These 7 Random Facts Will Make You a Smarter Person

Here are a few questions for you. When does your feeling of impending doom actually have a high chance of being right, and why might that also be really bad news for you?

What industry paid Harvard scientists to blame cardiovascular disease solely on saturated fat?

Are you trustworthy? Do you cuss a lot?

All this and more in today’s bag of Fact Snacks:

#7. Swearing keeps your filter open.

Photo Credit: dyk

Sources: 1, 2

#6. There’s a bar for after the bar in Amsterdam.

Photo Credit: dyk

Source

#5. When that feeling of dread is real…

Photo Credit: dyk

Source

#4. The Nobel champion is in Paris.

Photo Credit: dyk

Source

Photo Credit: Quartz

#3. Harvard shilled for Big Sugar.

Photo Credit: dyk

Sources: 1, 2

#2. Canada and Denmark have a ‘whiskey war.’

Photo Credit: dyk

Source: 1, 2

#1. Powdered wigs hid syphilis.

Photo Credit: dyk

Source

Want more Fact Snacks?

We’ve got a whole book full of them:

Photo Credit: Amazon

Hundreds of your favorites facts, such as:

  • Your pupils dilate when you’re looking at someone you love.
  • Octopuses are older than dinosaurs.
  • Caffeine withdrawal is officially a mental disorder.
  • The only breed of dog to be mentioned by name in the Bible is the greyhound.
  • Your heart is so powerful that it can squirt blood 30 feet across the room.
  • Dr. Seuss’s first book was rejected 27 times.

Buy it now on Amazon:

Did You Know?: A collection of the most interesting facts, stories and trivia…ever! (Volume 1) Paperback

Did You Know?: A collection of the most interesting facts, stories and trivia…ever! Kindle Edition

Or keep digging into more lists like these:

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Kids of the ’80s and ’90s Share Their Favorite Slang Terms They Wish Would Make a Comeback

Do you have any favorite slang terms from the 1980s and ’90s that you wish would make a totally tubular comeback? Personally, I’ve always been a big fan of “Psych!” and hope that’ll make a comeback sometime soon. I’m going to start using it, at least. These AskReddit users definitely do…

1. Inspired by Heathers

“What’s your damage?”

2. Nothing wrong with that

“I still say Rad. And get crap for it.”

3. Cool kid

“My 3 y/o is watching the 80s/90s cartoon and he’s taken to saying “let’s boogaloo” when he wants to go somewhere.”

4. Maybe?

“Do people still say wicked? Because this is a wicked good thread.
Also solid.”

5. Oh God, no!

“One of the primary directives of the mid-90’s
was to avoid being (or being accused of being)
a poser.”

6. Good one

“That’s tight.”

7. Gnar-dog

“Gnarly.”

8. Yes!

“Tubular.”

9. A pretty sick burn

” “If you love it so much WHY DON’T YOU MARRY IT” “

10. TMNT

“Kowabunga.”

11. Just do it!

” “Oh snap” is one I’d use again.”

12. One of the best

“Homie don’t play that – When you talk about something you refuse to do or accept.”

13. Boom

“I liked psych/sike.”

14. Very popular at one time

” “Suck it!” while making the Degeneration X cross on your crotch.”

15. Bring it back!

“Saying something is “the bomb”. I miss it.”

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These 5+ Facts Will Really Make You Think

Hope you’ve got your thinking cap ready, because these 7 facts are going to put that mind of yours to work.

But they’re all extremely solid, so 7 is the perfect number for you. Enjoy.

1. Avert your eyes

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2. A true hero

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3. They blew it

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4. A different take on a classic

Photo Credit: did you know?

5. Interesting…

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6. Vader plant

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7. This is wonderful

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12+ People Share the Most Horrible Thing They’ve Ever Done That They DON’T Regret

We’ve all done something in our lives that has brought us feelings of regret. Maybe we meant to do it, maybe not – but what’s important is that we use those feelings of remorse to make ourselves better people.

Unfortunately, some people didn’t get the memo. In this AskReddit thread, 15 people reveal the worst things they’ve ever done that they don’t feel the least bit bad about. This should be interesting…

1. Mother

“I refused my mom when she said she was going to be homeless if I didn’t give her money. She said she would be sleeping on a bench if I didn’t help her. I told her to get warm blankets. It was hard. The next day she checked herself into rehab.”

2. Payback

“Girl systematically bullied me at college so I reported her boyfriend for staying over in student accommodation, he wasn’t allowed back, they broke up because of the distance and I convinced her it was one of her friends that reported her so she became paranoid of everyone around her”

3. Puppy thief

“Stole a puppy from a yard in a really bad part of town because it was being neglected and abused and had a 99.9% chance of getting run over eventually. I’d spoken to the kids in the yard before and even offered to buy it but they said no. They gave me their other puppies (which I adopted into great homes) but they wanted to keep this one.

So one day in passing on my way to work, the puppy was in the street. I scooped it up and started taking a new route.”

4. Headbutt

“I ‘accidentally’ headbutted this girl in the face at a concert. It was a busy gig so people were bumping into people and dancing. She decided to start punching the back of my head and shoving me. I asked my cousin to push me into her and I stuck out my head to make sure it hit her. I then turned round and apologized.”

5. Time to learn a lesson

“My friends and I know someone who is notorious for having no money when we are out at a bar. One night, I saw him out and offered to give him a ride home trying to be nice. He says cool. When we go to leave, he tried walking out and manager stopped him and told him he hasn’t paid.

I told him okay we will wait, but he says to go and he can catch a ride with our friend Mark. Well Mark left 10 min before us so he’s screwed (he banks on Mark to buy him drinks.) But whatever, I leave.

Of course he called me on my way home and is begging for money. I didn’t go back for him and he had to clean the bathrooms at the bar and a bunch of other stuff. He then had to walk home at 3 in the morning for a few miles, but he needed it.”

