fact
Pepperoni is an American invention. It’s similar to the spicy salamis of southern Italy, but it also has elements characteristic of German sausages (smokiness, beef content, and fine grind). In Italian, “peperoni” just means “bell peppers”.
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North Korea, “world’s worst Internet black hole,” restricts Internet access to high-level Party officials and then only “to browse fan pages of the leading Kim dynasty”$$ in response, “North Koreans [are] buying properties close to foreign embassies in a bid to access their wifi.”
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History is very rich and full to the brim with stories of people who led full and interesting lives. The problem, of course, is that you probably heard about the same ones over and over again.
You’re probably tired of hearing about George Washington by now, and that’s okay.
But what if people told you that as cool as Washington’s life was—it would do you good to learn about how he tackled a smallpox outbreak that could have decimated his troops—there are others out there who are just as cool, if not cooler?
“Who would you consider the most badass person in history?”
“Raoul Wallenberg.”
“During World War II, he posed as a Swedish ambassador and confidently lied through his teeth to Nazis for years to save tens of thousands of Jews from the Holocaust.”
“There were instances of him flagging down trains bound for death camps, and yelling at the machine-gun-toting SS men that Swedish citizens were on board, handing out homemade fake passport documents to as many Jews as possible as he went.”
“He got away with it for so long because Fascists have a thing for confident authority figures.”
“The guy was captured by the red army in 1945 and likely died in a gulag.” ~ crappyentrepreneur
Ben Salomon.”
“The dude was just a dentist who got drafted into World War II. He was tending to injured soldiers when four Japanese soldiers entered the tent and killed a man he had just saved.”
“This man killed all four of them, then grabbed a machine gun and fired upon the incoming Japanese forces, letting the injured escape.”
“They say when his body was discovered, 98 enemy troops lay dead in front of him. He had been shot 72 times and bayonetted over two dozen times before he died. What a legend.” ~ DarkwingDave007
“Welles Crowther, aka The Man In The Red Bandana.”
“I’m sure most of us have thought about what it must have been like in the World Trade Center on 9/11 and it must have been debilitatingly petrifying.”
“He was 24 years old working on the 104th floor as an equities trader.”
“Made his way down to the sky lobby of the South Tower and found a badly burned woman, carried her down 17 floors, then went back upstairs to help guide others to the only passable stairwell.”
“Stayed up there helping others and working with the fire department until the towers collapsed. He’s responsible for saving around 20 lives and died a damn hero.” ~ FrankSkapopolous
“Nellie Bly.”
“She went undercover and endured abuse to cover neglect and abuse in Blackwell’s asylum.”
“She then went to Mexico and called out the dictator for going after the press and oppressing his people and then fled/was exiled from Mexico because of that.”
“She traveled the world in 70-something days to prove you could travel the world in 80 days or less (based on the Jules Verne novel), also did some reporting on the Eastern European front in World War I, and was arrested after she was mistaken for a British spy.”
“And she did so much more! Such a badass and one of my historical heroes.” ~ Cheshire_Cat8888
“Witold Pilecki volunteered to enter the Auschwitz death camp and escaped it to report what was happening there to allies of Poland. No one gave a f*** at that time.” ~ Buckszpryt
“Desmond Doss, an army medic in World War II who was constantly belittled and abused by his battalion and superiors for refusing to use a weapon as it went against his beliefs.”
“Then when he landed in Okinawa and more than half of his battalion were shredded by Japanese machine-gun fire, Desmond Doss crawled through the dirt over the course of several days to as many of his injured allies as he could and dragged them all the way back to the 40-foot cliff they had scaled up from, and lowered them to safety.”
“Some of these injured men were lying 15ft from the enemy machine gun itself, and all the while Doss wore his medic helmet, which stood out like a giant bullseye on a battlefield where the Japanese soldiers were ordered to kill doctors first to crush morale.”
“In the end, he saved the lives of 75 men and survived with an arm fracture from a sniper round and several pieces of shrapnel embedded in his body from when he tried to kick a grenade away from him and his men.”
“He was the first conscientious objector to be awarded the Medal of Honor.” ~ -CorrectOpinion-
“Peter Freuchen. He was a Danish explorer, journalist, author, and anthropologist.”
“He is widely known for his exploration of the Arctic Circle and discovery of vast areas of Greenland.”
“He was an Indigenous rights activist, having married an Inuit woman. He escaped a death warrant issued by the Third Reich for punching Nazis.”
