29 Of The Most Mind-Blowing Facts That We Haven’t Been Able To Stop Thinking About

Emily Izsak | October 15, 2024 7:00 pm

Every so often, you learn a fact that completely changes the way you feel about the world. The minute before, you were just living your life and minding your own business, and then all of a sudden, everything you thought you knew gets thrown into question. Are you ready to have that happen to you a bunch of times in a row?

We were completely astounded when we learned all of these incredible facts. We think you will be too.

What Poppy Seeds Look Like Up Close

poppyseeds under a microscope
Photo Credit: @BCharmer / Twitter
Photo Credit: @BCharmer / Twitter

This is what poppy seeds look like under a microscope.

Much to our surprise, they aren't actually completely smooth. They have little craters all over them. They look like little moons.

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The Difference Between A Million And A Billion

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Photo Credit: @Paul_Franz / Twitter
Photo Credit: @Paul_Franz / Twitter
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A million of anything seems like a lot, and a billion of anything seems like a lot. We knew a billion was more than a million, but we never realized exactly how much more.

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Pluto Vs. Australia

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pluto on australia model
Photo Credit: @konstructivizm / Twitter
Photo Credit: @konstructivizm / Twitter
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If you were to take the entire "planet" of Pluto (we know it's not a planet anymore) and move it close to the Earth, it wouldn't even be big enough to cover the continent of Australia.

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A Long Way Down

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MC ALLEN, TEXAS-July 20, 2020-A hearse passes as Jesus Torres, age 75, digs a grave after the backhoe broke down at La Piedad cemetery in McAllen.
Photo Credit: Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Photo Credit: Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
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Did you know that if you dug a hole to the very center of the Earth and dropped a book down that hole, it would take a full 42 minutes to hit the bottom of the hole?

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The Amount Of Water In Lake Superior

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General views of the Split Rock Lighthouse along the shores of Lake Superior on January 04, 2020 in Duluth, Minnesota.
Photo Credit: AaronP/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images
Photo Credit: AaronP/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images
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Lake Superior doesn't seem like a huge body of water. It's not like it's an ocean or anything. Even so, there's enough H2O in Lake Superior to cover all of North and South America in one foot of water.

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Another Fact About Pluto

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People look at an early image of Pluto taken by the New Horizons probe as the craft makes its closest fly-by of the dwarf planet at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory July 14, 2015 in Laurel, Maryland.
Photo Credit: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images
Photo Credit: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images
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We're back at it again with the Pluto facts. Did you know that Pluto didn't even get the chance to make a full rotation around the sun between the time it was discovered and the time it lost its planet status?

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The Dinosaur Difference

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Christie's Puts Tyrannosaurus Rex Skeleton Known As Stan On Display Ahead Of Its Auction
Photo Credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Photo Credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
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A greater amount of time has passed between when the Tyrannosaurus Rex lived and when the Stegosaurus lived than the difference in time between the reign of the Tyrannosaurus Rex and now.

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The Sad Truth About Tigers

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A Royal Bengal Tiger seen at Bangladesh National Zoo...
Photo Credit: Md Manik/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Photo Credit: Md Manik/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
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There are now more tigers living in the state of Texas than anywhere else in the world. Tigers are not native to Texas. All of the tigers in Texas live in captivity.

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Bring On The Flamingos

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A plastic pink flamingo is handled by factory workers who file down the rough edges during the flamingo's production at Union Products on March 18, 2004 in Leominster, Massachusetts.
Photo Credit: Jeff Hutchens/Getty Images
Photo Credit: Jeff Hutchens/Getty Images
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There are also more plastic flamingos in the world than there are real flamingos. Plastic flamingos have come to represent the pinnacle of American kitsch. Is there anything tackier than a fake flamingo?

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A Mammoth Of A Fact

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A wooly mammoth skeleton is seen in the National Fossil Hall, featuring around 700 fossil specimens that track the history of life on the planet from dinosaurs to mammals, during a media preview of the new exhibition at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, June 4, 2019. - The exhibition tells the story of 3.7 billion years of life on Earth, highlighting connections between ecosystems, climate, geological forces and evolution.
Photo Credit: SAUL LOEB / AFP via Getty Images
Photo Credit: SAUL LOEB / AFP via Getty Images
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It's a little-known fact that mammoths actually went extinct 1,000 years after the Egyptians finished building the Great Pyramid. That's right, mammoths roamed the Earth at the same time as Egyptian pharaohs.

