- Oh hey, didn't see you there.
You sitting down?
You got some popcorn?
Great, then let's begin the facts!
Here are 50 amazing facts to blow your mind.
(explosion booming)
When the sewers of Paris get clogged.
Officials sometimes clean them
with giant iron and wood rolling balls,
which is the same method they used over a century ago.
There's an Easter tradition in Czechoslovakia
where women get whipped and have cold water thrown on them.
Legend says that it will bring health and beauty
to those women in the coming year.
People who are always giving their opinions
on topics that are beyond their area of expertise
are called ultracrepidarians.
The University of Victoria's Law Library
has a black lab named Echo
that can be checked out from the library for 30 minutes
as a stress reliever for students.
It's the only law library in Canada
that provides this service.
Shaquille O'Neal and Bob Lanier
are tied for having the biggest feet in the NBA.
They both have size-22 feet,
with Shaq being a height of 2.16 meters
and Lanier being 2.08.
In 1938 and throughout the Second World War,
St. Ermin's Hotel was the home base for secret British spies
and the wartime intelligence community.
The British Secret Intelligence Service, Section D,
took up the entire top floors of the hotel
and had explosives stashed there,
while many other guests staying at the hotel had no idea.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
have developed a new technique
to replace the bulk of toxic and non-biodegradable materials
in smartphone microchips
with a transparent flexible material made from wood pulp.
There's an electric catfish that exists
that generates an electric shock up to 400 volts.
It's produced by specialized gland cells
on the side of their skin.
The catfish is in complete control of these shocks,
which they can use to their advantage.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization
estimates that around 795 million people in the world,
or one in nine, were suffering from chronic undernourishment
between 2014 and 2016,
and almost all of those people live in developing countries.
Forest bathing,
which is basically just being in the presence of trees,
is a Japanese practice that is proven
to lower heart rate and blood pressure.
It also reduces stress hormone production,
boosts the immune system and overall feelings of wellbeing.
See that?
Just go hug a tree; you'll feel better.
Red-eye from flash photography
is caused by the light of the flash
happening too fast for the pupil to close.
The light passes into the eye through the pupil,
reflects off the fundus at the back of the eyeball,
and appears red because of blood in the eye.
According to a DNA study by geneticists
at Germany's University of Tubingen in 2010,
King Tut was a frail Pharaoh
with malaria and a bone disease.
These health issues could be due to the new discovery
that he was the product of incest.
In 2002, Elmo appeared in front of
the Education Appropriations Subcommittee
to encourage more spending on music research
and musical instruments for school programs.
He also attended an education event at the White House.
In 2007, NASA bought a $19-million toilet
from the Russian aerospace company
SP Korolev Rocket and Space Public Corporation.
The reason that it's so expensive
is because the toilet recycles urine into drinking water.
Well, at least you know where your tax dollars are going.
The 24th floor of the Empire State Building
used to be full of nap pods, which were cushy chairs
that allowed people to take 20-minute naps.
Each eye can only hold about seven microliters of fluid,
which is why tears run down your face when you cry.
That's also why you get a runny nose when you cry,
because the drainage ducts get flooded.
Somniphobia is the fear of sleeping or falling asleep.
It's closely related to the fear of the unknown,
because people suffering with this disorder
are often afraid of what might happen when they fall asleep.
Spiders; spiders crawling in my mouth.
That's my nightmare.
The captain on Cap'n Crunch cereal
is not actually a captain.
He's a commander.
He only has three stripes on his sleeve,
which makes him a commander; captains have four.
Yeah, tell your friends about that one.
Ruin their childhoods.
Scientists have found that listening to music
releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter in the brain
that's associated with pleasure.
This explains why music is so significant for humans,
even though it has no clear survival value.
Moving a snail at least 19.8 meters away
will make it less likely to return
because it will lose its bearings.
Snails homing instincts only cover short distances.
Millennials have a low average net worth
of only about $17,612 on average,
and this is almost entirely because of student loans.
There's a frog called the southern gastric-brooding frog
that uses its stomach as a womb.
The mother swallows her own eggs
and stops producing hydrochloric acid in her stomach
to make sure that she doesn't digest her own young.
But the best part is that she eventually gives birth
through propulsive vomiting. (gagging)
The world record for the fastest time
to pierce four coconuts with just a finger is 12.15 seconds
and was accomplished by Ho Eng Hui, aka Master Ho,
from Malaysia in Milan, Italy, on April 21st, 2011.
How, how does that, how does that work?
It's very confusing, but amazing.
During the Second World War,
when meeting with his war cabinet,
Winston Churchill always insisted
that they use noiseless typewriters,
as he just disliked the noise.
In 2016, the Cheetos company started selling
Cheetos-scented perfume called Cheeteau for $18.99.
They've also released a Cheetos bronzer
to get what they call the Cheetos-kissed glow.
Wait, why wouldn't I just open a bag of Cheetos
and just rub it on my face like a Oompa Loompa?