“Won the $64,000 question as a contestant on the game show. He wrestled a polar bear and won. And as if this all wasn’t enough, he escaped a near-death encounter in a blizzard by fashioning a spade out of his own frozen feces.” ~ SpaceMonkeyXLLII
“That teenage girl that was the sole survivor of a plane crash and made her way through the Amazon…. She’s definitely up there!” ~ smokeandlavender
“Julianne Koepke.”
“While injured, bleeding, and functionally blind nonetheless. She had a strong prescription and lost her glasses in the crash.”
“I remember reading that she waded through a river, using a shoe to tap in front of her and scare off possible snakes. She was then found by a native tribe boating in the river.” ~ lordoftoastonearth
“Definitely Major Hugh Thompson. I’m sure there are people who have done similarly brave things, but not that I know about.”
“In 1968, Thompson managed to stop the My Lai massacre almost single-handedly. He arrived after many civilians had already been killed, and couldn’t understand how they had died.”
“After realising his fellow American soldiers were firing on unarmed civilians, he landed his helicopter between the Vietnamese and the soldiers.”
“He then told the troops that if they continued to do what they were doing, he and his crew would open fire on them. After getting back to base, he filed a complaint about what he had witnessed.”
“His complaint was covered up, and he was shunned as a traitor. It wasn’t until 1998 that the army acknowledged he did the right thing.”
“It’s common to be brave in war when you know that you’ll be lauded as a hero – it’s another thing entirely to do it knowing you’ll be seen as a traitor.
“He turned against his troops and country to protect innocent lives, despite what it would cost him, and I think that’s about as brave as you can get.” ~ hellebellet
Well, I don’t know about you, but I definitely feel enlightened after reading these.
Wouldn’t it be great if you had heard about these when you were in school at some point?
Perhaps that would have made history class more interesting for many of you.
We all know the basic memorization model isn’t necessarily the most conducive way to learn.
Lies and truth are not one in the same, but the are related. That’s because the most fantastical tales are forged in reality.
Which is why they say truth is stranger than fiction.
I mean look at the world we’re living in. Look at the half decade we just survived.
There are things we’ve all been privy to that if we told our younger selves years ago about we would’ve laughed in disbelief.
But facts are facts.
No matter how wild they can seem, the details are real. We just don’t know how anyone is left stunned by truth anymore.
Life is an Onion article, get comfortable.
That is why a shy Redditor wanted to get together and share some shocking, pearl clutching facts we may not have been so willing to originally believe until we got receipts.
“The most BS-sounding-but-true fact you know?”
“Cosmic rays from outer space cause glitches in your electronics. In some electronics, cosmic rays are the primary source of soft errors.”
“Cosmic rays are one of the main reasons that servers and high reliability computers use error correcting RAM.” ~ random_reddit_accoun
“Trees have such intricate root systems that a tree low on one particular type of nutrient will acquire some from his neighbors and make up for it later.”
“This is especially prevalent during the winter months when some trees don’t have leaves and so need extra help from their evergreen friends.” ~ kewlkidmgoo
“In the early 1900’s a wave a molasses rushed through the streets of Boston at 35mph killing 21 people. For decades later, locals said on hot summer days they could still smell molasses in the air.” ~ bartlechoo
“If you melted down the Eiffel Tower, the pool of iron would be less than 3 inches deep (in a square area the same dimensions as the tower base).” ~ Reddit
“You know those arch things connecting the legs of the Eiffel Tower? If you know anything about architecture, you’d probably assume they make perfect sense.”
“They are there to transfer the load of the tower above down to to the legs. Arches are perfect for that.”
“Nope. They’re a scam. Eiffel designed the thing without them, but the guys holding the money thought it looked too rickety.”
“And people wouldn’t pay to go up in it. So they forced him to bolt on fake arch panels to make it LOOK stronger.” ~ DrColdReality
“There were people who were killed by the Atom bombs who were born during Japan’s Samurai era.”
“Japans military went from swords, spears and bows to planes, tanks and aircraft carriers in a single humans lifetime. And people say Civilization is unrealistic.” ~ neohellpoet
“The United States in World War 2 created a bomb that used bats.”
“The bats would be carrying small incendiary charges and would be released from the bomb in mid air, causing them to fly and scatter to different buildings in the area.”
“The charges would then detonate and set all the buildings on fire. It was tested and proven to be very effective.”
“This was actually APPROVED by the government for development and production, and then cancelled because of the atomic bomb.”
