Here are 50 facts from FunFact's “Verified oddities” topic, all checked. Each one cites its source (fr.wikipedia.org, nbcnews.com, nationalgeographic.com…) and the date it was checked. This topic is free in the app.
They can raise small bumps on their skin to imitate a rock or coral.
Thanks to specialized muscles under the skin called papillae, they can raise small bumps on their bodies to mimic the rough look of a coral or rock.
Source: Marine Biology Journal — Octopus Skin Papillae · Checked on October 24, 2026
In 1884, after the wreck of the yacht Mignonette, a real cabin boy named Richard Parker was also killed and eaten by the crew.
Captain Dudley and Edwin Stephens were tried for murder in England. The case set a precedent: necessity does not justify murder. Sentenced to death, they had their sentence commuted to six months in prison.
Source: Edgar Allan Poe Society — Pym and the Mignonette (Freeman's Journal, 1884) · Checked on October 24, 2026
The water's surface behaves like a thin elastic skin: it forms a dome a few millimeters above the rim.
Water molecules are strongly attracted to each other. If you add water drop by drop, the dome holds until the weight of the water wins out. A drop of dish soap makes everything spill at once.
Source: Les Neurones au Labo — Tension de surface : verre et roches · Checked on October 24, 2026
In 2000, two European laboratories compared the DNA of the heart with that of hair from Marie Antoinette, France's last queen before the Revolution, and her relatives.
The test looks at mitochondrial DNA, passed down from the mother: it proves a maternal link to Marie Antoinette, without entirely ruling out another explanation. The heart was placed in the Basilica of Saint-Denis, the burial place of French kings, in 2004.
Source: Archaeology Magazine — Prince Louis' Heart · Checked on October 24, 2026
Deinococcus radiodurans withstands radiation doses that are lethal to humans.
Bacteria such as Deinococcus radiodurans can withstand radiation doses lethal to humans and survive for a time, as clumps of cells, exposed to the harsh conditions of space, as experiments outside the ISS have shown.
Source: Frontiers in Microbiology — Deinococcal cell pellets, 3 years in outer space · Checked on October 24, 2026
The celestial mechanics of our neighbor in the solar system defy intuition.
Venus takes 243 Earth days to complete a single rotation on its axis (one day), but only 225 days to go all the way around the Sun (one year).
Source: NASA Planetary Fact Sheet — Venus · Checked on October 24, 2026
He has been scanning the loch full-time since June 19, 1991, which made 32 years as of June 2023. No evidence of the monster has been found.
No concrete evidence of the monster has been found. In 2015, Feltham suggested that “Nessie” might be a very large wels catfish, a giant freshwater catfish.
Source: Guinness World Records · Checked on October 26, 2026
It's an effect of Earth's rotation.
In the Northern Hemisphere, they spin counterclockwise; in the south, clockwise.
Source: NOAA Ocean Service — Hurricanes · Checked on October 24, 2026
Dead cells fall off by the millions every day.
Dead cells are constantly shed to make room for fresh new layers, which means millions of skin flakes are lost every day.
Source: National Institutes of Health — Skin Regeneration · Checked on October 24, 2026
Waves at 2.45 GHz are absorbed by water within just a few centimeters. The center of a thick dish is then heated by conduction.
That is why a thick dish is sometimes scalding at the edges and cold in the middle. Stirring and letting food rest for a few minutes helps spread the heat.
Source: Wikipédia (four à micro-ondes) · Checked on October 24, 2026
Sold in 1968 for 1.02 million pounds, it was inaugurated in Lake Havasu City on October 10, 1971, after a little over three years of work.
One catch: only the stone facing crossed the Atlantic. The numbered stones traveled by ship through the Panama Canal before being laid on a new reinforced-concrete structure. The original bridge, by John Rennie, dated from 1831.
Source: Lake Havasu City — London Bridge · Checked on October 26, 2026
That adds up to nearly 4 million lightning strikes a day.
At any moment of the day, thousands of cumulonimbus clouds discharge colossal amounts of static electricity, totaling nearly four million lightning strikes a day around the globe.
Source: NASA Earth Science — Lightning Frequency · Checked on October 24, 2026
This Salvadoran fisherman, who set out from Mexico in 2012, lived on fish, turtles, birds and rainwater; when there was no rain, he drank turtle blood or his own urine.
He was found on January 30, 2014, in the Marshall Islands. His boat companion died during the drift. Drinking blood or urine is not a technique to imitate: these were last-resort measures.
