8+ Random Facts You Won’t Believe Are 100% True

We could all use a few more random facts in our lives, right? They spice up conversations and teach us something new about the world we live in.

Check out these 10 amazing facts about all kinds of topics.

1. Trolling for a good cause

Photo Credit: did you know?

2. Did they get here first?

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3. That’s a lot of smog

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4. Same-sex parents

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5. You’re being lied to

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6. Don’t trust the BMI

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7. How is this possible?!?

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8. I’m still holding out hope

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9. Time to bust a rhyme

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10. Only one space

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You Might End up in Hell If You Laugh out Loud at These Tweets

People love to poke fun at religion and these tweets are no exception. But, if you are the religious type, you may not want to laugh out loud at this list for fear of being sent straight to hell.

Just wanted to give you a heads up…

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This Man is Giving Us a Glimpse of Amazing 100-Year-Old Photographs Using Modern Technology

If you stumbled onto a box of 100-year-old photo negatives that were all worn and cracked, you’d probably think that their true images were probably lost forever, right? Well, that’s not always true.

Lucky for all of us, 70-year-old Greg Pack of Essex, England, thought no such thing when he found a battered old box at a boot sale. His son tells ITV News that the box and its contents – 100-year-old glass negatives – caught his father’s interest.

Photo Credit: Twitter

Even though the images were faded, the former artist used a mixture of his professional knowledge and modern technology to “restore” the photos well enough to be seen easily.

Pack held each negative up to the light and took a picture using his iPhone, then used Photoshop to turn the negative images into positive ones.

Photo Credit: Twitter

The results, as you can see, are pretty freaking cool.

I never would have thought to do this, so thank goodness for professional photographers and creative minds! More little treasures would be lost without them.

The man’s son, Scott Peck, has been updating Twitter on their search for the people in the photographs, their families, or even just a way to date the images. This list was in the lid and seemed to be a useful starting point.

Photo Credit: Twitter

But as you can see, turned out to be a red herring.

Photo Credit: Twitter

The saga continues, so make sure you’re following him on Twitter for updates if you’re intrigued!

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This Fabulous Infographic Takes You Through the History of the Pyramids

Did you know that the Americas have more pyramids than the rest of the world combined? I don’t know about you, but I didn’t realize that there are thousands of pyramids around the world…not just in Egypt.

Study this infographic to learn more about the history and evolution of these great, historic structures.

Photo Credit: History.com

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The Massive Effort Behind D-Day in One Infographic

The Allied invasion of France, otherwise known as D-Day, is one of the most important events in modern history. There’s no telling how World War II would have turned out and how the world would have been affected had it not been for that operation.

D-Day saw thousands of casualties on both sides, but it signaled the shift of power to the Allies and the war in Europe would be over in less than one year.

Take a look at this infographic that details the numbers behind D-Day.

Photo Credit: History.com

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The Salem Witch Trials, Explained

While they only lasted a little more than a year, the legacy of the Salem Witch Trials in Massachusetts continues to resonate in the American consciousness. And although we hear the trials referenced quite often, what actually occurred during the paranoia and hysteria that led to the execution of 20 people?

In 1689, Salem Village in colonial Massachusetts saw an influx of refugees from New York and parts of Canada because of a war between New France and New England. The conflict was known as King William’s War. The refugees added fuel to a rivalry between wealthy people in Salem and those who still relied on agriculture for their livelihood. Salem Village’s minister, Reverand Samuel Parris, was widely disliked because of his rigidity and greed.

In January 1692, Parris’ 9-year-old daughter Elizabeth and 11-year-old niece Abigail Williams alarmed their friends and relatives by throwing fits, screaming, speaking gibberish, and twisted themselves into weird positions. A third girl named Ann Putnam had similar experiences.

Photo Credit: Public Domain

A local doctor believed the girls’ calamities were supernatural. In late February, the three young girls were pressured into admitting the source of their madness: they said it was Tituba, the Parris’ slave from the Caribbean; Sarah Good, a homeless woman; and Sarah Osborne, a poor, elderly woman.

The three older women were brought before local magistrates. Good and Osborne denied any association with witchcraft, but the slave Tituba admitted she had been contacted by the Devil himself and was doing his work. Tituba also said there were other witches intent on destroying the Puritans. All three women were imprisoned.

After the women were put behind bars, rumors and paranoia gripped the town. People of all ages were accused of being witches. The first “witch” convicted and hanged on Gallows Hill was a woman named Bridget Bishop, even though she adamantly denied practicing witchcraft. As the summer of 1692 wore on, 18 more people were hanged for supposedly being witches and many more imprisoned.