6. Out the door

“Abandoned a pregnant lover. I was very worried that it was mine, but when it was confirmed not to be I ended it immediately. She didn’t cheat on me; she was newly pregnant before I came along and didn’t know. We were developing something, but I’m not even considering getting involved in that for half a second.”

7. Wow!

“Two kids I hated in class got into an argument and started side-kicking at each other. Like, it was really nothing, but the teacher sent them both to the office. Since I was sitting next to them, I got called into the office to fill out a witness report. Since I hated both these guys, I greatly exaggerated the situation and both kids ended up getting suspended. This was during the last week of school, so neither of them would be able to take their finals, and because of that, they failed and both of them ended up having to repeat a year.”

8. No remorse

“Dropped a shot-put on a kids thumb in primary school. He got in trouble for everything and didn’t give a sh!t if he was suspended. None of the teachers authority or disciplining meant anything to him. We were supposed to clean out the sports shed and he was f*cking around and being useless, just laying on floor arms outstretched refusing to move. I was carrying the shot-puts to another shelf and told him to move.

He stayed on the floor.

I held the 3kg weight above his hands and threatened to drop it (I wasn’t actually going to, just hoped he would move) he called my bluff and narrowed his eyes and said “do it” and in that moment I though “f this kid” and dropped it on his thumb. He never bothered me again.

I got detention and was forced to apologize but I had no remorse.”

9. Classic!

“I put laxatives in the football players water cooler mid game because they took over the field we were practicing on for soccer. They had to forfeit the game and canceled the next two weeks of games/practices. I might have went a little overboard but oh well.”

10. No regrets

“I ended contact with a guy that has Aspergers. I’m usually easy going and nice, but this guy just rubbed everyone in our friend group the wrong way. He was edgy for no reason and would force conversation on topics that only interested him.

Things came to a head when he got creepy with one of the girls, and commented how he imagined shooting the other one while playing Call of Duty. Line crossed. We were done with him and told him to get lost. He begged us to forgive him, claiming he had:
“Aspergers and I’m depressed, I didn’t know that was wrong.”

Bullsh!t, I’ve known plenty of people with mental ailments that don’t do what he did.

Then for some reason he became fixated on me, like I was the one that could get him back into the group. He just would not leave me alone. I refused to give a single thought to him. Then he started saying I was going to regret it if I didn’t get him back in.

I have family members with schizophrenia, and drug problems. I’ve heard these threats before. The friends were freaking out, but I convinced them not to. You can’t yield to these manipulative tactics. Because that’s what it was. Manipulation.

I told him in response: “I would pity you. But I won’t feel guilty. That’s your personal problem.”

I put it out of my mind. Whether or not he did, I didn’t care. I refuse to have my life jerked around.

About a week later: “Why can’t we be friends?”

Blocked him across all media. No regrets.”

11. Speed bump

“I lived on a street where commuters regularly drove 40 to 50 mph with a 20 mph speed limit making it dangerous to pull out of my driveway or my daughter to walk to school. One day the town finally put in speed bumps to slow down traffic. That night I removed the newly planted sign that said CAUTION SPEED BUMP AHEAD. Several cars were damaged when they went speeding over the bump.”

12. Dad

“I cut my abusive father out of my life and didn’t answer his calls or texts even after he’d been diagnosed with cancer and given only 3 months to live.

That bastard did chemo and surgery and is still alive years later. I haven’t talked to him since but my stepmom keeps tabs on him and will occasionally, unasked, tell me something about him.

Sorry, not sorry Dad. You shouldn’t have been a selfish, emotionally abusive asshole. Then maybe you’d have a daughter who gave a shit about you.”

13. Out of my life

“I cut my grandmother out of my life. She was emotionally abusive and extremely manipulative, and I got fed up with it after she tried to blackmail me and started lying about me. This is the same lady who served an eviction notice alongside my birthday card, had my cousin arrested and her kids taken, and talks crap about the decent side of the family. My grandfather warned my mom to get away once he died, and his dying words were literally tell my grandmother to shut up. Leading to that point she had his will changed while he was not mentally fit. I hate her. I always will. But it’s apparently necessary I care since she is 1/4 of my genetics. Nope.”

14. Telling on Pops

“I told my mom that my dad was still cheating on her.

They’re in counseling right now, and he promised he’d stop talking to his online girlfriend. I was in the car with him and saw him texting her. So I told my mom she ought to check her bank account.

Sure enough he is still sending this chick money (he’s getting scammed).

He is using my mother’s paycheck to send this girl money… f*ck that shit. I regret nothing except the hurt my mom feels towards him.”

15. Brutal

“Broke someone’s shin. It was accidental, we were playing hockey in school and I misaimed, hit her as hard as I could instead of the ball, she wasn’t wearing shin pads and you can see where that ends… She was in hospital for a while, then on crutches for months, into the next school year actually. Meant she had to drop being in the netball team, think it screwed up her holiday plans, stuff like that. Nothing that’s ruined her life, but not good stuff at the time.

She was a bully, and a b*tch and I did not like her. She had a charmed life, her brother was one of the most pleasant people you could know so it wasn’t upbringing, there was just something wrong with her emotionally. She and her friends derived enjoyment from mentally and emotionally torturing other people, including me and my few friends. After that, they left us all alone and our school lives were peaceful. It was accidental, I’m too short sighted to have actually been able to distinguish her features during sport (didn’t wear my glasses), but I assume they had some doubt as to whether I had exacted revenge for years of pain.

Tldr: caused my bully pain and made her and all of her friends scared of me, gave me and my friends reprieve from dreading being in school.”

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15 Employees Look Back at Their Most Intense First Days on the Job

The first day at a new job is always a stressful experience. You want to make a good impression but you also need to ask a million questions. It’s a lose-lose.

Add in a whole lot of pressure/incompetence/etc. and it makes for a memorable and stressful day.

These AskReddit users shared their stories of intense first days at a job. Hang on tight.