“The idea was thought up by a Dentist who was friends with Eleanor Roosevelt: Link” ~ DinosaurFriend
“The Pistol Shrimp can create a cavitation bubble that when collapsing can create a sonoluminescence that can reach temperatures near the temperature of the surface of sun and the sound competes with some of the loudest creatures in the ocean.” ~ DaddysWetPeen
“If every star in our galaxy had a trillion planets, each with a trillion people living on them, and each of these people has a trillion packs of cards and somehow they manage to make unique shuffles 1,000 times per second, and they’d been doing that since the Big Bang, they’d only just now be starting to repeat shuffles.”
“That was copied from this QI article.”
“The number of ways to shuffle a deck of cards is 80,658,175,170,943,878,571,660,636,856,403,766, 975,289,505,440,883,277,824,000,000,000,000. ~ ccnova
“On March 1, 1950, the West Side Baptist Church exploded at 7:27 p.m., right when the scheduled choir practice was supposed to be occurring.”
“The explosion was powerful and swift, taking a nearby radio station off the air. However, not a single choir member got hurt.”
“All fifteen members were delayed from attending the practice. Two women had car troubles, one had trouble with a particularly difficult math problem, another was listening to their favorite radio station.”
“The list goes on and on. If they had been at the church on time for the choir practice, they would have died.” ~ SecretAgendaMan
“There is an immortal jellyfish. When it gets old it reverts itself back into it’s youngest stage and relives life over and over again!” ~ Rdken13
“This is more scary that bull crap but its true nonetheless, there are thousands of micro tumors in your body right now and they only need correct conditions to become cancerous.”
“Your body kicks butt at fighting these micro tumors so you have nothing really to worry about.”
“Chocolate doesn’t have caffeine. Caffeine is added to chocolate because people, in err, expect it to be there.”
“In actuality it naturally contains theobromine which is a methylxanthine, like caffeine. This is what makes chocolate bad for dogs.”
“Also the toxic dose for them is similar between dogs and humans at around 150g/kg if I remember right.”
“Humans just weigh more and don’t tend to sneak into the pantry and eat a 2 lbs block of bakers chocolate.” ~ IRageAlotInIn
“In the Age of Sail, piracy was seen as simply part of doing business.”
“When approached by a pirate ship, a merchant vessel would almost never put up a fight, simply turning their cargo over instead. Why?”
“Because, as a cost of doing business, cargo was insured against piracy and there was no point in risking life and limb to protect it.” ~ Blenderhead36
They say don’t believe everything you read, but I just read a lot of stuff that makes sense.
Look at it this way, even if it’s odd, it’s still knowledge.
Collect as much of that as you can.
You never know when Jeopardy! will call.
An English convict named William Buckley was transported to a penal colony in Australia, After escaping he was discovered by an Aboriginal tribe who believed he was the returning spirit of a deceased tribesmen so they took him in, He continued living with them for 32 years. By virtue of his age and peaceful ways, […]
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Director Michael Bay (Transformers) often traces his interest in action films back to when he attached firecrackers to a toy train and filmed the ensuing fiery disaster with his mother’s 8 mm camera. The fire department was called and he was grounded.
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In 1900, the Secretary of the Navy wanted to use the USS Constitution for target practice until it sunk. A benefactor offered to buy it but was refused so he started a campaign that successfully pressured Congress into saving it. Built in 1797, it is now the oldest ship still afloat.
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It’s easy to dismiss everything going on inside of us as unimportant and anyone who didn’t pay attention in high school biology class might agree with that statement, but the human body is a wonder of science and nature.
By all accounts, we all appear mundane on the outside.
We are all of us just a walking, talking bag of bones, electrical impulses and chemical reactions in a meat suit with an appetite for excellent television and an addiction to overpowered, miniature super computers we carry with us everywhere.
But there’s more to us than that.
For example, did you know your liver is capable of regenerating itself like Wolverine or that you can produce enough spit in a lifetime to fill up two entire swimming pools?
WARNING: some of it is kind of gross to those with weak stomachs.
Just when we think we know everything about the human body, the internet goes and surprises us with a bit of blood and gore.
“What’s a strange, but true fact about the human body?”
“The acid in your stomach could burn your skin! I always thought that was pretty interesting, and reminds me of the scene in Alien, where the alien blood burns everything.” ~ RebaRocket
“Humans can outrun almost every animal on long distance.” ~ WantedJOCZ
“Long distances only. Humans have been known to jog for days at a time without sleeping, and we seem to have evolved as endurance predators (ie, jog after an animal until it’s literally too tired to fight back).”
