Let’s be honest: the internet is drowning in “fun fact” lists, and most of them repeat the same tired trivia. So we’ve done something different. Every fact below has been checked, and where the popular version is actually a myth, we tell you – because a fact that turns out to be wrong isn’t funny, it’s just embarrassing.
Here’s a freshly updated stack of genuinely funny facts – from the downright strange to the outright unbelievable. A few will make you laugh, a couple will settle an argument, and at least one will have you quietly trying something at your desk.
1. A monkey once ran an English town.
In 2002, Hartlepool elected a man in a monkey costume as mayor. H’Angus the Monkey – the local football club’s mascot, played by Stuart Drummond – ran on the joke slogan “free bananas for schoolchildren” and won. The town liked him enough to re-elect him twice, and he served three terms. (No, he never did hand out the bananas.)
2. One to try at home.
It’s practically impossible to lick your own elbow. You’re trying it right now, aren’t you?
3. Cows have best friends.
Cows are social enough to form close friendships, and research suggests they get stressed when separated from a particular companion. Their heart rates go up when a friend is taken away – so yes, cows really do have a best mate.
4. Tea may have been discovered by accident.
Legend has it that tea was stumbled upon around 2737 BC, when leaves blew into a pot of boiling water belonging to the Chinese emperor Shennong. It’s almost certainly a myth – but we’ve been perfecting the brew on purpose ever since.
5. A quarter of Americans are a bit lost in space…
In a US National Science Foundation survey, around 1 in 4 Americans got it wrong when asked whether the Earth goes around the Sun or the Sun goes around the Earth. Copernicus would not be impressed.
6. Some turtles can breathe through their backsides.
Strange but true: certain turtles, such as the Australian Fitzroy River turtle, can take in oxygen through their rear ends (a process called cloacal respiration). It lets them stay underwater far longer. Now that’s multi-tasking.
7. Another one to try at home.
You can’t hum while holding your nose. Humming needs air moving out through your nose – block it, and the sound stops. We bet you’re testing that one too.
8. This animal’s official name is gloriously repetitive.
The western lowland gorilla’s full scientific name is Gorilla gorilla gorilla. Say it three times fast.
9. Hitchcock brought the toilet to the big screen.
Psycho (1960) is widely credited as the first major American film to show a toilet being flushed on screen – shocking enough at the time to cause a stir with the censors.
10. “My dog ate my homework” – John Steinbeck edition.
Of Mice and Men nearly never reached the publisher. Steinbeck’s dog, Toby, ate the original draft. “The poor fellow may have been acting critically,” Steinbeck mused, rather generously.
11. There’s nothing wrong with a healthy sense of humour.
Blink-182 reportedly incorporated their holding company as “Poo Poo Butt, Inc.” – purely because they loved the idea of accountants and lawyers having to say it out loud in serious meetings.
12. Are you jet-propelled?
It’s often claimed that the average fart travels at around 7 miles per hour. Nobody’s winning any races, but it’s a fun figure to drop at dinner.
13. Play-Doh started life as a cleaning product.
Play-Doh was originally sold as a wallpaper cleaner in the 1930s and ’40s. Only when a family member spotted schoolchildren using it as modelling clay did it get reinvented as the toy we know today.
14. Doctors once prescribed ketchup.
In the 1830s, tomato ketchup was sold as medicine. An American doctor, John Cook Bennett, claimed tomatoes could treat everything from indigestion to diarrhoea, and “tomato pills” briefly became a craze.
15. Banksy once shredded more than a million dollars in public.
The street artist Banksy sold a framed piece, Girl with Balloon, at a 2018 auction – and the moment the gavel came down, a hidden shredder in the frame began slicing it up. The buyer paid around £1.04 million (roughly $1.4 million) and honoured the sale anyway. The half-shredded work, renamed Love Is in the Bin, later resold in 2021 for £18.5 million.
16. An almond is basically a peach’s cousin.
Almonds and peaches belong to the same genus, Prunus, and are closely related. The almond we eat is the seed inside a fruit that’s structurally a lot like a small, dry peach. Guess again next time you call it a nut.
