Life
213 Fun Facts That'll Make You Go, "Huh"
Google was almost called something else.
There’s a reason fun facts are called fun facts. It’s always entertaining to discover a new and interesting or shocking piece of trivia to share with your friends, family, partner, the mailperson, your Uber driver — basically anyone you come across. There’s something so satisfying about dropping random truth bombs during conversation and seeing the reactions of those around you. Awkward pauses, who?
Usually sharing fun facts will result in a good quirked eyebrow, an impressed smile, and a genuine, “Really?” with the possibility of some laughter. But sometimes, when the facts are practically certified jaw-droppers, you’ll get to lean into further meaningful discussions. Not only does it round out your knowledge base but it’s also a way to bond and connect with others via engaging conversation. And it doesn’t hurt that it gives you a leg up for trivia nights.
The lure of fun facts is that there are always some lesser-known details behind any topic, no matter what specific interests you have. Maybe you’re fascinated by the way the human body works and would delight at the knowledge that your brain is constantly eating itself in a process called phagocytosis. Other fun facts remind you just how far humanity has come — like the fact that people used to swear up and down that arsenic was one of the best skin care products to grace their faces.
And who doesn’t want to feel more intelligent? Whether you’re in desperate need of an icebreaker at a party or trying to impress a date with memorable tidbits, there’s an interesting fact to lighten the mood for every occasion.
Best Fun Facts
- A sheep was the first animal to be cloned.
- Ketchup was once sold as medicine.
- Alaska is the farthest east, west, and north state in the United States.
- Your voice sounds deeper to you because of the bones in your head.
- The first animals to travel to outer space were fruit flies.
- A lightning bolt is five times hotter than the surface of the Sun.
- The tiny pocket in jeans was designed to store pocket watches.
- Bottlenose dolphins are the only other species to have names for themselves.
- There were active volcanoes on the moon when dinosaurs were alive.
- People are more creative in the shower.
Most Shocking Fun Facts
- A chicken named Mike lived for 18 months without his head in the 1940s.
- Vegetables aren’t a distinct scientific category. The word is a broad culinary term for non-sweet parts of edible plants.
- Animals can also be allergic to humans.
- Australia is wider than the moon.
- Wearing a necktie could reduce blood flow to your brain by up to 7.5 percent.
- The average cloud weighs over one million pounds, or about 100 elephants.
- A British man found £100,000 of Roman gold coins 20 minutes after buying his first-ever metal detector.
- You remember more dreams when you sleep poorly.
- Almonds are a member of the peach family.
Funniest Fun Facts
- A woman in the United Kingdom once called the police when her ice cream didn’t have enough sprinkles.
- There are nearly as many saunas in Finland as cars.
- McDonald’s once attempted to make bubblegum-flavored broccoli.
- Penicillin was initially called “mold juice.”
- People in the late 19th century ate arsenic for skin care.
Fun Facts About World Records
- The longest time someone has held their breath underwater is 24 minutes and 37 seconds.
- The longest English word is 189,819 letters long.
- The quickest commercial flight in the world is in Scotland and lasts typically under two minutes.
- The world’s longest concert lasted 453 hours.
- In 2012, a parrot achieved a world record for opening 35 canned drinks in one minute.
- The longest fingernail of all time is over six feet long.
- The oldest dog that ever lived was 31 years and 165 days old.
- The world’s oldest cat lived to 38 years and three days old.
Most Random Fun Facts
- A fear of long words is called hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia.
- The unicorn is the national animal of Scotland.
- A cat named Stubbs was the mayor of Talkeetna, Alaska for two decades.
- A mile is 5,280 feet long.
- The Pope can’t be an organ donor.
- The letter “Q” doesn’t appear in any American state’s name.
- No number before 1,000 contains the letter A, the second most commonly used letter.
- Allodoxaphobia is the fear of other people’s opinions.
- Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.
- There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.
- "Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt".
Fun Facts About Laws
- It’s illegal to own only one guinea pig in Switzerland.
- In Texas, it’s legal to be married by proxy (have a stand-in) if you’re deployed in another country and can’t make your ceremony.
- It’s illegal to be an astrologer in Yamhill, Oregon. In fact, the practice of all “occult arts” including, fortune telling, phrenology, palmistry, clairvoyance, mesmerism, or spiritualism as a means of divination or giving advice is illegal in this city.
- It’s prohibited to get married in Nebraska if you have a sexually transmitted infection.
Fun Facts About Books
- The most expensive book ever purchased, Codex Leicester by Leonardo Da Vinci, was sold for $30.8 million to Bill Gates.
- Bibliosmia is the delightful aroma of a good book.
- The longest sentence ever printed is 823 words, appearing in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables.
- Harry Potter is the third most-read book in the world, coming behind only The Holy Bible and The Holy Quran.
- Alice in Wonderland was based on a real 10-year-old girl named Alice.
Fun Facts About Disney
- Buzz Lightyear was originally called Lunar Larry.
- Woody from Toy Story was originally an evil ventriloquist dummy.