“In cold weather the only animal that beats us is huskies, and in hot weather we can be outdistanced by camels and IIRC kangaroos, but otherwise we tend to win in the end.” ~ Pseudonymico
“Your intestines are in near constant motion, wiggling like a worm.” ~ EasilyForgotten1
“We know what everything would feel like on our tongues without even licking it.” ~ meh2557
“I’ve read this before and it blew my mind looking around at everything and realizing how weirdly, fascinatingly true it is. I’m assuming it’s a combination of you know textures from your fingers and that stage of infancy when babies put everything in their mouths.” ~ ablondedude
“When pregnant, if a mother suffers a heart attack or other large physiological issue, the fetus will release a swarm of stem cells that move to the affected area, greatly helping in survival and healing.” ~ SugaBear9001
“that the brain operates on the same amount of power as a 10-watt lightbulb” ~ boringg-moon
“Our immune system is so strong it can kill our own bodies’ cells: so techinically we do have a self destruct sequence” ~ SheepSh-t2525
“Our cells have a self destruct sequence also. If things start getting weird, your mitochondria send a signal to the brain which sends a signal to the cells lysosomes which then burst open and destroy the cell.”
“It’s called apoptosis or programmed cell death.” ~ callisstaa
“Until the age of like 2 ish babies don’t have real kneecaps, they are made of a squishy cartilage type thing” ~ Bunchnivski
Lots of their bones are squishy cartilage stuff, and only grow into bone as they age. Compare this baby hand with this adult hand x-ray.”
“We can actually use this development of cartilage into bone in the wrist to figure out roughly how old somebody is.” ~ elcarath
“We have the same number of bones in our neck as a giraffe.” ~ Team_Captain_America
“Giraffes’ neck vertibrae are just really big.” ~ KaityKat117
“Human breast milk adapts it’s nutritious content to fit the need of the offspring. Baby lacks iron?”
“Next dose of milk will contain more iron. It’s amazing.” ~ Grimms_tale
“how does that work?”
“like.. how does the body of the mother know what the baby needs?”
“or is it more a ‘the ingredients of milk change over time, as the baby goes through different stages of grow’?” ~ Chepi_ChepChep
“Breastmilk is SO cool!! There’s a reason why it’s called liquid gold!”
“More fun facts:”
“1- breastmilk can be dripped into babies eye/ear/nose to treat infections (as mentioned by someone below, it works best as an anti-inflammatory, which can help! Also, it’s more of a preventative than a cure.)”
“2- breastmilk does change depending on babies needs and as they grow”
“3- breastmilk contents differ depending on babies gender”
“4- breastmilk can help with cradle cap”
“5- it works on mild eczema!”
“6- the components of breastmilk could lead to treatment for cancers! possibilities still under trial”
“7- it’s “made” out of the mother’s blood”.
“Milk is made inside glands from the blood stream. Breast milk is NOT made from the mother’s stomach contents”
“The foods mom eats are broken down in the digestive system. Blood reaches the milk glands where it delivers carbohydrates, nutrients, white blood cells, enzymes, pro- and pre-biotics water, fat, and proteins into the gland. link!”
“8- mothers can detect issues with the baby through all of that kissing, which tells her body what to produce (like more antibodies ect) whoa!“~ Exotic-BlueBird
“It’s possible for your bowel movements to go backwards, causing you to poop from your mouth” ~ ipakookapi
“Just a way your body adapts to changes. If, for some reason you can’t poop, your body will attempt to expel it like its other waste products. You’ll find your breath will go rank, you’ll throw up poop and you urine will smell strong.”
“This will happen shortly before you die of sepsis, since all of these methods collectively aren’t good enough to dispose of everything you need.” ~ Gh3rkins
Never forget the human body is a fascinating and marvelous wonder of biology, chemistry and physics.
Just never be surprised when it does something surprising and/or upsetting to learn about.
We’re only human, after all.
Conspiracy theories are attractive.
It might be easy to dismiss someone who believes that the moon landing was faked or that Covid-19 vaccines aren’t safe, but it’s a bit more complicated than that.
According to the Fight Fake News initiative at Louisiana State University (LSU), “Conspiracy theories are captivating because they provide explanations for confusing, emotional and ambiguous events especially when official explanations seem inadequate.”
People “naturally want to make sense of the world,” the initiative notes, observing that conspiracy theories “provide structured narratives of events that comport with how some people process information.”
So what happens when a conspiracy theory turns out to actually be true? Your brain just exploded at the thought, huh?
“What are some popular conspiracy theories that have been proved?”
