Weird Facts

In 2019, Emma Schols woke up to a nightmare inside her family’s home in Edsbyn, Sweden. The house was on fire, and her six children were still inside.

Emma went through the flames to get them out, refusing to stop until every child was safe. Her children survived without injuries, but Emma suffered burns over 93% of her body.

On December 9, 2021, 11-year-old Davyon Johnson was at school in Muskogee, Oklahoma, when a classmate started choking on a water-bottle cap. Davyon jumped in and performed the Heimlich maneuver, a move he reportedly learned from YouTube. The cap came out.

But his day of heroism wasn’t over. Later that same day, he saw a woman using a walker trying to get away from a house fire. Davyon ran over and helped her reach her truck safely.

In a small 2013 Berlin study, 48 healthy young adults were randomly divided into two groups. One group played the game daily, while the other did not.

MRI scans showed that the gaming group had increased grey-matter volume in areas linked to memory and navigation, planning, working memory and motor skills. The control group did not show the same increases.

Players who reported a stronger desire to play tended to show larger changes in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex.

In January 2020, a student in New Zealand and a chef in Spain teamed up to turn the entire planet into an “Earth sandwich.”

Etienne Naude placed bread on the ground at Bucklands Beach in Auckland, while Ángel Sierra did the same near Ronda in southern Spain. The two locations were calculated to be antipodes, points directly opposite each other on Earth. Naude found Sierra through Reddit, and they spent about two months coordinating the locations, timing and even the type of bread.

Using online maps and GPS, they positioned the slices within a few meters of the calculated points. Sierra placed several slices around his target to allow for small measurement errors.

In July 2022, 25-year-old pizza delivery driver Nick Bostic spotted a house on fire while driving through Lafayette, Indiana. He immediately stopped and ran inside. Nick helped four young occupants escape, but then learned that a six-year-old girl was still trapped.

Despite the growing flames and thick smoke, he went back inside. He followed the girl’s cries, found her, and carried her upstairs because the normal exits were blocked. Nick smashed a second-floor window and jumped while holding the child, using his body to protect her during the fall. He then handed her to a police officer waiting outside.

On August 20, 1975, brothers Michael McQuilken (18) and Sean McQuilken (12) were hiking with their sister and others at Moro Rock, a popular granite dome in California’s Sequoia National Park.

As storm clouds gathered, their hair suddenly stood on end from electrical charge in the air. Finding it amusing, they posed for photos taken by their sister. Minutes later, lightning struck as they were descending from Moro Rock.

Sean was directly hit by part of the bolt, while Michael was knocked down and affected by the strike. Sean suffered third-degree burns on his back and elbows, with smoke coming from his back. Michael felt himself lifted off the ground. They both survived, though another nearby hiker didn’t.

In 2013, 67-year-old Sabine Moreau from Solre-sur-Sambre, Belgium, set out to pick up a friend at Brussels’ Gare du Nord station, a journey of less than 90 miles. She programmed her GPS and began driving.

Due to a navigation error, or possibly user error in following it, she continued for about two days, reportedly crossing five international borders and possibly driving through France, Germany, Austria, and Slovenia before reaching Zagreb, Croatia, roughly 900 miles from her starting point.

She reportedly stopped several times for fuel and short rests in her car. She finally realized something was wrong when she arrived in Zagreb and realized she was no longer in Belgium. By that time, her son had already reported her missing to the police.

On May 19, 1902, a massive coal-dust explosion ripped through the Fraterville Mine in Tennessee. According to the Mine Safety and Health Administration, it instantly killed 190 of the 216 men and boys working that day.

A group of 26, including miner Jacob Vowell and his 14-year-old son Elbert, barricaded themselves in a side passage to escape deadly gases. As their air ran out, Vowell used his notebook to write a final letter to his wife Sarah Ellen. He told her of their faith, asked her to raise their other children well, requested that he and Elbert be buried together beside their late son Eddie, and said goodbye to the family.

In 1989, a four-year-old boy named Li Jingwei was abducted from his village in Zhaotong, Yunnan Province, China. A neighbor lured him away with the promise of seeing cars, then handed him to traffickers who sold him to a family more than 1,800 kilometers away in Henan Province.

For over three decades, Li lived without knowing his real name, exact age, or birthplace. He carried detailed memories of his childhood village and obsessively drew maps of it from memory throughout his life. In December 2021, he posted a hand-drawn map online showing key landmarks including a school, bamboo forest, and pond.

In December 2011, in Zamboanga City, Philippines, a mixed-breed dog named Kabang saw two young girls, her owner’s daughter Dina, 9, and cousin Princess, 3, about to be hit by a motorcycle while crossing the street. Kabang bravely jumped in front of the vehicle, knocking it over and taking the worst of the impact herself. The children escaped with only minor bruises, but Kabang suffered severe injuries when her snout and upper jaw were crushed by the motorcycle wheel.

About 6,000 people have actually bought insurance policies that pay out $10 million if they can prove they were abducted by aliens. A Florida company has been selling them since 1987.

The world’s first floating hotel opened off the coast of Australia in 1988, and later sat abandoned in North Korea before being demolished in 2022.

The Four Seasons Barrier Reef Resort, also known as the John Brewer Floating Hotel, opened on 9 March 1988, anchored about 70 km off Townsville, Australia, over the Great Barrier Reef.

Designed as a luxury seven-storey resort with roughly 200 rooms and suites, it faced storms, high costs, and logistical issues and closed after about a year. It was towed to Vietnam in 1989 and operated as the Saigon Floating Hotel from November 1989 to August 1996, before Hyundai Asan bought it in 1998.

More than 200 years ago, sailors are believed to have left goats on a Brazilian island that has no fresh water. The goats not only survived, they multiplied. Scientists still don’t fully know how, and a researcher said he had never seen them drink seawater.

Their survival despite the lack of known freshwater sources turned them into a scientific puzzle. Brazilian authorities and researchers began studying the animals as a potential “genetic treasure” for traits linked to adaptation to water scarcity.