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What's Cuter Than A Baby Armadillo?

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A new exhibit at the Orange County Zoo features an Armadillo named
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Photo Credit: Mark Boster/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
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What's cuter than a baby armadillo, you ask? How about four identical baby armadillos? Armadillos almost always give birth to identical quadruplets. Imagine if you had three siblings who looked just like you.

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How Old Is Betty White?

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BEVERLY HILLS, CA - OCTOBER 12: Actress Betty White speaks at Paley Honors in Hollywood: A Gala Celebrating Women in Television at the Beverly Wilshire Four Seasons Hotel on October 12, 2017 in Beverly Hills, California.
Photo Credit: David Livingston/Getty Images
Photo Credit: David Livingston/Getty Images
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Believe it or not, Betty White is actually older than sliced bread. She may even literally be the greatest thing since before sliced bread. Why do we think sliced bread is so great, anyway?

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France's Dark Age Wasn't So Long Ago

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darth vader costume
Photo Credit: FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images
Photo Credit: FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images
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A not so very long time ago, in a galaxy not so far away, France decided that it was a good idea to cut people's heads off. France was still executing people with guillotines when the first Star Wars film hit theaters.

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Who Is Humpty Dumpty?

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LAS VEGAS, NV - 2010: A metal sculpture of Humpty Dumpty sitting on a bench at David Burke Restaurant in the Venetian Hotel and Casino is seen in this 2009 Las Vegas, Nevada, photo.
Photo Credit: George Rose/Getty Images
Photo Credit: George Rose/Getty Images
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Nowhere in the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme does it say that Humpty Dumpty was an egg. We've just interpreted it that way, probably to make it less terrifying. Poor Humpty.

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Well, Now I Feel Old

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015927.CA.0927.LionKing.05.KM––Disney's success of adapting their hit animated film into a theatrical phenomenon has hit Los Angeles with teh arrival of the
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Photo Credit: Kirk McKoy/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
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The original animated version of The Lion King was released closer to the moon landing than to today. Do you feel old yet? Because I definitely do. I feel like that movie came out yesterday.

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Vending Machines Are Dangerous

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An Architect of the Capitol employee uses a disinfectant wipe on a vending machine in Cannon Building to combat the spread of the outbreak on Thursday, March 12, 2020.
Photo Credit: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Photo Credit: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
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Vending machines are responsible for twice as many human deaths as sharks each year. I don't want to hear anyone say they're too scared to swim in the ocean because of sharks if they had no problem buying a Coke from a machine that week.

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Carrots Used To Be Purple

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BREWSTER, MA - AUGUST 30: Purple and yellow carrots grown at Chatham Bars Inn's farm in Brewster, MA are pictured on Aug. 30, 2017. The famous Cape Cod luxury resort now grows its own produce at its nearby farm. The farm land was purchased in 2012 to help accelerate the inns culinary transformation, a pillar of the more than $100 million modernization effort that began when Richard Cohens Capital Properties bought the resort in 2006.
Photo Credit: John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
Photo Credit: John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
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Purple carrots still very much exist. You may have seen them at your local grocery store at the end of the summer. Still, we think of orange carrots as the default. Purple carrots used to be the default.

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Woody Has A Last Name

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PHOTOGRAPHER: KEN HIVELY / Los Angeles 96–11–13 –– John Lasseter:
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Photo Credit: Ken Hively/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
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Woody from Toy Story actually has a last name. It's Woody Pride. This fact comes to us from the director of Toy Story 3, Lee Unkrich. He says that Woody's last name has been Pride since the development stages of the first film.

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Cookie Monster Has A Name

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Cookie Monster is pictured in the Washington Post Food Lab with a recipe from his new book,
Photo Credit: Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Photo Credit: Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post via Getty Images
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Cookie Monster is a cookie monster, but he does actually have a name. It's Sid. Well, it used to be Sid. Then he ate his first cookie and his whole identity changed.

