Fact Cards

8171. HMS Terror’s Hunter-Led Discovery-After 171 years missing, the lost exploration ship HMS Terror was found in 2016 after an Inuk hunter named Sammy Kogvik recalled seeing what looked like a mast sticking out of the ice in Terror Bay. Kogvik, a Canadian Ranger who had joined the Arctic Research Foundation crew, remembered the sighting from seven years earlier. Searchers changed course from Cambridge Bay to Terror Bay and found the wreck in just 2.5 hours. The discovery placed the ship nearly 100 kilometers south of where historians had expected it, challenging the accepted story of the Franklin Expedition's final days.

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8172. Hitler’s Fake Suicide Mission Prank-In 1937, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels reportedly pranked their supporter, businessman Ernst Hanfstaengl, with a fake suicide mission during the Spanish Civil War. Hanfstaengl received sealed orders to parachute into Spanish territory for Francisco Franco, while the crew secretly circled Germany and fed him false reports that they were nearing Spain. The pilot then claimed engine trouble and landed safely near Leipzig. The prank terrified Hanfstaengl, and he defected from Nazi Germany soon afterward.

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8173. Teen Brains Shift Toward Peers-During adolescence, the brain goes through social reorientation, as teenagers often grow closer to peers and less close to parents. In a 2019 study led by Eric Nelson, PhD, researchers at Nationwide Children's Hospital and The Ohio State University surveyed 40 people aged 8 to 19 and used fMRI scans while they viewed teenage faces. Older teens reported more closeness with peers, and that peer closeness changed activity in the brain's social and reward regions.

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8174. Bergen’s Acid Attack Stage Comeback-Turkish singer Bergen, born Belgin Sarılmışer in 1958, lost vision in her right eye after her husband, Halis Serbest, paid a man to throw nitric acid on her in 1982. Bergen spent 45 days in the hospital recovering from severe burns. She returned to performing, covering her blind eye with her long hair, and became one of Turkey’s best-known Arabesque singers in the 1980s. After she divorced Serbest, he shot and killed her in 1989.

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8175. Curaçao’s Indigenous Deportation Under Spain-After Europeans discovered Curaçao, the Spanish control of the island led to many Indigenous people being completely deported from their homeland. The island’s original inhabitants were Arawak and Caquetio Amerindians, and the first Europeans recorded there came with a Spanish expedition led by Alonso de Ojeda in 1499. Spain officially settled Curaçao in 1527, but disappointing agriculture and a lack of precious metals made the Spanish call it “the useless island.” In 1634, the Dutch West India Company captured the island from Spain, and after the Spanish surrendered, about 30 Spaniards and many Indigenous people were deported to Santa Ana de Coro in Venezuela.

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8176. Noah’s Ark Sued Over Rain-The Noah’s Ark Encounter attraction in Kentucky sued its insurance company after heavy rains caused major property damage near the site. In 2019, Ark Encounter said in a federal lawsuit that rain in 2017 and 2018 triggered a landslide on its access road. The attraction reported that the damage cost nearly $1 million and that they had already rebuilt the road, despite the ark itself remaining undamaged. The lawsuit said its insurance carriers refused to cover the claim, so Ark Encounter sought compensatory and punitive damages.

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8177. Yakult Ladies Check Elderly Customers-Japan has more than 31,000 “Yakult Ladies” who deliver probiotic drinks door to door, and many of their customers are elderly people living alone. The regular deliveries often double as wellness checks. If an elderly customer does not answer, a Yakult lady may contact their family or report that something seems wrong.

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8178. Thomas Salme’s Fake Pilot License-A Swedish pilot named Thomas Salme flew commercial airliners for 13 years for three airlines without a valid commercial pilot’s license. After obtaining a fake license he had created himself, he accumulated approximately 10,000 hours in the air. Salme later said,

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8179. Shaggy’s Marine Drill Instructor Voice-Reggae singer Shaggy, known for “Boombastic,” developed his signature singing voice as a U.S. Marine by mimicking his drill instructors. The Jamaican American musician said he used the imitation to joke with and motivate his platoon during his military service. He sang his first big hit, “Oh Carolina,” in that voice because he thought it sounded cool, but after the song blew up, he realized listeners expected him to keep using it. Shaggy later won two Grammys.

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8180. James Doohan’s Secret Space Burial-Star Trek actor James Doohan, who played Starship Enterprise engineer Montgomery “Scotty” Scott, has traveled nearly 1.7 billion miles through space and orbited Earth more than 70,000 times after some of his ashes were secretly smuggled onto the ISS. Doohan died in 2005, and British American video game entrepreneur Richard Garriott carried a small portion of his ashes aboard the International Space Station in 2008. Garriott hid the ashes inside a laminated card placed under the floor of the station’s Columbus module. The secret stayed quiet for 12 years.

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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!

    1224
    • 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!

    5
  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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