40+ Real Facts That Might Be Hard to Believe Right Away

New knowledge about the world appears much faster nowadays, but there are still a lot of misconceptions around us. Many things kids were taught at school half of a century ago have disappeared into oblivion. And some information that used to be considered too outlandish has ended up in modern school books. For example, you might not have heard that the biggest eggs in the world aren’t laid by ostriches, or that in countries where people consume more chocolate, residents become Nobel laureates more often.

Bright Side suggests you learn some new things, read shocking facts, and hear the stories connected to their discovery, clicking on the links attached to each fact. At the end of the article, we hid a short story about a sultan who accidentally revealed the secret of the ancient pyramids 800 years ago.

• The atmosphere of Venus is so hot, it would cook a pizza in 7 seconds.

• During World War II, all road signs in the UK were removed so that in case of an invasion, enemy forces would get lost.

• After spending 11 months in space, Scott Kelly (on the right) became younger than his twin brother.

• A cat from Scotland managed to catch almost 30,000 mice over the course of 24 years. This world record hasn’t been broken yet. There’s a statue in her honor at the distillery where she used to live.

• Water in swimming pools starts to smell like chlorine when sweat, oil, or urine get in the water.

• Some people pour this liquid away, considering this product to be waste, while others turn it into an expensive pastry. Macarons for people who don’t eat eggs include water which is left in canned beans.

• Some people don’t like to relax and prefer to worry about small things because staying in such a state helps them deal with big problems more easily.

• The smell we feel when working with soil actually belongs to the bacteria living in it.

• In the picture below, you see not a cucumber, as it might seem at first sight, but rather, a luffa — a plant that you can eat fresh. You can add it to a salad or use it dried as a scrubbing sponge.

• If school lessons start at 10 a.m., students become ill less often and show better academic performance.

• At the end of the nineteenth century, people bathed in rocking bathtubs to recreate the feeling of swimming in the ocean.

• If the TPS connector of the earphones has 2 stripes, it belongs to stereo earphones. If it has only one stripe, they’re mono earphones. 3 stripes mean that the earphones also have a microphone.

• Human eyes get a bit yellow over time which is why the sky appears less blue as you get older.

• Vampire bats practice social distancing when they get ill so that they don’t infect the others. They live in colonies and care about each other a lot.

• Orangutans scare away predators by imitating kissing sounds.

• Termites are walking bioreactors. They produce up to 1L of hydrogen, having consumed only 1 sheet of paper. Scientists see this as a potential for creating a promising source of green energy.

• There’s a village where children have names in the form of songs instead of ordinary ones.

• This is not a GMO product, but natural grapes that are known as “witch fingers” or “moon drops.”

• Stripes that are painted on cows help protect them from bites of flying insects.

• An owner of a vineyard in South Africa keeps a herd of ducks to protect his plants from slugs, snails, and other pests. To protect the ducks and their eggs from crows, an army of geese also lives there.

• Kiwi’s eggs are the biggest ones if we take the size of the bird into consideration. They are six times bigger than what is considered normal for a bird of that size. And the ostriches’ eggs, if we consider the size of the bird, are the smallest ones.

• The Icelandic version of Dracula by Bram Stoker underwent major changes after the translator worked on it, adding bedroom scenes and new characters. The difference was noticed only 100 years later.

• Scientists can convert blood types from A to O so that the blood of any person can be used universally.

• Adding a viagra pill into a vase with flowers makes the flowers stay fresh 2 times longer. This discovery became a base for a method that helps preserve food products longer.

• Long before trees overtook the land, Earth was covered with giant mushrooms.

• Continental drift moves at half the speed compared to that of human nails.

• 6’8″ penguins used to live in Antarctica.

• Rough Vikings used to take their pets, mainly cats, with them when they’d go sailing.

• Corn reproduces with the help of hair. The hairs that stick out of the cob are actually a part of the stigma and they catch pollen in the air.

• In countries where people consume more chocolate, residents become Nobel laureates more often.

• Magnolia trees appeared long before bees and are said to have pollinated by beetles, the most ancient insects.

• The domain name, .tv, that is popular among TV companies is a national domain of the small country, Tuvalu, that rents it out and replenishes its treasury with it.

• Since 1975, every bathroom in Italy was required to have a bidet, according to the law. This device reduces the consumption of toilet paper and is considered a more hygienic and environmentally friendly way to take care of one’s intimate body parts.

• What we call “school chalk” mostly consists of gypsum.

• Body armor was created by a pizza delivery guy after he got caught in a shootout. To prove that the product was really resistant, he tested it directly on himself.

• In 1859, 24 rabbits were released in Australia so that people could hunt them later. By the year 1920, they reproduced significantly and their number increased to about 10 billion.

• Lemurs’ wrists smell like sweet fruit.

• Initially, there existed many colors of carrots including purple, black, red, withe and yellow, and they were considered normal for thousands of years up until the seventeenth century. An orange carrot only appeared when Dutch plant breeders came up with a new breed of this root crop as a gift to the royal court of the Orange Dynasty.

• A 62-year-old man spent 8 hours, 15 minutes and 15 seconds in a plank position, setting a new world planking record.

• The Romans believed that when eyelashes would fall out, it was a sign of a woman with easy virtue. That’s why ladies tried to make their lashes longer to prove their chastity.

• In ancient Sparta, people wiped their hands with raw dough to clean them after they had a meal.

Bonus: The buildings of the ancient Egyptians were of such high quality, that it took just as much time and effort to destroy the pyramids as it took to build them.

This story deserves special attention. Over 1000 years ago, the sultan ordered to destroy the Pyramid of Menkaure, the smallest of the 3 main Pyramids of Giza. So every day, hard work took place. After 8 months, he had to give up on this idea because the workers had managed to move only 1-2 stones a day. It became clear that the demolition of the pyramid would cost as much as the building of a new one. A large vertical gash still remains on its northern face as a result of this attempt.

What facts about the world have you recently discovered? What would you add to this compilation?