“The United States really did engage in a secret and illegal bombing campaign in Cambodia during the Vietnam war.” ~ Redditor
“Yep. Led to the rise of the Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge. If you don’t remember, Pol Pot instigated a massive genocide in Cambodia.” ~ tface23
“Hemingway went off the grid at the end of his life believing that the FBI was tracking him. He was a world-class drinker and not the best individual.”
“He wasn’t wrong about that.” ~ thatthingdo
“The sad part is that being tracked fueled his anxiety which eventually contributed to his decision to kill himself.” ~ TXR22
“The Black Hand did give Gavrilo Princip the gun he used to kill Archduke Ferdinand. They had other assassins on that route.”
“And even though this hits up all the marks of a conspiracy theory, it’s true.” ~ Bitlong_Salad
“The Serbian prime minister knew about the plans and tried to discreetly warn about it but was misunderstood.”
“The original assassination plan included grenades, but every assassin failed, Princip actually intended to kill one of his fellow assassins, who was caught and failed to commit suicide, when the archduke happened to pass by on his way to visit wounded officers in the hospital.” ~ GrandTheftPony
“When you hear the full story of Ferdinand’s death, it’s much harder to consider it a conspiracy.”
“I mean, everything about it was so poorly thought out down to the fact that Ferdinand was the highest-ranking ally the Black Hand’s cause had within the government at the time.” ~ HandicapperGeneral
“That older Iphones are purposely being slowed down.” ~ mark484877
“It’s not so black and white, but you are correct. What a lot of people fail to mention is that Samsung does the same thing if not worse because you can ‘speed it back up’ for a fee.” ~ tireddrew
“Have you heard of Verizon or Google doing the same? My Pixel 2 battery used to last me 2+ days easily before the phone was paid off.”
“Within a week of paying it off, my battery suddenly started lasting me about half a day with minimal use, and the phone started running slowly as well. Come to think of it, the GPS issues started around then too.”
“When using maps, the GPS can tell me where I am, but doesn’t update location once I start navigation.”
“Service providers have no control over when your phone’s hardware clocks out. But a lot of Android phones usually die when they hit the 2-3 year mark.”
“As much as people hate on Apple, I’ve been a user since 2012 and have had an excellent experience. I used to be Android, but I had an LG phone that really soured the experience and now I’ll never go back.” ~ tireddrew
“Operation Northwoods: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods“
“A proposed CIA operation to train Cuban refugees to commit mass shooting sprees in cities like Miami, to help convince the public that we should invade Cuba and kill Castro. Luckily, JFK had the sense to reject the idea.” ~ Redditor
“Operation Northwoods is a classic example of a Western government planning a false flag against civilians to justify war.”
“I do see this example ‘refuted’ in the sense that it was merely in the brainstorming stages and not operationally ready, but it was meant to be implemented fairly soon after the memo was written – US planners anticipated Cuba would sign a defense pact with the Soviet Union in the coming months.”
“Such a pact would’ve tied America’s hands behind its back in trying to thwart the Cuban revolution.”
“I think it’s noteworthy how the generals casually throw in a reference to ‘Remember the Maine’, in connection with planning a false flag. I wonder if it’s an open secret in military/intelligence black ops circles that such incidents were actually carried out from the inside.”
“One scenario from Northwoods – the swapping of civilian airliners with drone aircraft – is thought by some 9/11 Truthers to have been used to carry out the September 11th attacks.” ~ 50YearPlanBro
“As in it never got past the memo phase and was never close to being implemented? Have you even read the actual memo the Joint Chiefs of Staff gave JFK.”
“It’s so badly written that it reeks of someone telling their subordinates the government version of ‘I need pictures, pictures of Spiderman’. DoD wanted to prove it could come up with something and it was just….awful.” ~ CitationX_7N11C
“The term “conspiracy theorist” was coined during the JFK assassination to discredit the people that had a different interpretation from the official story.” ~ OttoManSatire
“They turned ‘conspiracy’ into a dirty word. People act like it is some mythological creature but it is simply a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful.” ~ OMGhateallofyou
According to Karen Douglas, Ph.D., a professor of social psychology at the University of Kent in the United Kingdom, “Believing in conspiracy theories and being suspicious about the actions of others is in some ways quite an adaptive thing to do.”
We don’t necessarily want to trust everyone, she points out, so conspiracy theories have always been around.
Which one will surprise us next by turning out to be true? We have no way to know, but there are at least a few people out there who are bound to feel vindicated.
A guy drove 3.25 million miles with his Volvo that he bought in 1966 until his death in 2018.
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