17. “Make fun of my name and it’s off to prison with you!”
Zimbabwe’s first president was Canaan Banana – and it’s widely reported that he brought in a law making it an offence to joke about his surname. You couldn’t make it up.
18. Rabbits are competitive show jumpers.
In Sweden there’s a whole sport for it: Kaninhoppning, or rabbit show jumping, where pet bunnies clear miniature fences and hurdles. Why should horses and dogs have all the fun?
19. Barry Manilow is a master of irony.
One of Barry Manilow’s signature hits is “I Write the Songs.” The twist? He didn’t write it – it was penned by Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys.
20. Some street names are wonderfully odd.
Spain has some gems, including streets with delightfully strange names – proof that town planners everywhere occasionally have a sense of humour.
21. Don’t ask a squirrel to keep a secret.
Squirrels are famously forgetful. They bury far more nuts and acorns than they ever dig back up – and all those forgotten stashes quietly grow into new trees. Accidental gardeners, every one of them.
22. You can blame some of your chemistry homework on a dream.
Chemist Dmitri Mendeleev said the structure of the periodic table came to him in a dream, after which he wrote it down almost exactly as he’d pictured it. Not a bad night’s sleep.
23. “Officer, arrest that coconut!”
In the 2013 Maldives presidential election, police genuinely detained a coconut on suspicion of vote-rigging, after it was found near a polling station and suspected of carrying a black-magic spell. Completely true.
24. Mind where you keep your ice cream in Kentucky.
There’s a long-standing tale that it was once illegal to carry an ice cream cone in your back pocket in Kentucky – a quirk supposedly aimed at stopping people from luring away other people’s horses. Whether it’s still on the books is another matter, but it’s a great one to repeat.
25. Mary Shelley won a very famous writing contest.
Frankenstein was born from a ghost-story competition at Lake Geneva in 1816. The other contestants? Her future husband Percy Shelley and the poet Lord Byron. Safe to say Mary won.
26. India takes cow welfare seriously.
Cows are revered across much of India, and many states have strict laws protecting them – including bans on slaughter. There’s genuine legal weight behind the reverence.
27. Duck quacks DO echo – the “no echo” fact is a myth.
You’ve probably heard that a duck’s quack doesn’t echo. It’s not true. Acoustics researchers at the University of Salford tested it and found the quack echoes just fine – it’s just a soft, fading sound, so the echo is hard to pick out. Myth: busted.
28. Bank robbers apparently like a Friday.
According to some crime statistics, a surprisingly large share of bank robberies happen towards the end of the week, with Friday often cited as the busiest day. Even criminals, it seems, fancy a weekend.
29. Americans once used wooden money – and today’s notes aren’t paper.
During the Great Depression, the town of Tenino, Washington, actually issued emergency money printed on thin wood. And modern US dollar bills aren’t paper at all – they’re made from a cotton-and-linen blend, which is why they survive the odd trip through the wash.
30. There may be more “play money” than real cash.
It’s often said that the makers of Monopoly print more of the game’s colourful money each year than the US Treasury prints in real currency. Whether or not the sums truly add up, it’s a brilliant thought.
31. Lock lips for a (very small) calorie burn.
Kissing is sometimes estimated to burn around two calories a minute. So it’s technically exercise – you’ll just need to be extremely dedicated to see results.
32. Froot Loops have no distinct flavours.
Slightly disappointing but true: despite the different colours, every Froot Loop tastes the same – a single blended fruit flavour. Sorry to spoil breakfast.
33. Christmas in Catalonia is… a bit gross.
In Catalonia, Spain, there’s a festive character called the Tió de Nadal – the “pooping log” – which children “feed” for days before hitting it with sticks so it “excretes” sweets and small gifts. Suddenly a man coming down the chimney seems tame.
34. The sandwich was born out of convenience.
The sandwich is named after John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich, who – as the story goes – asked for meat between two slices of bread so he could keep eating without leaving the card table. Multi-tasking, 18th-century style.
