There have been several times while plotting books when I discarded an idea because it sounded too outlandish…even though, in some cases, it was historically true.

In that vein, Redditors thought it would be fun to share facts that are truly hard to believe, and I bet at least a few of these are going to blow your mind!

15. This isn’t really surprising, if you think about it.

Death rates in boxing exploded after the introduction of the boxing glove. Almost nobody ever died bare knuckle boxing because head punches often resulted in broken hands, so nobody used them.

14. A man-eater.

The Champawat Tiger was a female Bengal tiger responsible for an estimated 430 deaths in Nepal and India, (listed in the Guinness Book of World Records and Wikipedia) More people than died in the U.S. in the last 100 years from, snakes, bears, wolves, and spider fatalities combined.

13. I’m going to need video of this.

President Lyndon B. Johnson owned an Amphibious car, the Amphicar, and used it to scare guests by driving them into his lake screaming about brake failure.

12. Let’s get on activating that, hmm?

Humans have the gene to, and are capable of hibernation. It’s just not active

11. This is not actually surprising.

There was once a war between Honduras and El Salvador started by a soccer game.

10. It’s Australia. There’s any number of things that could have happened to him.

Australia once lost a prime minister. as in straight up couldn’t find him. and they have yet to find him.

9. Wait, why?

Saudi Arabia imports camels from Australia.

8. That’s gotta be uncomfortable.

Wombat poop is square. Go ahead, google it. *edit: yes, cube-shaped.

7. A desert is just a desolate, arid environment.

My friend doesn’t trust me with these things now that I’ve told her that Antarctica is the world’s largest desert. She still doesn’t believe it.

6. I’m sure that’s pretty.

It rains diamonds on Saturn, and Jupiter.

5. In case you want to hate corporations a little bit more.

There is a little town in Mexico called Chamula where shamans started using Coca Cola in their religious rituals to heal worshippers. Pepsi heard about this and began giving commissions to shamans if they recommended Pepsi instead, so then Coca Cola did the same and there are now rival religious groups based on which soft drink they use.

4. Crazy or innovative? You decide.

In the 1950’s Popular Mechanics published a story about a former artillery Sergeant who attempted to invent a personal delivery system similar to what Amazon intends to create with drones. Except he used modified artillery shells. He actually got a hold of an M116 howitzer which he fired modified shells over a small town in upstate New York.

The shells were hollowed out inside and a parachute would automatically deploy as it approached the target. The problem was the shells weighed twenty pounds and if the parachute did not deploy that meant a twenty pound shell would come crashing down from the sky and wreck someone’s house or possibly kill someone in the street. As the Sergeant tested the device and was utterly convinced it was a way of the future he offered to sell a solution installing expensive iron plating on the roofs of people’s homes and heavy protective armor for navigating the streets.

This Sargent’s story had become an inside joke among people who market modern electronics and virus software. Create a problem that is unnecessary and then sell people an expensive and completely impractical solution.

3. I fail to see how this could be a bad thing.

Thanks to a botched burglary attempt at the Émancé Nature Reserve (about an hour outside Paris) in the 1970’s, there is now a feral Wallaby population in France.

2. And they were Nazis.

The founding of Adidas and Puma.

Rudolf “Rudi” Dassler and Adolf “Adi” Dassler were born into a German family, and Adi eventually began to produce athletic shoes. Rudi joined his younger brother’s company, and everything went swimmingly… for a while.

Eventually, both brothers joined the Nazi Party and turned on each other. Rudi formed “Rudas,” now known as Puma. And Adi formed “Adidas,” now known as Adidas.

The first time I heard this story, I was convinced it was fake.

1. He might be an alien.

In the hockey world, some of the numbers that Wayne Gretzky put up are mind-boggling. He scored nearly 3,000 points, nobody else even has 2,000. He has more assists than anyone else does points. He recorded 4 seasons with at least 200 PTS, nobody else has ever scored 200 in a season, though Lemieux came close. Rarely do we see a 50 goal scorer anymore, Gretzky set the record with 50 goals in a mere 39 games. So many other records that just make you say “wow.” No wonder he’s known simply as “The Great One.”

Do you have something you would add to the list? Share it in the comments!

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