It’s never too late to learn something. And Factourism is probably the best place online to do so.
Created by Ferdio, an infographic agency in Copenhagen, Denmark, it shares cool facts about our world — whether it’s the inventor of the office wheelchair or the most frequently used password, everyone and everything has its place on Factourism. Here are 50 of them.
1. Human Gold
We hold 0.2 mg of gold inside us. An average person weighing 70 kilograms hosts 43 kg of oxygen, 16 kg of carbon, 7 kg of hydrogen… and 0.2 mg of gold.
2. Dog Television
Thanks to modern television screens, dogs are able to watch TV as well as humansHuman eyes can register around 55 images a second, while dogs, better at detecting quick movements, can see around 75 images a second. Older television sets were flickering around 60 times a second, good for humans but not adapted to dogs. New television screens have higher frequencies, so dogs can finally appreciate what happens on TV.
3. Farmer Ants
Several species of ants, attines, started farming 55 to 60 millions of years before humans did. Their favourite food? Fungus. They organise themselves around cutting grass and leaves, bringing them back to their colony, watching after fungus growing on the harvested crop, and then collecting and eating the fungus. The fungus species evolves along with each ant species.
4. Wine Glasses Size
Wine glasses are seven times larger than they used to be{Weekend Repost}The average wine glass from the 1700s was about 66ml, against 417ml in the 2000s. That is a finding of research conducted by scientists from the university of Cambridge. Comparing 411 glasses from the past 300 years found in museums, catalogues, and other sources, they found that their size got six to seven times larger during that time. The larger increase has been happening in the last few decades, leading to the question of what it can mean in terms of alcohol consumption.
5. Trees Secret Signals
Plants can communicate with one another. Some correspond with each other by emitting volatile organic chemicals, some even send electric signals. The meaning of the messages can have different goals, such as alerting about insects, advising nice directions for growing, regulating temperature, etc.
6. Honey Expiration
The visibly never ending shelf-life of honey is surprising: archaeologists have excavated honey from thousands of years ago, and it’s still unspoiled. One reason is that as a substance, honey has very low moisture, an environment in which very few bacterias can survive. Another is that it is very acidic, again a characteristic that bacterias don’t like. Finally, the bees produce hydrogen peroxide from the nectar, a known antiseptic, to the point that honey can be used in traditional medicine to treat wounds against infection. In a word, honey is hell for bacterias and other microorganisms, so as long as it is sealed and not mixed with anything, they won’t dare grow on it and spoil it.
7. Ugly Laws
Some cities in the US used to have ‘ugly laws’, fining people $1 to $50 for how they lookedAnd by ugly, mayors mostly meant poor or with a disability. The laws were a pretext to force beggars, people with missing limbs or visible diseases, to stay away from public space. From the 19th century, several cities of the West and Midwest had laws like this. The last one, in Chicago, was only repealed in 1974.
8. Pigeon Mammogram
Pigeons, birds with a pretty good visual memory, were trained at classifying mammograms: some with and some without cancerous cells. If they were right, they would be rewarded with a treat. After two weeks, they were able to be 85% accurate. And when using four birds working on the same images, the accuracy of diagnosis went up to 99%. The birds’ newfound medical skills could be used to improve medical imagery data.
9. Donut Planet
A donut-shaped planet is technically possible{Weekend Repost}Even if extremely unlikely to happen naturally, the possibility of a planet shaped as a torus — the true name of a doughnut shape — is not physically impossible. Researchers have made simulations and calculated the gravitational forces implicated, and everything seems alright. The weather would be very peculiar, and there could even be moons with orbits going through the central hole.
10. Crow Grudge
Don’t mess with a crow: they will remember your face. Researchers have been either nice or not nice to crows for scientific purposes, all while wearing different masks. Crows were able to remember which masks were not nice to them, and scans of their heads showed that a region of the brain associated with bad memories — until now only studied in mammals — was activating in the presence of a face they remembered as threatening.
11. Dorothy Diet
The powerful producers of the MGM film required the teenage actress to look as young and thin as possible so as to fit their whim, so they imposed on her a strict diet of some soup and coffee, along with an abundant amount of cigarettes so that would not get too hungry. On top of that, she was put on pills to reduce her appetite and to keep her awake during the long filming hours and a forced lack of sleep. Not exactly “wonderful”.
