Want to be the expert the next time you play trivia? Just remember some of these fun facts.
From history to science to the hilariously bizarre past profession of Danny Devito, enjoy these fun facts that will have you destroying your trivia competition in no time:
Bubble wrap was originally intended to be used as 3D wallpaper.
The last movie ever rented at a corporate Blockbuster was "This Is The End" at a store in Hawaii.
Glitter is so unique it can be used as forensic evidence if matching glitter is found at the crime scene and on the suspect since glitter often goes unnoticed by the suspect.
J.K. Rowling became the first person to become a billionaire by writing books. However, she also lost her billionaire status because she donated so much money to charity!
Movie popcorn costs more per ounce than Filet Mignon.
At the Wife Carrying World Championships in Finland, first prize is the wife's weight in beer.
Researchers have found that swearing when in pain may release pain-killing endorphins.
Enzo Ferrari told a man "you may be able to drive a tractor but you will never be able to handle a Ferrari properly." The man was so angry that he vowed to create the perfect car. His name was Ferruccio Lamborghini.
It's a tradition in Ireland that if you donated a pint of blood, they give you a pint of Guinness to replace the iron.
When Boris Yeltsin met President Clinton in 1995, his first question was "Do you think O.J. did it?"
When two white-faced capuchin monkeys meet, they say hello by sticking their fingers into each other's noses.
Christian Bale studied Tom Cruise's mannerisms to prepare for his role as a psychotic killer in American Psycho.
The designer of the current United States flag was 17 at the time, and created it for a high school project. He received a B-.
Alexander the Great encouraged his men to shave so enemies couldn't grab their beards during battles.
In the 2011 census for the Czech Republic, over 15 thousand people listed their religion as Jedi.
Danny Devito used to work as a hairdresser. For corpses.
The United States defense budget of $698 billion is more than the next seventeen nations combined.
Bill Gates plans to donate 95% of his $81.1 billion dollar wealth to charity. That's about $77 billion dollars!
Doctors' sloppy handwriting kills more than 7,000 people annually in the United States.
Nutella was invented during WWII, when an Italian pastry maker mixed hazelnuts into chocolate to extend his chocolate ration.
The idea that a man should spend two months salary on an engagement ring was popularized by De Beers' ad agency.
Scorpions are incredibly resilient: scientists have frozen scorpions overnight, left them in the sun the following day, and when thawed, the arthropod walked away unscathed.
A typical cloud weighs around 1.1 million pounds.
The 442nd Infantry Regiment, a largely Japanese American unit that served during WWII, did so while their families were held in internment camps. Their motto was "Go for Broke" and they were the most decorated unit in U.S. military history.
The first American woman to go to medical school was admitted as a joke. Geneva Medical School thought it was joke when Elizabeth Blackwell applied to attend 1847. She graduated in 1849, started her own practice, and opened an infirmary for the poor.
There are around 60,000 miles of blood vessels in the human body. If you took them all out and laid them end to end, they’d stretch around the world more than twice.
Almost all chickens eaten today come from the winner of the 1948 'Chicken of Tomorrow' Contest whose genetics now dominate poultry farms worldwide.
Reed Hasting started Netflix after receiving $40 in late fees when returning Apollo 13.
The Catholic Church considers the Theory of Evolution to be "virtually certain", and believes that intelligent design "isn't science even though it pretends to be."
Commercial flights were allowed to fly any course to their destination and would often detour over points of interest. This ended in 1956 when two planes crashed mid-flight over the Grand Canyon.
Oxford University is older than the Aztec Empire.
Agatha Christie said she came up with many of her book plots while sitting in her bathtub while eating apples.
For every human on Earth, there are 1.6 million ants.
A man named Tsutomu Yamaguchi was on a business trip in Hiroshima when the atomic bomb dropped. He was wounded, but returned to his hometown of Nagasaki, where the very next day the second atomic bomb was dropped. He survived both blasts and lived to 93.
Contrary to popular belief, Marilyn Munroe was nowhere near a 'plus' size 12 - 16, she was closer to a US size 0.
