Random Fun Facts That Will Amaze You - Part 15

Whether it’s an awkward first date, a tense family gathering or your first time heading up a pop quiz, a hearty piece of random trivia can turn any situation around and leave you looking like Mr. smarty-pants. Let's delve into artful knowledge with these weird and wonderful facts.

What Are Tonsil Stones?

You’ve probably had them before, but have you ever wondered what those little whitish lumps in the back of your throat are? Their official name may be tonsil stones but, spoiler alert, they’re not actually stones at all. Otherwise known as tonsil calculi or tonsilloliths, these tiny throat invaders are actually made up of debris like food, dead cells or other substances that become trapped in the crevices of the tonsils before turning hard.

Although they’re usually pretty small, the biggest tonsil stone on record was a whopping 14.5cm and was measured in 1936. Can you imagine the surprise when that bad boy was pulled out? The reason why they smell like the devils butt crack is because they’re home to various anaerobic bacteria, which produce foul-smelling sulphides. The bad news is that they’re pretty unavoidable, but they can be removed at home with some vigorous gargling and good old oral hygiene!

Why Do You See Stars When You Rub Your Eyes?

Whether tired, stressed out or just plain bored, many people will resort to the oddly satisfying feeling of rubbing their eyes, but something else happens when we practice to this strange behavior, an entire mini-galaxy appears!

It might seem like you’re traveling through space and time, but there’s actually a scientific explanation for why you suddenly see stars. These seemingly random shapes and colors are known as phosphenes and were reported as long ago as the time of the ancient Greeks.

Rubbing your eyes increases the pressure within the eyeball, and that pressure activates ‘ganglion’ cells in the retina the same way as light does. Because your brain doesn’t know the difference, it interprets this activation as if you were seeing light from the world outside. As a result, you’ll likely see tiny blobs of different colors that move and scatter rapidly with the rubbing motion.

A Decapitated Head Can Still Blink

We have one man to thank for this intriguing factoid: French chemist Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier. During France’s reign of terror in the 18th century, which was characterized by a shedload of guillotine executions, poor old Mr. Lavoisier found himself on the chopping block. What were his crimes? Discovering hydrogen and helping to implement the metric system!

Being a dedicated chemist, Lavoisier decided that his death wouldn’t be in vain, because there was one last discovery he needed to make: is it possible to blink after having your head cut off? Having promised that he would try and blink for as long as possible after the blade fell, witnesses claimed that Lavoisier’s decapitated head did indeed blink for around 30 seconds. Because more advanced scientific equipment didn’t exist back then, de Lavoisier has since been credited for conducting the earliest known study into the brains independent function.

Crows Have Funerals

There are plenty of facts that prove animals aren’t as unsophisticated as we think. For instance, crows and ravens hold funerals for their dead. They may not put on all the works like fancy caskets and funeral cars, but they are already dressed in black, so that should count for something.

Both birds are proven to be incredibly intelligent animals, in fact, they possess the reasoning capacity of a seven-year-old child. For example, they’ve been known to place nuts on the road at red traffic lights so that the cars will run them over and crack their shells.

It shouldn’t really surprise you, then, that they are one of the only other creatures to ceremonially honor the dead. When a crow or raven discovers the body of a dead companion, they start calling out to others. Once enough birds have arrived, they hang about, sometimes for days, making a harrowing racket.

Eventually, they peel off one by one until there are only a couple of birds left to pay their respects before they too leave the remains behind. Mass screaming and squawking might not be the most heart-warming send-off, but at least it’s something.

Why Can’t You Tickle Yourself?

Whether you claim be ticklish or not, there’s one thing we can all agree on: it’s impossible to tickle yourself. No matter how hard you try to hit the sweet spot on your neck, ribs, feet, or knees you won’t be able to send yourself into fits of giggles.

Scientists discovered that the sensation of tickling sends our brain into a mini state of panic, while the unease of knowing that we’re about to be tickled by someone can cause us to laugh. From an evolutionary standpoint, this was a pretty handy defense mechanism that helped us recognize unexpected dangers like a poisonous snake slithering over our foot.

So why can’t we tickle ourselves? Neuroscientists blame the cerebellum, which is located at the back of the skull. This part of the brain has developed to anticipate our own movements, which means the areas that register the tickling sensation are essentially ‘shut off’ before we even try. By predicting our own movements and registering them as normal, the brain can focus on registering other unpredictable sensations.

There Was Once a Laughing Plague in Tanzania

People say laughter is contagious, and after hearing what went down in Tanganyika, now Tanzania, in 1962, you’ll believe it too. It began when a group of schoolfriends started laughing during class in a small African village. No one knows why, perhaps someone told a hilarious joke, but soon enough the whole school was infected with contagious laughter, and it was forced to close.

An entire school laughing would be quite an event, but that wasn’t all. When parents picked their kids up, they started laughing too, and so the laughter spread through neighborhoods, shops, and eventually to other villages.

No clear records exist from the event, but accounts suggest that the epidemic lasted anywhere from 6 months to a year-and-a-half. Many experts have tried to explain what exactly happened in Tanzania that year. Christian F. Hemplemann from Purdue University argues that it was extensive stress, not bliss, that caused the ‘plague’.

Laughing puts quite a strain on respiration, so the likelihood is that the epidemic happened in short episodes, while there were other symptoms like fainting and crying. That year, Tanzania had also won independence, and students reported feeling stressed by expectations from parents and teachers, which may have caused the mass hysteria. In short, the laughing plague probably wasn’t as funny as it sounds.

