Updated December 7, 2021 9.6K votes 2.2K voters 135.2K views
Over 2.2K Ranker voters have come together to rank this list of Facts That Made Us Raise An Eyebrow Or Two When We Found Out They Were True
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Vote up all the facts that make your eyebrows go up.
Some history “facts” are really just fiction. A few myths that might surprise you include Edison inventing the light bulb and Napoleon being extraordinarily short (both false). Or what about some of the science facts we learned in school, such as the existence of a dark side of the moon? (Nope, that's just the name of an album.)
And sometimes the opposite is true: What seems like fiction is verifiably correct. So don't let anyone accuse you of faking it when you pull out one of these strange but true facts.
Wounds That Occur During The Day Heal Faster Than Those That Happen At Night
The next time you injure yourself, do your best to make it happen during the day. Scientists recently discovered that wounds heal noticeably faster when the injury happens during the day than at night, largely because of the circadian rhythm of fibroblasts, the skin cells that make way for new cell growth.
The difference in healing time was noticeable to the eye, and the study found that daytime burn injuries healed 11 days sooner than those that occurred at night.
Woolly Mammoths Were Still Living When The Great Pyramids Were Built
The last woolly mammoths on Earth were concentrated on a remote island off Siberia called Wrangel Island. Although they were a motley crew (being stuck on an island leads to a lot of inbreeding), they survived the general demise of most mammoths that occurred more than 10,000 years ago. This band of mammoths lived on the island until about 2000 BCE.
The Giza Pyramids were constructed approximately 4,500 years ago, meaning there were, indeed, woolly mammoths roaming (a tiny part of) the Earth during the construction of the pyramids.
The Coldest Temperatures Recorded In The Universe Occurred On Earth
If you had to guess where the coldest temperatures in the universe were recorded, you might guess another planet, such as Neptune, or deep in the abyss of outer space. But the coldest temperatures ever recorded in the universe have actually happened right here on Earth (in science labs).
Scientists working on a dark matter experiment in Canada, for example, installed a dilution refrigerator that reached 5.3 millikelvin (just a hair above absolute zero). To get an idea of how cold that is, Antarctica’s coldest temperature ever recorded was 184 kelvins, which equates to about -89 degrees Celsius or -128 degrees Fahrenheit.
You can cross “getting eaten by a whale” off your list of fears, but only if that whale is blue. Although they’re the largest known living creature on Earth and boast hearts that are as big as a car, blue whales have throats that are on average only 4 to 8 inches in diameter.
For comparison, human throats are about 1 inch in diameter. That’s why blue whales have a diet mostly made of krill - tiny shrimp-looking creatures - and tend to avoid eating humans. Phew.
Maybe Alice Cooper didn’t read Keanu Reeves a bedtime story or make macaroni and cheese, but the musician did babysit the future actor. How did this caretaking arrangement come about? According to Reeves in an interview on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon:
I grew up in Toronto and I lived on this street called Hazelton and there was a recording studio (near) there called Nimbus 9 and my mother was in costume design, she was in rock ’n’ roll, in the business, and they had friends and she had friends, and so Alice Cooper - I’m told - babysat me. I don’t know how that could possibly happen, but it did...
Yes, a banana is a berry... but strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries are not. The reasoning lies in the scientific definition of a berry. If the fruit in question has an outer skin (exocarp), a middle that is fleshy (mesocarp), and an inner part with two or more seeds (endocarp), then it is a berry.
Also to be considered a berry, a fruit must develop from one flower that has a single ovary, and strawberries have flowers with more than one ovary. So strawberries are not true berries, but bananas are, along with watermelons, kiwis, and eggplants (yes, eggplants are technically fruits).
