50 Unknown Facts About The World To Make You Look Cultured
Don’t panic—instead arm yourself with some incredible facts about a world that seems completely civilized. Facts that surprise everyone.
Want to pull off this elegant dinner-table trick?
Then read on.
First, you need to create the ‘location’. Let me explain what I mean by this.
You should come across as polite, as if you know what you are talking about. By telling any of the 50 Unknown Facts below, you are ready to shock your company.
Master the body language of an experienced educator with this simple 4-step technique:
Purse your lips (pout)
Raise an eyebrow (creating a glow of intrigue)
Raise your Coca-Cola and spin the glass for a moment (shows your sophistication).
Finally, lean back a little in your chair (indicating that you are at ease with yourself).
Now you are ready for the facts.
Type 1: Nature
The deepest place on Earth is the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean. It has a depth of 36,201 feet (11,034 m). That’s almost seven miles!
The longest river in the world is the Nile, which is 6,853 km long. Its water sources are shared by 11 different countries.
Crabs are not ‘biologically indestructible’, but they do produce an enzyme that helps repair their cells and replicate their DNA indefinitely.
The deepest freshwater lake in the world is Lake Baikal located in Siberia. It flows to a depth of 5,315 feet (1,620 m). Aha!
Pineapple takes two years to grow.
Acacia trees in Africa are related to each other. They emit gases to warn other trees to produce tannin, a toxin that protects them from hungry animals.
Armadillos are bulletproof. (This is not a call for fact-checking.)
Niagara Falls never freezes.
Each limestone/granite block that makes up the Great Pyramid of Giza weighs 2.5 tons. There are 2.3 million of them. Yes, you read that right.
It will take you about 18 months to walk the Great Wall of China. (It is over 5,000 miles long).
Category 2: History
The 12-color national flag is Belize (1981).
The first portable mobile phone call was made on April 3, 1973 in NYC.
Buzz Aldrin (the second man to set foot on the moon in 1969) actually urinated on himself while walking on the surface.
In ancient Egypt, the word ‘cat’ was actually pronounced ‘meow’ or ‘meow’.
The American Revolution (1765-1783) preceded the French Revolution (1789-1799).
Anglo-Zanzibar War (1896) Shortest War – Just 38 Minutes!
The printing press which revolutionized information sharing was invented by Gutenberg in 1440.
The largest continuous land empire in history was the Mongol Empire (13th and 14th centuries).
Egypt is classified as the oldest country in the world, dating back to 3100 BC.
Tim Berners-Lee created the first web browser (World Wide Web) in 1990.
Category 3: Art & Culture
In 2019, scientists discovered the world’s oldest artwork on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. It was created 44,000 years ago.
The name “Sandwich” comes from the 18th century 4th Earl of Sandwich.
9310 tweets are sent every second.
Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvador Mundi” is the world’s most expensive painting, valued at $450.3 million.
According to UNWTO’s 2018 statistics, France is the most visited country on the planet, with 90 million visitors. Who is in second place? Spain.
92% of the world’s currency is digital.
“Avengers: Endgame” is the highest-grossing movie of all time, grossing over $2.7B!
The richest company in the world in 2020 is Saudi Aramco.
The Statue of Unity in Gujarat, India, is the tallest in the world at 579 feet (182 m). Note: Statue of Liberty is 93 m tall in comparison.
Brazil has the highest biodiversity of any country on the planet, with more than 50,000 species of plants and trees.
Category 4: People and Nations
To make someone cry Scientists say tears will tell the reason. If the first drop comes from the right eye, it is a tear of joy. Otherwise, it causes pain.
In the UK in 2019, renewable energy generated more electricity than fossil fuels for the first time. Also, did you know that Norway gets 0% of its electricity from coal? And Germany has installed 1 kW of renewable capacity per person in the last decade?
(Climate change is the biggest global issue of our time, but there are some things to feel positive about!)
The longest reigning monarch was Louis XIV of France. He ruled for 72 years, 110 days. Tiredness
Marie Curie was the first person to win two Nobel Prizes – one in 1903 for physics, the other in 1911 for her work on radioactivity in chemistry.
King Henry VIII of England had servants called “Grooms of Stool” who cleaned him after he went to the toilet. Total.
0.5% of the male population are descendants of Genghis Khan. (Scientists conducted a study in 2003, showing that about 16 million women share a Y chromosome with the famous emperor.)
Iceland, the Faroe Islands and the Isle of Man claim to have the oldest parliaments in history, all established in the 9th and 10th centuries.
With an area of 815 million hectares, Russia is the most forested country in the world.
China is the world’s most populous country, with about 1.4 billion people living there.
Malala Yousafzai, the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize (only 17 years old in 2014), is a child rights activist and has fought for girls’ right to education.
Type 5: “No! Is that so?”
Sunsets exist only because the Earth’s atmosphere acts as a prism of light. Scientifically.
- a) Molecules and particles in the atmosphere (which are more abundant during sunset) scatter short-wavelength violet and blue light from your eyes, so we can see other colors in the spectrum, such as yellow and orange.
The most remote place in the world is the Tristan da Cunha Islands in the South Atlantic Ocean. They are 2,434 km from the nearest inhabited place, Saint Helena. Imagine mom is sending you grocery shopping but the local supermarket is closed? It’s a long journey.
When you do a Google query, 1000 computers are used to find the answer in 0.2 seconds.
There are nearly 5 billion internet users in the world.
As of 2019, the average age of the world population is about 30 years.
We actually produce enough food to feed everyone on the planet; Problem distribution.
In 2010, Google tried to find out how many books there are in the world. They estimate that there are about 130,000,000 of them. (Let’s say this is a half-truth, right?)
A tiger’s roar can be heard up to two miles away.
The Earth is 147.2 million kilometers from the Sun, and it is about 4.5 billion years old. It is a serious tradition.
Owls do not have eyelids.
We go, that’s 50 for you! Thanks for reading. I hope you can now use some “fact consumption” to enhance your next chat about ‘culture’ and ‘world’. good luck
Below, you will find a list of sources for some of the specific the top facts listed above.