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Barbie's Full Name

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A young girl holds a Barbie doll next to a notice saying that the toy
Photo Credit: MARK RALSTON/AFP via Getty Images
Photo Credit: MARK RALSTON/AFP via Getty Images
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Barbie has a full name, too. It's Barbara Millicent Roberts. She was named after the daughter of the people who founded Mattel toys. Barbara Millicent is a nice name, but it doesn't roll off the tongue like "Barbie" does.

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They All Taste The Same

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Froot Loops cereal, sugary breakfast cereal, prepared food, popular with children
Photo Credit: Getty Images
Photo Credit: Getty Images
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All pieces of Froot Loops cereal taste the same no matter what color they are. Kellogg's doesn't go around flavoring the orange loops to taste like oranges and the purple loops to taste like grapes.

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That's A Lot Of Trees

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SOUTH SALEM, NEW YORK - OCTOBER 19: Fall colors dominate a small parcel of preserved land at the Leon Levy Preserve on October 19, 2020 in South Salem,
Photo Credit: Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images
Photo Credit: Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images
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There are more trees on Earth than there are stars in the galaxy. Just to be clear, we're talking about our galaxy—the Milky Way galaxy. Not all of the galaxies in the universe.

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The Truth About Cleopatra

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Cleopatra, poster, from left: Rex Harrison, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, 1963.
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Photo Credit: LMPC via Getty Images
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Even though we often associate Cleopatra with the pyramids, she actually lived closer to the invention of the iPad than she did to the building of the Great Pyramid. That's wild.

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This Is How Pineapples Grow

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Pineapples growing on ground in garden Dole Plantation near Wahiawa Oahu Hawaii USA
Photo Credit: Andrew Woodley/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Photo Credit: Andrew Woodley/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
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For some reason, we imagined pineapples growing on palm trees like coconuts or something. We never envisioned them growing out of the ground like this. It looks like someone just put a pineapple on this bush.

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How Brussels Sprouts Grow

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Brussel sprouts at Crown O' Maine Organic Cooperative Friday, October 31, 2014.
Photo Credit: Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Portland Portland Press Herald via Getty Images
Photo Credit: Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Portland Portland Press Herald via Getty Images
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First of all, Brussels sprouts grow on long stalks like the ones pictured above. I don't know why that seems so strange to me, but it does. Also, for your information, it is "Brussels sprouts" and not "Brussel sprouts."

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Deadly Coconuts

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Photo Illustration on the new popularity of coconut water for healthy electrolyte replacement for on Tuesday, January 11, 2011. Cyrus McCrimmon, The Denver Post
Photo Credit: Cyrus McCrimmon/The Denver Post via Getty Images
Photo Credit: Cyrus McCrimmon/The Denver Post via Getty Images
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Coconuts kill more people than sharks do every year. As do cows. It turns out that sharks aren't as scary as we thought. Or maybe the rest of the world is just way scarier than we thought.

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You Can't Swallow And Breathe

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SPRINGFIELD, NJ - JULY 29: Andrew 'Beef' Johnston of England is seen eating beef jerky on the third hole during the second round of the 2016 PGA Championship at Baltusrol Golf Club on July 29, 2016 in Springfield, New Jersey.
Photo Credit: Drew Hallowell/Getty Images
Photo Credit: Drew Hallowell/Getty Images
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It is impossible for a human being to both swallow and breathe at the same time. You just tried it just now, didn't you? See, it's impossible. You can stop trying now.

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Apples Are Old

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pples for sale at the Central Market in Adler District, southern Sochi.
Photo Credit: Dmitry FeoktistovTASS via Getty Images
Photo Credit: Dmitry FeoktistovTASS via Getty Images
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Some of the apples you buy in the grocery store are over a year old. Because apples ripen in late August and September, many of them are picked then and then kept in cold storage until grocery stores need them.

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The Scottish Love Their Mythical Creatures

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The Royal coat of arms of Scotland, The Graphic
Photo Credit: Getty Images
Photo Credit: Getty Images
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The unicorn is the national animal of Scotland. This is because King James II of Scotland wholeheartedly embraced the unicorn legend. It seems like par for the course for a country that came up with the Loch Ness Monster.

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