To the best of my knowledge, all of this trivia is factual. I derived it from very credible sources, the main resources being two books named: The World’s Best Trivia, and Unbelievable Facts (see my Credits and Acknowledgements page for more details). If however, you believe one of the facts in this list to be a fallacy, please let me know.

Despite its great strength, the octopus tires easily. The oxygen-carrying component of its blood, hemocyanin, is copper-based and is less efficient than the iron-based haemoglobin of humans. Therefore, a struggling octopus will quickly go into oxygen deprivation, and becomes lethargic.

In spite its reputation for being finicky, the average cat consumes about 127,750 calories a year, nearly 28 times its own weight in food and the same amount again in liquids.

It may take longer than two days for a chick to break out of its shell.

Disk-winged bats of Latin America have adhesive disks on both wings and feet that enable them to live in unfurling banana leaves (or even walk up a window pane).

A 4-inch-long abalone can grip a rock with a force of 400 pounds. Two grown men are incapable of prying it up.

Racehorses have been known to wear out new shoes in one race.

Rats can swim for a 1/2 mile without resting, and they can tread water for 3 days straight.

An average of 13 people are killed by vending machines each year.

In 1980, the Yellow Pages accidentally listed a funeral parlour under ‘Frozen Goods.’

More people are killed each year by coconuts than by sharks.

Even as you sit here reading this, more than 100 million tiny creatures are feeding, reproducing, and depositing waste inside your mouth.

There is a Tupperware party held somewhere in the world every two seconds.

You are more likely to be struck by lightning than to be eaten by a shark. Then again, you are less likely to be struck by lightning than to be infected by flesh-eating bacteria.

In 1994, electromagnetic interference from a mobile phone sent a man in an electronic wheelchair over a cliff.

It is possible to fracture your rib from sneezing too hard.

In England, in Parliament, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak.

It’s impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

Only one person in two billion lives to be 116 or over.

If you yelled for eight years, seven months, and six days, you would have created enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.

The human heart creates enough pressure with each pump to squirt blood up to nine meters.

On average, people fear spiders and public speaking more than they fear death.

You are more likely to be killed by a champagne cork than a poisonous spider.

A cockroach can live for nine days without its head, until it starves to death.

Butterflies taste with their feet.

Elephants are the only animals that can’t jump.

The main library at Indiana University sinks over an inch each year. When the library was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that the library would be carrying.

The longest recorded flight of a chicken was 13 seconds. The chicken was headless at the time.

According to WHO (the World Health Organization), there are approximately 100 million acts of sexual intercourse each day.

If injected intravenously, nutmeg is very poisonous.

About 35% of the people who use personal dating services are already married.

About 100 people choke to death on ball-point pens each year.

Birds would not survive in outer space. This is because they require gravity in order to swallow.

A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.

Two minor earthquakes occur each minute somewhere in the world.

Armadillos always have a litter of four babies, and they are always all the same sex.

Your stomach will digest itself unless it produces a new layer of mucus every two weeks.

The Boston University Bridge is the only place in the world where a boat can sail under a train that is driving under a car that is driving under an aeroplane.

Our eyes are always the same size from birth, however, our nose and ears never stop growing.

In every episode of the television show Seinfeld, there is a Superman somewhere.

There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.

Leonardo da Vinci invented scissors.

Babies are born without kneecaps. These don’t appear until the child is 2-6 years old.

One of the reasons why marijuana is illegal dates back to cotton growers in 1930. The cotton growers lobbied against the hemp farmers, seeing them as competition.

On average, more people are killed by donkeys each year than by planes.

Can’t remember the word you want to use ? There’s a name for that. It’s ‘lethologica’.

You share your birthday with over 9 million other people.

It snowed in the Sahara desert on 18^th February, 1979.

The 1970 World Cup soccer match between El Salvador and Honduras resulted in a three-day war between the two countries.

There is no single word given to describe the back of the knee.

From fertilization to birth, a baby’s weight increases 5000 million times.

Most lipsticks contain fish scales.

Nobody will ever own, or even see, the entire works of Pablo Picasso. Why ? Because when Picasso was starting out, he was quite impoverished, and so he burnt his own paintings to keep warm.

Walt Disney won 35 Oscars between 1931 and 1969.