1. Toodles!

” “Okay so I know this is your first day at a fast food restaurant but I got to get back to the register, hope you know how to use a deep fryer. Toodles!”

F you Galven!”

2. That’s not good

” ‘Well, you’re on the crew, now. Here’s your pager but don’t worry, there probably won’t be a fire for a whi-‘

beepbeepbeepbeepbeep

‘Well, damn.’ “

3. Tragic

“First day of my EMT clinicals and I’m sitting in some parking lot really excited for my first call with a 911 out of Los Angeles. Waiting for about 3 hours and we finally get a call. It’s a unknown so we end up getting to this residential in some neighborhood and we’re the first on scene, cool no problem. I’m the first one through the door while the two other EMT’s get the stretcher and code kit following behind me. I’m standing in these peoples living room who Ive never met before and out comes this guy holding a blue 3 month old girl and I just stood there frozen.

Can’t really describe what it felt like but I can tell you it shook me to my core for a second. Training kicked in and thankfully the more experienced EMT’s took control and soon after the Paramedics showed up and ran the code. 3mo old didn’t end up making it. Whole call lasted about 15 minutes probably but felt like an eternity. Huge respect for the Paramedic who lead the call that day. Telling a mother and father that their baby isn’t going to see her first birthday has got to be the worst part of the job. Took a lot for me not to cry and all I had to do was stand there and try not to get in the way. Watching the mother pull the intubation tubes out of her lifeless daughters nose will probably stick with me for awhile, along with how pretty the little girls hair was.

It was brown and surprisingly long for someone as young as her. It seemed crazy to me how we were just supposed to continue our day after that and pretend everything was ok. I remember ordering food at a fast food joint no 30 minutes later thinking what the hell just happened. Before I knew it I was on my way to the next call. Just gotta suck it up and continue working I guess. I was 19 at the time and I like to think a lot of me grew up that day. Huge respect to all men and women in EMS who suck it up everyday and put the patient first. Overworked and underpaid but always willing.”

4. Thrown right in

“First rotation through the ER as an imaging student theres a code call I had no idea what was going on, my tech (teacher) looks at me and says “You had to pass CPR to get in here right?” I just look at him blankly and say um yeah? he responds “Good you then me.” Next thing I know I am in ER 1 (trauma room) with about 20 other people doing CPR on a woman as the doc does his best. Two people before me the doc calls time of death. My tech and I go back to our little x-ray room and just go on like someone didn’t just die in front of me on my first rotation.”

5. Rough day

“I was overlooking a job site where a very expensive rock saw was cutting a 20ft deep trench initially in what should have been – as surveyed – a solid limestone bed.

My new boss at the environmental consulting firm let me know there was nothing that could possibly happen, that I needed to be there for the initial cut, and that it would be the easiest day of work I had ever had. Boss leaves for a different work site.

Couple hours later the saw begins it’s first cut and it breaks through an ancient clay sewer line that was directly underneath the giant saw machine. The machine sinks about 7 ft into the ground.

Best part, the operator gets out of the saw, walks over to me, the site manager, and the other official individual and says – “it was like that when I got here” gets in his truck and we never saw him again.”

6. Probably sold out of booze

“First ever pub shift was during an England world cup game this summer, every shift after that was easy!”

7. A test

“Started a job at a machine shop at a time when I was more or less 40% of the way to being a full fledged machinist who could do everything, just to boil it down really simply without getting into trade specific qualifications and experience. My resume was accurate and reflected my marginal knowledge and experience, and noted interest in progressing into more difficult tasks that I had not yet been given the chance to take on.

My first day, the lead man gave me zero instruction, put me on a machine I’d never run, and asked me to do something I’d never done before. I quickly informed him that I had absolutely zero experience on a machine like that, and zero experience setting up and writing a program for the type of part he wanted me to create. He said, “That’s ok, just do your best to figure it out.” He then explained that he and the boss had to leave and go to some meeting with a client, and that they’d be back at 5pm. I asked if there was anyone else in the small shop that might could help me get this done, and they said that there wasn’t, the other guys had no experience with this machine or part.

So I stated once more, for the record, that they were asking me to do something that I was not qualified to do and once again, he said, “Don’t sweat it, just do your best.”

I spent the first couple hours just reading the manual for the machine and experimenting with the unfamiliar controls and coding. The next couple hours I spent trying to figure out a way to setup the strange and large part in the machine. I had never even used the old school toe clamp fixturing they had available, but figured out how to use it, and eventually got the part securely in place and ready to machine half of the features the blueprint called for.

The next couple hours were spent reading the manual more and digging into the coding, and eventually finding some “conversational” types of canned cycle programs where I could design toolpaths by inputting several parameters and spitting out code that would run.

Two hours later, I had a part that was roughly 1/3 of the way completed. I performed 2 operations on the first “side/setup” and would have needed to run one more on that side, and like 3 more on the next side/setup. I double checked that everything had been run to the print, and it looked like I at least had a partially done good part that could be finished, so I felt good about that. But I still felt like I failed because it took all day and I couldn’t even do what they asked me to do.

They came back, and the lead and boss came over and kinda raised their eyebrows when they saw me and started laughing and chatting amongst each other. Turns out, it was just a test that nearly everyone fails for one reason or another.

I failed, but they said that in the past several months, they had 8 new hires that simply gave up and left, spent all day begging coworkers to do the work for them, spent all day in the bathroom and/or on their phones, and one guy who got pissed off and crashed a machine intentionally. They were so pleased to see that I not only didn’t run away, but tried my best and actually got something done without fucking anything up, they gave me a $2 raise on the spot and later bought me a really nice toolbox.”

8. Heart racing

“I worked on a suicide hotline for a year. My shift was a weekday afternoon, so supposedly it “wasn’t too busy.”

My first shift came immediately after finishing the mandatory training period. I had four calls in a two hour period, one of which needed emergency intervention. I think my heart raced through the rest of the night.”

9. No training

“First day after my orientation night at my current job…the guy ‘training’ me shows where i am supposed to work (which machine) then walked off without showing me how to do my job.

