The truth isn't always stranger than fiction, despite the old cliché.
But sometimes the truth is so odd, it makes even the most imaginative fabrications feel
dull and uninspired.
The real world is brimming with weird facts that make an X-Files script sound like your
sixth grade history textbook.
Get ready to question everything you knew about the world you live in we're diving headfirst
into some of the strangest, most outlandish factoids that just happen to be 100% true.
"Everything I know is a lie!"
Patchwork patriot
Considering the level of adoration many Americans have for the "red, white, and blue," you'd
think the design of its 50-star incarnation in 1959 would have been supervised by the
elites of the graphic design industry.
The truth, however, is crazier, but also quintessentially American: in 1958, a 17-year-old kid from
Lancaster, Ohio, named Robert G. Heft, used his mother's sewing machine to create the
50-star flag design we know, love, and make yoga pants out of today.
Heft had a feeling Alaska and Hawaii would both achieve statehood soon, so the crafty,
possibly psychic teen set to work, designing the flag for a class project.
His teacher, firmly on the wrong side of history, gave Heft a measly "B-" for the work.
Heft's underdog design later triumphed over 1,500 other submissions to Congress, earning
him a personal phone call in 1959 from President Eisenhower, who thanked him for his patriotic
project.
A rose by any other name
Everyone knows a Jessica.
America, in particular, is absolutely lousy with Jessicas it was the most popular female
baby name in the U.S. in both the '80s and '90s.
If you've forgotten a Millennial lady's name, just go with Jessica.
The odds are in your favor.
Such an insanely popular name must be biblical, right?
After all, the top male baby name for those decades is Michael, the guy in the Bible who
was literally the leader of Heaven's army in the battle against Satan.
Yeah, the Satan.
Drop that little trinket on your favorite Michael and watch their reaction…
. But the Bible can't claim Jessica William Shakespeare actually invented the name Jessica
for his play, The Merchant of Venice, in 1569.
Shylock's daughter is history's first Jessica, meaning the Bard is at least somewhat responsible
for christening Jessica Rabbit, Jessica Jones, and Baby Jessica, that kid who famously fell
down a well in 1987.
What a genius.
Grape-ling with the truth
Wine that costs more than your mortgage is pretty ridiculous, but connoisseurs aren't
totally full of it when they talk about the complexity of a glass of pinot noir.
"I'm getting notes of dried robin's blood, old dirty cashews, and just a hint of a robot's
bath water."
The pinot noir grape, believe it or not, has 30,000 genes in its DNA, which trumps the
human genome, which only has 20,000-25,000.
That's right: we're less complicated, genetically, than the fruit we stomp to get drunk.
And what are we doing with this knowledge?
Welcoming our wine overlords, of course, by using the discovery to create new, tastier
flavors of wine, grown on vines more resistant to pests and diseases, thus enabling us to
more-easily get blitzed on better, more-readily-available vino.
Sky-high savings
In the 1980s, American Airlines CEO Robert Crandall was looking for a way to cut costs
that also wouldn't perturb passengers.
What he actually came up with has since become the stuff of legend, and it sounds totally
made-up: he decided to shrink each dinner salad the airline served by one solitary olive,
reckoning that passengers wouldn't know the difference, and the savings would be tremendous.
The plan actually worked, saving the company a cool $40,000 a year, enough cash to buy
800 Night Glow Toilet Seats from SkyMall.
Hole-y moley!
It sounds too horrific to be true, but it's 100% factual: 1 in 5,000 babies are born without
a proper anus, and it happens to boys slightly more often.
"That's not true!
That's impossible!"
In the best cases, the so-called anorectal malformation means the anus is just narrow
or misplaced, requiring corrective surgery.
But in the worst cases, the baby is born with a membrane covering what should be the anus,
like they're a Ken doll.
In these cases, surgery is required to literally create a new anus, which isn't something you
learn on day one of medical school.
This means there's gotta be a surgeon out there particularly gifted at making anuses,
which is probably the only medical subplot Grey's Anatomy has yet to explore.
Flightless, not fightless
It's a one-two-punch of fake-sounding facts, both totally true: in 1932, Australia declared
war on a flock of 20,000 crop-devastating emus.
Despite deploying a brigade of gun-wielding ex-World War I soldiers, the emus ultimately
proved victorious.
This is why Emu is the official language of Australia, and Emu art and architecture prevail
on the continent, which was subsequently renamed Emustralia.
Seriously, though: the emus managed to evade the soldiers for an entire month, and it soon
became economically inviable to keep the battle going so Australia just gave up.
The flightless birds are still thriving in the area to this day, probably sharing stories
about how their great-grandemus totally dunked on the Aussies for one glorious month.
And unlike the tall tales humans tell, it's 100% true, despite sounding like an ill-conceived
arcade crossover between Contra and Joust.