‘Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu’ is the name of a hill in New Zealand. It roughly means, ‘The hill where Tamatea, the great warrior, climbed over after returning from a long voyage abroad and played the flute to his beloved upon arrival.’

Apples are more effective than caffeine in keeping a person awake in the morning.

A watermelon is actually a berry.

Just like snowflakes, no two cornflakes ever look identical.

The equivalent of 10 city blocks of rainforest is destroyed every minute.

Both Hitler and Napoleon were missing a testicle.

The plastic thingies on the end of shoelaces are called aglets.

Bulletproof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers, and laser printers were all invented by women.

A shrimp’s heart is in its head.

Due to gravity, you way slightly less when the moon is directly overhead.

One square inch of human skin has 625 sweat glands.

A peanut is not a pea, nor is it a nut.

There are approximately 178 sesame seeds on a McDonalds’ Big Mac Bun.

There is no such thing as naturally blue food. Even blueberries are purple.

Mel Blanc, who did the voice of Bugs Bunny, was allergic to carrots.

An airline saved $40 000 in 1987, by removing one olive from each salad served in first class.

No rain has ever been recorded falling in the Atacama Desert, Chile.

A sex change has never been performed in Ireland.

Mt. Waialeale, in Hawaii, is the wettest place in the world. It rains 90% of the time.

99% of all life forms ever to exist on earth are now extinct.

The Tower of London has served many purposes. In fact, at one stage, it was a zoo.

If an Irish person greets you with, ‘Top of the morning to you,’ the correct response is, ‘And the rest of the day to yourself.’

Porcupines float in water.

According to Genesis 1:20-1:22, the chicken came before the egg.

Shirley Temple always had 56 curls in her hair.

The fingerprints of koalas are so similar to those of humans, that they can easily be confused at a crime scene.

It takes 8.5 minutes for the sun’s light to get to the earth.

There are more plastic flamingos in America than there are real ones.

Lightning strikes the earth about 200 times each second.

The animal with the largest brain in proportion to its body is the ant.

Rhinoceroses belong to the same family as horses. They are thought to have inspired the legend of the Unicorn.

There are 1 929 770 126 028 800 possible color combinations on a Rubik’s Cube.

Kermit the Frog is left-handed.

If you put a raisin in a glass of champagne, it will keep rising to the top and sinking to the bottom.

There are more 2^nd Streets than there are 1^st Streets in the United States.

It takes 3 months just to make one episode of The Simpsons.

The bread slots in a toaster are called toast wells.

The smallest monkey in the world is approximately the size of your index finger.

Drinking water after you eat will reduce the amount of acid in your mouth by 61%.

The cheetah is the only cat that cannot retract its claws.

If you told somebody that they were one in a million, you’d be saying that there are about 1 800 of them in China.

When the planet Mars is nearest to the Earth, the amount of UFO sightings increase.

There is a town in the United States called Looneyville.

If heart disease, diabetes and cancer were eliminated, the life expectancy for both genders would be 99.2 years.

Hummingbirds can’t walk.

Kilo for kilo, lemons contain more sugar than strawberries.

More people are killed by bees each year than by snakes.

Giraffes are unable to cough. They also cannot swim.

Crocodiles swallow stones to help them dive deeper.

Mexican Jumping Beans jump because of a moth larva inside the bean.

A chameleon’s tongue is twice the length of its body.

Ancient Egyptians trained baboons to wait at their tables.

Squid can commit suicide by eating their own tentacles.

A female dog is more likely to bite you than a male dog.

Dogs do not sweat by panting, as popular belief claims. They sweat through the pads of their feet.

Sharks’ teeth are as hard as steel.

Bees have five eyes.

Estrogen, the female hormone, can protect against heart disease.

Snails have 25000 teeth.

Hair grows faster in men who anticipate sex, due to the release of testosterone.

The most sensitive cluster of nerves is located at the base of the spine.

If you find yourself in the unlikely situation of sinking in quicksand, there is a way to avoid complete submersion. Simply raise your legs slowly and lay on your back. This is meant to slow the process.

Legally, sheep theft is still a hangable offence in Scotland.

A human will shed a complete layer of skin every four weeks.

A python can devour a pig whole.

