40 Stupid Facts You Don’t Need to Know (But Are True)

Some facts are useful. These are not. But they are all true, which is more than can be said for a lot of the “stupid facts” that get shared online. We have checked every one, and busted a few famous myths along the way. Here are 40 stupid facts you don’t need to know.

1Bears do not poo while they hibernate.

Hibernating bears can go for months without going to the toilet. Their bodies recycle waste, and a plug of dead cells and hair, known as a fecal plug, forms in their gut until spring.

2A group of crows is called a murder.

Other collective nouns for birds include a parliament of owls and a flamboyance of flamingos.

3New York has its own species of ant.

An ant found in the central reservations of Broadway in Manhattan in 2012 seemed to be unknown elsewhere and was nicknamed the “ManhattAnt”. Scientists later suggested it may be a European species that arrived long ago.

4Snails have thousands of teeth.

A snail’s tongue-like ribbon, called a radula, is covered in rows of tiny teeth. Some snails have more than 10,000 of them.

5The world’s biggest pyramid is in Mexico.

The Great Pyramid of Cholula in Mexico is the largest pyramid in the world by volume, far bigger than the Great Pyramid of Giza. It is so overgrown that it looks like a hill, with a church on top.

6US spies once banned Furbies.

In 1999 the US National Security Agency banned Furby toys from its offices, worried that they could record and repeat secret conversations. They could not.

7Crocodiles cannot stick out their tongues.

A crocodile’s tongue is held in place by a membrane attached to the roof of its mouth.

8Mice in space run laps.

Mice sent to the International Space Station started running laps around the walls of their cages, a behaviour scientists called “race-tracking”.

9“Eunoia” is the shortest English word with all five vowels.

The six-letter word means “beautiful thinking” or goodwill towards others.

10Spiders’ webs were used as plasters.

In ancient Greece and Rome, cobwebs were pressed onto wounds to help stop bleeding.

11Alexander Graham Bell wanted us to answer the phone with “Ahoy”.

It was Thomas Edison’s suggestion, “Hello”, that caught on instead.

12All tea comes from the same plant.

Black, green, white and oolong teas all come from the leaves of Camellia sinensis. The difference is in how the leaves are processed. Herbal “teas” are not really tea at all.

13You are more likely to die on your birthday.

A Swiss study of more than two million deaths found that people were about 14% more likely to die on their birthday than on any other day.

14Apples float because they are a quarter air.

About 25% of an apple’s volume is air, which is why apple bobbing works.

15“Alaska” can be typed on one row of a keyboard.

All its letters are on the middle row of a standard QWERTY keyboard, the only US state that can be typed this way.

16The man who designed the Pringles can was buried in one.

When Fredric Baur died in 2008, his children buried some of his ashes in a Pringles can, as he had requested.

17Lego bricks from 1958 still fit today’s bricks.

The modern Lego brick was patented in 1958, and bricks made then still click together with ones made now.

18One bone in your body is not attached to any other.

The U-shaped hyoid bone in your neck, which supports your tongue, is held in place only by muscles and ligaments.

19There is a basketball court above the US Supreme Court.

It is on the top floor of the Supreme Court building in Washington, and is nicknamed “the highest court in the land”.

20The blob of toothpaste on your brush is called a nurdle.

The word became famous in 2010 when toothpaste makers argued over who had the right to show it in their adverts.

21Viagra can keep cut flowers standing up.

In 1999, researchers in Israel and Australia reported that a tiny dose of Viagra in a vase made cut flowers stay fresh for up to a week longer.

22British spies swapped a bomb recipe for cupcakes.

In 2011, British intelligence hacked an online al-Qaeda magazine and replaced bomb-making instructions with recipes for cupcakes.

23Someone made a pizza with 1,001 cheeses.

Australian chef Johnny Di Francesco set a record with a 154-cheese pizza, partly to prove a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film wrong. Two French chefs smashed it in 2023 with 1,001 cheeses.

24Queen Elizabeth II gatecrashed a wedding, by invitation.

In 2012, a couple getting married in Manchester sent the Queen an invitation, not expecting a reply. She turned up to congratulate them, as she was visiting the city that day.

25James Bond was named after a bird expert.

Ian Fleming took the name from the author of Birds of the West Indies, the American ornithologist James Bond, because he wanted the plainest name he could find. He did not ask permission first.

26Most people cannot lick their own elbow.

A small number of people with long tongues or very flexible joints can, but for most of us it is physically impossible.

27You cannot hum while holding your nose.

Humming needs air to escape through your nose. Try it, and the sound stops.

28A duck’s quack does echo.

A well-known “stupid fact” claims it does not. In 2003, scientists at the University of Salford tested it and found that a duck’s quack echoes like any other sound. It is just hard to hear.

29Water does not swirl differently in each hemisphere.

Another popular myth. The Coriolis effect is far too weak to affect a sink or toilet. The direction water swirls depends on the shape of the basin and how the water was moving.

30Bangkok’s full name is 168 letters long.

Thai people call it Krung Thep, short for a ceremonial name that holds the world record for the longest place name.

31Some animals sleep through the summer.

Instead of hibernating, some snails, tortoises and lungfish “aestivate”, going dormant to survive hot, dry spells.

32Scotland’s national animal is the unicorn.

The unicorn has been a symbol of Scotland since the 1300s and appears on the royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom.

33A town called Boring is twinned with Dull.

Boring in Oregon, USA, and Dull in Perthshire, Scotland, became sister communities in 2012. They were later joined by Bland in Australia.

34Wombats do cube-shaped poo.

Wombats are the only animals known to produce cube-shaped droppings, thanks to the way their intestines stretch. The research won an Ig Nobel Prize in 2019.

35Strawberries are not berries, but bananas are.

To a botanist, a berry is a fleshy fruit grown from a single flower with one ovary. Bananas, grapes and even aubergines qualify. Strawberries do not.

36Octopuses have three hearts.

Two hearts pump blood through the gills, and the third pumps it around the rest of the body. Their blood is blue.

37Sea otters hold hands while they sleep.

They do it so they do not drift apart in the water.

38Ketchup was once sold as a medicine.

In the 1830s an American doctor, John Cook Bennett, claimed tomatoes could cure indigestion and other illnesses, and tomato ketchup pills were sold as a remedy.

39Shakespeare wrote poems when plague shut the theatres.

When London’s theatres closed because of plague in 1592 and 1593, Shakespeare wrote the long poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece.

40The dot on an “i” has a name.

It is called a tittle.

FAQs about stupid facts

Are these stupid facts true?

Yes. We have checked each one, and corrected some common “facts” that turn out to be myths, such as ducks’ quacks not echoing.

What is the most useless fact?

That is up to you, but a strong contender is that the dot on the letter “i” is called a tittle.

Sources and further reading

• Guinness World Records
• The Ig Nobel Prize winners

Explore more: facts about life and interesting facts.

Do you know any stupid facts? Share them in the comments below!