He did this for 2 weeks before other people noticed and he got strung up by his balls (metaphorically). They gave me a new trainer and a week later i was doing well enough they ended my training early, normally its 6 weeks, i had 3 weeks, and 2 of those were spent messing stuff up because i didn’t know what to do.

they already asked me about training other people because we have half the crew we are required to have by company policy and I’m already better, after less than 2 months (started the third week of July) than many of the people who have 2-5 years at this job…its not a hard job…these people just suck…”

10. INTENSE

“My first ever call as a volunteer was for a four car accident after a high speed chase on a remote stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway. Patients with limbs sheared off ejected fifty yards into the brush, Medivac helicopters one after another, brush fire from a truck that exploded, and units everywhere from CalFire, CHP, Sheriff’s Department, State Park Rangers, and Forest Service. I saw my first fatality declared while preparing to load them onto a helicopter.

Still haven’t (and hope I don’t have to) respond to something like that again but it did inspire me enter the medical field so I can be as much help as possible when it does happen..”

11. Through the ringer

“I have a couple. I worked several long term sub jobs before getting a permanent job in special ed. First story- I worked with kids with emotional disorders for a couple weeks. Day 1 a 1st grader called me a c**t, threw a full trash can at me, stole a scooter and ran off campus where he started peeing on things at the school next door.

2nd story- Working in mod/severe. A 10yo kid with cerebral palsy bit me on the hip while I was changing him. Literally as the aide was saying “By the way, sometimes he bites.” The kid and the aide then proceeded to laugh hysterically. I was pissed at the time but then I got bit once a year for 5 years straight(by different kids) and it doesn’t seem like such a big deal anymore.”

12. Get up there

“First day of fire department training, when I was 16, run the 100′ aerial platform to full vertical…. “OK kid, see how far you can climb.” “

13. Doesn’t like clothes

“I baby-sat all the time in high school. Your first day with a new family can be a little tricky, because kids know the baby-sitter has no real authority over them and you have to develop a good rapport immediately if you want any hope of getting the kids to bed somewhat on time. (At least in my town.) But my little sister is six years younger than me, and all my previous jobs were watching her classmates and their siblings. So I had the advantage of already knowing the kids, and hadn’t dealt with anything too difficult.

Then a couple from church hired me. They knew me from “Crib Room” (place where your infant/toddler can hang out & be supervised while you listen to the sermon) and their daughter liked me because I build amazing block towers. But I’d only interacted with the girl for an hour on Sundays, in a room filled with other children. I didn’t have the same rapport with her as I did with my sister’s classmates. And I didn’t know her older sister, “Jenny,” at all. I was going in blind.

I show up, the girls seem pretty amicable, they like that I’ll go right into imaginary games with them, aren’t freaked out that Mom & Dad won’t be home for a few hours. It looks like everything’s gonna go smoothly.

The parents start to leave. Just before he shuts the door, the dad says, “Oh, just to let you know, Jenny doesn’t like clothes.”

Latch clicks.

I whirl around.

Jenny’s butt-naked.

Baby-sitting with your eyes shut is really difficult.

Eventually I was able to establish rules like, “Underwear is mandatory unless you’re using the bathroom.” But it took a while.”

14. What a way to start

“My first day of hospital clinicals in nursing school was pretty intense. It was a pretty easy start to the day; I got assigned a COPD patient in his early 80s, and he wasn’t supposed to have much going on that day besides a CT scan. After going through his chart and doing an initial assessment, I helped take him down to CT. the machine required him to lay flat on his back (which is harder on patients in late stages of COPD than sitting up), with his arms raised.

He was hooked up to oxygen the whole time so the tech assumed he’d be okay, but once we left and got back to our floor, we both simultaneously noticed the guy was gasping for air, and his lips were turning blue. We hurried him back to the room, call a code, and watch as this guy goes into respiratory arrest (he was just a tech and I was just a student, so we really hadn’t been trained for this).

Help arrives, and my patient’s actual nurse is nowhere to be found, so nobody in the room besides me knows anything about this guy. So I had to fill the doctor leading the emergency response in on all of this guy’s information and the situation, which was terrifying. And all during this, my clinical instructor kept walking by the room making weird, goofy faces at me. The guy lived, but wow what a way to start clinicals.”

15. That’s a lot of calls

“I started two jobs at the same time and the first weekend I supposed to work the morning shift by myself at this hostel I missed my alarm because I closed as a hostess at this restaurant the night before at 1 am… so I wake up at 7:30 am with 25 missed calls from my new boss and when I called him two minutes later he told me he was outside my house and would take me to work when I was ready. Lmao literally nuts but turned out to be a really good guy.”

The post 15 Employees Look Back at Their Most Intense First Days on the Job appeared first on UberFacts.

7 Fascinating Facts About All Kinds of Interesting Things

You look like you could use some more information in that awesome brain of yours!

Get ready to get smart!

1. You must laugh

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2. Are you one of them?

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3. Injured

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4. It never ends

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5. He liked the sauce

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6. Well, that’s just great

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7. Chase the cheese!

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15 of the Biggest Culture Shocks Travelers Have Ever Experienced

Traveling is an exciting opportunity that everyone should get the chance to experience. It puts you outside of your comfort zone and pushes you to try new things.

It’s one thing to go to England or Germany, but quite another to go to places like India or China.

Here, 15 travelers share their stories of when they experienced major culture shock.

1. Time to eat!

“Visiting family in the Czech Republic around Christmastime. Went to use washroom and was utterly astounded to see a giant carp swimming around in their bathtub. Learned it is customary to eat fried carp on Christmas Eve.”

2. It’s all about the quality

“How much quality food there is at Japanese 7-11. Yes you heard me, QUALITY. Obviously here in the US you don’t trust gas station sushi or really any food that comes from them. Honestly a vagabond or tourist can easily survive eating only 7-11 food in Japan, since really it’s cheap and not as processed.”