Goldfish are able to suffer from motion sickness.

Scorpions can withstand 200 times more nuclear radiation than humans.

There are more living organisms on the skin of a single human being than there are human beings on the surface of the earth.

Humans gradually begin to shrink from the age of 30.

The average human brain weighs 1.3 kgs.

In 1562, a man was dug up six hours after his burial, following a guest at his funeral who claimed to have seen him breathing. Sure enough, the ‘dead’ man was alive, and lived for another 75 years.

If you have smelly feet, your condition is podobromhidrosis. Microscopic creatures that eat the sweat that forms on your feet cause this. Their feces are what create your foot odor.

Because of their reproduction rate, if the population of China walked past you in single file, the line would never end.

If your mouth was completely dry, you wouldn’t be able to taste.

When you blush, your stomach lining also reddens.

If 80% of your liver was removed, it could still function, and would eventually grow back to its normal size.

Most people blink about 25000 times a day.

An oyster changes its sex several times throughout the course of its life.

The Archives of General Medicine state that coffee drinkers have sex more frequently and enjoy it more than non-coffee drinkers.

It requires 30 muscles to raise your eyebrows.

Honey is the only food that doesn’t spoil.

The sound that your stomach makes when it rumbles is called a borborygmi.

Donald Duck lives at 1313 Webfoot Walk, Duckberg, Calisota.

X-Ray technology has proven that there are 3 versions of the Mona Lisa underneath the visible one.

Spider webs are a natural clotting agent. When applied to wounds, they help to stop the blood.

Sharks are immune to cancer.

Bill Gates has enough money to fund his own mission to Mars – twice.

In developing nations, 80% of diseases are water related.

Pablo Picasso was abandoned by the midwife just after his birth because she thought he was stillborn. He was saved by an uncle.

Turkey has a ban on kissing in films.

Mozart was buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave.

In Papua New Guinea, there are villages within 10 kilometers of each other which speak different languages.

Atilla the Hun is thought to have been a dwarf.

Bob Dylan introduced the Beatles to marijuana.

Some hotels in Las Vegas have gambling tables floating in their swimming pools.

The first recorded reference to the game of cricket dates back to 1272.

More than 50% of people in the world have neither made nor received a telephone call.

India has a Bill of Rights for cows.

Camels are born without humps.

About 70% of all living organisms in the world are bacteria.

Moths have no stomach.

The women of the Tiwi tribe in the South Pacific are married from birth.

When Albert Einstein passed away, his final words died with him, as the nurse by his side at the time did not understand German.

Only one child in 20 is born on the day predicted by the doctor.

There is enough carbon in the human body to fill approximately 9000 pencils.

Whales must move their entire bodies to change their line of sight.

It is forbidden for an Olympic wrestler to twist his opponent’s toes.

Cyanide is present in apple seeds.

Julius Caesar wore laurel leaves to cover the onset of baldness.

At age 12, Martin Luther King was so depressed, he tried to kill himself twice by jumping out of his bedroom window.

One of Queen Victoria’s wedding gifts was a slab of cheese with a diameter of three meters and a weight of ½ a ton.

A surgeon of Ancient Egypt had his hands amputated if he lost his patient during the operation.

A group of goldfish is called a troubling.

Starfish can turn their stomachs inside-out.

The Red Sponge, an aquatic animal, can be split into a thousand pieces and still reconstruct itself.

Caligula, the mad emperor, once decided to go to war with Poseidon, the God of the Sea. He ordered his army to throw spears into the water at random.

A pig’s snout is called a gruntle.

There are no clocks in Las Vegas casinos.

The most common type of cancer is skin cancer.

Cats were a sacred animal in Ancient Egypt. If a cat died, the people shaved off their eyebrows as a form of respect.

An anencephalous creature is one with no brain.

Pearls will melt in vinegar.

A group of apes is called a shrewdness.

The McDonalds corporation has taken over from the US Army as the western world’s largest staff trainer.
The zoo in Tokyo closes for two months each year so that the animals can have a rest from the visitors.

Methane gas can often be seen bubbling up from the bottom of ponds. It is produced by the decomposition of dead plants and animals in the mud.

An estimated 80% of the animals on earth are insects.

The symptoms of hemophilia are never experienced by women, but are passed on by them. With men, it is the opposite case.

