Trivia games or not – knowing random, weird, fun, and interesting facts is a great way to entertain, educate or simply shock people. Additionally, they can be quite useful for teachers looking to engage a class at the start of the school day or a specific, relevant lesson. There are a plethora of strange facts out there that can transform your perspective about the world.
From science to pop culture, it’s virtually impossible to calculate how much of this unexpected knowledge exists. Some of these facts are purely fascinating, some are jarring. You might even use them for speech topics or debate ideas. But all demonstrate how much there is to know and how we’ve only scratched the surface.
Check out 141 weird fun facts below:
Weird Animal Facts
1) Scotland chose the unicorn to be its national animal.
2) Giraffes are more prone to be struck by lightning than humans.
Each year, there are about 0.003 lightning deaths per thousand giraffes. This means that it is 30 times the rate at which lightning strikes humans.
3) In Switzerland, owning just one guinea pig is not allowed.
It is considered animal abuse if you only own one guinea pig in Switzerland because the animals are such social creatures.
4) The heart of a shrimp is in its head.
Because of their open circulatory system, there are no arteries in shrimp, and so their organs are floating around in their blood. They also have other vital organs such as their ventral nerve cord and stomach because the head is safer than their tail.
5) Tigers have striped skin, not just fur.
This weird animal fact just might surprise you. It’s not only the tiger’s fur that is striped.
6) The bumblebee bat is the world’s smallest mammal.
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the bumblebee bat weighs 0.05 to 0.07 ounces.
7) Sloths can hold their breath longer than dolphins.
Another one for weird animal facts: Every 10 minutes dolphins need to come up for air, but sloths can hold their breath for 40 minutes.
Fun, Weird, & Interesting Facts (Continued)
8) The smaller the animal is, the slower they can process time.
How animals perceive time can depend on how quickly the brain processes new information. Animals like mice or lizards will experience time differently than horses or dogs.
9) Once a chicken lived without its head for 18 months.
Perhaps you’ve already heard of Mike the Chicken. Well if you haven’t, you’ll be surprised to find out in the 1940s, Mike survived because his jugular vein and brainstem were still functioning. But don’t expect this for every chicken. It’s a weird animal fact, but a rare one.
10) The world’s oldest dog lived to be 29.5 years old.
The Australian cattle dog named Bluey lived to be 29.5 years old when the average age for dogs is from 10-15 years. This weird animal fact should resonate with dog lovers around the world.
11) The oldest cat in the world lived to be 38 years and three days old.
Creme Puff lived a sweet, long life. On average, cats tend to live around 15 years.
12) Octopuses don’t have tentacles. Their eight limbs are considered as arms.
13) Ants do not have lungs.
14) The Tyrannosaurus rex most likely had feathers.
The ancestors of the T-rex were recorded as having feathers, which means that this carried onto future generations.
Fun, Weird, & Interesting Facts (Continued)
15) Snails have teeth.
They can have anywhere from 1,000 – 12,000 teeth.
16) A horse can have more than one horsepower.
The highest amount of power a horse can produce amounts to 24 horsepower.
17) Starfish do not have bodies.
The fascinating, weird fun fact here about starfish is that their bodies are their heads.
18) Cat urine glows under a black light.
Due to containing phosphorus, cat urine glows brighter under an ultraviolet light.
19) The heartbeat of a blue whale can be detected from 2 miles away.
The blue whale’s heart also weighs 400 pounds.
20) An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain.
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21) Pigs cannot look up at the sky.
It’s all due to the anatomy of their neck muscles and spine.
22) Dolphins name each other.
Dolphins use unique whistles to distinguish each other in a pod.
23) The blue whale’s tongue can weigh as much as a young elephant.
Another weird fun fact about these mammals is that an adult elephant can even fit on the tongue of a blue whale.
24) Dogs tilt their heads to pinpoint the words you’re saying.
They do this to spot familiar words
25) There’s a specific ant species that lives in New York City.
Scientists have named them ManhattAnts.
26) Contrary to popular belief, flamingos are not born pink.
They’re born with gray or white feathers and develop pink feathers from eating shrimp and algae.
27) Another weird fact about flamingos: flamingos don’t bend their knees.
What you’re seeing is their ankles being bent.
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28) Each dog has a different nose print.
This is similar to our fingerprint.
29) Ants are so strong that they can carry 50 times their weight.
Weird History Facts
30) In 1905, an 11-year-old boy invented ice pops.
11-year-old Frank Epperson left out a wooden stirrer in a cup of water and soda pop overnight. When he discovered it was frozen the next morning, he also discovered the very first ice pop.