3. Gross

“When I visited South America it was my first time experiencing that you throw your toilet paper in a trash bin next to the toilet specifically for that rather than flush it and mess up their sewage infrastructure

It’s so weird but not weird at the same time since its just how things work there.”

4. Boston!

“I went into an an ice cream shop in Boston that was staffed by an older lady, we’ll call er her OL, the exchange went like this:

OL: Hi how aw ya?

Me: I’m great, and you?

OL:<no answer>

Me: Do you have blueberry cheesecake ice cream?

OL: Do you see it on the board? If it’s not on the board then we don’t f*cking have it”

5. Different culture

“I grew up in a working class city where passive-aggression wasn’t a thing. If people didn’t like you they made it obvious. Shouting matches and fist-fights were pretty common. Then I get a job at a snooty ivy league university and nobody expresses what they actually think or feel, snide remarks replaced insults, people quietly conspire against you while pretending to be your friend, and you can’t call people out on their bullshit without getting socially shunned because everybody is neck deep swimming in it.”

6. Trash

“I live in a very clean city, so I was shocked When I visited South America and saw how dirty it was and how much people litter.

People there literally do not give a sh*t and will just throw their trash right on the ground… Even if there’s a trash can 10 ft away.

I was on a bus in Colombia and this lady was throwing trash out the window the whole 12 hr bus ride even though there was a garbage bag across the aisle from her.

In Brazil I was on a boat ride on the Amazon and our engine got clogged up. They stop the boat pull the engine up and there’s a black trash bag wrapped around the motor. The driver proceeds to take the bag off and throw it right back in the river before starting the boat and taking off.

I also remember seeing people just chucking huge bags of trash right into the Amazon River…No sh*ts given.

It’s really sad because it’s beautiful in South America. A lot places there just don’t have the money/infastruture to properly take care of their waste.”

7. Rules of the road

“Traffic in Vietnam. Crossing the street by walking slowly, letting the overloaded scooters drive around me, I got used to relatively quick. But the overnight bus from Hanoi to Danang crisscrossing the highway, having near misses with incoming trailers and honking every third second, that was bad.”

8. Welcome to Japan

“First time in Japan, first interaction with anyone outside of the airport:

Get there early in the morning, LOOOONG flight and have a meeting in an hour. Need coffee asap. Go to 7-11 (awesome! they have that here!) before checking into hotel. Guy at the counter greets me. I’m looking around for the coffee. Guy runs around counter, eager to help me in any way. “Cofffee” I say. He takes me to the coffee, points to the different types, gets a cup for me, shows me how to use the machine, practically holding my hand through the process. Get me all set up with a fresh coffee, runs back around counter. shows me the little tray to put my money in, helps me count my money. Runs back around counter, leads me to door, opens it for me and bows with traditional goodbye and arigatou gozaimasu.

WOW, welcome to Japan.”

9. Work experience

“Working in the public sector. I previously worked in hospitality as a restaurant manager. The change to go working into a 9-5 office job was extraordinarily tough. People were so awkward and shy, I used to greet every staff member with a handshake previously but now everyone in my office can’t make eye contact. Public Sector for me is the most ‘be careful what you say’ environment regarding absolutely anything even your plans for the weekend…”

10. Sexism

“As the only American at a company in rural Japan: the sexism.

Everyone wears uniforms, women have to wear skirts.

In the company phone directory there is a special symbol to indicate if someone is a woman.

Women leave the office at 5 or 530. Men all work later.

Women are very unlikely to be promoted. There is only one female manager in the entire company.

When a women gets married 90% of the time they quit the company.

If a married woman’s husband’s parents die the company sends a card and money. If her own parents die they send nothing.

Women must serve tea and clean the office spaces.

Constantly being called “kawaii”, cute, beautiful, and “~chan” by male co-workers.

Etc.”

11. All grown up

“Holidaying in Tokyo and watching 5 year old kids walk themselves home from school and catching public transport…all by themselves.”

12. People everywhere

“I spent 12 weeks backpacking in India. The most intense culture shock was when I returned to the US. There were no people outside! The streets felt deserted. In India every city street is just packed with people. I had a second wave of culture shock was when I went to the grocery store for bread and the aisle was 25 feet long and had dozens of varieties. Lots of stuff I used to take for granted suddenly felt like such a blessing.”

13. Can’t read

“When I went to Egypt, with everything written in Arabic script, I realized what it would be like to be completely illiterate.”

14. Freezing

“The lack of central heat in Japan was a rude wakeup call for me in my first Kansai winter.”

15. What do I say?

“Recently moved to the US (9 months ago), and I am still not used to everyone asking me how I am doing. I am from Norway, and if the cashier ask how you are, you get embarrassed and don’t know how to answer.”

The post 15 of the Biggest Culture Shocks Travelers Have Ever Experienced appeared first on UberFacts.

12+ of the Weirdest Things Doctors Have Ever Found in Human Bodies

When you’re a doctor, you see a lot of strange sights. I mean, the human body is weird – and that’s before all the horrible things that can go wrong with it.

In this article, 15 doctors/medical examiners/morticians share the strangest things they ever found in bodies.

1. Horrifying

“A mummified foetus – I was working in Africa and the usually very stoic Congolese surgeons called me in to theatre, gagging – the patient was an elderly woman with a protruding abdominal mass. When they opened it, they found that it was a long, long dead mummified foetus which as a result of an ectopic pregnancy, had somehow managed to both wall off after it died and somehow avoid killing the mother. Her body had encapsulted the alien tissue and over the years, it had slowly eroded her anterior abdominal wall to the point where it finally caused her to have enough symptoms to get something done about it.

It was horrific and the smell was worse.

Happily, though, the patient survived the procedure and just left the surgical team with a .. memory.”

2. Black goo

“In my anatomy lab, my groups’s cadaver had died from systemic complications of stage 4 lung cancer and when we got to the lungs they were two rock hard, necrotic blackened masses that looked nothing like the other cadaver’s pink and spongy lungs.