- Walt Disney holds the most Academy Awards with a lifetime total of 26.
- Elsa was originally supposed to be the villain in Frozen.
- Pocahontas is the only Disney princess whose character is based on a real historical person.
- Elsa is the only Disney princess who isn’t a teenager.
- Snow White is only 14 years old.
- Tiana is the only princess to ever have a job.
- Disney was running out of time when producing Beauty and the Beast, so they reused the animation dance from Sleeping Beauty for Belle and Prince Adam’s dance.
Fun Facts About Movies
- Velociraptor noises in Jurassic Park are mating tortoises.
- The script for The Terminator was sold for $1.
- The prop master in Scream forgot to unplug Drew Barrymore’s phone, so she actually called 911 screaming several times until the police called back during a take.
- Mike Myers only agreed to star in The Cat in the Hat because of the threat of a lawsuit with Universal Pictures.
- The code in The Matrix comes from sushi recipes.
- The cat in The Godfather was a stray.
Fun Facts About People
- President Theodore Roosevelt had a pet hyena.
- Neil Armstrong’s hair was sold in 2004 for $3,000.
- Galileo was also a skilled practicing astrologer.
- John Wayne, Hollywood’s most famous cowboy, hated riding horses.
- Dr. Seuss didn’t like children.
- The Pringles creator’s ashes were buried inside a Pringles can.
Fun Facts About The Body
- About a quarter of the bones in your body are in your feet.
- Your nose and ears never stop growing.
- Human teeth are the only part of the body that cannot heal themselves.
- Fingernails grow faster than toenails.
- Skin is your body’s largest organ.
- Your heart beats an average of 100,000 times each day.
- Your brain alone burns around 400 to 500 calories each day.
- It’s impossible to hum while holding your nose.
- The circulatory system is more than 60,000 miles long.
- Approximately 10% of people are left-handed.
- Your nails grow faster during a hot summer.
- The middle finger has the fastest-growing nail.
- Sneezes regularly exceed 100 miles per hour.
- Your heartbeat changes to mimic the music you’re listening to.
- The beard has the fastest-growing hair on the human body.
- It’s impossible to tickle yourself.
- Everyone has a unique smell except for identical twins, theirs are the same.
- You don't actually breathe through both nostrils at the same time.
- Your height changes depending on the time of day.
- Most people produce enough saliva in their lifetimes to fill two swimming pools.
Fun Facts About History
- The Hollywood sign used to say “Hollywoodland.”
- The first commercial passenger flight lasted only 23 minutes.
- The first person processed at Ellis Island was a 15-year-old girl from Ireland.
- People used to say “prunes” when taking pictures because smiling for photos was “childish” in the 1840s.
Fun Facts About Animals
- Around 80% of the world’s orange cats are male.
- Dingoes have rotating wrists, unlike other canines, meaning they can open doors with their paws.
- Animals can experience time differently from humans.
- Cats can’t taste anything sweet.
- Flamingos aren’t born pink.
- Dogs sweat through their paws.
- Sea otters hold hands while they sleep so they don’t drift apart.
- The Antarctic blue whale is the largest animal on the planet and can weigh about as much as 33 elephants.
- The blue whale’s tongue can weigh as much as one elephant.
- The fastest animal is a cheetah.
- Giraffe tongues can be 20 inches long.
- Shrimp’s hearts are located in their heads.
- Platypuses ooze milk from all over their skin.
- Snakes smell with their tongue.
- Bats are the only flying mammals.
- All mammals get goosebumps.
- There is a group of wolves in British Columbia called sea wolves with a 90% marine diet.
- Tigers have striped skin.
- Giraffes are 30 times more likely to get hit by lightning than people.
- Giraffes hum to communicate with each other in the dark.
- It’s physically impossible for pigs to look up at the sky.
Fun Facts About Space
- The surface of the sun is around 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
- There is a planet, 55 Cancri e, made almost entirely of diamonds.
- Comets smell like rotten eggs.
- Mercury is the closest planet to the sun.
- Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system.
- Venus is the only planet that spins clockwise.
- English soccer teams with red jerseys win more often than any other color.
- A rainbow on Venus is called a glory.
- There’s a family photo on the moon.
- It rains methane on Saturn’s largest moon.
Fun Facts About Food
- Peanuts aren’t really a type of nut, they’re legumes.
- Cap’n Crunch’s full name is Horatio Magellan Crunch.
- Ripening bananas glow blue under black lights.
- Tomatoes are a fruit, not a vegetable.
- Tea is the most popular beverage worldwide apart from water.
- Avocados are actually fruits, not vegetables.
- Lemons float, but limes sink.
- Nutmeg is a hallucinogen.
- McDonald’s serves spaghetti in the Philippines.
- 3 Musketeers candy bars are so named because they used to come in three flavors — chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry — before sugar was rationed during the 1940s.
Fun Facts About Sports
- Massachusetts is the birthplace of both basketball and volleyball.
- NFL Super Bowl referees also get Super Bowl rings.
