I can’t be the only one that gets this tingly, excited rush of dopamine when I stumble across a list of random facts and start reading from the top. I don’t know if it’s normal, but it feels intensely good to learn weird stuff. This time, however, it’s not the usual random facts we often see. Earlier this year in January, American activist Brittany Packnett Cunningham asked her Twitter followers to state the most random facts they know. [1] By random, she meant, completely out of normalcy and something most people would never have known. Of course, Twitter came through with the most interesting and hilarious answers.
#1 Imagine being born in a time when you attend a wedding and everyone from the groom’s family ends up dead. The host had to clink his glass with another’s before drinking from it as a sign of honesty.
#2 They also celebrate birth. When a mother is delivered of her baby, other females form a mom tribe around her and trumpet loudly, partly celebrating the newborn and partly warding off baby predators.
#3 Sure, I can totally stay calm and think clearly when I’m within the grasp of a crocodile.
#4 They have it all figured out. Snails need moisture to survive and when the weather is too warm, they fall into an extremely long hibernation.
#5 Wait… what?
#6 I’m somewhere between 700 million and 800 million.
#7 Kindness is the universal religion.
#8 Just in case you didn’t know some things in nature are for you alone.
#9 “Males appear stronger than females when adjusting for differences in total body mass, due to the higher male muscle-mass to body-mass ratio.”
#10 Wow. Okay. Good to know. Actually, “Lye” most commonly refers to sodium hydroxide, but has also been used for potassium hydroxide.
#11 There are many things to love about opossums, after the fact that they are excellent gardeners.
#12 I always got tagged within the first ten seconds.
#13 According to Denver Parks and Recreation, the city’s dog population is estimated to be about 158,000 across 99,000 households. [2] That’s actually more dogs than kids. Shocking.
#14 Another fun fact: penguins are the fastest-swimming and deepest-diving bird species and can remain underwater for up to 20 minutes at a time.
#15 You’ve got to be kidding me.
#16 They are members of the woodlice family and like others, they can roll into a ball when threatened. This is all good information but can we not talk about bugs? I’m not okay.
#17 The coldest temperature ever recorded in the continent was -89.6°C at Vostok station in 1983. Between April 2016 and April 2017, 44,376 travelers visited Antarctica, and the numbers have been increasing steadily since 2011. [3]
#18 Yes, I will understand this. One day.
#19 I think what he’s trying to say is, you should always have some cake at home so when you finish a piece, you have some more left to eat. Life doesn’t have to be so complicated.
#20 The unconventional punctuation mark (a jargon for printers and typists) that just became my favorite.
References
- “Someone Starts A Twitter Thread On The Most Random Facts And 35 People Deliver. Bored Panda. Neringa Utaraitė. Retrieved July 16, 2020.
- “Millennials are picking pets over people.” Denver Post. Abha Bhattarai. Retrieved July 16, 2020.
- “Antarctica keeps attracting visitors — and it may be ‘last-chance tourism’.” Global News. Maham Abedi. Retrieved July 16, 2020.