100+ Random Did You Know Facts & Trivia – The Most Useless List

People love all kind of useless did you know facts and trivia and UselessDaily is here to create the ultimate list!

Thanks to the reddit community, these are the best totally random useless did you know facts and trivia available out there, among with their sources!

Double spacing after a period is no longer the standard. (wikipedia)
When Joseph Stalin’s first wife died, he was so overcome with grief he threw himself into her grave during the funeral. (wikipedia)
Cruise lines pay almost no taxes thanks to a maritime law loophole called “flags of convenience”. (tourismconcern.org.uk)
Old books have a particular smell due to lignin being present in the paper. (smithsonianmag.com)
Ontario Canada has a combined Paternal and Maternal leave of 63 weeks in addition to 17 weeks pregnancy leave for the mother. (ontario.ca)
The phrase “Keep calm and carry on” was originally coined by the British in 1939 to boost the morale of the public in preparation of mass air attacks on cities during WW2. (wikipedia)
The longest car in the world was 100 feet long, had 26 wheels, a jacuzzi, diving board, king-sized water bed, and a helicopter landing pad, and was called the ‘American Dream’. (motor1.com)
Captive Giant Pandas were shown a video of pandas mating in the wild, in an effort to get them to mate in the female’s 3-day breeding cycle. Αfter the “show” the pair mated successfully. (telegraph.co.uk)
Magnolia plants are so ancient that they’re pollinated by beetles because they existed prior to bees appearing. (wikipedia)
Keyboards were laid out so that the most common letters were the furthest apart in order to slow down typists so that their typewriters wouldn’t jam. (bbc.co.uk)
The Haitian Revolution was the only successful slave uprising. (wikipedia)
The S in Harry S. Truman doesn’t stand for anything. (wikipedia)
Hot air balloon pilots don’t directly control the direction of flight. They can only increase or decrease the balloon’s altitude to place the balloon into a wind going the same direction they need. (wikipedia)
X-Rays were common in shoe stores through the early to mid 20th century. They were also used as gimmicks at birthday parties. (mentalfloss.com)
The first words spoken in a film were “wait a minute, you ain’t heard nothin’ yet” in the 1927 film The Jazz Singer. (theguardian.co.uk)
Aegis is a shield carried by Zeus and Athena. (wikipedia)
Almost half of the Earth’s crust is composed of oxygen. (wikipedia)
The last time Olympic Gold medals were made of solid gold was in 1912. (huffpost.com)
It takes thousands of years for sunlight to travel from the Sun’s core to its surface and then only ~8 minutes to reach us. (ted.com)
You are less likely to die during an economic depression. This is mostly attributed to cleaner air, reduced traffic, etc (nature.com)
During the filming of Escape to Victory, Sylvester Stallone broke a finger trying to save a penalty kick from Pelé. (bbc.com)
In 1967, US president Lyndon Johnson secretly ordered a study that concluded he would die at age 64. He died of a heart attack in 1973 at age 64. (theatlantic.com)
Cows need to be pregnant and give birth for milk production and release to occur. (dairy.com)
Archeologists discovered a sailing ship from the 1600s buried 15 feet beneath Manhattan. (cheddar.com)
Japan is so successful at returning lost property that 130,000 mobile phones, or 83% of those reported missing, were returned to their owners in 2018. (bbc.com)
Cassandra was a woman in Greek mythology cursed to utter true prophecies, but never to be believed. (wikipedia)
One of the more popular early American wiping objects was the dried corn cob. (pristinesprays.com)
Stained glass originated to help illiterate people learn about the Bible. (wikipedia)
There is a hall of fame for fictitious athletes. (wikipedia)
45000 American soldiers died of “flu” in WW1. (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
The Leaning Tower of Pisa began to sink early in its construction due to a weak foundation. Wars intervened and construction had to be halted for nearly a century, allowing time for the underlying soil to settle. (wikipedia)
In 2016, the European Union ordered Apple to pay Ireland $14 billion in lost taxes. (time.com)
Control+Alt+Delete was used to log into Windows. According to Bill Gates, there was an option to make a single button for such a command, but the IBM keyboard designer didn’t want to give Microsoft a single button. So Microsoft decided to use “Ctrl+Alt+Del” as a way to log into Windows. (geekwire.com)
If your headphone plug has 1 stripe, it’s mono; if it has 2 stripes, it’s stereo. (geeksmate.io)