12. Four Earths
If everyone on the planet consumed as much as the average US citizen, four Earths would be needed to sustain them{Weekend Repost}A set of data produced by the Global Footprint Network measures the ecological impact of the populations of different countries. Their footprint is calculated using statistics about the natural resources used to make the products they consume, as well as their carbon emissions. The researchers calculated the amount of land and sea necessary to sustain each country. The whole world needs 1.5 Earths to be sustainable the way we consume now, and if the entire humanity were to consume the way the United States does, we would need 3.9 Earths. Yet it isn’t the worst, as it is topped by Kuwait (5.1 Earths), Australia (4.8 Earths), the United Arab Emirates (4.7 Earths), and Qatar (4.0 Earths).
13. Male Cheerleader
Cheerleading started as an all-male activityCheerleading in the US can be traced back to the late 19th century, when male students rebelled and, besides taking part in riots, also started practising sports in universities. One of the earliest documented examples of cheerleading dates from 1877, happening at Princeton University. It’s only in 1923 that the University of Minnesota allowed women to join, and most universities followed much later, in the 1940s. By the 1970s, most cheerleaders were women.
14. Newborn Giraffes
Baby giraffes are born falling 1.5 metres to the ground. It’s no secret that giraffes are very tall animals, but a lesser known fact is that they give birth standing up. The first experience of a giraffe calf is a 1.5 metres (about 5 feet) high fall. Infants are then able to stand up in the first half hour of their life, and can run within 10 hours.
15. Air Pollution
29% of San Francisco’s air pollution comes from Asia. Geochemists have analysed the air of the San Francisco Bay Area, both from an urban spot and from a coastal location, looking at pollution particles smaller than 2.5 microns over the course of six months. They have found that 29% of these were 208Pb particles, a specific form of lead that is characteristic of East Asia.
16. Sloth Poop
17. Paris Stop
There are no stop signs in Paris(the last one was removed in the 2010s)With over 2 million inhabitants and a considerable amount of cars, the French capital has managed to do just fine without any stop signs, a sight that is usually very common in cities. At any unmarked crossing, drivers follow the “priority to the right” rule: cars coming from the right have the right of way. And of course, bigger intersections have traffic lights. It wasn’t always the case, with the last known stop sign disappearing from its street sometime between 2012 and 2014.
18. Bear Jail
There is a polar bear jail in CanadaThe town of Churchill in northern Manitoba, visited by a thousand polar bears in the summer, has a special facility for the most troublesome or dangerous of these special visitors: nothing else than a jail, comprising about fifty cells where the bears are locked up to one month and without food. After that, they are flown far away from the town with a helicopter. The theory is that this would be memorable enough for the bear that they won’t want to approach the town ever again, even though they cannot find food anywhere else any more since the ice in the region has melted and their usual food, seals, are now not that common.
19. Queen Mechanic
Queen Elizabeth was a mechanic during WWIIDuring the second world war, Elizabeth II, then princess, now queen of the United Kingdom, was working full-time as a mechanic and driver to help the war efforts. She was 18 in 1944 when she decided, against her father’s (King George V) initial opinion, that she would join the Auxiliary Territorial Service, a women’s branch of the British army. A photo from that time has her fixing a car engine while her mother Queen Elizabeth I is visiting.
20. Tennis Sweat
Tennis players produce up to 3 litres of sweat an hour. A tennis player can create more sweat than their body is able to replace during a 5 hours match, especially when the weather conditions are very hot. Players have to be selective about what balls to put effort into, in order to reduce their own heat and not outdo what their body can take.
21. Apple Phonebook
When Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak created Apple in 1976, the first of the two Steves came up with the name Apple for two reasons: he had a nice experience working in an apple orchard a few years earlier, and the name would get them before Atari in the phone book, the company where Jobs was working previously.
22. Ups Left Turns
Turning left puts drivers against the flow of vehicles coming the other way, which leads them to wait 30–45 seconds each time with the engine running. A new routing system introduced a few years ago, which calculates routes favouring right turns, saves the whole UPS 10 million gallons (38 million litres) of fuel every year. On top of that, right turns are more safe, leading to only 1.2% of crashes instead of 22.2% for left turns.
23. Pet Ticket
From the 1200s, the Tower of London started to host a menagerie of exotic animals, the ancestor of what would eventually move and become the London Zoo in the 1830s. The place was finally opened to the general public under Elizabeth I. The entrance was half-pence, but was free if you brought a cat or a dog.
24. Balloon animals
A sheep, a duck and a rooster were the first passengers on a hot air balloon1783. The Montgolfier brothers, Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne, have been doing experiments with hot air balloons for about a year, when they got invited to make their first demonstration with passengers in Versailles, attended by the king Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. The passengers are three farm animals, chosen for their characteristics: a sheep that is not that different from a human, a bird that can fly and a bird that can’t. The balloon flew eight minutes and went 500 metres high, before landing peacefully. The animals were almost fine: the duck was not disrupted, the sheep was eating its hay like nothing happened, but had sat on the rooster, breaking its beak. They became honoured residents of the royal menagerie. A month later, the brothers flew a new balloon, this time with people in it.
