Did You Know? A Fun List of Trivia Facts

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Knowledge Gets You Places

You won’t be getting a college degree nor will this help you to get a job, but these trivia notes will surely raise an eyebrow or two! Not to mention it will stimulate your brain.

Knowledge is Power

We’re not saying you will rule the world or become the next billionaire tomorrow, but the better we understand the world around us, the better decision-makers we become.

The power of knowledge expands horizons and instills critical thinking, which can enhance our mental health. But probably most of all, having good intelligence works great for date nights! But if that is not useful to you, then at the very least, it can always help you finish your crossword puzzles or solve clues on Jeopardy!

On a more serious note, knowledge stimulates our brain which is a great benefit for our mental health. We can navigate challenges, solve problems, and build a better world for future generations through knowledge.

So, let’s give it a go!

Animals

• • Hippopotamuses are listed as one of the most dangerous animals in the world. They are very territorial so don’t try to pet one! 
  • The oldest turtle in the world is Jonathan, who is 190 years old.
  • There are twenty quadrillion ants on planet Earth. That’s a million billion or the number 1 followed by 15 zeros.
  • Male penguins give pebbles to the females as a courtship.
  • Elephants are scared of bees.

Entertainment

• • Bob Dylan is the only person to have won both an Oscar and a Nobel Peace Prize.
  • Every Academy Wards Oscar winner cannot sell their Oscar trophy. they would have to sell it back to the Academy for $1.
  • Over 106 million people watched the finale of MASH on February 28, 1983, which was the largest audience for a TV series finale.
  • Paul McCartney wrote the song Hey Jude to console John Lennon’s son, Jullian, who was depressed from his parents’ divorce. McCartney changed the name from Julian (AKA Jules) to Jude because he felt it sounded better. He composed the song in his car while riding to Lennon’s house.
  • CNN broadcaster Anderson Cooper is the son of Gloria Vanderbilt.
  • Humphrey Bogart never said “Play it again Sam” in the movie Casablanca
  • Newsmax Greg Kelly is the son of former NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly.
  • Mr. Potato Head was the first toy to be advertised on TV.

Finance

• The average lifespan of a $1 bill is 6.6 years. For a $20 bill it is 7.8 years, and a $100 bill can extend up to 22.9 years.
• 996 million dollars is printed by the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing every day.
• The grooved edges on coins help visually impaired people determine the type of coins they are.
• 78% of Americans prefer to bank digitally instead of physically going to the bank.
• The average price of a home in 2024 is $416.000.

History

• • Despite popular belief, Henry Ford did not invent the automobile. That credit goes to Illinois residents, the Duryea Brothers, circa 1892.
  • Paul Revere never said, “The British are Coming.” It wasn’t customary to talk in this manner back in those days. He more likely would have said, “The regulars are coming.”
  • In 17th-century England, it was customary to have a long wooden table in the dining room, where the father would sit at the end and was the only chair with arms; hence, the expression chairman came into being. The table top was known as the board, which gives us the expression “Chairman of the Board and Boardroom.”
  • Shakespeare’s will stated that he left his wife, Anne Hathaway his “second-best bed with the furniture.” Historians believe this suggested that Anne was merely the “second-best” woman in his life, implying that Shakespeare had other women in his relationship.
  • The Cosmetics company Avon was named after Stratford-Upon-Avon – Shakespeare’s birthplace.
  • The first American to win a Nobel Peace was Theodore Roosevelt.
  • The only president to hold a Ph.D was Woodrow Wilson.
  • The son of the detective who investigated the Lindberg kidnapping was Norman Schwarzkopf, the general who led Operation Desert Storm in the war on Iraq in 1991.

• • The Mesozoic Era, which existed about 252 million to 66 million years ago, is the period when dinosaurs roamed the earth. It is also the time when the Triassic, Cretaceous, and all-too-familiar Jurassic eras existed. Earth’s continents were breaking apart at this time, so we find remains of dinosaurs worldwide despite the vastness of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans that formed after it.

    

  • Nyasasaurus is the most ancient dinosaur on record, originating from the late Anisian stage around 243 million years ago. This discovery places it approximately 10 to 15 million years ahead of any previously identified dinosaur specimens.

Geography

The center of the 48 contiguous United States is located north of  Lebanon, Kansas, coordinates 39°50′N 98°35′W.

• The closest point between the United States and Russia lies in the Bering Strait, which is a body of water that separates the northeastern most point of Russia from Alaska. Within the Bearing Strait are two small islands known as Big Diomede and Little Diomede. Russia owns Big Diomede and the United States owns Little Diomede.  These islands are 2.4 miles apart at their closest points, but timewise, they are 21 hours apart since the International Timeline cuts right through them.

  

Biology

• • Humans share 98.8% of their DNA with chimpanzees, making them our closest relatives.
  • It only takes six minutes for alcohol to affect your brain.
  • Your brain consists of 170 billion cells.
  • Spanish Flu didn’t originate in Spain. The first documented case was at an army base in Kansas.
  • The oldest person living today is 118-year-old Lucile Randon of France.
  • Brother Island is located just south of The Bronx, NYC, and no one can visit it. It was previously where people with contagious diseases were sent. The most well-known was Typhoid Mary.
  • Your femur bone can hold 30 times your weight.

Technology

• • 99% of all Internet communication travels through cables in the oceans.
  • Over 500 hours of videos are added to YouTube every minute.
  • You can have actual conversations with ChatGPT.
  • The most used word in the English language is “Time.”
  • The word most searched for on Google is “Love.”
  • The most powerful light beam in the world is in Luxor, Las Vegas.
  • The Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Spitsbergen, Norway, contains over 1 million seed samples, which will secure our food supply should a world disaster occur.

Architecture / Engineering

• • The copper framework of the Statue of Liberty weighs 125 tons.
  • The Pentagon in Washington DC is the largest office building in the world. The Willis Tower in Chicago comes in at number 4 and One World Trade Center, AKA the Freedom Tower in New York City, comes in at number 8, above the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. 
  • The Citicorp Building in NYC could have fallen due to an engineering glitch, but it was caught in time by an engineering student at Princeton University.
  • The famous London Bridge was dismantled in London and reassembled in Arizona.

Astronomy

• • • Scientists estimate there are over two trillion galaxies in the known universe.
    • The largest known space object is the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall, a cluster of galaxies that extends 10 billion light years.
  • If the sun blew up right now, we would still have another 8.3 minutes to live. That’s because light travels at a finite speed of 186,000 miles per second, so grab your beer or whatever strikes your fancy (legally of course) for the next 8.3 minutes and live it up. At least you will be happy for that one moment in time!