Surprising but True

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Surprising but True

• The lighter (1823) was invented before the match (1826).

• Wheeled luggage was invented in 1972 and the moon landing happened in 1969 which means we put a man on the moon before we put wheels on a suitcase.

• Cows kill 2x more people every year (20) than sharks do (10). Snakes kill more than 100k people every year. Mosquitos kill millions, making them the deadliest animals on earth.

• There are 43 million kangaroos in Australia and 26 million people, meaning if there were to be a human vs kangaroo war each human would have to take on 1.7 kangaroos.

• 68% of Soviet males born in 1923 didn’t survive WWII.

• The first moon landing (1969) happened only 66 years after the first successful flight test by the Wright brothers (1903).

• Almost 4x more US Vietnam War veterans died from suicide after the war (200k) than were killed in combat (58k). More than 4x more US Iraq + Afghanistan War veterans died from suicide after the war (30k) than were killed in combat (7k).

• People watched 57 billion minutes of the office in 2020 (which is equivalent to 108k years).

• The least obese state in the US in 2020 (Colorado @ 24% obesity) was 60% more than the most obese state in 1990 (Mississippi @ 15% obesity).

• In 2020, 12 states were above 35% obesity with Mississippi #1 at 40.8%. The entire country of India had a 40.3% obesity rate in 2020.

• It is estimated that 8 million horses, mules, and donkeys died in WWI (compared to 15 million people).

• 73 billion chickens are killed every year (which is 202 million every day and 140k every minute).

• 1.4 billion pigs are killed every year (which is 3.8 million every day and 2.6k every minute).

• 330 million cows are killed every year (which is 900k every day and 625 every minute).

• 7% of American households had toothpaste in 1930.

• If you were able to fold a piece of paper in half 42 times it would be tall enough to reach the moon (385,000 km).

• As of November 2021, if you had made $405,000 every single day since the birth of Christ, you would still have less money than Elon Musk ($299 billion vs $300 billion).

• Joe Biden was born (1942) closer in time to Lincoln’s second inauguration (1865) than to his own inauguration (2021).

• In Formula 1, the full grid of 20 cars during all practice, qualifying, and race sessions over an entire single season will burn less fuel than one commercial flight from London to New York.

• The lowest-income American households spend ~$412 annually on lottery tickets. 40% of the US population couldn’t cover an emergency $400 expense. 57% of the US population couldn’t cover an emergency $1,000 expense.

• There are more trees on earth today than there were 35 years ago

• The technology for the fax machine was invented in 1843. The feudal era in Japan ended in 1868 abolishing the samurai class. Abraham Lincoln lived until 1865. This means that there was a 22-year period in which Lincoln could have received a fax from a samurai.

• In the US, more retail workers (e.g. Walmart cashiers) were murdered on the job than police officers and firefighters combined every single year from 2012 to 2017.

• Judge Judy makes $45m per year for ~52 days of filming. She is worth ~$500m

• According to a 2008 CDC report, there were 234k nonfatal bathroom injuries treated in U.S. emergency departments. 14.1% of these injuries occurred when people stood up from, sat down on, or used the toilet, meaning there were 33k toilet-related injuries in the US that year.

• In 2018, the median household income in the US for “Indian Americans” was $120k. For “White Americans” it was $66k.

• 33 people die from terror attacks each year in the US. 95,000 die from alcohol.

• The number of countries with legal slavery went down from 193 in 1800 to zero in 2024. However, it is estimated that there are more slaves on earth right now (27 million) than there have been at any point in history. 14 million of the 27 million are in India.

• As of 2017, the world's 8 richest people had more money than the poorest 3.6 billion. The top 8 had $426bn which is $53bn per person. The poorest 3.6 billion had ~$420bn, which is ~$120 per person.

• Homicide is the leading cause of death for pregnant women in the United States.

• Maine has more coastline than California (3,478 miles vs 3,427 miles).

• A study in 2019 revealed that 49.6% of Pakistanis were married to a first cousin.

• If all humans alive right now lived in the same density per square mile as New York City, we would fit into the state of Texas.

• It takes 2 years for a pineapple to grow.

• The top 10% of drinkers account for 60% of all alcohol consumed in the US. And they drink the equivalent of 74 drinks per week.

• The home price to income ratio in the US was 3.5x in 1985 ($78k vs $22.5k) and is now 6.0x ($435k vs $75k) meaning homes are ~2x more expensive on a relative basis.

• As of 2022, if you made more than $34,000 you were in the global top 1% of earners.

• If you make the (not unreasonable) assumption that at least one person in every generation of humans has lived to be about 100 years old and that their life briefly overlapped with another person who lived to be 100, the entire span of human civilization is covered by the overlapping lives of about 50 people.

• Grizzly bears in Yellowstone eat around 300,000 moths a month and it accounts for 1/3 of their calorie intake. 