While kissing, humans tend to turn their heads to the right two times more often than to the left. (nature.com)
Friends character Phoebe had a twin sister in the show purely because Lisa Kudrow was playing that character in the show that aired right before Friends on Thursday night: “Mad About You”. (comedycentral.co.uk)
When Allen Iverson was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2016, he became the first former Grizzlies player to be inducted, despite playing only three games for Memphis in 2009. (espn.com)
Although they have genes, Viruses do not have a cellular structure, which is often seen as the basic unit of life. (wikipedia)
Koala Bear fingerprints are almost indistinguishable from human fingerprints. (ripleys.com)
In rare cases after injury or illness, hedgehogs can inflate like balloons. (howstuffworks.com)
The eldest father had his child at 101 years old. (wikipedia)
Women’s clothing has the zipper on the left side to account for a right-handed assistant to help dress them. (reference.com)
Only female mosquitoes drink blood. (cottagelife.com)
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon was created to sell the toy line by Playmates. (mentalfloss.com)
Charlie Chaplin composed the music for almost all of his films and played the Piano, Violin and Cello, despite not knowing how to read sheet music. (wikipedia)
‘Killer whales’ are not actually a whale, rather they are the largest species of dolphin. (wikipedia)
Quarantine was first introduced in 1377 in Dubrovnik on Croatia’s Dalmatian Coast, and the first permanent plague hospital (lazaretto) was opened by the Republic of Venice in 1423. (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
The sound effects for the velociraptors in Jurassic Park were created by modifying the sounds of a goose, horse, and tortoises mating. (dangerville)
Hawaiian Pizza was not invented in Hawaii, but rather by a Greek-Canadian in Chatham, Ontario, Canada in 1962. (cbc.ca)
Nokia 3210 was the first phone to sell 100 million units. It spotted the first mass market internal antenna, there games, and had a standby time of up to 11 days. (wikipedia)
Kareem Abdul-Jabber has written Sherlock Holmes novels and an episode of Veronica Mars. (cheatsheet.com)
Famed child star Shirley Temple served as the US ambassador to both Czechoslovakia and Ghana. (newsweek.com)
When Washington became president, he scrapped the plans for “Washington monument” as he didn’t want to use public money for a personal memorial monument. (wikipedia)
Before the advent of modern toilet paper many different materials were used for the same purposes. People used leaves, grass, ferns, corn cobs, maize, fruit skins, seashells, stone, sand, moss, snow and water. (toiletpaperhistory.net)
In order for Voldemort’s name to spell out to “Je Suis Voldemort” in the French translations of Harry Potter, they had to make his middle name ‘Elvis’. (bookshelf.mml.ox.ac.uk)
There is an AI email bot that will respond to phishing scammers realistically to waste their time and hopefully reduce the number of scams they can perform on others. (Re:Scam.org)
The Pyramids are so well built that when a Sultan’s workers tried to destroy a small Pyramid 3000 years after its construction, they could only move 1-2 stones a day and gave up after creating only a gash after eight months. (wikipedia)
There is an Icelandic show called Keeping up with Kattarshians, which is about 4 kittens living in a miniature house. (nutiminn.is)
The reason we refer to people as redheads instead of more accurately as “orangeheads” is because both the fruit and the word to describe its color doesn’t enter the English language until the 1300’s. (quickanddirtytips.com)
In 1995 McDonald’s sued a topless sandwich shop in Melbourne, Australia called “McTits” to get them to change their name. (chicagoreader.com)
The Milky Way rotates at a speed of 168 miles per second. So, the actual place in space where you were an hour ago is now roughly 600,000 miles away. (wikipedia)
Katy Perry’s parents wouldn’t let her eat Lucky Charms as a child, because the word “luck” reminded her mom of ‘Lucifer’. (wikipedia)
Snow isn’t actually white, but rather translucent. It’s the light reflecting off it that makes it appear white with the many sides of the snowflake scattering light in many directions, diffusing the entire colour spectrum. (bbcearth.com)
The alphabet (the Latin alphabet) derived from the Etruscan alphabet, which came from the Greek alphabet, which came from the Phoenician alphabet, which came from another early alphabet, which was based on Egyptian hieroglyphics. (wikipedia)
Maybe the most expensive video game ever sold is a rare version of Super Mario Bros. that sold for $100,150 in 2019. Only one copy is believed to exist in unopened condition. (businessinsider.com)
