What's your favourite fact?

[GlitterSquid]

Fill me full of your favourite facts. The more obscure, the better!

My favourite all time fact is that two halves of a supermarket sandwich are never from the same sandwich and are each another half of another pair. Unbelievable.

I met a grown man who didn't know peanuts grew underground recently too, which pleased me.

Enlighten me further!

@TwoLeftSocksWithHoles I’m sure I read somewhere that astronauts get slightly shorter after time in space (potential misremembering!!) so perhaps balance out time on the rack with moonwalking night shifts?

@Pinkstegosaurus

High foreheads were fashionable in Tudor England and women would pluck their hairlines deliberately high.

They also removed their eyebrows and painted their teeth black in Elizabethan times to pretend (like her) they had lost their teeth due to eating sugar.

People born around year 1000 had great teeth. It’s the importing of sugar from the America’s that started destroying everyone’s teeth. People from that time still had their teeth in their graves!

And their fancy frocks were more like jigsaws. So a slip over which your tie in a skirt then bodice and arms. The slip would be pretty smelly since people didn’t wash too often 🤢

Dinosaurs were around for 65 million years.
Humans have been around for 5 million years.

Absolutely blows my tiny brain. There is so much we don’t know!

I think that is was a slightly mangled misremembering of Benford's law

You are right! I was told this as a fact by two mathematicians so I trusted them even though I couldn’t understand it. Now I do.

@caranations

Eggs came before chickens.

This sent me into a spiral. Any one care to join?

So, yes 'eggs' came first because dinosaurs (and other prehistoric animals) were around long before the mighty chicken- which is itself a descendant of the dinos.
And I understand evolution as much as the average person does. But I am ~perplexed~ at how life went from microbes to egg laying.

Oh and, can I add that Betty White was born 7 years before Anne Frank and 6 years before Martin Luther King Jr.

I've seen a rainbow from a plane, I was looking down at a double rainbow which was a complete circle.

This is why you can never get to the end of one.

@BiscuitLover3678

Dinosaurs were around for 65 million years. Humans have been around for 5 million years.

Absolutely blows my tiny brain. There is so much we don’t know!

Dinosaurs were around for about 165 million years, 65 million years ago.

Surely that's a bit of a paradox. How can you create a kit kat filling made up of rejected kit kits if a kit kat had never been invented, until they were invented and at that point the rejected kit kat wouldn't be a available to become the filling, ahhhhhhhh my brain hurts

Which came first, the Kit Kat or the filling….

A boy will always be taller than his mother

Not true. All sorts of variables at play here.

This is why you can never get to the end of one.

The reason you can’t get to the end of a rainbow is to do with perspective.

Female rabbits can reabsorb their embryos if the conditions are not favourable for rearing young. Why couldn't such a gift have been given to the human race?

Girls are born with a million eggs in their ovaries. So you could say that if mum has a daughter she is also giving birth to her grandchildren too! That actually makes me 73 then

It's an amazing concept to realise, but I would just quibble the number somewhat! Isn't it more like 300-400 eggs? I always understood (maybe completely wrongly) that the menopause doesn't just kick in because you've reached a certain age, but because all your eggs have run out?!

It's a shorter distance from London to the easternmost point of Kazakhstan than it is from the easternmost point of Kazakhstan to the westernmost point of Kazakhstan - and yet most people would struggle to even point to Kazakhstan on a map!

Literary giants Aldous Huxley and CS Lewis both died on 22nd November 1963, but they hardly troubled the news of that day - because a certain president was also assassinated on that same day.

However, contrary to her claim in the lyrics of 'Run, Baby, Run', Sheryl Crow was not actually born on that day!

I'm also baffled by the Kit-Kat one. Presumably, like with all big factories, they monitor 'wastage' - but then also completely rely on that wastage in order to continue production of the actual product?! I wonder if this has anything to do with the very rare occurrence when you get a Kit-Kat that is just chocolate all the way through, rather than biscuit - is that when they have very slightly fewer duff ones to use for filling than they have orders?!

My DS was complaining only the other day that 4-finger Kit-Kats are woefully incomplete and an outrage, because they should also come with a thumb

@WomanStanleyWoman

Only virgins are allowed to become admins of local Facebook groups.

Literally did actually spit my tea out!

Male cats are usually left-pawed, females right-pawed.

@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll

Wombat poo is cube shaped

As is that of toddlers who have 'accidents' whilst sitting inside shopping trolleys (cf Mumsnet of antiquity)

Over 50% of all numbers begin with 1

When written out as words, the first number to contain the letter 'a' is 'A hundred' (or 'hundred And one', depending on whether you use the indefinite article for hundred).

When counting from zero in English, using 'standard' mouth pronunciation patterns, the first time your lips will touch is when you reach "a/one Million".

Wow! This is amazing.

I never knew this. I tried it out too. Well, so far........ I didn't count to a millionaire!

@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll

Girls are born with a million eggs in their ovaries. So you could say that if mum has a daughter she is also giving birth to her grandchildren too! That actually makes me 73 then

It's an amazing concept to realise, but I would just quibble the number somewhat! Isn't it more like 300-400 eggs? I always understood (maybe completely wrongly) that the menopause doesn't just kick in because you've reached a certain age, but because all your eggs have run out?!

You start with about 4 million eggs at birth but you loose hundreds of thousands before puberty where you have around 300k left. You lose about 1000 a month at that stage. By 30 you have about 72k. Only 1 or 2 of the best of the batch are released each month though. I guess we're just born with a lot of duds.

You lose about 1000 a month at that stage.

Wait, what??

I'm guessing you mean that they "die off" at that rate, rather than release that many in month! Otherwise I seriously need to revisit some biology lessons!

Ooooor, ya know, finish reading a sentence

@Crazy8

Neil Armstrong spelt backwards is Gnorts Mr Alien

That's ludicrous, but actually made me spurt a loud LOL out!

@DropYourSword

You lose about 1000 a month at that stage.

Wait, what??

I'm guessing you mean that they "die off" at that rate, rather than release that many in month! Otherwise I seriously need to revisit some biology lessons!

Yeah they're just reabsorbed by the body. Lots of eggs sit in follicles each month trying to mature and the first one or sometimes 2 are 'ovulated' the rest are just lost

@StarryNightSparkles

Great thread op. I didn't know over half these facts 🤯🤯🤯

You are shorter in the afternoon than you are in the morning.

Also heavier!

@Seraphina1993

You start with about 4 million eggs at birth but you lose hundreds of thousands before puberty where you have around 300k left. You lose about 1000 a month at that stage. By 30 you have about 72k. Only 1 or 2 of the best of the batch are released each month though. I guess we're just born with a lot of duds.

OH MY ACTUAL GAWWWD!

I totally 100% did NOT know that. I thought we were born with 400 to 500 eggs and that was it. I just looked this up and it's true.

I am nearly 60 and I never knew this. What is my life?! 😳