By January Nelson Updated October 28, 2021

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Omar Lopez

By January Nelson Updated October 28, 2021

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Omar Lopez

Useless facts can help you break the ice at the party or keep the conversation going on a date. Either way, they’ll bring some new perspectives to the table. They’ll help you learn more about the world around you. Here are some useless facts to share with friends and family:

Random, Useless Facts About The World:

1. Movie trailers got their name because they were originally shown after the movie.
2. Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.
3. The real name of Monopoly mascot Uncle Pennybags is Milburn Pennybags.
4. Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
5. Pogonophobia is the fear of beards.
6. Oreo has made enough cookies to span five back and forth trips to the moon.
7. Edgar Allan Poe married his thirteen-year-old cousin.
8. Salt used to be a currency.
9. Your fingernails grow faster on your dominant hand.
10. In 10 minutes, a hurricane releases more energy than all the world’s nuclear weapons combined.
11. Sloths can hold their breath for longer than dolphins.
12. A giraffe can go longer without water than a camel can.
13. On average, 100 people choke to death on ballpoint pens every year.
14. A dragonfly has a lifespan of only 24 hours.
15. On average, a human being will spend up to two weeks kissing in their lifetime.
16. The average adult spends more time on the toilet than they do exercising.
17. Honey is the only food that does not spoil.
18. Toy Story helped sell the Etch-a-Sketch.
19. Four out of five children recognize the Mcdonald’s logo at three years old.
20. Barbie and Ken broke up in 2004. (They got back together in 2011.)
21. One single teaspoon of honey represents the life work of 12 bees.
22. It’s impossible to tickle yourself.
23. Queen Elizabeth II is a trained mechanic.
24. It’s impossible for you to lick your own elbow.
25. Cap’n Crunch’s full name is Captain Horatio Magellan Crunch.
26. Venus is the only planet that rotates clockwise.
27. The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year. Engineers failed to account for the weight of all the books that it would eventually hold.
28. Dolphins give each other names.
29. Frank Sinatra was offered the starring role in Die Hard when he was in his 70s.
30. One man set a world record by putting on 260 T-shirts at once.

Fun, Useless Facts That Will Make You Think:

1. There is a metallic asteroid shaped like a dog bone named “Kleopatra.”
2. A “jiffy” is about one trillionth of a second.
3. The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.
4. Dragonflies have six legs but can’t walk.
5. It’s possible to lead a cow upstairs… but not downstairs.
6. Pope John Paul II was an honorary Harlem Globetrotter.
7. Mulan has the highest kill-count of any Disney character.
8. 3.6 cans of Spam are consumed each second.
9. The average American looks at eight houses before buying one.
10. Most pandas in the world are on loan from China.
11. A snail can sleep for three years.
12. Your stomach produces a new layer of mucus every two weeks so that it doesn’t digest itself.
13. Right handed people, on average, live nine years longer than left handed people.
14. Women have more tastebuds than men.
15. Women see more colors than men.
16. People used to answer the phone by saying “ahoy” instead of “hello.”
17. The number of dimples on a regulation golf ball is 336 dimples.
18. Al Capone’s business card said he was a used furniture dealer.
19. Taco Bell was named after its owner, Glen Bell.
20. The average American spends about 2.5 days a year looking for lost items.
21. “Go” is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.
22. Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.
23. The U.S. Air Force introduced Bob Ross to painting.
24. A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.
25. Punctuation wasn’t always a part of our written language.
26. Alaska is the only state whose name is on one row on a keyboard.
27. There are 32 muscles in a cat’s ear.
28. A giraffe can clean its ears with its 21-inch tongue.
29. The King of Hearts is the only king in a deck of cards without a mustache.
30. Animals that lay eggs don’t have belly buttons.

