21 Exciting Facts About the World for Those Who Are Hard to Surprise

A countless number of surprising events have occurred since the moment of the Big Bang almost 14 billion years ago. And life on earth has come a long way from its “primordial soup” days. We, as Homo Sapiens, have to constantly develop our brains and acquire new knowledge to keep up with the changing times.

Bright Side invites you to read several interesting facts about our world and possibly learn something new to share with your future children, no matter how jaded you may be.

1.     William Patrick Hitler, the nephew of Adolf Hitler, served as a nurse in the American navy during the Second World War. He received permission to join the navy from U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
2.     The word boycott originated from the name Charles Boycott who didn’t support a campaign for the protection of workers’ rights, so his neighbors stopped talking to him, people wouldn’t sit next to him in church, and shops wouldn’t sell goods to him.
3.     Before bone growth stops, children don’t taste that food is too sweet. So, they can add sugar to any food and it will still be appetizing to them.
4.     The entire English language on “Wikipedia” without pictures and videos measures at about 14 GB.
5.     According to U.S. law, the size of dollar bills used for shooting movies should either be smaller than 75% of the actual size, or bigger than 150%. Also, the image should be printed only on one side using one color of paint.
6.     Human saliva contains a natural “drug” called opiorphin that is six times stronger than morphine.
7.     The laws of physics we know of now only work for 4% of all the matter in the universe. The other 96% is referred to as dark matter and dark energy that we know almost nothing about.
8.     The stomach and the esophagus are covered with nerve cells (they cap at about 100,000,000 which is more than there are in an entire cat’s head). Scientists think that these nerve cells are our “second brain” and they determine our mood and emotions.
9.     The M100 galaxy is 55 million lightyears away from Earth. This is so far that if someone from there was looking at our planet right now, they would see the extinction of dinosaurs.
10.     The crime level in the Vatican is one of the highest in the world. Every year, there is at least one crime for every single citizen, and in 2007, there were 1.5 crimes committed for every citizen. Most of the violations are pickpocket thefts, and the other 90% of them go unsolved. 
11.     Scientists think that the life of any living creature is equal to the time period it takes their hearts to make around 1 billion beats. However, people managed to prolong this period thanks to the development of medicine and the invention of drugs.
12.     The fact that most of the dust in our homes is actually made up of our dead skin cells is nothing more than a myth. In fact, dust mostly consists of the dirt that we bring home from the outside.
13.     Avocados never ripen on the trees which is why farmers leave them there for quite a long time — up to seven months before they need to sell them.
14.     Scientists studied the remains of the penguins that were found on Seymour Island. They lived about 40 million years ago. They found out that their predecessors were measured at 5’9? and weighed more than 220 lb.
15.     The ashes of Fred Baur, the creator of Pringles chips, was buried in one of its cylinder-shaped packages, according to his own will.
16.     Cats and dogs can be allergic to people.
17.     Velociraptors were the size of a modern turkey.
18.     The idea that breakfast is the most important meal of the day was made in 1944 by a company that produces cornflakes. With this trick, the marketers were able to make the sales of their product higher. 
19.     By the year 2050, chocolate will have disappeared. This is due to the chocolate trees going extinct thanks to climate change.
20.     The official number of jury members is 12 because this is how many apostles there were in the bible. 
21.     The novel Futility written in 1898 by U.S. writer, Morgan Robertson, predicts the sinking of the Titanic. In the novel, the ship is called the Titan and it was the largest ship of its day. Both ships were called “unsinkable”, and both ships had very few lifeboats.

Did we manage to amaze you with any of these facts? Do you know something that could surprise us? Tell us in the comment section below!

Source: Brightside