• The average internet user spends 2 hours and 20 minutes per day on social media. Assuming they sleep for 8 hours per day, this is 14.4% of their waking time. If they live to age 72 and start using social media at age 12, they will spend the equivalent of 5.8 of their 40 waking years on social media.

• In 1918 the Spanish flu killed 2.7% of the global population (50 million people).

• 80% of the US population is concentrated within 3.6% of the landmass of the contiguous United States.

• Around 90% of people on Earth live in the northern hemisphere.

• 80% of the “stable” elements of the periodic table are in your smartphone (70 out of 84).

• As of 2023, The Ford F-150 had been the best-selling car in the US for 42 consecutive years.

• In 2023, Amazon made ~$1.1 million every minute.

• The average number of births per woman was 5 in 1965 and 2.4 in 2017.

• John Tyler, the 10th president of the U.S. (serving 20 years before Abraham Lincoln) still has a living grandson.

• In the US between 1993 and 2012 the top 1% saw their incomes grow 86% while the bottom 99% saw just 6.6% growth.

• Medical errors account for between 250k and 440k deaths every year in the US, making them the third leading cause of death behind heart disease (695k) and cancer (610k). 30k of the medical error deaths are specifically caused by Infections from catheters.

• Human trafficking generates an estimated $236 billion per year

• The global average lifespan in 1900 was 31. In 1918 it was 23 (due to WW1 and Spanish flu). In 2023 it was 73.

• A human’s brain reaches 80% of its full adult size by age 3 (and 90% by age 5)

• More people live in California (39 million) than in Canada (38 million). More people live in Texas (29 million) than in Australia (26 million).

• By age 17, over 50% of foster children will have an encounter with the juvenile legal system through arrest, conviction, or detention. Another study showed that 70% of former foster care youth were arrested at least once before age 26.

• 1 teaspoon of neutron star weighs 1,000x as much as the entire human population (100 million metric tons).

• 60% of all deaths involving a firearm in the US are suicides.

• The USSR's WWII death toll was 24 million and China’s was 19.5 million (the United States’ was 450k).

• In America, evangelical Christians make up less than 11% percent of the population but account for almost 30% of all voters.

• In the US, motorcycles represent 3% of all registered vehicles, 0.7% of all vehicle miles traveled, and 15% of motor vehicle deaths.

• There are more combinations of a standard deck of cards than atoms in the Milky Way galaxy. There are more permutations of a chess game than atoms in the entire universe.

• The word “oxymoron” is itself an oxymoron. It comes from the Greek words “oxy” (sharp) and “moron” (dull).

• Cleopatra (30 BC) lived closer to the moon landing (1969 AD) than the building of the pyramids (2560 BC).

• An ostrich eye is bigger than an ostrich brain. A human eye is 0.54% of the size of a human brain.

• Sloths can hold their breath for up to 40 minutes. Dolphins can hold their breath for 8 to 10 minutes.

• In the US, the labor participation rate for men over 65 has gone from 78% in 1880 to 47% in 1950 to 22% in 2010 to 19% in 2023.

• There are more public libraries in the US (16.5k) than there are McDonald's restaurants (14k).

• 72% of current Canadian residents live south of Seattle. 27 US states breach the southernmost tip of Canada (including California).

• In 2022, 110k Americans died from a drug overdose (82k of which overdosed on a synthetic opioid–primarily fentanyl). This figure is more than double the 42.5k who died in motor vehicle accidents.

• The energy stored in all the oil and gas in the Earth is the equivalent of just eight and a half days worth of sunlight hitting Earth’s surface.

• Oxford University (1096) was founded more than 300 years before the Aztec Empire (1428).

• As of 2015, the US had killed 15,000 ISIS fighters for every American soldier ISIS killed.

• 1 million seconds from right now is in 11 days. 1 billion seconds from right now is in 32 years.

• The average person produces about 46.5 liters of saliva each month (which is more than 40,000 liters over an entire lifetime).

• Tyrannosaurus rex existed closer in history to humans (65 million years ago) than to the Stegosaurus (144 million years ago).

• If you were to compress Earth’s existence into a 24-hour day, life would first appear at 4:00am, plants would first appear at 10:00pm, dinosaurs from about 11:00pm-11:40pm, and humans emerge at 11:59pm.

• The global population was 1 billion in 1800, 2 billion in 1930, and 7 billion in 2020. Between 1950 and 1987 the global population doubled from 2.5 billion to 5 billion.

• More French soldiers died during WWI (1.4 million) than American soldiers during all of US history (1.3 million). 116k American soldiers died in WWI.

• China has one time zone. It is also 300 miles wider than the US which has three time zones.