31) Argentina is where the world’s first animated feature film was created.
Before Disney’s Snow White was made in 1937, Argentina was home to the first full-length animated feature film called El Apóstol. It was a political satire consisting of 58,000 drawings and running for 70 minutes.
32) The first airplane flight happened on December 17, 1903.
In Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Wilbur and Orville Wright flew the airplane four short times.
33) Chainsaws began to be used for woodchopping at the start of the 20th century. But before then, chainsaws were used for childbirth to speed up the widening of the pubic cartilage.
34) In the 1840s, children were taught to say “prunes” instead of “cheese.”
This was in order to have their mouths closed. Just another weird history fact in the world of photography.
35) In the Olympics, competitive art was once an official sport. Between 1912 and 1952, artists won medals in architecture, music, painting and sculpture.
Fun, Weird, & Interesting Facts (Continued)
36) The Hollywood sign used to say Hollywoodland.
37) Which American president had a pet hyena? President Theodore Roosevelt.
38) Back in the day, ketchup used to be sold as medicine.
39) When dinosaurs were alive, there were active volcanoes on the moon.
40) The first commercial passenger flight lasted 23 minutes.
41) Before Americans had toilet paper, they used corn husks.
This weird history fact proves to be uncomfortable as well.
42) The Statue of Liberty was once functioning as a lighthouse.
In 1886, the famous statue was a working lighthouse for years. You could see its light from 24 miles away.
43) On May 27, 2005 at 10:07 p.m. Big Ben’s clock stopped.
It was a hot summer day in London, and the heat is presumed to be what caused the famous clock to stop.
44) Queen Elizabeth II was a trained mechanic.
When she was a teenager, Queen Elizabeth II joined the Labor Exchange’s British employment agency. There, she learned about repairing tires, trucks and engines.
45) In 1969, Salvador Dalí created the Chupa Chups logo.
Fun, Weird, & Interesting Facts (Continued)
46) In 1524, the last letter to be added to the English alphabet was the letter “J.” Before it became a letter, the letter “i” was used for both “i” and “j.”
47) The set used on the television show iCarly was also used for Saved by the Bell.
48) The Eiffel Tower was originally supposed to be for the city of Barcelona.
But they rejected the famous tower at the time because they considered it too ugly.
49) A 15-year-old Irish girl was the first person processed at Ellis Island.
In 1892, Annie Moore was the first passenger to arrive at Ellis Island when it opened. She came with her two younger brothers on the SS Nevada.
50) John Quincy Adams once had a pet alligator.
The alligator was gifted to him from a French general, and it lived in one of the bathrooms at the White House.
51) The script for the movie “The Terminator” was sold for $1.
52) Penicillin’s first name was “mold juice.”
Weird Facts About the Human Body
53) Compared to all other human parts, human teeth do not have the power to heal themselves.
Since teeth are coated in enamel and not made of live tissue, they cannot heal on their own like other parts of the body.
54) Identical twins do not have the same fingerprints.
Contrary to popular belief, identical twins can’t have the same fingerprints because of development factors in the womb. The rate their fingers grew, their position in the womb, and the length of their umbilical cord all play a factor.
55) The human brain is eating itself.
Phagocytosis is where cells consume smaller cells or molecules to ultimately remove them from the system. This is not a harmful process but a necessary one in order to preserve gray matter in the brain.
56) The circulatory system is more than 60,000 miles long.
Veins, arteries and capillaries. One weird fact about the human body is that a child’s circulatory system stretches out to 60,000 miles long. By the time they’re adults, it stretches out to 100,000 miles of blood vessels.
Fun, Weird, & Interesting Facts (Continued)
57) We are more creative in the shower.
Warm water in the shower increases the flow of dopamine and increases creativity.
58) The cornea is the one of two parts of the human body without blood vessels.
Coming in as another weird fact about the human body, the cornea and the cartilage do not have blood vessels.
59) Your nose and ears never stop growing.
60) In 2004, Neil Armstrong’s hair was sold for $3,000.
61) To improve their skin, people used to eat arsenic.
62) Is it possible to hum while holding your nose? No.
63) You can be very pregnant and not know it.
About 1 in 500 people don’t realize that they are pregnant until halfway through their pregnancy.
64) The bacteria on your skin cause the itching on your skin.
Staphylococcus aureus releases a chemical that activates a protein in our nerves and tells our brain that there is an itch.
65) In your body, there are more bacterial cells than human cells.
The average person is made up of around 56 percent bacteria.
66) During the hot summer, our nails grow faster.
