Useless Facts

[01dragonslayer]

The opposite sides of a die will always add up to seven.​

If you take a look, you'll see that one and six are on opposite sides of the cube (1+6=7), as are two and five (2+5=7), and three and four (3+4=7). And if you want to understand more about this amazing but useless fact, The Guardian offers a deeper explanation.

 

[01dragonslayer]

You are 13.8 percent more likely to die on your birthday.​

According to a 2012 study published in the journal Annals of Epidemiology, humans are 13.8 percent more likely to die on their birthday than on any other day of the year. That's according to Swiss mortality statistics from 1969 to 2008. We've got to say, that study is (morbidly) interesting!

 

[01dragonslayer]

Playing dance music can help ward off mosquitoes.​

Playing electronic dance music (EDM) could be just what you need to scare away those pesky mosquitoes in the summer. According to one 2019 study published in the journal Acta Topica, the Skrillex song "Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites" combines "very high and very low frequencies" as well as "excessive loudness and constantly escalating pitch" that discourages the yellow fever mosquito from biting victims and mating.

 

[01dragonslayer]

The King of Hearts is the only king in a deck of cards without a mustache.​

There are four kings in every deck of cards. And while they all look similar, the King of Hearts is the only royal fellow who doesn't have a mustache. According to The Guardian, the so-called "suicide king" (who earned his name because it looks like he's stabbing himself in the head with a sword) wasn't always bare-faced. He mistakenly lost his facial hair in a redesign.

 

[01dragonslayer]

"Dreamt" is the only word in the English language that ends with "mt."​

The English language is full of idiosyncrasies, and the word "dreamt" is one of them. According to Oxford Dictionaries, "dreamt" (and its variations, such as "undreamt") is the only word in the English language that ends with the letters "mt."

 

[01dragonslayer]

Those metal studs on your jeans have a name and a purpose.​

The next time you're wearing a pair of jeans, take a look at the pockets. Do you see those little metal studs on the corners? They're not just there to add some extra pizzazz to your pants; they actually have a purpose. These rivets, according to Levi Strauss & Co., are placed on certain spots to add extra support where the denim is more likely to wear out and rip.

 

[01dragonslayer]

A Greek-Canadian man invented the "Hawaiian" pizza.​

There will always be fierce debates over whether or not pineapple has any place on a pizza, but there's no question about where the Hawaiian pizza originally came from: Chatham, Ontario, Canada! Restaurant owner Sam Panopoulos was born in Greece but moved to Canada when he was 20 years old. And in 1962, the entrepreneur decided to put pineapple on pizza.

Panopoulos, who passed away in 2017, once told the BBC, "We just put it on, just for the fun of it, see how it was going to taste. We were young in the business and we were doing a lot of experiments." The name apparently came from the brand of canned pineapple that Panopoulos used on that fateful day he invented the Hawaiian pizza.

 

[01dragonslayer]

If you open your eyes in a pitch-black room, the color you'll see is called "eigengrau."​

Go into the darkest room that you can find, one where there's no light at all, and spend a few minutes with your eyes closed. Then, open them up and take a look around. While you'd expect to be staring into pitch-blackness, you'll actually notice that you're seeing a sort of dark gray shade. And that color has a name: It's called "eigengrau."

 

[01dragonslayer]

Cats can't taste sweet things because of a genetic defect.​

Cats can jump surprisingly high, slip through the tightest spaces, and seemingly have nine lives. But there's one thing they can't do: taste sweet things. According to a 2007 article in Scientific American, unlike other mammals, felines can't taste sweetness due to the fact that they "lack 247 base pairs of the amino acids that make up the DNA of the Tas1r2 gene. As a result, it does not code for the proper protein … and it does not permit cats to taste sweets."

 

[01dragonslayer]

It's possible to turn peanut butter into diamonds.​

While most of us are happy to slap some peanut butter between two slices of bread, scientist Dan Frost of the Bayerisches Geoinstitut in Germany did something a little bit different with his peanut butter: He made a diamond. Frost studies the conditions of Earth's mantle and has found ways to mimic them in his lab. According to the BBC, the high pressures of the mantle can strip oxygen from carbon dioxide and leave behind the carbon to form a diamond. And since peanut butter is already rich in carbon, Frost was able to transform the nutty goodness into a shiny jewel.