My anatomy prof took one lung out and wrung it resulting in this putrid black goo flowing out of the lung.

As he was draining the lung, he mentioned…

“This. This is what happens when you smoke” “

3. How’d that get there?

“Weirdest thing was in a woman’s intestine- a dead mouse.

Tiny little thing…. obviously never got the chance to ask how the mouse got there as this was post mortem. Definitely unexpected though…”

4. A tough situation

“She isn’t dead, but this week i saw a patient with endometriosis in her lungs.

Somehow, womb-lining cells had travelled to her thorax and colonised on the lung. She previously had symptoms of coughing up blood while menstruating, but because the endometriosis was so severe, was on the pill to stop her periods entirely.

Then she came off it to have a baby, and after the birth, with her hormones all over the place, she developed two pulmonary embolisms (blood clots in the lung), and a few weeks after that, three successive pneumothorax (collapsed lung). The womb cells had tried to shed, and made a hole between the airways and the sac surrounding the lung, letting air escape.

She’s deciding now whether to let the surgeons cut out the part of her lung with the endometrial cells, to go back on the pill for life, or to have a full hysterectomy and remove her ovaries. Tough choice at 32.”

5. Very rare

“I was a combat medic in the Army.

Not super super uncommon (about 1 in 10,000 people have it), but I had a buddy with situs inversus. All of his major internal organs were reversed (heart on the rights side instead of the left, for example). As soon as he got to the unit, it was the first thing he told me. Wanted to make sure if he got hurt I wasnt curious as to why he had no heart, I guess.

Edit to say: Had to look up the name and how uncommon it is, because it’s been a few years since I got out and he’s literally the only person I’ve ever met like that. I was honestly surprised at how common it actually is, I figured it’d be more rare.”

6. That’s odd…

“My colleague was embalming an autopsied male and found two hairnets, numerous plastic tissue sample slides, a plastic urine container (with another person’s name on it) and over twenty seven latex gloves within his abdominal cavity…”

7. Sounds awful

“Doctor here, general prac and young, so not many experiences.

I had this kid (8) and his mother come to the ped triage about a cold.

As soon they came in they filled the room with stench, like a wound festering, that humid and rancid smell. Kid had a runny nose, but secretions were coming from a single nostril. Upon examination we found the sinusal cavities filled with cotton.

Apparently the kid had this funny idea of stuffing one nostril with cotton and shoving it up inside with a stick as far as he could. We had to call the specialist to remove a lot of VERY deep cotton that was of course a picnic field for bacteria.

Kid probably isn’t going college but he won’t be lacking new ideas.”

8. Don’t see that every day

“One of our cadavers had two spinal cords, aka split spinal cord malformation.

Edit: just a first year med student here folks. Unfortunately it’s against our school’s policy for me to even take photographs, yet alone share them. One of our groups during our laminectomy (removing the back of your vertebra to expose spinal cord) lab, once they cut into the dura mater (the tissue that wraps around the spinal cord) noticed a spit cord in the in the thoracolumbar region, side-by-side. Our lead anatomist was very excited to see this and had the whole class come see. Apparently it’s not the most incredibly rare thing, but it is the weirdest anomaly I’ve seen thus far.

Edit 2: So a lot of people are mentioning Spina Bifida. From what I understand in my studies, that would be the result of bones in the spine not forming correctly. This was not what we saw. There were no signs of prior surgery or herniation of the meninges.”

9. Fix me up

“Pretty memorable to me. I’m a doctor was working in OT (anesthesiology)

An emergency came in the afternoon. Apparently the patient is a fisherman and got into a fight with his fisherman friend.

Patient was impaled by a spear gun. The spear entered just lateral to his belly button and came out just above his right hip.

He actually held this 6 ft long spear going through his body and walked into the emergency room by himself. When it was time to put him under he wasn’t scared /anxious. He said “just fix me up so I can go find that guy”. “

10. Probably should’ve mentioned that

“Young man comes in complaining of headache. I work in radiology.

We ask for history. Nothing to report, he says.

We scan his head. CT shows a bullet rattling loose inside his sphenoid sinus (kind of between the nasal cavity and the brain).

I asked the guy: “Have you ever been shot in the face?”

“Oh, yeah, I guess I forgot to mention that.”

Edit: Okay this blew up. To clarify, the guy had been shot in the face a few years earlier, never sought treatment for it. The bullet had somehow missed all the vital structures.”

11. Yikes

“When my mom was a mortician, I would hang out in the mortuary watching TV. Her boss showed me a guy who had retained water and drowned. His balls were the size of a grapefruit. Not the most pleasant thing to see at age 15. When you poked him, he moved like a water bed.”

12. Whoops!

“In med school I had to do a pelvic on a woman during my EM rotation and found a meth pipe. She forgot she put it there during a traffic stop.

I also had to remove a nail from a guy’s head. He figured it must’ve went off while reloading. He had intractable tooth pain, so he got sent by his dentist for a CT and low and behold there was a nail in his cranium.”

13. No idea

“Father owns a crematory, we once cremated a man (with no clothes and not in any container) and along with his ashes came a massive belt buckle. I kid you not, we have no idea how it got in him but it was definitely there.”

14. Never noticed

“ER nurse; man comes in after a car accident, we do a brain scan for safety and find a 3 inch nail imbedded in his brain. Ask man about it, he says he has no idea. Admits he was once shot with a nail gun but HAD NO IDEA A NAIL HAD BEEN LODGED IN HIS HEAD. Had been there for well over 4 years. Edit: originally said 6inch, meant 3.”

15. He really loved the game

“Here’s another weird one… 3 golf balls in a mans stomach. His cause of death was lung cancer. Still trying to figure out how he ate golfballs/how long they were in there considering he was on life support for 2 weeks before he died.”

The post 12+ of the Weirdest Things Doctors Have Ever Found in Human Bodies appeared first on UberFacts.

