Interesting facts you’ll want to share with everyone
Random fun facts catch us off guard in the best possible way. They’re legitimately fascinating, and once you get started, you’ll want to keep reading until your curiosity is satisfied.
So get ready to dive into all the wacky, wonderful and interesting facts the world has to offer!
Fact: The world’s oldest wooden wheel has been around for more than 5,000 years
Talk about one old tourist attraction! This wheel was found in 2002, approximately 12 miles south of Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, and is now housed in the city’s museum. Radiocarbon dating was used to determine the wheel’s age, which is somewhere between 5,100 and 5,350 years old.
Fact: Dead skin cells are a main ingredient in household dust
Here’s an interesting (and gross) science fact for you: According to researchers at Imperial College London, humans shed around 200 million skin cells each hour—and they have to go somewhere when we’re indoors. If the idea of skin dust isn’t sitting well with you, you should know that a report from the American Chemical Society found that a skin oil called squalene naturally helps reduce indoor ozone levels by up to 15%—so it’s not all bad.
Fact: Sudan has more pyramids than any country in the world
What is … a totally strange Jeopardy! question about geography? Not only have archaeologists found more pyramids in Sudan than Egypt, but the numbers aren’t even close. While somewhere around 100 pyramids have been discovered in Egypt (some sources put the number at 118), the number of those found in Sudan is around 255—more than double.
Fact: The bumblebee bat is the world’s smallest flying mammal
Weighing in at 0.05 to 0.07 ounces, with a head-to-body length of 1.14 to 1.29 inches and a wingspan of 5.1 to 5.7 inches, the bumblebee bat—also known as Kitti’s hog-nosed bat—is the smallest flying mammal (aka the smallest bat, since those are the only mammals that truly fly) in the world, according to Guinness World Records. Many consider the bumblebee bat to be the smallest mammal overall, but its weight overlaps a bit with another of Earth’s tiniest creatures, the Etruscan shrew.
To see this tiny bat for yourself, you’d have to visit one of a select few limestone caves on the Khwae Noi River in the Kanchanaburi Province of southwest Thailand.
Fact: The circulatory system is more than 60,000 miles long
If your entire circulatory system—we’re talking veins, arteries and capillaries—were laid out flat, it would stretch for more than 60,000 miles. That’s long enough to go around the Earth almost two and a half times! This is one of those mind-blowing facts that sounds made up (but isn’t).
Fact: The U.S. government saved every public tweet from 2006 through 2017
Starting in 2018, the Library of Congress decided to keep tweets only on “a very selective basis,” including those dealing with elections and topics of national interest, like public policy.
Fact: The CIA’s headquarters has its own Starbucks, but baristas don’t write names on the cups
Its receipts say “Store Number 1” instead of “Starbucks,” and its workers have to undergo extensive background checks and need an escort to leave their work posts.