Insane, Useless Facts You Won’t Believe:

1. Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously.
2. Montpelier, Vermont, is the only U.S. capital without a McDonald’s.
3. Americans, on average, eat 18 acres of pizza every day.
4. Pound cake originally included a pound of all of its ingredients.
5. The chicken and the ostrich are the closest living relatives of the Tyrannosaurus rex.
6.  About 11,000 Americans injure themselves while trying out weird sexual positions per year.
7. More than two-thirds of millennials sleep nude.
8.  The only real person to be a Pez head was Betsy Ross.
9. Queen Elizabeth II’s cows sleep on waterbeds.
10. If you plug your nose, you can’t tell the difference between an apple, a potato, and an onion.
11. A British teen changed his name to “Captain Fantastic Faster Than Superman Spiderman Batman Wolverine Hulk And The Flash Combined.”
12. Basenji dogs are the only breed that doesn’t bark.
13. You can’t hunt camels in Arizona.
14. On average, people fear spiders more than they do death.
15.  Junk food is as addictive as drugs.
16. “Schoolmaster” is an anagram of “the classroom.”
17. The sun makes up more than 99 percent of our solar system’s mass.
18. Hummingbirds are the only animals that can fly backward.
19. Many oranges are actually green.
20. There are 293 ways to make a change for a dollar.
21. The average person has four to six dreams a night.
22. It’s possible to turn peanut butter into diamonds.
23. The largest bill to go into circulation in the United States was a $10,000 note.
24. You spray 2.5 drops of saliva per word.
25. The tallest supported bamboo sculpture is more than 164-feet high.
26. Messages from your brain travel along your nerves at up to 200 miles per hour.
27. Finland has the most metal bands per capita.
28. Massachusetts is home to Busta Rhymes Island.
29. There’s a tiny home in Virginia called the “Spite House” because that’s why it was built.
30. An earthquake might have shrunk Mount Everest.

Interesting, Useless Facts That Will Teach You Something

1. Apple seeds contain cyanide.
2. The cheesiest pizza ever was topped with 154 varieties of cheese.
3. There are giant technicolor squirrels in India.
4. A shark is the only animal that can blink both its eyes.
5. You would likely “mutate” in space without a spacesuit.
6. In most advertisements, including newspapers, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10.
7. There are around 16 million people alive today that are direct descendants of Genghis Khan.
8. An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain.
9. There’s a city called “Rome” on every continent except Antarctica.
10. The opposite sides of a die will always add up to seven.
11. Marie Curie’s 100-year-old belongings are still radioactive.
12. A dentist invented the electric chair.
13. Barbie’s full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts.
14. The inventor of Pringles is buried in a Pringles can.
15. A cubic inch of human bone can bear the weight of five standard pickup trucks.
16. Sweat doesn’t smell bad.
17. The only domestic animal not mentioned in the Bible is the cat.
18. Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads or online apps for dating are already married.
19. In old Christian art, good angels were red and Satan was blue.
20. Ketchup was used medicinally in the early 1800s.
21. Every time you lick a stamp, you consume one-tenth of a calorie.
22. The first Nerf ball package claimed the toy “can’t hurt babies or old people.”
23. The tool used to measure your feet at the shoe store is called a “Brannock Device.”
24. According to the Bible, the chicken came before the egg.
25. You produce about six pounds of stool per week.
26. Cats can’t taste sweet things because of a genetic defect.
27. A frigate bird can sleep while it flies.
28. Octopuses and squid have three hearts.
29.  The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.
30. Those metal studs on your jeans have a purpose. They’re placed on certain spots to add extra support where the denim is more likely to wear out and rip.