15 People Reveal the Strangest Experience They’ve Had with a Friend’s Parent

Did you ever go over to a friend’s house when you were younger, only to discover that their parents were a bit…odd? It’s an awkward situation for sure, and these 15 Redditors share their tales.

1. Thank you?

“One time I’m at my friend’s house and his father comes up to me and he asks if I want anything to drink. I politely ask if I could have a glass of water. Dead serious he responds with ‘oh sorry I don’t think we have any water. Would you like some pasta instead?’ Thinking its some kind of joke I say sure. He goes into the kitchen and comes back a little later with a drinking glass full of spaghetti and hands it to me before going back to what ever he was doing. Needless to say, I was quite confused.”

2. Hi there

“I was coming back from the annual county fair with a childhood friend and his cousin, heading to my friend’s house. Unfortunately I got really sick at the fair and was sprawled out in the back of my friend’s cousin’s car trying my best not to puke everywhere. (It didn’t help that we live out in the mountains so the drive was unbearable)

Out of desperation for my stomach pain to pass, I didn’t even turn on the lights when I got to his house and literally fell onto the bed in the dark only to find his dad under me snoring.

Apparently my friend’s dad was staying up waiting for us to get home and fell asleep on his bed. I obviously woke him up and he freaked out, turned on the lights and yup he was in his underwear.

When he saw it was us he laughed at the situation but it was definitely one of the most uncomfortable experiences of my life. I’m just glad I didn’t throw up on him.”

3. Accused

“I practically lived over at my friends house from my mid to late teens. They were a devout Pentecostal family and his dad was treasurer of their church. I go over to their house, walk in and both parents are immediately in my face. “DID YOU STEAL MONEY FROM US!!” Someone broke into their roll top desk and stole $2k from the church funds. They accused me, then the mother broke down and started crying.

Sitting on the couch, hands in her face balling. Then they all started praying for the return of the money. Then they prayed over me for guidance to do the right thing. I thought, WTH! What they didn’t know was that their son, my friend, had his eye on a $2k Nikon F3 camera for a few months and his parents wouldn’t buy it for him. What really blew my mind was he bought the camera and they never suspected him of stealing the money. And he never apologized to me for it.”

4. Sad

“I was friends with this boy and we would go to his house after school and his mom would watch me til my mom was done with work. Well one day we get to his door and there is a note on it saying we need to go to my house. The weird thing was that there was loud music coming from inside…

We went to my house and waited and my step dad and mom came home soon after.

My mom obviously found that weird so she ran over there and come to find out his mom tried to commit suicide. It was really sad but she seemed to have gotten help and gotten better. But it was an experience I would never forget.”

5. Bummer

“Senior year of high school, I asked out a girl right before school ends for the summer. She said she wanted to stay friends. Bummer, but at least I’ll never kick myself for not trying. I was still invited to her graduation party at her house so I went, as I also enjoyed being friends with her regardless of any romance. At the party her dad met me in the kitchen and patted me on the back saying “Bummer about her saying no. If it was up to me you’d already be my son-in-law.” Not sure how to respond I awkwardly laughed and said thanks. Not 20 minutes later he walked into a shed outside and asked us teenagers if we wanted to see a magic trick. He then proceeded to pull a dove out of his pants. A living, breathing dove.

The guy was/is one of the nicest people I’ve met, but I never knew what he was going to say or do next.”

6. Creeper

“I was best friends with a girl from grade 4 to grade 7. A few years ago I ran into her parents at my brothers birthday party. The Dad got super drunk and started hitting on me hard. I’m married and I was there with my young children. It was at my brother’s house and the guy’s wife was right there! Even then my brother still had to come save me.”

7. That’s uncomfortable

“I was in the 6th grade and had just started going over to my best friends house for the weekend. His dad was sitting on the ledge for the fireplace bumping Hollaback Girl by Gwen Stefani on repeat for a good 45 minutes.

Edit: a few times he did go around that track.”

8. Remember?

“My lifelong friend’s dad is a nurse practitioner. When I was 19 I lost a lot of weight in a short amount of time, so I went in to see him. He gave me a rectal exam. I’ll occasionally get a, “Hey, remember that time my dad stuck his fingers up your butt?” from my buddy.”

9. That’s a no

“A dad of one of my friends kept urging me to come over and sit in his hot tub with him. My friend wasn’t there at the time.

..yeah, no. No.”

10. Drunk mom

“We picked up my friends mom one night at a bar cause she was drunk and on the way back she kept yelling “I’m not going to sleep with you you!” But yeah that was the strangest 1 hr ride of my life.”

11. That’s weird

“In high school, my friend was dating a guy and we both were invited by him to his house. His mom was super mean though and acted like us being there was awful. I rang the doorbell and was invited inside by the mom. I was there for an hour and had to go outside to get something out of my car. I came back inside and heard “UMEXCUSEME!” “I’m sorry, yes?” “You didn’t ring the doorbell before BARGING into my HOME.” “Oh I’m sorry, uuuh…should I go back outside?”

“We wait to be invited inside in this house.” I went back outside and the door was closed on me. I rang the doorbell and heard the Mom say “Who is it?” “Hi it’s Rustmutt here to see your son.” “Just a moment! opens door please come inside.” Turns out every time you leave the house even for a second she expected the pageantry of a first invite.”

12. In it for the money

“A friend’s father was absolutely convinced that I was only friends with his daughter for money. They weren’t exactly rich, maybe a tiny bit better off than we were, but it was impossible for him to know that. When her Dreamcast needed a new cable after one of her pets chewed through it, he came storming into her room while we were hanging out and demanded to know why I thought he would buy me something.

My friend had to jump in and explain that it was her cable, not mine. He’d complain if I spent the night because he had to feed me, like I was a stray cat. It was incredibly weird. The worst part is he made extremely inappropriate jokes all throughout dinner when I was there. I was maybe 14.”