25. Left Handed People
Studies have shown that life is on average shorter for left-handers. One that looked at 1,000 Californians found out that the left-handed portion died on average 9 years younger. They discovered that left-handers are also five times more likely to die in an accident.
26. Extinct Cacao
Cacao plants are cultivated in a very narrow strip on the globe: they grow only around the equator, in places that have relatively stable temperature and humidity during the year. But in the next few decades, the climate of these regions is expected to become warmer and dryer, leaving the cacao nowhere to be grown. Giant chocolate companies like Mars are working with scientists to find solutions, like making GMO cacao plants able to withstand these conditions, but we are certainly reaching the end of chocolate as we know it.
27. Password 123456
The most frequently used password is 123456{Weekend Repost}“123456” has been for several consecutive years the most widely used password, according to a list collecting all those which were hacked and leaked. The top 10 also includes the very imaginative “123456789”, “12345678”, “1234567”, and “12345”. As for the second most used password, it is “password”.
28. Blood Loop
Blood makes a loop around your body 1,500 times a dayBlood circulates through the body continuously: starting from the heart, it irrigates all parts of the body, passes through the lungs for a new supply in oxygen, and gets to the heart again before starting the tour again. Our 5 litres of blood recirculates about 1500 times each day, and that without exercise that can also increase the number of loops.
29. Cows Names
Cows that are called by name produce 258 litres more milk per year than those who aren’t{Weekend Repost}Cows that are stressed make less milk because of the interference of hormones, and the ones that are anxious are more likely to resist milking. A relaxed and cared about cow, however, is going to give more milk. A study conducted across British cows in 500 hundreds farms showed that the ones that had a name, usually alongside being gently stroked and talked to, got on average 258 more litres of milk a year. Baby cows that are not yet of age for making milk are also more likely to give a good amount of milk later on if they are treated as individuals rather than ignored.
30. Avocado Testicles
The word ‘avocado’ comes from a Native Central American word meaning both avocado and testicleIn Nahuatl, an Aztecan language spoken in Central America, the fruit has been called “āhuacatl”, the same word that is used for testicles. After all, both have obvious similarities. When the Spanish invaders colonised the region, they took the word and made it “aguacate”, which later became “avocado” and was borrowed in turn into the English language.
31. Supreme Basketball Court
The United States Supreme Court building, built in 1935 in Washington D.C., does not only house a courtroom. It has five floors, the last one being a gym with a basketball court, referred to as “the highest court in the land”.
32. Nazi Fanta
Fanta was created in Nazi Germany due to difficulties importing Coca-Cola syrup during World War II {Weekend Repost} Coke was present in Germany since the late twenties, and continued operation when the nation was overtaken by Nazism. When the war broke however, some key ingredients couldn’t be imported. To keep the company running, its executives launched a new drink made from the leftovers of other food industries, Fanta.
33. Taller Morning – You are one or two centimetres taller when you get out of bed in the morning
All the pressure put on our spine during the day, compressing our cartilage down, makes us a little smaller when we go to bed. Your body can finally relax during the night, finding again its initial height, usually 1-2 cm more than on evenings.
34. Antarctic Tinder
In 2014, two scientists on a mission in Antarctica, one housed in a tent from a field camp in the Dry Valleys, another staying at the McMurdo Station, had the same idea: checking Tinder. No profiles appeared at first, but when extending the radius of the search, they found each other. It turned out they matched! As for actually going on a date, they did manage to meet up once, but that was the day before one of them was leaving the continent.
35. Fish Lipstick
There are a lot of ingredients in a lipstick: for instance beeswax, Carnauba wax from palm trees, lanolin from wool, castor oil from beans, any dye either from vegetal, animal, or synthetic origin, and sometimes guanine, a substance that can be found in fish scales and gives the product a pearl-like appearance
36. Fish Airdrop
Fish are getting dumped from aeroplanes in order to repopulate lakesLakes needing more fish can get their new population to fly over: aerial firefighting airplanes get their tank full of water and fish, and they all get dropped when the aircraft flies over their destination. Practised for decades already, the practise is meant to be relatively harmless for the fish.