Source: CBC.ca — Jose Salvador Alvarenga's family had given him up for dead · Checked on October 26, 2026
The last name is based on the father's first name: Magnús's son is called Magnússon, his daughter Magnúsdóttir.
So the name changes with each generation. To avoid confusion, phone books also list people's occupation. A few family names exist, mostly among descendants of foreigners.
Source: www.re.is — Icelandic names - everything you need to know · Checked on October 24, 2026
On October 17, 1814, a 6.7 m (22 ft) tall vat gave way at a brewery: 580,000 to 1.5 million liters (153,000 to 396,000 gallons) of beer flooded a poor neighborhood.
Five of the victims were at the wake for a two-year-old child. The St Giles neighborhood was very poor and overcrowded. The exact volume is uncertain, hence the gap between estimates.
Source: The History Reader — The London Beer Flood · Checked on October 26, 2026
Richard Feynman famously failed to figure out why. In 2005, French physicists explained it, and in 2018 MIT managed to break one in two.
When it breaks, the flexural wave that follows bends the spaghetti elsewhere, making it break again. To get two pieces, the MIT researchers first twisted the spaghetti before bending it.
Source: MIT News · Checked on October 24, 2026
On June 28, 1914, after a first failed attack, the archduke's car took a wrong street, then had to reverse near Gavrilo Princip.
The driver had not been told about the change of route. As the car reversed, the engine stalled a few meters from Princip, who fired. The assassination triggered the crisis that led to the First World War.
Source: Smithsonian Magazine — The Origin of the Tale that Gavrilo Princip Was Eating a Sandwich When He Assassinated… · Checked on October 24, 2026
Discovered during Bonaparte's Egyptian expedition, it was seized by the British in 1801 and has been displayed at the British Museum since 1802.
It bears the same text in hieroglyphs, Demotic, and ancient Greek, which allowed Champollion to decipher hieroglyphs in 1822. Egypt wants it back.
Source: napoleon.org — Découverte de la pierre de Rosette : le rôle oublié de l'adjudant-général Jullien,… · Checked on October 24, 2026
Kolmanskop was born in 1908, after a worker discovered a diamond, and was deserted in the 1950s.
Dunes are invading the living rooms, hallways and staircases of the old German-style houses. The site, near Lüderitz, is now a tourist attraction and a setting prized by photographers.
Source: National Geographic — Eerie pictures of Kolmanskop, a desert diamond ghost town · Checked on October 24, 2026
Every July, a ceremony called “Swan Upping” counts the river's young swans over five days.
The sovereign owns the unmarked mute swans living in open water. Boatmen in costume row up the Thames in skiffs to count them and check their health, together with two ancient guilds that also own swans.
Source: The Royal Family — Swan Upping · Checked on October 24, 2026
A giraffe sleeps less than two hours a day on average, in short naps.
Because of their size and how vulnerable they are when lying down, giraffes make do with short naps of a few minutes, sometimes even standing up.
Source: San Diego Zoo — Giraffe Sleep Patterns · Checked on October 24, 2026
Roy Sullivan, a ranger in Shenandoah National Park (Virginia), was hit seven times between 1942 and 1977. Guinness World Records recognized it.
He suffered burns, sometimes severe, but no strike killed him. His job, spent outdoors in a stormy region, exposed him far more than average: this was extreme bad luck, not a superpower.
Source: Inside NOVA — Shenandoah recalls park ranger struck seven times by lightning · Checked on October 24, 2026
That day, the United States was celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, which both men had helped get adopted.
Jefferson died at 83, Adams at 90. According to tradition, Adams's last words were “Thomas Jefferson survives”: he did not know that his old friend and rival had died a few hours earlier.
Source: Library of Congress — "Deaths of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson on July 4th" · Checked on October 24, 2026
Compulsory voting was introduced so that the poorest could vote without pressure from their employers.
The law provides for penalties, but the justice system does not make these prosecutions a priority: they would take an enormous effort. Compulsory voting also exists, for example, in Australia and Luxembourg.
Source: Le Vif — Le vote obligatoire est-il une bonne idée ? · Checked on October 24, 2026
Since the 2008 animal protection ordinance, social species (guinea pigs, parrots, and others) must not live alone.
When one of two animals dies, the survivor must be joined by another of its kind. A guinea pig rental service even existed to help out owners.
Source: Protection Suisse des Animaux — Élevage de rongeurs et lapins · Checked on October 24, 2026
US federal rule 14 CFR 25.853 requires a clearly visible, removable ashtray on each lavatory door, even though smoking is prohibited there.