A tee-shirt manufacturer printed shirts for the Spanish market which promoted the Pope’s visit. Unfortunately, instead of the desired I Saw the Pope print, the shirts declared I Saw the Potato.

If you pick up a hamster by its hind legs, there is a chance its eyes will fall out.

It would take 13 years and eight months to stay one night in every hotel room at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas.

A fully ripened cranberry can be dribbled like a basketball.

To eliminate the foam off the top of your beer, stick your fingers in it.

More people are killed by bees and pigs each year than they are by sharks.

Rabbits can suffer heatstroke easily because they cannot sweat. Pigs have the same problem, and that’s why they wallow in mud – to stay cool.

A dog’s mouth has fewer germs and bacteria than a human’s mouth.

The most commonly shoplifted book is the Bible.

Canaries can grow new brain cells.

Your stomach shrinks and expands in accordance with how much you eat. Therefore, if you haven’t eaten lunch, you won’t be able to eat as much dinner as you would have been if you had eaten lunch.

Only 25 bottles of Coke were sold in its first year.

Cats like to sleep with their backs to something. This dates back to the days before their domestication, when they did it so that no predators snuck up on them from behind.

The onion is actually a lily.

Patting a child on the head in Thailand is forbidden, because it is believed that that is where the soul resides.

Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven, is, at any given moment, being played on a radio somewhere in the world.

Suppressing a sneeze could be fatal. There is a risk of bursting a blood vessel.

The flatulence from cows produces about 30% of the methane gas on this planet.

An adult crocodile will help a baby croc in trouble, even if they are not related in any way.

Every day, the average person sees at least one thing related to a cow.

The pyramids of Egypt were built over 6 kilometers from where they are today. This is a result of the shifting plate boundaries.

I Love Lucy, the 50s sitcom, airs somewhere in the world every hour, every day.

Termites are affected by music. They will gnaw at your house twice as fast if you play loud music.

In the movie Back to the Future 2, the almanac said that Florida would win the World Series in 1997. At the time of the film’s making, Florida didn’t even have a team. However, sure enough, in 1997, the Florida Marlins won the World Series.

The world’s longest game of Monopoly lasted over 660 hours.

More people die on Monday mornings from a heart attack than on any other day of the week.

Every human being spends approximately half an hour as a single cell.

Dog saliva, believe it or not, has healing qualities.

The average person will produce 42 220 kilograms of rubbish in a lifetime.

The average person spends two years on the phone in a lifetime.

We replace our skin approximately 1000 times in our lives.

Lightning doesn’t strike where it’s raining.

The longest fry in a bunch is called a loomster.

A new McDonalds opens somewhere in the world every six hours.

You are more likely to get stung by a bee when it is windy than in any other weather.

It has been proven that women generally have a better sense of hearing than men.

On average, women speak about 7000 words per day. The average male, by comparison, will speak 2000.

Giraffes only sleep for five minutes each day.

When you eat at a restaurant, you receive about 27 cents worth of food for every dollar you spend.

French poet Gérard de Nerval used to take a lobster for a walk on the end of a ribbon through the Palais Royal gardens in Paris. He hung himself from a lamppost.

It has been estimated that the average person spends about a year of his/her life looking for lost objects.

When Hitler’s mother was pregnant with him, she seriously considered having an abortion, but her doctor talked her out of it.

None of Queen Anne’s 17 children survived her.

The average person has about 1460 dreams in a year.

Through her life, Princess Alexandra of Bavaria was convinced that as a child, she had swallowed a full-size grand piano.

King Augustus II of Poland fathered 300 children. Only one of those children were legitimate.

Each day is longer than the previous one by .00000002 seconds. This works out at 13 seconds each century. Therefore, in roughly 460 years, the day will be an hour longer.

The first pair of Doc Martens were made from old tyres.

85% of women wear the wrong size bra.

40% of women have hurled footwear at men.

It is illegal to walk down a street in Maine with your shoelaces undone.

In Iowa, it is illegal for a kiss to last more than five minutes.

The New York phone book had 22 Hitlers listed before World War II, but none afterward.

In 1980, a Las Vegas hospital had to suspend workers, after it was discovered that they were betting on when the patients would die.