Fact Cards

37 Comments
7811. Buttons Made People “Lazy”-As electric push buttons spread in the late 1800s, people suddenly found themselves activating doorbells, intercoms, and elevators without touching the machinery behind them. Critics were worried the button would make human skills atrophy by turning technology into a sealed “black box” that consumers stopped questioning. By 1916, one educator even complained that pushing a button seemed to remove any sense of responsibility for what happened behind it.

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7812. South Korea Rejected “Honorary White”-During apartheid, South Africa used “honorary white” status to give select East Asians privileges it normally reserved for whites, largely to keep trade and diplomacy moving. When South Africa offered that status to South Koreans during talks in 1961, South Korea refused to play along and rejected the arrangement. South Korea then cut off relations with South Africa and kept full ties frozen until 1992, when apartheid ended and normal diplomatic relations resumed.

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7813. Hawala Moves Money on Trust-Hawala is an informal, trust-based global money transfer system that can leave little to no electronic or paper trail. It lets people without bank accounts or even identification send funds across borders by relying on the honor of hawala brokers who settle debts between themselves. Due to its informal nature, its total market size remains unknown.

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7814. Michael Corke Stayed Awake-A Chicago man named Michael Corke developed fatal insomnia and spiraled into a state of near-total sleeplessness. Doctors recorded that by the time he died in 1993 at the age of 42, he had essentially stayed awake for about six months, with only minimal, ineffective sleep.

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7815. Washington Was Almost “Columbia”-When there were preparations for the creation of a new territory in the Pacific Northwest, U.S. officials initially planned to name it “Columbia” after the Columbia River, but they were worried that it would confuse people with the District of Columbia, especially in government paperwork and mail. To avoid that mix-up, they switched the name to “Washington” instead. The change stuck, and the territory later entered the Union as the state of Washington.

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7816. Thomas Gold’s Moon Dust Trap-Before Apollo 11, some scientists warned that the Moon might hide a deep “dust trap” that could act like quicksand. Astrophysicist Thomas Gold argued that a thick layer of fine powder might not support the lunar module or even an astronaut’s boots. That nightmare scenario pushed NASA to investigate the surface more carefully with unmanned missions and other analysis before committing a crewed landing.

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7817. Smong Saved Simeulue Islanders-An oral tradition called Smong on Simeulue Island taught residents to run for the hills if an earthquake struck and the sea suddenly receded. People recognized the warning signs during the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and evacuated fast, and only 7 of about 78,000 residents died. On Indonesia's mainland, roughly 60 km away, communities had largely lost that tradition, and far more people stayed near the coast. As a result, over 170,000 people died.

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7818. Border Collies Learn in Five-In psychologist Stanley Coren’s rankings of canine intelligence, the Border Collie lands at #1 for working and obedience smarts. Trainers found the breed could learn a new command in under five repetitions and then obey it at least 95% of the time.

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7819. Croesus Triggered His Own Fall-The famously wealthy King Croesus of Lydia asked the Oracle at Delphi whether he would win a war against Persia. The oracle warned that if he attacked, he would bring about the fall of a great empire. Croesus marched, and the “great empire” that fell was his own.

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7820. Edwin Murphy’s Space Gas Warning-At a 1964 conference on space nutrition, a USDA “flatus researcher” named Edwin Murphy warned NASA that methane-heavy astronaut gas could become a fire risk inside sealed capsules. He said the safest crews would be those who produced no methane, and he even reported one volunteer who produced essentially no flatus after eating 100 grams of beans. NASA ignored that idea and instead banned foods like beans, cabbage, sprouts, and broccoli from flight menus for a long time.

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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.

    1094

  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…

    1096

  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.

    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

  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.

    18

  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.

      6

  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).

      7

  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.

    1270

  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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