The idea is that a passenger who breaks the ban can safely put out a cigarette instead of tossing it into a trash bin. The rule applies to aircraft certified by the US authority (the FAA).
Source: Code of Federal Regulations (14 CFR 25.853) · Checked on October 26, 2026
Lena Påhlsson had lost the ring during Christmas preparations. She found it sixteen years later near Mora.
The family believes the ring ended up in the compost, which was later spread on the vegetable garden. The carrot had grown through the ring. No explanation is certain: some also mention the farm's sheep.
Source: Sveriges Radio · Checked on October 24, 2026
At Wolfsburg (Germany), the factory makes this curry sausage itself; many are served directly to staff (2016 figure).
A 2016 headline in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, a German newspaper, claimed that VW sells more sausages than cars. In 2021, a controversy erupted when VW wanted to take the dish off its canteens; former Chancellor Schröder defended it as the working man's snack.
Source: NBC News — Volkswagen Sold More Currywurst Than Cars in 2015 · Checked on October 26, 2026
Its inventor, Phil Shaw, worked in a knitwear factory in the city; he launched the craze in his backyard.
Since then, enthusiasts have ironed while parachuting and even under the ice of a frozen lake. Extreme ironing is done alone or in a group, anywhere you wouldn't expect to find an ironing board.
Source: MEL Magazine — Extreme ironing · Checked on October 26, 2026
The pathologist Thomas Harvey, who had removed his brain, also took his eyes before handing them to Einstein's eye doctor.
The brain was divided into about 240 blocks, and its remains were transferred in 2010 to the National Museum of Health and Medicine in the United States. The eyes' current whereabouts are often said to be a safe-deposit box in New York, but that is unconfirmed.
Source: Indiana Public Media — Tale of Dr. Harvey's Illicit Souvenir · Checked on October 26, 2026
After a bet over a crocodile-skin suitcase in the 1920s, the American press called Lacoste “the alligator.” He had the animal embroidered on his blazer.
In 1933, René Lacoste and André Gillier founded the company that sells the polo shirts with the embroidered crocodile. The story of the bet comes mostly from accounts of the time, but the nickname itself is well documented.
Source: Lacoste — Our History · Checked on October 24, 2026
In the AGBRESA study, 24 healthy volunteers spent 60 days in a bed tilted at −6°, without getting up.
This position mimics some effects of weightlessness on the body, especially on the heart. The study tested whether short daily sessions in a centrifuge (artificial gravity) limit this weakening.
Source: PubMed Central (étude AGBRESA) · Checked on October 26, 2026
This posture takes less muscular effort and limits heat loss.
Studies have shown that this posture takes less muscular effort for the bird thanks to an anatomical joint-locking mechanism, while also limiting heat loss.
Source: Royal Society Open Science — Flamingo Balancing · Checked on October 24, 2026
Madan Kataria, a family doctor, launched it in Mumbai (Bombay) with his wife Madhuri.
People laugh without jokes or reasons, combining it with yogic breathing exercises and meditation. Sessions alternate between breathing, which works the diaphragm, and laughter exercises with gentle movements.
Source: Yoga Journal — How Laughter Yoga Heals, Plus 6 Fun Exercises to Try · Checked on October 26, 2026
Researchers found it in the Everglades, Florida: headless, belly torn open, with the alligator sticking out.
Exactly what happened isn't known: the meal may have been too big, or a second alligator may have attacked the snake. One specialist judged that last theory doubtful. The case mainly raised alarm about what these pythons can eat.
Source: National Geographic · Checked on October 26, 2026
Under the ice, they absorb oxygen from the water through the highly vascularized skin of their cloaca.
When hibernating at the bottom of frozen ponds, turtles absorb oxygen dissolved in the water through the thin, highly vascularized membranes of their cloaca.
Source: Herpetological Review — Turtle Respiration · Checked on October 24, 2026
In 2021, residents of Nordelta, a gated community founded in 1999 on the Paraná River wetlands, saw capybaras arrive.
Capybaras, the world's largest rodents, live near water. Residents complained of ruined lawns, bitten dogs and road accidents. They are called “carpinchos” in Argentina.
Source: France 24 — In Argentina, giant rodents vie with the rich for top real estate · Checked on October 26, 2026
He took out the policy with Lloyd's of London in 2009.
His job depends entirely on his tongue: he has to detect the slightest differences in taste between coffees. Hence the idea of protecting this work tool with an insurance policy for a spectacular amount.