In the 80’s/90’s, a computer virus called ‘Cascade’ infected computers and caused all text on screen to cascade down to a heap at the bottom of the screen. In response to this, IBM developed their own anti-virus software. (wikipedia)
A media producer purchased a non-visible work of art called ‘Fresh Air’ for $10,000. The artwork does not exist in the real world. It only exists in the artist’s imagination. (npr.org)
The first TV remote control, created by Zenith Radio Corporation in 1950, was called “Lazy Bones”. (wikipedia)
The Fallout series is considered a spiritual successor to a 1988 game Interplay made called Wasteland. (wikipedia)
There was a legal battle between World Wide Fund for Nature and World Wrestling Federation over the use of the acronym WWF. (wikipedia)
Top Gun movie (1986) contained no footage of the actors in the air because they all vomited while shooting. (cinemablend.com)
In 1820, the median age in the US was 16.7 years old. (wikipedia)
In 1907, Alfredo Di Lilio invented the modern dish, Fettuccine Alfredo, to entice his pregnant wife. (wikipedia)
Microsoft has, in the past, attempted to acquire Apple, Comcast, AT&T, WebMD, Best Buy, Audible and Facebook. (wikipedia)
Mickey Mouse enters the public domain and loses copyright protection on 1st January 2024. (mentalfloss.com)
There used to be twice as many trees before humans learned agriculture and started cutting them down en masse. (sciencemag.org)
The first Oscar for best animated feature film was assigned in 2002, and the first winner was Shrek. (wikipedia)
The Godfather II (1974) was the first movie sequel in history to win the academy award for best picture. (mentalfloss.com)
Having kids makes people happier than those without children, but only but when the kids have moved out, according to a survey of 55,000 people age 50 and over. (cnn.com)
In 1990 when the Chicago White Sox changed their Logo and Hip Hop artists started wearing it, New Era cap company had to stop production of all other team caps and just make White Sox caps to meet the demand. (wbez.org)
The american bison’s binomial/scientific name is Bison Bison. (answers.com)
Binge drinking Alcohol can weaken your immune system and leave you susceptible to Pneumonia. (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
Led Zeppelin bought their private jet “The Starship” for part of their 1973 US tour for $30,000. Drummer John Bonham once flew the band from New York to LA even though he didn’t have a pilot’s license. (led-zeppelin.org)
Until 2016, there was a pool in the middle of nowhere out in the Mojave desert that anybody could go to. (wikipedia)
With a telescope of 13km diameter you’d be able to see the Tesla Roadster in space traveling at 13km/s. (whereisroadster.com)
In Terminator 2 – Judgement Day, Arnold Schwarzenegger received a salary of $15 million for the 700 words he spoke. (eightieskids.com)
The word “Alphabet” is actually just the beginning of the Greek AlphaBet(a). (getwords.com)
Children stop believing in Santa at around 8 years old. (phys.org)
Dennis Rodman’s height was only 5’6 as a high school freshman and he never made the varsity basketball team. (wikipedia)
Turtles and tortoise don’t “live in their shells”, they ARE their shells, their spine is inside the shell. (dkfindout.com)
Sega sold their own line of rear-projection TV’s in the 70’s. It was called the SEGA Vision and came in 3 different models with two size choices, 44 and 50 inch. (segaretro.org)
If you gently press the bottom right corner of your eyeball through the eyelid, you see a little dark spot in the top left of your vision. This is because we see the world upside down, but our brain translate it so it looks right side up to us. (mentalfloss.com)
A Cornell University study found that social media “Likes” are less likely to affect the self-esteem of people with a sense of purpose (defined as ongoing motivation that is self-directed, oriented toward the future and beneficial to others). (news.cornell.edu)
“Corolla” means “little crown” in Latin, and “innermost ring of flower petals” in English. (wikipedia)
37% of all registered Steam games have never been played. (gamespot.com)
Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy” uses the Sydney (Australia) Crosswalk Alert in its chorus. (theguardian.com)
Snakes can help predict earthquakes. (independent.co.uk)
The actual colour of the sun is white. (askanastronomer.org)
Michael Jordan has been responsible for making more than 175 wishes come true for the Make-a-Wish Foundation. (espn.com)
Jon Favreau was the Clown from Seinfeld that didn’t know who Bozo was. (wikipedia)