 

[01dragonslayer]

A group of hippos is called a "bloat."​

If you ever see a group of hippos, you can inform everyone around you that you're looking at a "bloat." The BBC laid out the story behind the word, which comes from The Book of St Albans (also known as The Book of Hawking, Hunting and Blasing of Arms), written by Juliana Berners, a 15th-century English Benedictine prioress. She came up with multiple terms to describe groups of animals including a "swarm of bees" and a "gaggle of geese."

 

[01dragonslayer]

Pogonophobia is the fear of beards.​

You probably know your fair share of men who sport some sort of facial hair. But if you suffer from pogonophobia—the fear of beards—then you'd rather avoid them. And it turns out, this fear could be justified: A 2018 study published in the journal European Radiology suggests that beards contain "significantly higher" amounts of bacteria than dogs do.

 

[01dragonslayer]

Alaska is the only state whose name is on one row on a keyboard.​

With "A" and "S" being beside each other on the middle row of the standard QWERTY keyboard and "K" and "L" over on the other side of the same row, Alaska is the only state name that you can type out using a single row on a keyboard.

 

[01dragonslayer]

And "tesseradecades," "aftercataracts," and "sweaterdresses" are the longest words you can type using only your left hand.​

If you find yourself only able to use the left side of your computer's keyboard, there are still plenty of words that you can type out. By using Q, W, E, R, T, A, S, D, F, G, Z, X, C, V, and B—the letters on the left side of the standard keyboard—you can not only tap out whoppers like "tesseradecades," "aftercataracts," and "sweaterdresses," you can also type "great," "vast," "water," "starter," "cascades," "retracts," "affects," "trees," "caves," "crests," "waver," "reverberate," "sat," "far," "raced," "faster," "created," "craters," "graves," "wasted," "arrested," and (perhaps best of all) "abracadabra!"

 

[01dragonslayer]

The average adult spends more time on the toilet than they do exercising.​

According to a 2017 study by British non-profit UKActive, adults spend an average of 3 hours and 9 minutes on the toilet each week, but only spend around 1 hour and 30 minutes being physically active during that same time span. Maybe this somewhat useless, but also motivating fact is what we needed to hear to get to the gym.

 

[01dragonslayer]

Your fingernails grow faster on your dominant hand.​

If you've ever broken a nail way down near the base—or lost one completely—you know they take quite a while to grow back. In fact, the American Academy of Dermatology says that a fingernail takes around six months to grow from base to tip and toenails can take up to a year. But a couple factors tend to speed that process up: Fingernails grow faster on your dominant hand as well as on your bigger fingers, and nails also grow faster during the daytime as well as during the summer months.

 

[01dragonslayer]

A "jiffy" is about one trillionth of a second.​

You've probably said you'll be "back in a jiffy" at least a few times in your life. But what you might not realize is that you made a promise you couldn't keep. According to Dictionary.com, a "jiffy" is an actual unit of time—and a very short one at that. Sometime during the late 18th or early 19th centuries, scientist Gilbert Newton Lewis defined a jiffy as the amount of time it takes light to travel one centimeter in a vacuum, which is about 33.4 picoseconds or one trillionth of a second. That's a short (and pretty much useless) amount of time indeed!

 

[01dragonslayer]

Dragonflies have six legs but can't walk.​

You might have seen a dragonfly hanging out on a plant in your garden or zipping around in the air above a pond. But we can guarantee that you've never seen a dragonfly parading across a picnic table or strolling along a branch. That's because, despite having six legs like other insects, a dragonfly's legs are too weak for them to walk on for lengthy amounts of time.

 

[01dragonslayer]

Golf balls tend to have 336 "dimples."​

When you're on the golf course, you're probably paying more attention to what club you're using than the details of each golf ball. But if you did take notice of the specifics, you might discover that your golf balls can have anywhere between 300 and 500 "dimples," though most tend to have 336. According to the Department of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, "golf balls are usually covered with dimples in a highly symmetrical way," which "is important or the ball will wobble."

 

[01dragonslayer]

Montpelier, Vermont, is the only U.S. capital without a McDonald's.​

In many cities, you can pick up a Quarter Pounder or some McNuggets on every other block. However, it's not as easy for residents of Montpelier, Vermont, to get a Big Mac. That's because it's the only U.S. state capital that doesn't have a McDonald's. As the smallest state capital in terms of population (approximately 7,500), the city doesn't have a Burger King, either. Sorry, Whopper lovers! To enjoy a meal from either fast food chain, Montpelier residents can simply head over to the neighboring city of Barre.