Unusual Facts About the World That You Probably Won’t Find in the Encyclopedia

The world is an amazing place. Just when it seems that you’ve seen everything, it surprises you with something new. Even ordinary things sometimes turn our worlds upside down when we see them from an unusual angle. For example, it turns out that 1/10 of the world’s gold reserves belongs to Indian housewives, and there are people from a village that have a sleeping sickness causing them to fall asleep for an entire week! How can we get that disease?

Here at Bright Side, we’ve collected several incredible facts about our world. They’re so unusual that you might want to share them with your friends and family.

• Steven Spielberg wanted to direct a James Bond movie but he was rejected. Then he shared his problem with his friend George Lucas who said that he had an idea of how to make a James Bond movie but better. This is how Indiana Jones was created.

• Baby elephants use their trunks just like human babies suck a pacifier.

• 11% of the world’s gold reserves belong to Indian housewives.

• In 1982, a man managed to sneak into Buckingham Palace. He ate cheddar cheese for 30 minutes and walked around the place. After sitting on the throne and entering the Queen’s bedroom, he left.

• The people living in Kalachi, Kazakhstan have a strange sleep syndrome. People feel tired and sleepy, and some of them even fall asleep for an entire week. Many scientists conducted studies in this village and found that it was caused by an abandoned mine that reduced oxygen levels in the area.

• Apples that we buy in stores were picked 6-12 months ago. Before they are in stores, they are kept in special fridges with very low oxygen levels so that they don’t lose their appearance.

• Atoms are 99.9999999% empty space. If you collected all the world’s people together and removed any empty space out of them, humanity would be the size of an orange.

• This is how the shape of Coca-Cola bottles has changed over the years. If you look at them from left to right, the first bottle was released in 1899, the second in 1900, the third in 1915, the fourth in 1916, the fifth in 1957, and the sixth in 1986.

• Half of the people who are 65 are still alive. This is explained by the fact that before the 20th century the average life expectancy around the world was 33-39 years. Now people live much longer thanks to the development of medicine.

• It’s amazing, but there are way more bacteria in a human belly button than in the bathroom. Scientists compared 10 belly buttons of volunteers and compared them with germs found in the bathroom. More than that, almost 77,000 different types of bacteria were found in public restrooms.

• Very few people know that Elvis Presley’s natural hair color was light. When he was young, he dyed his hair and people remember him as a dark-haired macho.

• A truck driver from Australia had a heart attack and experienced a clinical death. He spent 12 days in a coma and right when doctors wanted to turn off his life support, he woke up. After that, he won a car in the lottery. The car cost $17,000. A local TV-company was so impressed with his luck that they decided to make a story about him. The director’s idea was that the guy was supposed to remove the protective layer of a lottery ticket on camera. This ticket got the man $170,000.

• At the beginning of the 19th century, ketchup was advertised as a cure for diarrhea and jaundice. It was even made into pills. But later, this information was proven wrong and ketchup has since been sold only as a sauce.

• Some people believe that it’s possible to determine the sex of a future baby by the shape of the pregnant woman’s bump. The idea goes like this: if the bump grows only forward, it’s a boy and if becomes bigger on the sides, it’s a girl. Even though this is a popular idea, it’s a misconception, or at least, it hasn’t been proven by any scientific research. The shape and size of the bump depend on how tall or short the woman is and some other factors.

Which of these facts amazed you the most? Tell us in the comment section below!