- The longest tennis match in history took 11 hours and five minutes, spanning over three days.
- Babe Ruth put chilled cabbage leaves under his hat to keep him cool while playing baseball.
Fun Facts About Geography
- Rhode Island is the smallest state in the United States.
- The largest continent in the world is Asia.
- Africa is the only continent in all four hemispheres.
Fun Facts About Art
- Competitive art used to be an Olympic sport.
- The Mona Lisa has her own mailbox in the Louvre because of all the love letters she receives.
- In 2003, street artist Banksy put his own work on the wall at the Tate Modern Museum in London. The prank lasted several hours.
- In 1969, the “Moon Museum” became the first piece of artwork to go to the moon and may still be there today.
- Michelangelo was also a poet.
Fun Facts For Kids
- An 11-year-old accidentally invented popsicles in 1905.
- LEGO bricks withstand compression better than concrete.
- You can’t fold a piece of A4 paper more than eight times.
Fun Facts About Architecture
- The tallest building in the world is the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.
- The Eiffel Tower grows taller in the summer.
- The Eiffel Tower was originally made for Barcelona.
- The Statue of Liberty was once a lighthouse.
Fun Facts About Nature
- Trees can communicate with each other.
- Bamboo is the world’s fastest-growing plant. One species is able to grow up to 35 inches in a day.
- Forests can create their own rain.
- There are more trees on earth than stars in the Milky Way.
Fun Facts About Earth
- It would take 19 minutes to fall to the center of the Earth.
- Earth’s rotation is slowing and gaining 1.8 seconds in a day every century, meaning that 600 million years ago, a day lasted only 21 hours.
- The Tibetan Plateau is known as Earth’s “third pole.”
- Earth has a squishy interior.
Fun Facts About Bugs
- There are more than one million different species of insects on the planet.
- The world’s largest butterfly, Queen Alexandra’s birdwing, has a wingspan of around 10 inches.
- Ants don’t have lungs.
- Bees can fly higher than Mount Everest.
- Bees dance to communicate.
Fun Facts About Technology
- The first computer bug was a literal moth stuck in a 1947 computer.
- The QWERTY keyboard was designed to slow you down because typing too quickly jammed the keys on the first typewriters.
- The name Google was supposed to be called Googol, but when searching if the domain was taken, the creators accidentally searched “google.com” instead of “googol.com” and liked it better.
- Apple was originally designed as an apple-shaped flip phone.
- Every iPhone ad has the time set to 9:41, the time Steve Jobs announced the first iPhone in 2007.
- You blink less than half as often when using a computer, which makes your eyes dry out.
- Changing fonts can save on ink when printing.
- The first computer weighed more than 27 tons.
- Nintendo was founded in 1889 as a playing card company.
- The first handheld mobile phone was made by Motorola.
- The first photo took eight hours to expose in 1826 in France.
Fun Facts About The Internet
- Email came before the internet.
- Amazon was almost called Cadabra Inc.
- Google Images was created after Jennifer Lopez wore the green dress at the 2000 Grammys because so many people were searching for the outfit.
- The Firefox logo isn’t a fox, it’s a red panda.
- Google averages almost 3 billion searches per day.
- The internet was invented in a beer garden.
- WiFi was released to the public in 1997.
- The name WiFi doesn’t actually stand for anything.
Fun Facts About Social Media
- The real name for a hashtag is an octothorpe.
- As of 2024, 62.3% of the global population uses social media.
- From 2019 to 2022 the most-liked photo on Instagram was of an egg, with 61 million likes.
- Pizza, steak, and sushi are the most popular food items on Instagram.
Fun Facts About Medicine
- Occupational therapy (OT) can be traced back to 100 BC.
- Cataract surgery was possible in the sixth century BC.
- The idea of doctors washing their hands before surgery or delivering babies was laughed at in the mid-1800s.
Fun Facts About The Ocean
- The ocean covers 71% of the Earth’s surface.
- There is enough salt in the ocean to cover the whole surface of the Earth.
- Starfish don’t have bodies, they’re technically entirely classified as a head.
- Fish form orderly queues in emergencies.
- About 95% of the ocean has not been explored.
- The number of species living in the ocean is unknown.
- The ocean influences and regulates the earth’s climate.
- The biggest mountain range in the world is in the ocean.
- Orcas are actually dolphins, not whales.
- The giant squid has the largest eyes in the world.
Fun Facts About Different Countries
- Finland has ranked as the happiest country in the world for 7 years straight.
- Only four countries in the world have national anthems with no lyrics.
- Vatican City is the smallest country in the world.
- Mongolia has the world's sparsest population and in some regions you can go days without seeing another person.
Disturbing Fun Facts
- Chainsaws were initially invented for childbirth.
- Wearing headphones for just an hour could increase the bacteria in your ear by 700 times.
- Some lipsticks contain fish scales.
- The Tin Man original actor in The Wizard of Oz was replaced after suffering health issues from ingesting aluminum into his lungs from the costume makeup, his skin turned blue and he struggled to breathe.
- 99% of the human body is empty space.