George Lazenby wasn't an actual actor. He got himself a suit, a Rolex and a new haircut, then met with the producer and made up movies he had been in. He later landed the role of James Bond.
More people are bitten each year by New Yorkers than by sharks.
Former billionaire Chuck Feeney has given away over 99% of his 6.3 billion dollars to help under privileged kids go to college. He is now worth $2 million dollars.
In the late 1600s, London was plagued by an attacker who would spank his victims with a rod and shout "Spanko!" before running away.
The sun and moon appear to be the same size in the sky because of an astonishing coincidence: the moon is 400 times smaller but 400 times closer.
After Hitler ordered the deportation of Denmark's Jewish population, Danish citizens organized a massive evacuation of the Jews to neutral Sweden, despite the risks. In the end, 99% of Danish Jews survived the Holocaust.
Before mating, the female giraffe will first urinate in the male's mouth.
John Tyler, the 10th president of the United States, was born in 1790. He has a grandson that is alive today.
Warren Buffett has only sent one email in his life. It was sent to Jeff Raikes of Microsoft, and Buffett said it became his first and last email when it ended up in court.
During World War 2, a bear named Wotjek joined the Polish army. He carried ammunition and occasionally drank beer.
The Nobel Committee declined to award the Nobel Peace Prize in 1948 because "there was no suitable living candidate." This was meant as tribute to Mahatma Gandhi, who was assassinated earlier that year without receiving the Prize.
Italy's Credem Bank takes parmesan cheese from local producers in exchange for cheap loans, charging 3-5% interest depending on the cheese quality and a fee ensuring the cheese matures properly in the bank vault. 200 million dollars of parmesan wheels are stored there.
The glass winged butterfly lacks colored scales, which makes its wings transparent and helps it avoid predators.
Google's founders were willing to sell to Excite for less than $1 million in 1999, but Excite turned them down.
Saint Patrick's Day began as a "feast day". To honor him, Christians could put aside their Lenten restrictions on food and alcohol consumption, which is why excessive drinking has become linked to the celebration.
Grasshopper Mice have evolved to turn scorpion venom into a pain-killer. They now prey on scorpions.
If you take all the letters from the word "wizard" and swap them with opposite letters (a->z, b->y), it spells wizard backwards.
The Guinness brewery supported all of it's employees who chose to fight in WW1. They were paid half of their wages while away, and their jobs were guaranteed upon their return. The brewery also sent them care packages containing chocolate and condensed milk.
War pigs were used in ancient warfare to counter against war elephants, which feared the pigs (and their squeals) and would bolt. War pigs were sometimes lit on fire to enhance this effect.
Mattel once tried to sue Aqua over their song "Barbie Girl". The judge literally told them to "chill".
Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd dusted off their Ghostbusters costumes to visit a terminally ill child who was a fan of the film and wanted to meet them.
You can buy a completely renovated and converted Boeing 727 jet that accommodates 23 people for less than the cost of a Ferrari.
An English composer, Jeremiah Clarke, couldn't decide if he should commit suicide by hanging or drowning himself. He flipped a coin and after the coin landed on its edge in the mud he went home and shot himself instead.
One in four Americans thinks that the Sun revolves around the Earth.
Mark Zuckerberg said a voting mechanism that says whether posts are good or bad is 'not something that we think is good for the world'.
In 1567, the man said to have the longest beard in the world died after he tripped over his beard running away from a fire.
US Marine John Kelly was the last person to be awarded 2 Medals of Honor. He ran 100 yards in advance of the front line and attacked an enemy machine gun nest, killed the gunner with a grenade, shot another man with his pistol, and returned with 8 prisoners. He was 19.
Portland was named by a coin flip. Had the coin landed the other way, the city would be known as Boston, Oregon.
Will Smith turned down the role of Neo in the Matrix. He starred in Wild Wild West instead.
The national animal of Scotland is the unicorn.
When the Super Bowl champion Giants visited the White House in 1987, they dumped popcorn on President Reagan.
A Nepalese doctor has restored the sight of over 100,000 often poverty-stricken people in the last thirty years across Asia and Africa using a 5 minute procedure and an inexpensive artificial lens.
Penguins spend approximately 75% of their life in the water.