35. Fancy flying your armchair?
In 2015, a Canadian man tied more than a hundred helium balloons to a lawn chair and floated over Calgary as a stunt during the Stampede. It worked – right up until he parachuted down and was promptly arrested.
36. Nicolas Cage takes acting research seriously.
Nicolas Cage has reportedly spent lavishly on unusual “inspiration,” including a pet octopus said to have cost around $150,000, a pair of king cobras, and a dinosaur skull (which he later had to return when it turned out to have been smuggled).
37. Crocodiles are naturally well-mannered.
A crocodile can’t stick its tongue out – it’s held in place along the bottom of its mouth by a membrane. So don’t expect one to blow you a raspberry.
38. You CAN sneeze with your eyes open – another myth down.
Despite the warnings, keeping your eyes open during a sneeze won’t make them pop out. Closing them is just an automatic reflex; plenty of people can override it with no harm done. Go on, prove it.
39. Some US presidents were born pranksters.
President Lyndon B. Johnson owned an Amphicar – a car that could drive straight into water and float. He loved terrifying guests by pretending the brakes had failed as he rolled toward a lake, then cheerfully motoring across it.
40. The plastic flamingo may outnumber the real thing.
It’s often said there are more plastic pink flamingos in the United States than real ones – and given how few wild flamingos live there, it’s entirely believable. Blame Don Featherstone, who designed the iconic lawn ornament in 1957.
41. The Matrix’s famous “code” came from a cookbook.
Those cascading green symbols in The Matrix aren’t complex computer code at all. Production designer Simon Whiteley revealed they were scanned from his wife’s Japanese sushi cookbook. The machines, apparently, run on recipes.
42. People once got creative about contraception.
Disgusting but true: ancient Egyptians are recorded as using crocodile dung as an ingredient in early contraceptives. We’ll take modern medicine, thanks.
43. Ever tried growing spaghetti?
In 1957, the BBC aired a straight-faced April Fools’ report about Swiss farmers harvesting spaghetti from trees. So many viewers believed it that they rang in to ask how to grow their own spaghetti plant.
44. Heinz ketchup has an official speed limit.
Someone actually measured it: ketchup leaves a glass Heinz bottle at about 0.028 miles per hour, and the factory rejects any batch that pours out faster. And that famous “57 Varieties”? Henry Heinz simply liked the number 57 – there were never exactly 57 products.
45. Santa wasn’t “invented” in red by Coca-Cola.
You’ll often hear that Santa wore green until Coca-Cola dressed him in red in the 1930s. Not so. Father Christmas was already being drawn in a red suit decades earlier – illustrator Thomas Nast popularised the look in the 1800s. Coca-Cola’s ads spread and cemented the jolly red image worldwide, but they didn’t create it.
46. One man is a serial record breaker.
Ashrita Furman has set more Guinness World Records than anyone alive – over 600 across his lifetime, holding hundreds at any given time. His feats include the furthest distance cycled while balancing a bottle of milk on his head. Naturally.
47. Donkeys reportedly won’t sink in quicksand.
As the story goes, donkeys are buoyant enough that they won’t sink in quicksand. We still wouldn’t recommend testing the theory – on a donkey or yourself.
48. New Zealand’s air force has a flightless mascot.
The Royal New Zealand Air Force uses the kiwi as a key emblem – which is charmingly ironic, given the kiwi is a bird that famously can’t fly.
49. “Bitch the pot” once meant something very ordinary.
Language moves fast. Today the phrase would raise eyebrows, but back in the early 1800s “to bitch the pot” simply meant to pour the tea. Fancy a cuppa?
50. Iceland’s capital once banned pet dogs.
Keeping a pet dog was illegal in Reykjavík for much of the 20th century, with a ban dating back to 1924 and only relaxed in the 1980s. Thankfully, the city and its dogs have long since made peace.
51. Finland and the trouser-less duck.
There’s a long-repeated tale that Finland banned Donald Duck comics because he doesn’t wear trousers. The truth is tamer – a Helsinki committee dropped the comics in the 1970s to save money, and the “no trousers” explanation was a joke that stuck. A myth, but a wonderful one.
