Fact Cards

7411. Astronaut Bumped Onto Challenger-In the mid-1980s, Hughes engineer and payload specialist Gregory Jarvis was twice scheduled to fly on the Space Shuttle, but each time he was replaced by congressmen who wanted to go to space, including Senator Jake Garn and Representative Bill Nelson. Those changes eventually reassigned him to STS-51L, the Challenger mission that broke apart shortly after launch on January 28, 1986, killing Jarvis and the six other crew members.

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7412. Harrison Hides First Dakota State-When President Benjamin Harrison signed the statehood papers admitting both North Dakota and South Dakota to the Union, he deliberately shuffled the documents before putting pen to paper. By mixing up the order, he made sure no one could tell which of the two Dakotas was officially recognized first.

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7413. The Sea With No Shores-The Sargasso Sea in the North Atlantic Ocean is the only sea on Earth not bounded by land, but instead defined by four surrounding currents. Those currents, including the Gulf Stream and the North Atlantic Current, enclose a vast gyre where floating brown Sargassum seaweed gives the water its distinctive character.

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7414. Eight Days Buried Under Snow-In February 1799, Elizabeth Woodcock was riding home near the village of Impington in England when her horse threw her, leaving her cold and exhausted as drifting snow gradually buried her alive. Trapped in a hollow, she managed to push a twig with a handkerchief tied to it up through the snow as a signal. Eight days later, a villager noticed the strange marker, dug down, and found Woodcock still alive.

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7415. Forest Hermit Before Gojira Fame-Before starting Gojira, French metal frontman Joe Duplantier spent two years living in a cabin in the forest without electricity or any source of income. During that period, he withdrew from city life and modern comforts while he developed his musical ideas and direction.

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7416. Madonna Turns Ban Into Platinum-After the video for Madonna's song

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7417. Crashing Saturn Stages Into Moon-From Apollo 13 onward, NASA deliberately steered the Saturn V rocket’s third stage into the Moon instead of sending it into heliocentric orbit as it had done on earlier missions. Engineers timed these impacts near seismometers left on the lunar surface so the resulting moonquakes would generate clear seismic signals. By analyzing how those shock waves traveled through the Moon, scientists learned more about its internal structure and composition.

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7418. Math Behind Fading Irregular Verbs-Researchers have quantified how quickly irregular verb forms regularize, finding that the half-life of an irregular verb scales as the square root of its usage frequency. Their analysis shows that less frequently used irregulars shift to regular forms faster, which is why older forms like

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7419. Britain’s One Penny Mail Revolution-In 1840, Britain introduced the Penny Post, a uniform postage system that let anyone send a letter anywhere in the country for just one penny. Under Rowland Hill’s reform, postage was prepaid by the sender rather than paid on delivery, which slashed costs for long-distance mail. The change made personal communication affordable for ordinary people for the first time and triggered a huge surge in letter writing across the country.

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7420. Jewish Officer Who Backed Hitler-In 1918, during World War I, German Jewish army officer Hugo Gutmann recommended that Adolf Hitler receive the Iron Cross for bravery. As Hitler’s superior in the German army, Gutmann filed the recommendation that resulted in Hitler being awarded the decoration.

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37 COMMENTS

  1. Would you mind if I started to post these facts on iFunny? I really think people would love them and I would of course credit and link your website.

    1094
  2. Your page (re)numbering makes it almost impossible to find something on your site. The search option doesn’t seem very helpful.. I tried to search for Harris Rosen or Fact #62 after seeing it on Bored Panda, but had to do a brute force search to find this page…

    1096
  3. I just went through all the facts pages. A few things I’ve noticed:
    1. #451-#470 (pgs 46 & 47) have images that are broken.
    2. #841-#1140 (pgs 85-114) are complete duplicates of earlier pages.

    11
    • Thank you for your valuable feedback. Last night we implemented a new page numbering system for our fact cards. I really messed up with facts #451-#470 which I have fixed now. I have fixed the other problem too.

      10
  4. Just stumbled onto your site via an Imgur post. Cool stuff.

    Re. one of the citations above: “The oldest D20 dice was uncovered in Egypt…”

    One “die,” many “dice.” The headline in the source given had it right; “Ancient d20 die emerges from the ashes of time.”

    Credibility is always enhanced by proper grammar.

    18
  5. I really enjoy your site. I visit it regularly at this period of my life to use up time, while entertaining myself, and increase my awareness of life through the amazing insights into stories behind what we often overlook. It is almost therapeutic I would think! For one thing, I feel grateful not to be one of the warped personalities you often report on, but on the other hand, I feel sorry for the suffering that is really behind so many people you note through our shared history, who have the apparency of many successes, but are in fact imperfect and suffering souls like all of us, on the road to something better we hope eh?

    5
    • History gives us an opportunity to look into the mistake our ancestors made, but also the feats they achieved. The lives they suffered, so that the future generations could have the freedom. I am happy to have been part of such an important part of your life, Stuart.

      6
  6. I’m sure it’s like asking a magician how his tricks are done, but I would love to know the workings of the research you have to go through to find/verify everything I’ve read on your site. To say they are entertaining would be an insult. I read several pages daily. I have found them to be fascinating, educational, informative, and downright important.

    When I was a child and went on long road trips with my parents, my Mom would would bring a box of Trivial Pursuit cards to read and ask questions to pass the time for everyone in the car…My Wife now reads these to our kids on our vacations.

    Do you take fact submissions, or do you rely on your own people to research and present them to your team/site? The only thing I can say about your site, is some click ads could be modified or even done away with. Political opinion polls, etc…I would sooner see and ad for shaving cream that some of those useless and probably biased ads (not you, just the people conducting them) But, I love what you do and am so glad that your site exists!

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    • Thank you Ryan. It’s the readers like you who keep us going. It gives us immense pleasure to know that you love reading facts on our site. We do take submissions. About 10% of our facts come from submissions. You too can submit facts by filling out this form Contact Us. The ads are what keeps the servers running. We don’t take any donations, use patreon or sell merch on our site so ads are how we generate income. Though, we will take your advice to tone down the ads (we can’t really see what kind of ad our readers see as it’s decided by Google).

      7
  7. 1454: She wasn’t found “shortly” after, which might imply that 911 had tried to help and just didn’t arrive in time; she was found HOURS after.

    1182
  8. Each of these pages of facts should have its own page for commenting instead of many fact pages and only one place to comment. I’d also delete my post about each fact having its own page since the aforementioned idea is better, but I can’t.

    1270
  9. I love this website I use it all the time and it allows me to attain info that I have been able to use irl all the time. Keep up the great work!

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  10. Also Rickinator for 610 killing bears is not a good thing due to most species of bears being endangered it is just a fact/statistic

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  11. Your fact card is WRONG! You state Queen Elizabeth II is related to George Washington (which is correct), however, then you all say “Their last living common ancestor is Augustine Warner, Sr. who died in XX.”

    That’s incorrect! i am related to both Col. Augustine Warner, Sr. and George Washington and I’m very much alive as are my family members and 1 uncle and his 2 sons.

    1

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