Fascinating, Completely Useless Facts

1. The most common name in the world is Mohammed.
2. Women hiccup less than men.
3. A cat’s jaw cannot move sideways.
4. In 2016, Mozart sold more CDs than Beyonce.
5. Slinkies are 82 feet long.
6. Most car horns are in the key of F.
7. Riding roller coasters can help you pass kidney stones.
8. “Dreamt” is the only word in the English language that ends with “mt.”
9. Jupiter is twice as large as all the other planets combined.
10. A pig’s orgasm lasts for 30 minutes.
11. The Super Soaker was designed and invented by a NASA engineer.
12. In ancient Egypt, priests plucked EVERY hair from their bodies, including their eyebrows and eyelashes.
13. Your body contains about 100,000 miles of blood vessels.
14. New Jersey grows two-thirds of the world’s eggplants.
15. Ravens know when someone is spying on them
16. There is only one walled city in North America.
17. The first email was sent by Ray Tomlinson to himself in 1971.
18. You are 13.8 percent more likely to die on your birthday.
19. Mosquitoes are attracted to people who just ate bananas.
20. More Monopoly money is printed in a year, than real money throughout the world.
21. Space travel makes mice run in loops.
22. Emus and kangaroos cannot walk backward.
23. The average American produces 4.5 pounds of trash per day.
24. Almonds are members of the peach family.
25. The footprints made on the moon will be there for 100 million years.
26. A Greek-Canadian man invented the “Hawaiian” pizza.
27. Antarctica is the largest unclaimed territory on Earth.
28. The largest scrambled eggs ever made weighed nearly 3.5 tons.
29. Flamingos can only eat with their heads upside down.
30. Playing dance music can help ward off mosquitoes.

Even More Random, Useless Facts

1. Reindeer like to eat bananas.
2.  Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a spacesuit damages them.
3. There are 10 times more stars in the night sky than grains of sand in the world’s deserts and beaches.
4. A piece of paper can be folded no more than 9 times.
5. The flea can jump 350 times its body length.
6. The placement of a donkey’s eyes in its’ head enables it to see all four feet at all times.
7. Honey is the only natural food made without destroying any life.
8. The name Wendy was made up for the book “Peter Pan.”
9.  Our eyes are always the same size from birth.
10.  A chameleon can move its eyes in two different directions at the same time.
11.  It’s impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
12. Bees have 5 eyes.
13. Most collect calls are made on father’s day.
14. The Oscars given out during World War II were made of wood.
15. Napoleon’s penis was sold to an American Urologist for $40,000.
16. The average person with the average stride living until 80 will walk a distance of around 110,000 miles. Which is the equivalent of walking about 5 times around the Earth, right on the equator.
17. The thumbnail grows the slowest and the middle nail the fastest, nearly four times faster than toenails.
18. A pound of potato chips costs two hundred times more than a pound of potatoes.
19. The average person spends 6 months of their life sitting at red lights.
20. The average American/Canadian will eat about 11.9 pounds of cereal per year!
21. Barbie’s measurements, if she were life-size, would be 39-29-33.
22. You spend 92 days of your life on the toilet.
23. On average, Americans’ favorite smell is banana.
24. One-quarter of your body’s bones are in your feet.
25. Americans eat an estimated 13 billion hamburgers each year.
26. Dexterous comes from the Latin word dexter, meaning “on the right side.” Since most people are right-handed, and therefore do things more easily with their right hand.
27. Maine is the only state whose name is just one syllable.
28. Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in first-class.
29. Hershey’s makes one million miles of Twizzlers every year.
30. Honey is the only food that does not spoil.

Useless Facts About Words In The English Language

1. Dr. Seuss invented the word “nerd.”
2. Stewardesses is the longest word typed with only the left hand.
3. “Spoonfeed” is the longest English word with its letters in reverse alphabetical order.
4. The “pound” key on your keyboard (#) is called an octotroph.
5. TYPEWRITER is the longest word you can type using only the letters on one row of the keyboard.
6. The infinity sign is called a lemniscate.
7. No word in the English language rhymes with “MONTH.”
8. The most common password is “123456.”
9. The “dot” over the letter “i” is called a tittle.
10. Sleeping through summer is called “estivation.”
11. A group of hippos is called a “bloat.”
12. Rainbows were called “bows of promise” in Victorian English.
13. The lint in the bottom of your pocket has a name, gnurr.
14. If you open your eyes in a pitch-black room, the color you’ll see is called “eigengrau.”
15. A Harry Potter book filled with typos sold for $90,000.