Before refrigerators, people in Russia and Finland
used to put live Russian brown frogs in milk
to keep it fresh. (gagging)
The amphibian's skin has peptides
and antimicrobial compounds that kept it fresh.
Mmm, frog milk.
There's a bridge in Dunbarton, Scotland, called the Overton
where local dogs keep mysteriously committing suicide.
Some accounts say as many as 600 dogs have died there.
In North Korea, nearly 100% of eligible voters vote,
even though there's only one option on the ballot.
Yeah, sounds legit.
During the Second World War,
it's estimated that only 14% to 19% of kamikaze aircraft
successfully hit their target.
Many were shot down before they even got close
to the ships that they were trying to damage.
In November of 2016 in South Korea,
more than 600,000 students
wrote the annual college entrance exam,
which is extremely important for their futures
in their competitive country.
But to make sure the roads were clear
for the students to arrive on time,
trucks were banned, construction sites were paused,
and businesses were opened late.
Transport authorities even stopped all airport landings
and takeoffs for 30 minutes in the afternoon
so as to not disturb the main language listening test.
If you can't tell, they take those exams seriously.
All cats, including tigers, have a specific scent
because they have individualized scent glands.
The individual scent helps cubs find their mothers
and allows them to identify certain individuals.
There's an orchestra based in Vienna that performs
on instruments that are made entirely out of vegetables.
They call themselves the Vegetable Orchestra, clever name,
and they use a variety of vegetable instruments
to create a very unique sound.
What sound does an eggplant make?
In Helsingborg, Sweden,
there's a new museum called the Museum of Failure,
which opened on June 7th, 2017.
Samuel West, the creator of the museum,
says the purpose of it is to think differently about failure
and to realize that you can't have success without it.
There's a bird called the secretary bird
that kicks and stomps on their prey's head
until it dies or is incapacitated,
specifically with large lizards and venomous snakes.
It can kick with 195 newtons, which is equivalent to
about five times their own body weight.
"I'll mash you up good." (squawking)
The exclamation part only became a key
on the keyboard in 1970.
Before then, people would type a period
and then use the backspace
to go back and put an apostrophe above it.
Most car airbags deploy
at a speed of up to 322 kilometers an hour.
An airbag can actually cause serious damage
to a person at that speed and easily break your nose.
Actor James Franco has been teaching film classes
at UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television since 2012.
He's also working to get his Ph.D. at Yale University.
Between 753 and 476 AD, the Romans used to think
that unibrows were beautiful
and desirable features on a woman.
Many women would even create one
by painting in between their eyebrows
if they couldn't naturally grow one.
Really, caterpillar between the fa--
Okay, whatever.
Black was the only color that the Ford Model T came in
between 1914 and 1925 because it was the only color paint
that could be dried quickly,
and speed was super important for the Ford plant
because of its enormous volume.
There is a 24-hour-a-day livestreamed show
called Keeping Up With the Kattarshians,
where GoPro cameras film four kittens available for adoption
living in an oversized dollhouse.
(squealing) That's so cute!
Paracheer is a new type of cheerleading
that's currently in development.
It will involved mixed teams of disabled
and non-disabled athletes, and they will create routines
incorporating jumps, dance, and stunts.
There's a cafe in Tokyo called Butler Cafe,
where all the waiters are butlers.
You can even get butlers to call you Prince or Princess.
Naked mole-rats can survive for up to 18 minutes
in an environment without oxygen.
They do this by using a metabolic process
usually associated with plants
where they switch to a system run by fructose,
which doesn't require oxygen.
Mother Nature's a mad scientist!
NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson has had more spacewalking time
than any other female astronaut,
and she's the first woman
to command the International Space Station twice.
And if that wasn't enough,
she's the oldest woman to ever go into space,
at the age of 56.
Superfetation is the term used to describe
getting pregnant again while already pregnant.
This happens when another fetus is conceived
days or even weeks after its sibling.
Underneath the golf driving range
at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx,
there's a massive $3.2-billion water filtration plant
taking up enough space to hold Yankee Stadium.
This plant can fill over a billion liters
of water every day.
James Earl Jones, the voice of Darth Vader,
developed a stutter as a child that became so severe
that sometimes he could only talk to himself
or his immediate family.
This continued into high school,
where his English teacher suggested
that he memorize speeches and enter oratorical contests
to get rid of his stutter,
which ended up being an extremely successful cure.
Astronaut Buzz Aldrin recorded a song
called Rocket Experience to commemorate the 40th anniversary
of his walk on the moon and to help benefit organizations
dedicated to space exploration.
Andy Garcia was born with an undeveloped conjoined twin
the size of a tennis ball on his shoulder,
which he eventually had surgically removed.
Charles Dickens used to have a compass with him
to make sure that he always slept and wrote facing north.
He believed that doing this improved his creativity.
♪ The knowledge whale, giving you facts ♪
Okay, cool, so now I know, face forward, north, creativity.
Got it.
Now y'all know what to do.
Just pull out a compass and just always look north
every time you're doing anything creative.
That seems like a lotta work.
Maybe not; meh.