Our planet is a world of wonder, with surprises that will never cease to amaze.
Okay, okay, we all know that. But what specific things make the world so rare and unique? What facts are the hardest to believe?
We've curated some of the best answers to the r/AskReddit question, "What 100% fact is the hardest to believe?"
"Clouds weigh hundreds of thousands of pounds, full of water, effortlessly floating above our heads. No support, No structure, just weight, floating around above us and we're like, yep totally believable, because they're clouds, duh."
"The US has a 1.4 billion pound cheese surplus. It’s all stored in the Cheese Cave in Missouri."
"I live in Springfield, Mo where the cheese is stored. Full time guards and no one is allowed in the underground unless you work there or you have someone that will sign for you. Basically like a military installation."
"The Loudest Sound In Recorded History Was The Krakatoa Volcanic Eruption Of 1883
It ruptured the eardrums of people more than 40 miles from the epicenter, created a sound wave that circled the globe seven times, and could be heard all the way in New York City, a short 10,000 miles away."
"105 billion people have lived so far. 7.9 billion of us are currently alive."
"This is counting anatomically modern humans - homo sapiens. So we're counting every human going back roughly 300,000 years. Neanderthals are not counted, since they aren't homo sapiens."
"Tsutomo Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on a business trip and on the day he was supposed to leave, the atomic bomb dropped. He survived with minor injuries and returned to his home in Nagasaki where he went to work 3 days later. As he was describing his experience to his supervisor, the second bomb was dropped and he survived without any injuries. He ended up living into his 90s."
"In 1995, a man named MacArthur Wheeler robbed two banks at gunpoint, he was arrested mere hours later because he didn't wear a mask. instead, he decided to coat his face in lemon juice because he read that lemon juice can be used to make invisible ink. His logic, was that it would make his face invisible."
"A moose can dive underwater down to nearly twenty feet in search of food."
"There's more than that. They really like seaweed, so they will go diving for that and while they can swim, they're very slow at it. Because of this, the main predator of the moose is the orca, because they just pick them off when they see them."
The biggest predators of moose are actually wolves and bears — but orcas have been known to at least eat moose, if not actually hunt them.
"For 60 million years, there was no bacteria, fungus, anything to decompose trees. They just got crushed under the weight of other dead trees. This is where about 90% of coal comes from."
"Also petrified wood as well."
"Ciabatta bread was invented in 1982.
It's advertised and perceived as this, traditional, rustic Italian bread that peasants must have enjoyed, but nope--created in the 1980s."
"I for one can’t believe we were still making new kinds of bread 40 years ago. You’d think we would have figured out all the ways to make bread by now."
"There are more trees on Earth than stars in the Milky Way. Roughly by a factor of 10."
"I think I heard somewhere that 150 years ago a squirrel could go tree to tree from the Mississippi River all the way to the East Coast without having to touch the ground."
"Oxford University is older than the Aztec empire."
"It's also about 74 years away from its millennium anniversary.
The University of Bologna, founded in 1088, predating Oxford by just eight years, is 66 years away from its millennium anniversary."
"From the time it was discovered to the time it lost its status as a planet, Pluto made it less than a third of the way around the sun."
"Pluto was discovered in 1930, it lost its status in 2006. 76 years."
"A spy named Joan Pujol Garcia was awarded the highest honor of service from both the Allies and Axis in the Second World War."
"He was initially rejected by MI6, so he joined axis intelligence just to deceive them."
"2/3 of Canada’s population lives south of Seattle."
"Look up Canada population maps. Almost everyone lives within an hour or two of the border, and Ontario dips way down there and has a huge, huge amount of the population."
"The Australian Funnel Web Spider is often regarded as the world's deadliest and hasn't had a confirmed kill in over 40 years since the antivenom was created."
"Some hospitals here don't even give you anti venom for redback bites anymore! They discovered that the deaths are mostly due to allergic reactions so they treat it like any other reaction."
"There is enough water in Lake Superior to cover north and South America in water one foot deep."
"To add to this, apparently every person on earth could stand shoulder to shoulder in Lake Superior, and the water level wouldn't even rise an inch."
"Dragonflies accelerate at up to 4G and corner at up to 9G."
"While larva they suck water into their butts where they get the oxygen from it. Then they expel it out of their butt rapidly as a jet to propel themselves through the water."
"Dinosaurs are older than grass.
Every artist rendition you've seen of them roaming fields is wrong. Most ground level plants were ferns or flowering bushes, not grass."
"And what was pollinating those flowering bushes? Bees. Yep, bees have been around since the dinosaurs."
"President Jimmy Carter rappelled into a nuclear reactor that was in partial meltdown to stop the meltdown and save Ottawa."
"Just looked it up, that was the Chalk River facility, quite a bit to the north of Ottawa (about 1.5hrs away)."
"That only 6 people have survived rabies. Rabies has a 99% Mortality rate.
You can have rabies for an entire year without symptoms and once you have symptoms, its already late. You'll probably die in a couple of days if you have symptoms."