This weird fact about the human body is because of the increased blood flow to our fingertips.
Fun, Weird, & Interesting Facts (Continued)
67) We sweat when we are anxious in order to inform others.
Our sympathetic nervous system releases hormones like adrenaline when we’re anxious, activating our sweat glands.
68) Humans are the only animals that blush.
69) Humans have tongue prints, just as we have fingerprints.
70) People can only use a small fraction of the earth’s water.
We can only use about 0.007 percent of it.
71) Our brains burn up to 400-500 calories a day.
72) Dead cells in the human body are eaten by other cells in our body. White blood cells, phagocytes, consume the dead cells. It’s their job.
73) It is impossible for most people to lick their own elbows.
But perhaps you’re not most people.
74) On average, people eat around 70 different insects throughout their entire lives while they sleep.
10 of those insects are probably spiders.
Weird Science and Space Facts
75) Out of all the planets, Venus is the only one to spin clockwise.
76) In your house, dead skin cells are the main factor in dust.
According to research at Imperial College London, humans shed roughly 200 million skin cells per hour.
77) Avocados are fruits, not vegetables.
This weird food science fact can start a debate, especially when you say the same thing about tomatoes.
78) The rotation of the Earth is changing speed.
The Earth’s rotation is slowing down. On average, every century the length of a day increases by 1.8 seconds.
79) The universe has a color and it’s called ‘cosmic latte.’
Astronomers have discovered that the light emitted from galaxies has a beige hue, which is named ‘cosmic latte.’
80) Water might not actually be wet.
Coming in as another weird science fact, water itself is not really wet. This is the case because of how scientists have defined wetness. It’s in the liquid’s ability to sustain contact with a solid surface. Startling, I know.
Fun, Weird, & Interesting Facts (Continued)
81) If all of the world’s entire bacteria were stacked together, it would stretch for 10 billion light-years.
Here’s another weird science fact about it: it could wrap around the Milky Way over 20,000 times.
82) The Sun is not silent.
That Sun above us does make sound through pressure waves. But the weird science fact here is that the wavelength of the sun’s pressure waves is impossible to capture with human hearing.
83) The Solar System consists of a wall – it’s called the “boundary wall.”
84) NASA’s Moon landing mission wasn’t entirely true. When the astronauts landed back on Earth, their quarantine procedure was a performative one.
85) What do Comets smell like? Well, rotten eggs. That’ll happen because of the ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, sulfur dioxide and more.
86) The North and South Pole are moving. The North Pole moves at around 34 miles per year.
87) Sound can be in negative decibels.
88) Nutmeg is a hallucinogen.
If you eat large amounts of nutmeg, you can hallucinate because it contains myristicin which is a mind-altering ingredient.
89) Bananas are radioactive.
Because bananas are rich in potassium, they are a little bit radioactive. But don’t worry about this weird science fact. You’re already 280 times more radioactive than a banana.
90) A straight line doesn’t exist.
This weird science fact is because if you zoom into anything, you’ll find curves and inconsistencies.
Fun, Weird, & Interesting Facts (Continued)
91) Deaf people can use sign language in their sleep.
92) The earth has so much gold that there is enough to coat the planet.
About 99 percent of gold can be found in the earth’s core.
93) There exists a planet that is mostly made of diamonds.
The planet 55 Cancri e is twice the size of Earth and located 40 light-years away.
94) The moon has moonquakes.
These happen because of tidal stresses occurring between the moon and Earth.
95) A lightning bolt is five times hotter than the sun’s surface.
96) The moon is shrinking.
But they are shrinking at a glacial pace. Moonquakes could be the root cause of the matter.
97) If the earth doubled in size, then all trees would topple over.
This is a direct result of changes in surface gravity.
Fun, Weird, & Interesting Facts (Continued)
98) It’s not Venus that is the closest planet to Earth, but Mercury.
99) Researchers have found that laughter came before language.
100) It is impossible to fold a piece of A-4 paper more than eight times.
101) Lemons float, while limes sink.
This is because limes are denser than lemons.
102) Plants were formed before seeds.
Moss-like plants most likely reproduced with single-celled spores. Then 150 million years later, multicellular seeds finally began to evolve.
103) It’s true. Some fungi will create zombies and control their minds.
Ophiocordyceps, anyone?
104) We can see stars as they were 4,000 years ago.
More Weird Facts
105) Australia is wider than the moon.
The diameter of Australia comes in at 2,485 miles, while the moon’s diameter stretches 2,113 miles in diameter.
106) In the summer, the Eiffel Tower gets taller.