37. Darwin Chair
In his office in Down House, in Kent, England, Charles Darwin had laid out all the specimens he collected during his research expeditions all around the room. But getting up, moving his heavy armchair, and sitting down again and again all the time, comparing specimens from table to table, wasn’t really practical. So he fastened four swivel caster wheels to his armchair’s feet, and could then roll around the study easily, effectively creating the first known wheeled office chair.
38. Fancy Pineapple
Pineapples were status symbols in 18th century Europe(they were so expensive that people rented them for the evening to show off at parties)Originally from South America, Christopher Columbus brought back pineapple to Europe in the 15th century, but they didn’t acclimate well to the local conditions. By the 17th century, pineapples were still rare there and considered very luxurious, one fruit costing up to 7000€ in today’s money.
39. Plant Light
40. Whale Threesome
41. Face Mites
Tiny mites are living and having sex on your faceThe human skin is home to several species of microscopic mites, from Demodex folliculorum who lives in the pores to Demodex brevis who settles in oil glands. Related to spiders, these mites are born on your skin, live on your skin, and die on your skin after their short 2-week lives. In the meantime, they mate with each other, males visiting females who in turn lay eggs in your pores.
41. Salmon Hair
Salmon, sardines and mackerel are all fish that have a good amount of fatty acids, in particular omega-3, which helps with hair health, shininess and loss prevention. The fish also have protein and biotin, which can improve hair strength and prevent breakage.
42. Mortuary Press
The history of printing is rich and black-and-white. It includes this bit from the 1860s: William Bullock, an American inventor known for improving the rotary press and turning it into a machine capable of printing up to 12,000 pages an hour, died after he kicked his invention and got his leg caught and crushed in the device.
43. Starfish Body
Most starfish can regenerate bits of their body if damaged, and some can regenerate a full limb if lost. A few however can even regrow their full central body from a single remaining limb. The process can take months to years, and the animal is very vulnerable during that time. Some species use that ability for reproduction: lose a limb, let it regrow a body, you’re now two.
44. Baby Cage
In 1930s London, babies were dangled out of windows in “baby cages”Fresh air. That is the reason why London parents living in flats a hundred years ago would purchase cages similar to chicken coops, hang them by the window, and put their little kids in it.
45. Alcoholic Shrew
Pen-tailed treeshrews spend every night drinking fermented nectar (drinking the human equivalent of 9 glasses of wine a night)A little mammal living in Southeast Asia and Oceania, the pen-tailed treeshrew is the only known animal, besides humans, to consume alcohol regularly. In fact, the threeshrews drink fermented nectar from flowers every single night, as it is their main source of nutrition. Their favourite brewery? The bertam palm plant, which produces drinks with up to 3.8 percent concentration of alcohol. And last but not least: they don’t show any sign of being drunk, suggesting a more efficient metabolism than ours in terms of alcohol detoxification.
46. Urine Teeth
Scientists can grow teeth out of the stem cells found in urineExtracting stem cells from urine samples, researchers at the Guangzhou institute of biomedicine then proceeded to grow artificial teeth from there. As the teeth were not as hard as natural teeth, and the cells not in their best state, urine might not be the best source: further research is needed. But growing teeth in a lab might become a viable way in dentistry to replace a damaged tooth.
47. Closed Eyes
Our eyes are closed for roughly 10% of our waking hours{Weekend Repost}We blink 15 to 20 times a minute, more than what we need in order to keep our eyes moisturised. So why are we blinking that much? Researchers from Osaka University in Japan discovered that the brain switches to some sort of idle state during the blink. Not having to focus and process any visual information for a fraction of a second, the mind gets some rest.
48. Churchil Cigar
May 11, 1947, Le Bourget airport, Paris, France. Winston Churchill, then between his two mandates as a prime minister of the UK, smokes half a Cuban cigar and stub it out in an ashtray before embarking on his plane to Northolt, UK. That’s when William Alan Turner, an airman working on this flight, discreetly got the cigar out of the ashtray and brought it home as a souvenir for flying the British statesman. Fast forward October 11, 2017, RR auction house, Boston, USA. The cigar resurfaces. A Floridian collector buys it for no less than $12,000.
49. Space Boots
On July 20, 1969, the Eagle lunar module landed on the Moon, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong on board. They stepped on it, said some nice words, planted a flag, walked around a bit. At one point however, they had to go home. So they flew off, but not before losing as much weight in the spacecraft as possible, especially since they picked up some nice rocks during their visit. Neil Armstrong’s boots are part of what has been jettisoned before returning home.
50. Colgate Candles
When English immigrant William Colgate founded his company in 1806 in New York City, he was making soap and candles. It is only in 1873, well after his death, that the company started to sell toothpaste, originally sold in jars.