52. Say it with apples.
The ancient Greeks are said to have tossed apples to one another as a token of love – making throwing fruit at someone, oddly, a romantic gesture. Times change.
53. Photocopiers aren’t always used as intended…
According to one oft-quoted survey, a notable share of photocopier faults are caused by people sitting on them. We won’t ask why.
54. Raisins dance in champagne.
Drop a raisin into a glass of fizzy champagne and it’ll bob endlessly up and down. Bubbles of carbon dioxide cling to its wrinkles and lift it up; at the surface they pop, and it sinks again. Cheap entertainment with an expensive drink.
55. The King has a claim on the nation’s swans.
By ancient tradition, the British monarch owns all unmarked mute swans on certain open waters, such as stretches of the River Thames – a right still symbolically upheld each year during “Swan Upping.” So no, you can’t take one home.
56. A living legend, older than sliced bread.
Beloved actor Betty White really was older than sliced bread – she was born in January 1922, and commercially sliced bread didn’t arrive until 1928. She remained sharp and working almost to the very end, passing away on 31 December 2021, just weeks before her 100th birthday.
57. Some legs are worth a fortune.
Singer Mariah Carey reportedly insured her legs for a reported $1 billion as part of a promotional campaign. Now that’s confidence.
58. Guinea pigs stay cool under pressure.
Guinea pigs can’t sweat – they lack the sweat glands to do it – which is also why they struggle badly in the heat and need to be kept cool.
59. Giraffes don’t need cotton buds.
A giraffe’s tongue is around 45–50 cm (roughly 18–20 inches) long, dark, and dexterous enough that they can use it to clean their own ears and nose. Handy.
60. The Falklands are seriously sheep-heavy.
There are vastly more sheep than people in the Falkland Islands – estimates put it at hundreds of sheep for every human resident. The wool industry there is no joke.
61. There’s one thing an elephant simply cannot do.
Don’t expect an elephant to join your skipping game – they’re the only mammal that genuinely can’t jump. All four feet never leave the ground at once.
62. The platypus has no stomach.
As if the platypus wasn’t strange enough, it doesn’t have a true stomach. Its oesophagus connects almost straight to its intestines, skipping the acid-filled sac the rest of us rely on.
63. Try asking for directions to this place…
A hill in New Zealand holds one of the longest place names on Earth. Locals mercifully shorten it to “Taumata,” but the full version is Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu.
64. A crocodile’s stomach is astonishingly powerful.
Crocodiles have some of the strongest stomach acid in the animal kingdom – powerful enough to dissolve bones, hooves and shells. (Digesting actual metal is a stretch too far, but their digestion is genuinely formidable.)
65. Rock, paper, scissors is a competitive sport.
If you’re unusually good at rock, paper, scissors, there’s a competitive scene for you – organised leagues and championships have offered real cash prizes for out-thinking your opponent’s next throw.
66. Getting hired at Walmart can be tougher than getting into Harvard.
When a new Walmart opened in Washington, D.C., it reportedly drew around 23,000 applicants for 600 jobs – an acceptance rate of under 3%, lower than Harvard’s. A memorable stat, if a very specific one.
67. Dalí claimed he was “drugs incarnate.”
Salvador Dalí insisted he never needed drugs to fuel his surreal imagination. “I don’t do drugs. I am drugs,” he famously declared.
68. Steel can out-bounce rubber.
It sounds wrong, but a hardened steel ball can bounce higher than a rubber one. Steel is extremely elastic, so it loses very little energy on impact with a hard surface. We still wouldn’t try it on the good floor.
69. The wartime Oscars were made of plaster.
During the Second World War, metal was in short supply, so Academy Award statuettes were cast in painted plaster rather than gold-plated metal. Winners could swap them for the real thing once the war ended.
70. Niels Bohr had beer on tap – permanently.
When physicist Niels Bohr won the Nobel Prize in 1922, the Carlsberg brewery gave him a house next to their premises, complete with a pipeline delivering free beer straight to his home. Now that’s a prize.
Do you know any funny facts? Share them in the comments below!
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