As it is made out of iron, due to thermal expansion the Eiffel Tower can rise up to 6 inches taller.
107) More than any other country in the world, Sudan has the most pyramids.
Egypt has 138 pyramids, while Sudan has 255.
108) Parts of Africa are in all four hemispheres.
Africa is such a large continent, covering nearly 12 million miles, that there are parts of the continent spanning all four hemispheres.
109) Despite their different colors, Fruit Loops are all the same flavor.
Sorry to break the news like this, but it’s just one of the many weird fun facts about cereal.
110) Apples you find in the supermarket can be a year old.
It is one of the many weird facts about food at the supermarket! Those supermarket apples might actually be a year old. Farmers often harvest them in the fall, wax them, and store them away.
Fun, Weird, & Interesting Facts (Continued)
111) If you wear a tie, it can reduce the blood flow to your brain by 7.5 percent.
Wearing a tie too tight can cause dizziness and headaches, including more pressure on your eyes.
112) The fear of long words is, in fact, a long word: Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia.
American poet Aimee Nezheukumatathil coined the word as we know it today. However, it was the Roman poet Horace who first used the word in the first century to criticize writers using long words.
113) Mount Everest isn’t actually the tallest mountain on Earth.
Hawaii’s twin volcanoes Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa are taller than Mount Everest. 2.6 miles of the volcanoes are submerged underwater, and Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa are 6.34 miles tall.
114) Most of the maps around the world are wrong. Maps that are found and life-size are the most accurate.
115) People can actually die laughing. Intense laughter can cause suffocation or a heart attack.
116) Soccer teams that wear red tend to play better.
The color of clothes affects how others see you and how you feel. Studies have shown that soccer teams played better in red in home matches.
117) A person’s signature can reveal a lot about their personality.
In men, a larger signature has been associated with social bravado, while in women, a larger signature points to narcissism.
118) Most of the wasabi you eat isn’t really wasabi.
Because actual wasabi can be quite expensive, store-bought wasabi is often made out of horseradish.
119) According to the World Happiness Index, Finland is the happiest country on Earth.
There is also one sauna for every 1.59 people.
120) The pope cannot be an organ donor.
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121) The longest concert to have ever happened lasted 453 hours.
122) If martial artists smile before a martial arts tournament, it increases the likelihood of losing.
Doing so can convey weakness or submissiveness.
123) In Japanese, the word “kuchisabishii” describes eating not because you’re hungry but because your mouth is lonely.
124) Which celebrity inspired the creation of Google images? Jennifer Lopez.
Her green dress at the 2000 Grammys led people to search online for photographs of her outfit.
125) British military tanks were designed in a way so that they could make tea.
If the military crew need any hot boiling water, there’s a built-in boiling vessel to make coffee or tea.
126) Walt Disney has won the most Academy Awards.
He’s earned 26 of them, actually.
127) There is a fruit that tastes like chocolate pudding.
Black sapote, native to Central and South America, tastes like chocolate and sweet custard. This is surely a weirdly delicious fact.
128) The actual name of the hashtag is octothorpe.
129) The name of M&Ms comes from their creators.
Businessmen Forrest Mars and Bruce Murrie created the famous candy.
130) Vatican City is the smallest country in the world.
It is so small that it is 120 times smaller than Manhattan.
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131) The longest walking distance in the world adds up to 14,000 miles.
You won’t need a vehicle when you walk from Magdan, Russia to Cape Town, South Africa.
132) There are more than 200 Kit Kat flavors in Japan.
There are various flavors for cities, regions and seasons.
133) The shortest commercial flight in the world takes place in Scotland.
From Westray to Papa Westray islands, the journey is 1.7 miles and lasts for 90 seconds by airplane.
134) It takes 90 days for one drop of water to travel the entire Mississippi River.
135) In Japan, there is one vending machine for every 40 people.
136) McDonald’s once had bubblegum-flavored broccoli on the menu.
137) The first oranges were not the color orange.
They were, in fact, green in Southeast Asia.
Fun, Weird, & Interesting Facts (Continued)
138) The letter “Q” does not appear in any U.S. state’s name.
139) The fear of other people’s opinions is called allodoxaphobia.
140) There is no number before 1,000 that has the letter “A.”
141) Each year, Hawaii gets 3 feet closer to Alaska.
Weird fun facts: You never know when you might need them
While going through the list above, you might have thought of some people who wouldn’t believe what you just read. These weird facts can often pose as great argumentative essay topics as well, but they’re a great way to get us thinking. Although this was a list of 151 weird facts, there’s still so much around us, both near and far, that has yet to be discovered and understood.
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