Facts You Probably don’t Need
- A kind of moth is found in Madagascar that almost entirely subsists on the tears of sleeping birds.
- Nearly 70% of Soviet males born in 1923 didn’t survive past WWII. 40% were casualties of the war and almost another 30% were due to famine and disease during childhood.
- Canned food was invented about 50 years before can openers.
- “Häagen-Dazs” has no meaning in any language, it was meant to sound “European.” The company was started by Reuben Mattus, a Polish immigrant to the Bronx, New York, who sold fruit ice and ice cream from a horse-drawn cart.
- Sharks are older than both trees and the rings of Saturn.
- Star Wars: The Phantom Menace is older now than the original Star Wars was when The Phantom Menace was released.
- Brazil is so big that the northernmost point in Brazil is closer to Canada than it is to the southernmost point in Brazil.
- Brian May from the band Queen has a PhD in astrophysics.
Facts by Sean McVeigh, factologist.