The Founder of Match.com Lost His Girlfriend to a Match.com Date

These days online dating is the most popular choice when it comes to meeting new people, but back in the infancy of the internet it was entirely new territory. In 1993, a man named Gary Kremem saw world wide web’s potential as the perfect way to put romantic strangers in touch with each other, so he created a little domain called Match.com. Nowadays, it’s one of the world’s biggest online dating sites, with over 9.8million users worldwide, but people didn’t quite take to it immediately.

The internet was still pretty fresh, and meeting stranger through it seemed like a daunting prospect. Undeterred by the lack of interest, Kremen devised a clever plan; he’d make everyone at the company create a profile on the site, which included his girlfriend at the time. His idea worked too well, because Kremen’s girlfriend soon met someone new on the site and decided to leave him. It might seem like Kremen had just taken a massive L, but he apparently saw it as a positive thing because it proved that match.com could be a success.

What Are the Stringy Bits on a Banana?

Bananas aren’t a fruit people generally go crazy about, but they never did anyone any harm either. That doesn’t mean there are aren’t a few accusations flying about that bananas are totally gross though, and that’s mostly down to those weird, white tendrils that hang off the fruit when you peel them.

It might seem like they’re just strips of banana meat that have separated during the peeling process, but they actually have their own scientific name: “phloem bundles”. Phloem is a tissue found in all plants which is responsible for transporting nutrients and water up and down the fruit to help it grow. Basically, you can think of them as banana veins that ensure the bananas are fully-formed and delicious.

Most people throw them away, but phloem bundles are actually packed full of potassium, fiber, vitamin A and vitamin B6. Still, the thought of chomping down on sinewy banana veins like some crazed fruit-zombie is not so appealing.

Someone Once Invented a Cat Piano

There have been plenty of bizarre failed inventions throughout the ages, but none are quite as absurd as the infamous Katzenklavier or cat organ.

To imagine what it looked like, picture 10 cats all lined up in boxes, with their tails held taught and secured underneath a keyboard. Each time a key is pressed, it hits the tail of the corresponding cat or, in the worst case, pricks it with a pin, causing the cat to produce a loud mewing sound. Of course, the cats were arranged according to the pitch of their meows.

The first mention of this sadistic instrument dates back to the early 16th century, when this drawing appeared in a book by Jean Théodorede Bry from 1596. The weirdest thing about this horrifying invention is that it generated enormous excitement in therapeutic circles. Legend has it an Italian prince was suddenly cured of his psychopathy upon seeing an image of these musical cats.

Meanwhile, medical theoretician Johann Christian Reil cited the cat piano as a treatment for mental illnesses like schizophrenia. It’s unclear exactly how it did this, but it’s safe to assume that the cat piano was the only thing crazy enough to grab the attention of crazy people.

Why Don’t Humans Walk Sideways?

Some thoughts can keep you up at night, like “why don’t people don’t walk like crabs?” It’s not like we’re not capable of moving sideways, but when we want to travel in a sideways direction, we usually turn our bodies to face forward first and then walk normally.

There are a few good reasons for this behavior. Because our eyes are located in the center of our face, our peripheral vision, everything that occurs outside of the very center of our gaze, is pretty poor. Crabs eyes are on the front too, because that’s where their food is. But when it comes to walking, crabs have no choice but to go sideways.

This is because their knees bend outwards, rather than forwards like human knees do, so they can move quickly sideways in a flurry with their multiple legs. Although humans can try and imitate a crabs movements if they choose, it’s not efficient at all. In fact, various studies have shown that the metabolic cost of walking sideways is over three times that of forward walking. If you want to burn some extra calories, crab-walking is the new running!

Why Do Pineapples Taste Prickly?

They may be one of the world’s favorite exotic fruits, but anyone who frequently gobbles down fresh pineapple will also be familiar with the bizarre way they can make your tongue feel "prickly" afterwards.

The suspect is a protease enzyme called bromelain that helps to break down proteins. Bromelain has a centuries-long history of being used to treat certain medical ailments, and it’s also often used as a meat tenderizer or marinade.

Thankfully, there are ways to eliminate this taste bud-ruining protein. You’ll find that tinned pineapple doesn’t produce the same sensation, but if you prefer the fresh stuff the trick is to cook it slightly first or simply to leave it out for a while so the pesky bromelain can break down first.

Wombat Poop is Square

Australia’s cutesy little marsupials perfectly produce cube-shaped poop. For some time, actual research into the reason behind wombats bizarre waste-disposal particulars has been scarce, but theories have abounded.

One of the most popular hypothesizes that wombat poop is square so that the creatures can easily stack them to mark their territory, like gross Lego bricks. A single wombat will leave on average between 80 to 100 square poops around its territory in one evening, and some say their square shape means they can sit on logs and edges more easily.

However, in 2018 Patricia Yang, a researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology, dismissed this theory. Yang explained that wombats don’t poop tactically, instead their square waste is actually a result of the dry environment they live in.

Because they squeeze every last drop of moisture out of their food, their poop is sculpted differently in the intestines and comes out dry and rigid. In case you were wondering, they don’t have square anuses either, which means the whole thing is probably highly uncomfortable too.

I hope you were amazed at these weird and wonderful trivia facts. If you want to find out more interesting facts, you might want to take a look at our whole fun facts series. Thanks for reading.