An exotic dancer was busted by the IRS for failing to pay income tax on 1 million dollars in income she received in exchange for sex, from a single man.
In 1966 and 1967, soldiers testing Agent Orange in Canada were told the chemical was completely safe and sprayed it on each other to cool off.
Pizza only became popular in the United States after American troops occupying Italy during World War 2 became hooked on it and then popularized it back home.
For 67 consecutive years, Mary was America's most popular female baby name. Linda broke the streak in 1947.
The wolf's jaw can exert 1500 pounds of pressure per square inch, twice the jaw pressure of a German Shepherd. Wolves can crush large bones in just a few bites.
The richest superhero is actually Black Panther, who has an estimated of $500 billion, whereas Tony Stark is worth $100 billion and Bruce Wayne $80 billion.
In 1993, San Francisco held a referendum over whether a police officer called Bob Geary was allowed to patrol while carrying a ventriloquist’s dummy called Brendan O’Smarty. He was.
In 1945, Dwight D. Eisenhower predicted that people would try to dispel the holocaust as a falsehood, and ordered all possible photographs taken of the Nazi crimes to hinder any such attempts.
Following the release of Rocky IV, a joke was making rounds in Hollywood. Since Rocky had run out of opponents, he would have to fight an alien if a fifth movie was made. Jim and John Thomas took the joke seriously and wrote a screenplay based on it, which later became the movie "Predator".
A Scarlet Macaw can live up to 80 years.
Clark Kent (Superman in DC Comics) is also a character in the Marvel universe, where he's actually just a mild-mannered reporter and nothing more.
A solar powered, self-filling water bottle has been invented for bike riders that condenses atmospheric moisture to automatically fill the bottle.
Shakespeare is easier to understand, makes more sense, and is punnier when it's recited in its original pronunciation instead of a modern English accent.
A species of squid has been observed to leap from the ocean by using pressurized water jets to achieve flight, going as far as 98 feet!
Stephen Hawking is 73 years old and has outlived his shortened life expectancy due to ALS by over 50 years.
A man sued Pepsi claiming he found a mouse in his Mountain Dew. Pepsi attorneys stated that Mountain Dew will dissolve a mouse in 30 days, and showed his can was purchased 74 days after being manufactured.
A U.S. park ranger named Roy C. Sullivan held the record for being struck by lightning the most times, having been struck — and surviving — seven times between 1942 and 1977.
Russia has a larger surface area than Pluto.
The first time Reddit was mentioned in the New York Times, it was described as "foolish collectivism" that "grinds away the Web's edges and saps it of its humanity".
You can survive being in outer space without permanent damage for about half a minute.
In 1923, jockey Frank Hayes won a race at Belmont Park in New York despite being dead — he suffered a heart attack mid-race but his body stayed in the saddle until his horse crossed the line for a 20–1 outsider victory.
A baby can cost new parents 750 hours of sleep in their first year.
The CIA reads up to 5 million Tweets a day.
It costs the U.S. Mint almost twice as much to mint each penny and nickel as the coins are actually worth. Taxpayers lost over $100 million in 2013 just through the coins being made.
Vietnam is one of the most pro-US countries in the world, with 76% having a favorable view. This is higher than Japan, the United Kingdom, and France.
Walt Jr. never encountered Jessie in all 62 episodes of Breaking Bad.
The Japanese created a smoke alarm for those who can't hear, which pumps super-spicy wasabi mist into the air to alert them.
Sony’s PlayStation 4 costs $381 to manufacture.
In 2009, Burger King launched a campaign that if you unfriended 10 friends on Facebook, you were entitled to a free Whopper. The person you unfriended would get a message telling them that their friendship is worth less than a Whopper.
A German and British aeroplane shot each other down in Norway during WWII. The crew met and helped each other survive. Two of them later visited each other many years after the war was over as friends.
Thank you to Mental Floss, r/TodayILearned, and Today I Found Out for inspiration and information for the trivia facts in this gallery.
Enjoy our collection of fun facts? Then be sure to check out All That Is Interesting's other posts on the most interesting facts about the world and space facts that prove Earth is boring.