Photo Credit: Public Domain

Eventually, well-respected people in the area, including Massachusetts Governor William Phips, prohibited the arrest of accused witches. By May 1693, the Governor pardoned all people accused of witchcraft. The final toll of the hysteria: 20 people executed, several died in jail, and over 200 accused of practicing witchcraft.

It wasn’t until 1957, over 250 years after the trials, that the state of Massachusetts formally apologized for the events of 1692-93.

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Older Millennials Remember Formerly Popular Websites That No Longer Exist

It’s important to remember that millennials are not teenagers. Many of them are grown-ups who still remember the early days of the internet. You know, when it was still a novelty and didn’t control every aspect of our lives?

Here are 15 websites we thought would never fall by the wayside, but that no one under the age of 25 would remember at all.

Cheers to getting older!

 

#15. Flash is dying.

“I didn’t learn about this website until a few years ago, but I would say homestarrunner.com mainly since Flash is dying.”

#14. Cards and chess.

“yahoo games used to be the best place for cards and chess and a ton of other games online.”

#13. Digital bubble wrap.

“Bored.com. Just for the digital bubble wrap alone!”

#12. Loved it.

“Wondering if anyone was gonna bring up livejournal. I got one when you still needed a code from a friend. Loved it.”

#11. So much angst

“Xanga. I kind of want to go back and read what 16 year old me wrote, but I think I’d die from the embarrassment.”

#10. By trial and error.

“Angelfire and Geocities were sites where you could make your own “website” and they would host them for free. It was fun back in the day learning really basic html by just trial and error. I don’t think anything like that exists any more, maybe blogspot would be the closest thing like it today.”

#9. Chatrooms.

“Napster. Not just for music downloads. I spent a lot of time in the chatrooms there.”

#8. Every Wednesday morning.

“The Onion used to publish a new edition every Wednesday morning. I was chomping at the bit by Tuesday night.

They had a better format back then, too.”

#7. Ready and waiting.

“AskJeeves. Just imagining a man named jeeves staying awake 24/7 to answer all questions.”

#6. Random forums.

“Webrings, almost every single band in the world had an forum with thousands of people, so many forums for other random shit. Bonzai Kitten and other joke sites, then there are the citrus extravaganza and other sites that weren’t so jokey but went viral nonetheless. In the early 2000s you saw websites like what Reddit would base itself on: Something Awful (which I could never stand), Fark (which used to be pretty great until terrible mods drove it into the ground and the owner stopped caring and decided to try politics instead), hell at once point there was this Reddit thing that would pop up but most people were like “meh, I already got something better” and just let it be.

Chatrooms in general are something that seem to be long gone. So many bots, so much chaos, but it was a bit wild wild west back then. Using bots and tools to clone names and accounts, kick people off chats, log them offline, etc (AOHell was probably the biggest known one if any of you want to look up what it was like).

And I remember websites/programs like The Palace and such which were chatrooms that allowed people to move around and be seen as avatars, oh how amazing the future was then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Palace_(computer_program) Again you could use a lot of bots to mess with people, one you’d commonly see was a bot that stole people’s avatars which usually angered the entire lot as there seemed to be a general rule of “ask if you want it”/”trade” etc. as a lot of them were made by the person “Wearing” them.

Good times, actually. I think one of the most distinctive things, especially of the 90s was the lack of people from every corner of life. It would be extremely rare to run into some old grandparent, there was this active subculture of people while most people just stuck to reading their emails and calling it a day. Now everyone is online, everyone is on Facebook, etc.”

#5. Scan every download.

“Limewire was filled with trojans and malware but Kazaa wasn’t much better. Kazaa Lite was what people used if they didn’t want to do a scan after every download.

Then Torrents came along and no worries.”

#4. Ah, memories.

“Neopets! God I sucked at neopets.”

#3. Over 2 decades.

“The hamster dance

Edit: hamPster dance. Forgot the P cause it’s been over 2 decades.”

#2. Pre-Tinder.

“Amihotornot.com”

#1. Budding weebs.

“gaiaonline. So many budding weebs on that site.”

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People Who Take These Roads Tend to Never Be Seen Again

The Bermuda Triangle isn’t the only place where people go missing. Turns out you don’t have to travel outside of the United States to pass through an area where people tend to mysteriously vanish.

#4. Interstate 80

I-80 runs east and west through the entire United States and is home to its fair share of mysterious disappearances. One example is Patrick Carnes, a WWII veteran who was stopped by a police officer on the highway the night he went missing – along with his dog – and was said to have been headed to a hotel. His car was found on the side of the road in perfect working order.

Photo Credit: Facebook

Another is 73-year-old Nan Dixon, who was on her way to visit her brother but never arrived. Her car was also found near the side of the road and contained some evidence of foul play. The case was never solved and her body was never found.