Source: Insurance Journal — Lloyd's Insures Coffee Taster's Tongue for $13.78 Million · Checked on October 26, 2026
Completed in 1607 under Henry IV, it is still standing, while other, older bridges have been destroyed or rebuilt.
It was “new” at the time: it was the first bridge in Paris built without houses or shops lined up on it, which gave an open view of the Seine. It links the Right Bank to the Left Bank, passing across the tip of the Île de la Cité.
Source: Sortiraparis — The Pont-Neuf, the oldest bridge in Paris · Checked on October 24, 2026
Monaco covers about 2.02 km² (0.78 sq mi), the Bois de Boulogne about 8.5 km² (3.3 sq mi). The principality is one of the most densely populated countries in the world.
With about 39,000 inhabitants on 2 km², Monaco has nearly 19,000 inhabitants per km². The country has been gaining land from the sea for decades through landfill, in order to expand.
Source: Wikipédia · Checked on October 24, 2026
She was asking $1.7 million for a fragment smaller than a grain of rice, set in an acrylic dome.
The sting took place at a Denny's, an American restaurant chain, in Lake Elsinore, California. She was held for about two hours, then released without the rock and without being charged.
Source: NBC News · Checked on October 26, 2026
Prussia and the Netherlands disputed the Altenberg zinc mine and placed the area under joint administration. In 1914, it had 4,668 inhabitants.
A local doctor, Wilhelm Molly, proposed turning it into an Esperanto-speaking micro-state, “Amikejo” (“place of friendship”). The Treaty of Versailles attached the territory to Belgium in 1919.
Source: Contrepoints — Moresnet neutre, deux cents ans plus tard · Checked on October 26, 2026
It filters muddy water to retain small crustaceans and algae.
Its bill is designed like a sophisticated filter. To feed, the flamingo dips its head upside down in the water: the bill pushes water through plates that trap small crustaceans and algae.
Source: San Diego Zoo — Flamingo Feeding · Checked on October 24, 2026
The Régiolis and Regio 2N trains, 20 cm (8 in) wider than the older ones, required work estimated at €50 million.
The SNCF (the French national railway) and RFF (the rail network operator) replied that the work had been planned since 2012. But the affair caused a scandal: the Secretary of State for Transport called it “comically dramatic” and demanded an investigation.
Source: Slate.fr · Checked on October 24, 2026
Driven into the clay of the lagoon, these piles are deprived of oxygen: the wood does not rot, whereas air would have destroyed it.
The lack of oxygen keeps fungi and bacteria from breaking the wood down. The piles are larch, oak, alder or elm, depending on the location. Venice is nevertheless slowly sinking, a few millimeters a year during certain periods, because of ground settling.
Source: Wikipédia · Checked on October 24, 2026
The model dates back to the 13th century; in 1938, 3,736 patients lived with Geel residents, compared with about 700 a century earlier.
Tradition links it to Saint Dymphna, a legendary 7th-century figure. According to the source, nearly 500 patients are still hosted by families in the town today.
Source: BJPsych Bulletin — Lessons to be learned from the oldest community psychiatric service in the world: Geel… · Checked on October 26, 2026
Yellow ducks, red beavers, blue turtles, green frogs: some traveled more than 27,000 km (16,800 miles) and passed over the wreck of the Titanic.
The container fell from a cargo ship traveling from Hong Kong to the United States. Oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer tracked the toys to study ocean currents: some also spent years in Arctic ice.
Source: Scientific American — Overboard: 28,800 toys and one man lost at sea · Checked on October 26, 2026
His “digester” was a very thick iron pot closed by a lid locked down under pressure, with a safety valve.
Papin developed it while working with the physicist Robert Boyle. The idea has endured: pressure raises the boiling temperature, so food cooks faster. The Cocotte-Minute, the pressure cooker by the French brand Seb, dates from 1953.
Source: Larousse — Denis Papin · Checked on October 24, 2026
Artist Sam Van Aken grafted 40 varieties of stone fruit onto one tree.
Using a painstaking grafting technique, artist and professor Sam Van Aken created the “Tree of 40 Fruit,” which produces plums, apricots and peaches on a single trunk.
Source: Tree of 40 Fruit Project — Sam Van Aken · Checked on October 24, 2026
It passed a wind-tunnel durability test in March 2008, but the project was never launched.
Its designers gave up: tracking the plane during its descent of about a week would have been almost impossible, and it would have had to survive an extremely violent atmospheric re-entry.
Source: NBC News (AP) — Paper airplane to fly from space to Earth · Checked on October 26, 2026
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