• Mount Everest isn’t actually the tallest mountain on Earth at 4.6km. Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa in Hawaii are taller at 10.2km, but since 6km of their height is submerged underwater, they only appear to be 4.2km tall.

• The pygmy shrew has the highest average heart rate of all animals at 1,200 beats per minute. Blue whales have the lowest at 10 beats per minute.

• The oldest known living tree is over 4,800 years old (a bristlecone pine located in California), which means it started growing ~200 years before the pyramids were built (2780 BC vs 2560 BC).

• The Wall Street bonus pool at the end of each year (~$30 billion) exceeds the combined annual earnings of all Americans working full-time at the federal minimum wage (~$24 billion).

• There is a fence in Australia that stretches the equivalent distance of London to New York (3,488 miles).

• Women couldn’t apply for credit cards in their own names until 1974.

• Harvard didn't admit women until 1977.

• More women have received college degrees compared to men every year since 1981. As of 2019, women outnumbered men in the college-educated workforce.

• Konrad Heyer, the earliest-born person ever to be photographed, was born 60 years before Abraham Lincoln, and 20 years before Napoleon.

• 62% of personal bankruptcies in the US are caused by medical debt.

• Orange County, California, has a population (3.2 million) higher than twenty European countries.

• Of the 270K people who applied to be a Delta Flight Attendant in 2017, just 1,700 got hired, making for an acceptance rate of 0.6%. For reference, Harvard’s acceptance rate was 3% in 2022.

• There are an estimated 3.5 million youth sports coaches in the United States which is ~1 in every 100 people.

• The last living child of a US Civil War veteran, Irene Triplett, died in June of 2020. Her father was 83 when she was born.

• A blue whale’s tongue weighs as much as a female elephant (6,000 pounds).

• There are about 1 million people in the air at any given moment (in ~10,000 airplanes).

• In 2015, Russians bought 500,000 baseball bats but purchased only one pair of baseball gloves and one ball, according to Moscow traffic police chief Viktor Kovalenko.

• Over 1 million earths could fit into the sun.

• Abolitionist Harriet Tubman’s lifespan included both Thomas Jefferson (who died in 1826) and Ronald Reagan (who was born in 1911). Oliver Wendell Holmes met both John Quincy Adams and JFK.

• Vatican City has the highest popes per square mile ratio of any country in the world at 5.9.

• There are only four American cities with a population of over 2 million: NYC, LA, Chicago, and Houston. If Brooklyn was its own city, it would be the fourth-largest city in the US (2.5 million).

• China used more cement in the 3 years between 2011-2013 (6.4 billion metric tons) than the US did in the entire 20th century (4.5 billion metric tons).

• From the end of WWII until Reagan's election, productivity more than doubled and wages moved in lockstep with them. Since then productivity continued to move up in a straight line while wages flat-lined. While the median net worth hasn't budged, the wealth of the top 0.1% has increased 10x.

• The US had more soldiers die in the Civil War (620k) than in all other wars combined.

• 0.07% of American men between 6'6″ and 6'8″ are in the NBA. 17% of American men over 7 feet are in the NBA.

• 3% of everyone on earth in 1939 died in WWII (70 million people).

• Strawberries share 60% of their DNA with humans. Mushrooms share more DNA with humans than with plants.

• If you're in a group of twenty-three people, there's a 50% chance that two of them share a birthday. If you're in a group of seventy people, that probability jumps to over 99%.

• Envisioning Jeff Bezos’ wealth: let's say everyone is on a staircase and each step is $100k of net worth. 80% of the world hasn't gotten up the first step yet. Most other people are standing somewhere on the first 10 steps or so. Then Jeff Bezos is (at 8 inches per step) 266 miles into the atmosphere.

• The eruption of Mount Krakatoa in 1883 was the loudest sound ever recorded. It was heard over 3,000 miles away, which would be the equivalent of an explosion in New York being heard in Los Angeles.

• If you stand at the base of the clock tower in London commonly called Big Ben with a digital radio tuned to the BBC, you'll hear the sound of the bell striking the hour via the radio before you hear it live. This is because sound travels faster digitally from the microphone in the tower to the BBC studio to their transmitter to your radio than it does analogically from the bell to you.

• There are more trees on Earth than stars in our galaxy. (~ 3 Trillion)

• In the US, miscarriages have gone up 1% each year and sperm counts of men have gone down 50% since 1970.

• You can fit all the other planets in the solar system ​(380,000 km), side by side, in the space between Earth and the moon (405,000 km).

• 20% of the mammal species on our planet are different types of bats (1,400).

• The human eye blinks about 4.2 million times a year on average.

• Snails have between 1,000 and 12,000 teeth.

• In 1800, 10% of the world was literate. Today that number is 86%.

• In 1800, 44% of children died before their fifth birthday. Today that number is 4%.

• In 2021, Budimer Šobat held his breath underwater for 24 minutes and 37 seconds.

