101 Fun Facts
1. Three presidents, all Founding Fathers—John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Monroe—died on July 4. Presidents Adams and Jefferson also died the same year, 1826; President Monroe died in 1831. Coincidence? You decide. (constitutioncenter.org)
2. The Barbie doll’s full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts, from Willows, Wisconsin. Her birthday is March 9, 1959, when she was first displayed at the New York Toy Fair. (barbiemedia.com)
3. There actually aren’t “57 varieties” of Heinz ketchup, and never were. Company founder H.J. Heinz thought his product should have a number, and he liked 57. Hint: Hit the glass bottle on the “57,” not the bottom, to get the ketchup to flow. (heinz.com)
4. One of President John Tyler’s grandsons is still alive today—and he was born in 1790. How is this possible? President Tyler, the 10th US president, was 63 when his son Lyon Tyler was born in 1853; Lyon’s son was born when he was 75. President Tyler’s living grandson, Harrison Tyler is 92. Lyon’s other son Lyon Jr. passed away in 2020 at the age of 95. The Tyler family still maintains the President’s home, Sherwood Forest Plantation in Virginia. (sherwoodforest.org)
5. The tallest man ever recorded was American giant Robert Wadlow (1918–1940), who stood 8 feet 11 inches. Wadlow’s size was the result of abnormally enlarged pituitary gland. (guinnessworldrecords.com)
6. The tallest living man is 37-year-old Sultan Kosen, from Turkey, who is 8 feet, 2.8 inches, who set the record in 2009. His growth is also due to a pituitary issue. (guinnessworldrecords.com)
7. The oldest person ever to have lived (whose age could be authenticated), a French woman named Jeanne Louise Calment, was 122 years old when she died in 1997. (guinnessworldrecord.com)
8. Sliced bread was first manufactured by machine and sold in the 1920s by the Chillicothe Baking Company in Missouri. It was the greatest thing since…unsliced bread? (chllicothenews.com)
9. The Earl of Sandwich, John Montagu, who lived in the 1700s, reportedly invented the sandwich so he wouldn’t have to leave his gambling table to eat. (pbs.org)
10. The first college football game was played on November 6, 1869, between Rutgers and Princeton (then known as the College of New Jersey) in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Rutgers won. (ncaa.com)
11. Experiments in universities have actually been carried out to figure out how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, both with machine and human lickers (because this is important scientific knowledge!). The results ranged from 252 to 411. (tootsie.com)
12. The Four Corners is the only spot in the US where you can stand in four states at once: Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico.
Related: Thanksgiving Trivia
13. Canada is south of Detroit (just look at a map).
14. The original name for the search engine Google was Backrub. It was renamed Google after the googol, which is the number one followed by 100 zeros. (about.google)
15. The oldest-known living land animal is a tortoise named Jonathan, who is 187 years old. He was born in 1832 and has lived on the island of St. Helena in the Atlantic Ocean since 1882. (guinnessworldrecords.com)
16. Bats are the only mammal that can actually fly.
17. Wombats are the only animal whose poop is cube-shaped. This is due to how its intestines form the feces. The animals then stack the cubes to mark their territory. (bbc.com)
18. The most common wild bird in the world isn’t the sparrow or blue jay—it’s the red-billed quelea, which live in Africa and have an estimated population of 1.5 billion. (audubon.org)
19. The heart of the blue whale, the largest animal on earth, is five feet long and weighs 400 pounds. The whale in total weighs 40,000 pounds. (nationalgeographic.com)
20. For comparison, an elephant’s heart weighs around 30 pounds. And a human heart? A mere 10 ounces.
21. Elephants can’t jump. (smithsonianmag.com)
Related: Like fun facts? Check out History Facts
22. Octopuses have three hearts.
23. Cows don’t actually have four stomachs; they have one stomach with four compartments. (fda.gov)
24. The platypus doesn’t have a stomach at all: Their esophagus goes straight to their intestines. (nationalgeographic.com)
25. This is one animal myth that’s true: Eating parts of a pufferfish can kill you because, in a defense mechanism to ward off predators, it contains a deadly chemical called tetrodotoxin. There’s enough in one pufferfish to kill 30 people—and there’s no antidote. Still, pufferfish, called fugu, is a highly-prized delicacy in Japan, but can only be prepared by well-trained chefs. (nationalgeographic.com)
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