Photo Credit: The Charley Project

A third woman, 62-year-old Judith Casida, disappeared around the same mile marker in 2006.

#3. Yosemite National Park

There are almost too many people who have gone missing in the park to count. There’s 14-year-old Stacy Arras, who went for a short walk and was never seen again. Likewise, Timothy Barnes vanished on a hiking trail in 1998, and David Paul Morrison went missing that same year. In 2000, 45-year-old Kiran Bark disappeared.

Photo Credit: National Park Service

A woman named Ruthanne Ruppert never returned from a hike near Yosemite Falls. Eight years later, her backpack was found in a drainage ditch but no other evidence was ever recovered.

In 2011, George Pensa disappeared while with a group, also hiking near Yosemite Falls. Then, there’s 74-year-old Peter Jackson, who rented a camp and then vanished. His car and his tent were there, but the man was just gone.

Photo Credit: National Park Service

There have been so many disappearances in Yosemite that some have taken to blaming supernatural phenomenon like spirits or Bigfoot. Who knows what’s going on up there, but it definitely sounds like something is…off.

#2. Appalachian Trail in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Over 10,000 people visit the park every year, but some who were driving or hiking along the Appalachian trail never emerged again.

In 1969, a group of families was camping in the park for Father’s Day when 6-year-old Dennis Martin disappeared without a trace. A search by over 1,300 people turned up nothing and his disappearance remains unsolved.

Photo Credit: The Charley Project

Seven years later, Trenny Lynn Gibson vanished, too. She was with a large group of fellow students and teachers, all hiking along the same trail. A group was in front of and behind Trenny, yet no one saw her disappear and her body has never been found.

Photo Credit: Trenny Lynn Gibson

They’re far from the only people to have gone missing in the park under odd or mysterious circumstances, but the police have never found anything to link the incidents together.

#1. Trail of Tears (The Canadian Iteration)

It’s got nothing to do with the forced removal of Native Americans, but along the Canadian so-called Trail of Tears – officially Highway 16 – 21 girls have disappeared since 1969. The disappearances (and deaths) began with Gloria Moody in 1969 who went missing after attending a party in Williams Lake and was found the next day. They ended (for now) with Madison Scott, who was camping in 2011 near Hog’s Back Falls and never appeared at home the next day. Her tent and car were found, but Madison has never been seen again.

Photo Credit: Help Find Madison Scott

The intervening years have seen vanished women like Shelley Anne Bascu in 1983, whose clothes were found on a riverbank, and Delphine Nikal and her cousin Cecilia Anne, who were both last seen on Highway 16.

The similar disappearances of Lana Derrick, Nicole Hoar, and Tamara Chipman have inspired local authorities to post signs warning women about the dangers of hitchhiking and camping in the area.

The bottom line seems to be to trust your instincts, and don’t always go boldly where people have vanished before you.

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The Fascinating Stories Behind 5 Famous Skyscrapers

Skyscrapers are feats of engineering and architecture. There’s nothing quite like standing at the top of an impressive building and looking down at the city below.

Here are the stories behind 5 iconic skyscrapers around the globe.

1. Willis Tower – Chicago

Photo Credit: Pixabay

Formerly known as the Sears Tower, the tallest building in the Windy City (and the tallest building in the world for 25 years) was constructed to house Sears’ thousands of employees. The Willis Tower is 110 stories tall and construction took 4 years to complete until the building opened in 1973. The building’s final beam was signed by 12,000 construction workers, Sears employees, and Chicagoans.

2. Taipei 101 – Taiwan

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

Taipei 101 opened in 2004 and was the first skyscraper to surpass the half-kilometer mark. It was the tallest building in the world until 2010. Like Hong Kong’s Bank of China Tower’s steel beams, Taipei 101’s entire structure was designed to resemble a bamboo stalk. The building contains the world’s fastest elevator, whisking passengers from the 5th floor to the 89th in only 37 seconds.
3. The Chrysler Building – New York

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

The recognizable Chrysler Building opened in 1930 and was the tallest building in the world for 11 short months until the Empire State Building usurped the Manhattan skyscraper. Auto tycoon Walter P. Chrysler wanted the building to have a glamorous look and he requested adding eagle-like gargoyles (that looked like Chrysler hood ornaments) to the building.

4. Bank of China Tower – Hong Kong

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

This skyscraper opened in 1990 and was designed by architect I.M. Pei. The architect faced a lot of challenges, including designing an eye-pleasing 70-story tower in a typhoon zone. Construction took 5 years and the steel beams are meant to represent bamboo shoots.

5. CN Tower – Toronto

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

This tower was the highest free-standing structure in the world from its opening in 1976 until 2007. The CN Tower was named one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World in 1995. A helicopter flew the massive antenna up to the top in 36 sections.

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