at the age of 47, with rhino, elephants and tigers. Source
  14. There is a Royal Navy superstition that whistling on a ship can summon strong winds. Traditionally, the only person allowed to whistle is the ship's cook, as it means he's not eating the food. Source
  15. A hurricane releases more energy in 10 minutes, than all the world's nuclear weapons combined. Verified
  16. Dinosaurs may have become extinct, thanks in part to their own powerful farts. Source
  17. The cigarette lighter was invented before the match. Verified
  18. According to one study, 24% of homes with lawns have some sort of lawn ornament in their yard.
  19. There is a girl named Zara Hartshorn who suffers from a rare disease called lipodystrophy. She is only 15 but looks like she is in her 40s or 50s. Source
  20. Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history: Spades - King David; Clubs - Alexander the Great;Hearts-Charlemagne and Diamonds - Julius Caesar. Verified
  21. A Russian family took a few possessions/seeds, fled into the forest as political refugees and were cut off from all human contact for 40 years until they were discovered by a group of geologists who accidentally saw their settlement from a helicopter. Source
  22. Terry Fox a Canadian amputee ran a marathon every day for 143 days straight, before dying of cancer at age 21. As a result, $500M has been raised in his name for cancer awareness. Source
  23. During World War II, allied fighter pilots frequently observed glowing balls of moving fire while on combat missions over Europe. Named foo fighters, there are a number of theories on the source of the fireballs, including UFOs and ball lightning. One explanation is that they were the air equivalent of land mines, launched into the skies by the Nazis to disrupt the pilots’ plans and even interfere with the planes electronics. Source
  24. There’s an act called the “Read the Bills Act,” which requires U.S. Congress to read the legislation before they vote on it. It has been in limbo since 2006. Source
  25. A woman in Mexico performed a successful Caesarean section on herself without any medical training. Source
  26. Saturn’s moon Titan has riverine valleys like Earth, except they are formed by flowing liquid methane. Of course, it also rains methane, but the drops are twice as large as rain on earth and fall at a fifth of the speed. It also has volcanoes that spew a “magma” that is water and ammonia, and at -100C has the same viscosity as molten rock. Also, the atmosphere is so thick, and the gravity so weak, if you were to strap wings to your arms like Daedalus you could fly. Source 123
  27. Children have been sent to the emergency room after eating too many Flamin' Hot Cheetos and appearing to have bloody poops. It was just the chemicals turning it red. Source
  28. Mars Candy corp, makers of Snickers, Three Musketeers, Milky Way, Twix ect., cut the size of their candy bars by 11%. They referred to it not as cutting size but “cutting calories”. Source
  29. The first official US coin said, “Mind your business.” Source
  30. Every purple heart awarded by the military since 1945 is one of the 500,000 purple hearts manufactured in anticipation of U.S. casualties resulting from the invasion of Japan. There 120,000 left. Source
  32. In the ancient Persian Empire, men used to debate ideas twice, once sober and once drunk, because the idea had to sound good in both states in order to be considered a good idea. Source
  33. Hundreds of years ago most people would go to sleep early, wake up for about an hour in middle of night and do various things, and then go back to bed for a ‘second sleep’. Source
  34. The United Nations has formed a contingency plan in the event that aliens directly contact us. Source
  35. The British flag has a correct way up, and that knowledgeable people can tell when it’s being flown upside down. Source
  36. When the Pyramids at Giza were being built, there were still isolated populations of mammoths alive in Siberia. Source
  37. On 15 April 1912 the RMS Titanic sunk on her maiden voyage and over 1,500 people died. Fourteen years earlier a novel was published by Morgan Robertson which seemed to foretell the disaster. The book described a ship the same size as the Titanic which crashes into an iceberg on its maiden voyage on a misty April night. The name of Robertson's fictional ship was the Titan.
  38. After Rasputin was murdered, a group of people dug up his remains & burned them. As the body was being burned, Rasputin appeared to sit up in the flames, terrifying onlookers. This effect can be attributed to the heat, which caused his tendons to shrink, forcing the body to bend at the waist. Heat contraction could not, however, explain the death threats and screaming. Source
  39. An Imperial Japanese Army intelligence officer who fought in World War II, Hiroo Onoda, did not surrender in 1945. In 1974 his former commander traveled from Japan to personally issue orders relieving him from duty. Onoda had spent almost 30 years holding out in the Philippines. Source
  40. Pinocchio is Italian for "pine eyes."



    1. Dollar BillIn 1995, St. Jude’s Hospital received an anonymous letter with a $1 million winning McDonald’s Monopoly game piece. Although it was against the rules to transfer prizes, McDonald’s honored it even after learning that the piece was sent by an individual involved in an embezzlement scheme. Source
    2. On an American one-dollar bill, there is an owl in the upper left-hand corner of the "1" encased in the "shield" and a spider hidden in the front upper right-hand corner.
    3. One of the reasons marijuana is illegal today is because cotton growers in the 30s lobbied against hemp farmers -- they saw it as competition. It is not chemically addictive as is nicotine, alcohol, or caffeine.
    4. Panama hats come from Ecuador not Panama.
    5. Peanuts are used in the production of dynamite.
    6. The creator of Peter Pan gave the rights to a children’s hospital so they would always collect the royalties and fund the hospital. Source
    7. The Soviet Union under Lenin and Trotsky was the world’s first country that decriminalized homosexuality and abortion. Stalin, however, recriminalised homosexuality in 1933 and abortion in 1936.  Source
    8. If you were freeze-dried, 10% of your body weight would be from the microorganisms on your body.
    9. Mosquitoes survive collisions with rain drops by clinging to the droplet and riding it for a while. Source
    10. A Belgian man who was being evicted from his home when he cheated with his wife, rigged his house up with over 20 firearm traps. He even made a riddle for the next home owners but accidentally shot himself with one of the traps. The Military anti-mining team took 3 weeks to disarm 19 traps. Source
    11. Pogonophobia is the fear of beards.
    12. "The number of licenses to operate cabs in New York [City] has actually shrunk since 1937." Read More
    13. Residents of the island of Lesbos are Lesbosians, rather than Lesbians. (Of course, lesbians are called lesbians because Sappho was from Lesbos.)
    14. A Kansas woman sat on her boyfriends toilet seat for so long (two years) that her skin grew around it.
    15. rs generally cannot be silenced, due to all the noisy gasses which escape the cylinder gap at the rear of the barrel. Unless the revolver is gas sealed like the Nagant M1895 Revolver.
    16. The 18th century frenchman once ate a meal for 15 in one sitting, consumed live cats, puppies, and lizards; and swallowed an entire eel without chewing. He got kicked out of the hospital because they caught him trying to eat blood and corpses, they think he ate a baby.   Source