• 88% of 1-year-olds are vaccinated, up from 22% in 1980.

• An ordinary plastic LEGO brick is able to support the weight of 375,000 other LEGO bricks before it fails. This, theoretically, would let you build a LEGO tower nearing 3.5km in height.

• In 2007 Myspace had 115 million unique users per month. By 2015 it had 7 million.

• 100 companies are responsible for 71% of global carbon emissions.

• McDonald's sells more than 75 hamburgers every second. They feed roughly 68 million people every day (almost 1% of the global population)

• In the late 90s, Wall Street Analysts estimated that 70% of Blockbuster’s profit (and 16% of their revenue) came from late fees (~$800m). Tangentially related, Blockbuster also passed on an offer to buy Netflix in 2000 for $50 million (now worth $300bn+).

• Disney is the second largest buyer of explosives in the US (~$50m annually) after the Department of Defense (fireworks).

• During Prohibition in the early 1920s, the US government ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured domestically to deter bootleggers. It is estimated that 10,000+ people died as a result.

• The global Jewish population today (15.7 million) is still smaller than it was in 1939 (16.6 million) since 60% of European Jews (6 million of 10 million) were killed in the Holocaust.

• By pollinating crops bees are responsible for 1 in every 3 bites of food we take.

• In 2008 Starbucks spent more money on employee healthcare ($300 million) than on coffee (according to the CEO at the time Howard Schultz).

• The international space station is closer to Earth than Philadelphia is to Boston.

• In 1940, 5% of Americans over age 25 had a bachelor’s degree. In 2021, 38% did and tuition is on average 3.6x more expensive (adjusted for inflation).

• $81.5bn of Warren Buffet’s $84.5bn net worth came after his 65th birthday. Berkshire Hathaway has owned 400-500 stocks over its lifetime, ~90% of their returns came from 10 stocks.

• The Russell 3000 has increased 73x since 1980 and this is due to the returns of 7% of its constituents — 40% of the companies completely failed over the same horizon.

• Several countries, including Mexico, Germany, and Austria, see the desire to escape prison as basic human nature rather than an unlawful act. Consequently, a prison break isn’t considered to be a crime itself.

• In 1999, 40% of internet searches were pornographic in nature.

• In 2022, healthcare spending represented 17% of US GDP. On average, 25% of all medical spending in the US goes towards patients in their last year of life.

• The Greenland shark is the world's longest-living vertebrate. It can live for 400 years.

• As of 2021, California would have been the 5th biggest economy in the world if it were its own country behind the US, China, Japan, and Germany.

• Between 1980 and 2015, the number of people incarcerated in America increased from roughly 500,000 to over 2.2 million. In 2015 the US was home to 5% of the world's population and 21% of the world's prisoners.  

• Bananas and pumpkins are technically berries (botanically speaking) and strawberries are not.

• Humans are 200x more sensitive to the smell of petrichor, which is the smell produced when rain falls on dry soil (5 parts per billion) than sharks are to blood (1 part per million).

• Sharks have been on Earth longer than trees (400 million years vs 385 million years).

• The fastest pigeons can fly up to 95 mph.

• Bamboo can grow up to 35 inches per day.

• A day on Venus is longer than a year on Venus. It takes Venus 243 Earth days to rotate once, but it orbits the sun in just 225 earth days.

• A bolt of lightning (50,000 degrees Fahrenheit) is 5x hotter than the surface of the sun (10,000 degrees Fahrenheit)

• The Trans-Siberian Railway (from Moscow to Vladivostok) is the longest railway in the world. Traversing it takes seven days, during which passengers pass through eight different time zones and cross 3,901 bridges.

• 20-30 million people died during the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864). 11 million people died in the Northern Chinese Famine (1876-1879).

• If you uncoiled the DNA in all our cells It would stretch 46 billion miles (2 meters per cell across 37 trillion cells), which is enough to go from the Earth to the sun 493 times.

• Baby blue whales gain 200 pounds per day during their first year of life.

• 25% of all of the bones in your body are in your feet.

• Oranges aren’t named after the color, the color is named after the fruit — before orange trees made it to Europe the color was referred to as “yellow-red.”

• The US population doubled from 150 million to 300 million between 1952 and 2006.

• Mayans used to play a ball game called Pok Ta' Pok where the losing captain was sacrificed to the gods.

• From 2010-2019, the biggest US airlines spent 96% of their free cash flow on buying back their own shares.

• 90% of a rocket ship's fuel is used in the first 3 minutes of its voyage.

• Koalas sleep for 18-22 hours per day. Giraffes sleep for 4 hours per day.

• Only 60 of the 500 "Fortune 500" firms from 1955 remain.

• An object traveling at the speed of light could do seven full laps around  Earth in under one second.

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