13. Dope head

“In 4th grade, my best friend lived just down the street from the school so we would regularly go hang out there after class. Her mom was a dope head and her step-dad was a drunk and routinely during sleepovers we would hear them having very loud sex. My friend told me one day she had found a huge orange vibrator in her mom’s room and then explained to me what, in fact, that was. A couple weeks later we walked over after school to find the house littered with bright orange shreds…the family boxer had found her mom’s vibrator, too.”

14. Porn

“Friend’s dad who I was building a website for, and thus was in contact by email seemed to accidentally forward a PowerPoint with a bunch of super generic adult videos copy and pasted into it, being shared by like 30 correspondents.

What it appeared to me was a bunch of old very not tech savvy guys thought copy and pasting porn into a PowerPoint was either the most efficient, or the most discreet way of sharing porn, and somehow I accidentally got added to the list.”

15. Man talk

“We were white water rafting in Maine. I was in a truck with my friend, a different friend’s dad, 2 ~ten year old boys going to the pickup spot at the end of the rafting route. I’m in the passenger seat and the dad is driving. I was about I was about 17 at the time, and the topic of “being a man” came up. He talked about how sometimes you just need to follow your dreams. We’re all listening at this point.

He then tells us this isn’t his first life. Told us he moved to the west coast when he was real young and started a family. Wife, kids. He said liked them decently enough but he wanted to get more out of life. So one day he went out to pick up some milk and never went back. I don’t know how the kids in the truck took the story, but my friend and I were pretty WTF the rest of the trip.”

The post 15 People Reveal the Strangest Experience They’ve Had with a Friend’s Parent appeared first on UberFacts.

IT Workers Dish on the Worst Mistakes They’ve Made While on the Job

Everyone has messed up at their job at one time or another. Most of the time, it’s not a huge deal…but sometimes? Well, let’s just say you hope your boss isn’t around to see it.

If you work in the IT field, you better have your head on straight. If you don’t, you could make some seriously huge mistakes that might lead to enormous headaches.

Here, AskReddit users share their own IT horror stories.

1. Ooops…

“I was trying to determine where some cables were going and had to open the cable management for that. I accidentally cut through the fiber connecting the two data centers of that company.

I was called Edward Scissorhands after that.”

2. Gone

“I deleted 50-70% of the photos on the site/project I’ve been working on. (Not mine, customer photos) =).”

3. Time to make amends

“I do test automation for an insurance company. Once, I accidentally pointed tests at the production environment and bound a bunch of policies. It took several people a couple hours to clean up the data before it got migrated to accounting. This was all after 4:00 on a Friday afternoon.

The next week, I spent $250 on a pizza party for the team to make amends.”

4. Don’t turn your back

“I was tasked with mounting a switch in a network closet alone. Those things are a bit heavy and difficult, even moreso that I was alone. So, I barely got two screws in and I released it and it stayed. I turned to get my other two screws and the switch fell 5 feet and broke the mounting bracket.

Not me but someone on site also delete an entire database and backed it up. So, basically, all data was lost.”

5. Sorry, Doc

“Lost a doctor’s spreadsheet she’d put ten years worth of work into.”

6. Panic

“Deleted my entire hard-drive just from moving too fast.

i was trying to delete some files, but i didnt realize i had the entire root directory highlighted instead of the one directory i needed. deleting took no time, and then i went to clear the recycling bin which happened to be in OSX – and i got curious as to why there was a progress bar that projected like 6 minutes to clear the bin. i was like oh well, just a system hiccup.

it was systematically scrubbing all thirty thousand files from my entire computer.

and i was the entire video editing wing of an advertising agency. i am not an emotional guy, but this had me running around in a panic, almost in tears in front of coworkers.”

7. Journals

“It wasn’t technically work but I was helping my sister with her computer and accidentally deleted her journal entries from like two years. Told her her hard drive had gotten corrupted and she may have lost files, but now that I defragged it it should be fine. She gave me a hug and surprised me with ice cream for helping her; I’ve never felt more guilty in my life. If you ever see this Cate…. sorry.”

8. Wrong word

“I once worked in IT support, biggest mistake I made was emailing whilst frustrated.

We needed everyone to turn their PCs off so we could roll out an update over the weekend, it saved us time to not have to go around turning them all off manually, not to mention if someone left a PC running with some work on it they’d lose it, which is never good. We also had lots of VMs running at any given time too and they can be a bit of a ball ache to turn off as I recall.

So. I sent an email out to the whole company asking people to turn off their PCs this time using a tone that was obviously slightly irritated, I signed off with my regards and sent it.

Only to be called in by the boss 5 minutes later so he could point out that I wrote ‘Retards’ instead of ‘Regards’, and the tone of my email made it look intentional.

Thankfully he was a good boss and just laughed it off.”

9. Rickrolled

“We were testing out our new phone system and it appeared to let you set different hold music per site. So we loaded up Rick Astley for our hold music. A day or so later we’re talking to several people on speaker phone at another site when they mute one of the phones they were using and suddenly…. never gonna give you up…

The MD in the room got all snide about the stupid 80’s hold music, the assistants are confused, and we are on mute laughing our a–es off.

So yeah, I rickrolled the hold music on our whole phone system. Might have to turn it into a yearly April tradition.”

10. That’s a lot of gift cards

“Oh man. This takes me back to my early days. Many years ago I did essentially the same thing to a database of currently active gift cards for a very large company. It’s our responsibility to load in new gift cards every now and then, and I did a batch but forgot to set the credit amount when loading. The update I wrote had a WHERE clause but the logic was bad and it updated every single gift card to essentially brand new.

Over 100 thousand currently active gift cards, all instantly refreshed to 100$. Fortunately it happened in the early morning and a peer and I were able to pull the right amounts out of the data warehouse and correct the issue within about 30 minutes without anyone being able to use any credit they weren’t entitled to, but man… What a harrowing learning experience. I was literally dripping sweat. I have taken the “write all deletes/updates as selects first” approach since.”

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