Fact Cards

37 Comments
7801. Walter Wyatt’s Shark Night-In 1986, a man named Walter Wyatt Jr. left Nassau for Florida in a plane whose instruments had been vandalized and partly stolen before the flight. Storms, a damaged compass, and engine failure forced him down into the Atlantic near where the plane sank and left him alone in the water through the night. Wyatt later spent about 15 hours at sea with a failing life jacket, swollen eyes, biting parasites, while being regularly pursued by at least 3 different shark species (bull, mako, and hammerhead). A shark was even in pursuit of him when he was spotted by the Coast Guard and rescued.

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7802. Goldilocks Zone Moves Outward-The

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7803. Cicisbeo, Italy’s Public Lover-In 18th- and 19th-century Italy, a cicisbeo was the recognized gallant or lover of a married woman, and the arrangement usually existed with the husband’s knowledge and consent. The Cisbeo escorted her to church, public entertainment, and other social events, and husbands who challenged the custom risked ridicule from the wider community. Elite society often tolerated the practice better when the man was known to be homosexual, as it made the role feel less threatening. The British poet Lord Byron became one of the most famous examples when he served as Cisbeo to Teresa, Contessa Guiccioli.

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7804. Coca-Cola’s Touch-Recognizable Bottle-As Coca-Cola spread across the United States in the early 1900s, imitators kept copying its name, labels, and bottle design to confuse customers. In 1915, the company responded by asking glass makers to create a bottle so distinctive that people could recognize it by touch in the dark or even when it lay broken on the ground. That push led to the famous contour bottle, which gave Coca-Cola a shape competitors could not easily imitate.

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7805. Broken Lotto Machine Jackpot-In August 2024, an Illinois man stopped at a Jewel store to buy a lottery ticket, but the machine would not switch to the game he wanted and stayed stuck on Lotto. He got frustrated, then gave up and bought the Lotto ticket anyway. The winning numbers matched his ticket exactly, earning him a $9.2 million jackpot.

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7806. Sleeping Beauty Flopped First-When Disney released Sleeping Beauty in 1959, the film arrived with enormous ambition, lavish artwork, and a style that would later make it one of the studio’s most influential features. At the time, though, it failed at the box office and lost about $900,000 for the distributor. The disappointment hit the studio hard enough that Disney laid off many employees from its animation division.

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7807. Lukis Anderson’s Contaminated DNA-In 2012, a man named Lukis Anderson was charged with the murder of Raveesh Kumra after his DNA was found under the victim’s fingernails. The case looked complete until investigators discovered Anderson had been in a hospital bed at the time of the killing, heavily intoxicated and under police guard. The DNA had been transferred accidentally by paramedics who treated Anderson earlier that night and then responded to Kumra’s home without changing gloves carefully enough to prevent contamination.

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7808. One Cut’s Tiny Budget Miracle-The 2017 Japanese independent film One Cut of the Dead had a tiny budget of about ¥3 million, or roughly $27,000. Despite that, it went on to gross over $30 million domestically after opening on just two screens and with no advertising budget. That gave it one of the most astonishing budget-to-gross ratios in modern film history.

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7809. Sun Tzu Entered West Point-Written in the 5th century BC, The Art of War took on new importance in U.S. military thinking after the Vietnam War, when American theorists studied why Viet Cong and North Vietnamese commanders had drawn so effectively on Sun Tzu’s ideas. The book was later adopted into official U.S. military education, appearing on the U.S. Marine Corps Professional Reading Program and as instructional material at the United States Military Academy at West Point.

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7810. Cheetahs Never Killed Humans-Despite being a relatively large predator, there are no documented records of a wild cheetah killing a human.

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37 COMMENTS

  2. 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.

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  4. 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…

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  6. 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.

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    • 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.

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  7. 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.

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  10. 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?

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    • 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.

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  13. 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).

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  17. 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.

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  19. 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.

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  23. 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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  24. 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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  26. 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.

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