Mostly Useless Facts

HP, Google, Microsoft and Apple were all started in garages.

On average, 6394 people are seriously injured in the US by a lawnmower per year.

Carrots were originally purple or white, with a very thin root. Later, a mutation occurred that created a new line of yellow carrots, from which the orange ones we see today were derived.

Gated reverb, an effect associated with 80s music, was invented by accident when working on Peter Gabriel’s song “Intruder.”

Crayon shavings are called ‘leftolas’ by Crayola and they can be melted down to make new crayons.

When Henri III of Navarre was trying to claim the French throne in 1590, he ended up endangering the Parisian food supply. The starving people turned to horses, mules, their pets, grass in the parks, and finally “Madame de Montpensier’s bread,” which was a ‘bread’ made out of ground up bones in lieu of flour.

Bacteria in panda poop could be the key to finding a more efficient way to create biofuels. Panda microbes are some of the most efficient at breaking down the woody materials of plants, and scientists believe they could be used to produce biofuel much more efficiently.

The Pokémon Hitmonchan is named after Bruce Lee. Its Japanese name, Ebiwalar, comes from the world champion boxer Hiroyuki Ebihara.

In 1995, the American logging industry wrote a book called Truax, a (hilariously bad) parody of Dr Seuss’ The Lorax, which was supposed to be an argument against The Lorax’s stance about logging.

In the early development of Sonic the Hedgehog (1991), Sonic was supposed to have a human girlfriend named Madonna. 

In the Greek alphabet, π (piwas) is the 16 letter of the alphabet. In the English alphabet, ‘P’ is also the sixteenth letter.

Opossums don’t actually ‘play dead.’ Their reaction is an involuntary response to a threat, and their body enters a catatonic state in response to fear.

The Romans had about 800 swear words. English, on the other hand, has about 20 (depending on how you define them.)

There is a town in Nebraska called Monowi with a population of one. The only resident is Elsie Eiler, who is the Mayor, Bartender and Librarian.

The word ‘radar’ is actually an acronym. The term was coined in 1940 by the US Navy to stand for RAdio Detection And Ranging. Another version of the acronym is Radio Azimuth Direction And Ranging, suggested during RAF RADAR courses in 1954/5.

11-35% of the population is affected by photic sneeze reflex, sometimes humorously called ACHOO syndrome, which is characterized by sneezing in response to bright light and other stimuli.

Every koala has a unique set of fingerprints, and their prints are very similar to those of humans.