20 Shocking Facts You Won’t Believe Are True (But Are)

1. If you ever doubted that English was a global language, how does it feel to know that 80% of the world’s information is stored on computers in English. And if that doesn’t do it for you, half of the world’s scientific and technical papers are also in English. Damn. [Source]

2. There’s a company you can pay to kidnap you. When life gets dull, pay some people to kidnap you, I guess! [Source]

3. In Russia, you can get fined for driving a car that’s too dirty. [Source]

4. Every year, thousands of people send letters to Jerusalem addressed to “God.” There is even a “Letters to God” department of the Israeli postal service. [Source]

5. Ever drift off when listening to boring people speak? Well, the brain tries to prevent that by “rewriting” monotonous speeches given by boring people. I just doodle when I get bored. [Source]

6. You probably love a particular song because you heard it during a particularly emotional moment in your life, studies now show. I’ve always said that music isn’t just about notes or sounds. It’s about people, too. But guess what else? The type of music you like also shapes the way you see the world. [Source] [Source]

7. It turns out that spending money on yourself doesn’t make you happy. Spending it on unique, one-of-a-kind experiences does. [Source]

8. You know how people Google their symptoms and hope/pray they are not dying? Well, there’s a rare mental disorder called Cotard’s Syndrome where people actually think they are dead or decomposing. The first case was reported in Paris in 1880. [Source]

9. 1089 multiplied by 9 equals 9801, lol.

10. 30,000 websites are hacked EVERY DAY. So scary. [Source]

11. Lake Hillier is a bubble gum pink lake on Middle Island in Western Australia. No one knows why its pink. [Source]

12. There’s a political party in Australia called the Sex Party, and among other things they want to tax Churches, tax and regulate weed, and depersonalize personal drug use! [Source]

13. There’s a gold bar worth $10 million dollars. Oh, and it also weighs 551 pounds. [Source]

14. A single space suit costs $12 million dollars. [Source]

15. In the 1960s the CIA tried to make “spy cats” a thing by using cats equipped with a batter, microphone and antenna to record the links between the Kremlin and Soviet embassies. The project cost $25 million dollars. [Source]

16. 90% OF U.S. MONEY HAS COCAINE ON IT. [Source]

17. There are 152 people in the United States named LOL. Most of them are in Wyoming, another reason to never go there. [Source]

18. You knew the U.S. economy was in the pits right now, yeah? Well get this. Apple currently has more coins than the U.S. Government. Let that marinate for a second. [Source]

19. Rachel Ray, John D. Rockfeller, Abraham Lincoln, Walt Disney, Halle Berry, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg didn’t graduate from college. [Source]

20. We will never really know who invented the fire hydrant because the U.S. patent office in D.C. caught on fire in 1836. How ironic. [Source]