useless facts

[Platapus]

The English Horn isn't.


It is neither English nor a horn


Must be a brit thing

[Jimbuna]

There were active volcanoes on the moon when dinosaurs were alive.

Most of the volcanoes probably stopped erupting about a billion years ago, but NASA findings have suggested there might still have been active lava flow 100 million years ago, when dinosaurs were still roaming.

[Jimbuna]

Dogs sniff good smells with their left nostril.

Dogs normally start sniffing with their right nostril, then keep it there if the smell could signal danger, but they’ll shift to the left side for something pleasant, like food or a mating partner.

[Platapus]

In the movie Jurassic Park, the vast majority of dinosaurs depicted did not live in the Jurassic era. They lived in the cretaceous era

[Jimbuna]

Avocados were named after reproductive organs.

You’ll never look at avocados the same way again. Indigenous people of Mexico and Central America used the Nahuatl word āhuacatl to mean both “testicles” and “avocado.” The fruits were originally marketed as “alligator pears” in the United States until the current name stuck.

[Jimbuna]

T. S. Eliot wore green makeup.

No one is sure why the poet dusted his face with green powder, though some guess he was just trying to look more interesting.

[Jimbuna]

The word “fizzle” started as a type of fart.

In the 1400s, it meant to “break wind quietly,” according to the English Oxford Living Dictionaries.

[Jimbuna]

Human noses and ears get bigger as we age.

[Jimbuna]

No number before 1,000 contains the letter A

[Jimbuna]

The # symbol isn’t officially called hashtag or pound.

Its technical name is octothorpe. The “octo” means “eight” and refers to its points, though reports disagree on where “thorpe” came from. Some claim it was named after Olympian Jim Thorpe, while others argue it was just a nonsense suffix.

[Jimbuna]

The French have their own name for a French kiss.

Something extra interesting about this kissing fact? The word hasn’t been around for long. In 2014, galocher—meaning to kiss with tongues—was added to the Petit Robert French dictionary.

[Jimbuna]

You can thank the Greeks for calling Christmas “Xmas”

In Greek, the word for “Christ” starts with the letter Chi, which looks like an X in the Roman alphabet.

[Jimbuna]

Movie trailers originally played after the movie.

They “trailed” the feature film—hence, the name. The first trailer appeared in 1912 and was for a Broadway show, not a movie.

[Ostfriese]

The five rarest letters in German are ß, J, X, Y and Q.

[Jimbuna]

Mercedes invented a car controlled by a joystick.

The joystick in the 1966 Mercedes F200 showcase car controlled speed and direction, replacing both the steering wheel and pedals.