Random Facts That Sound Fake, But Are 100% True (14 items)

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  (#1) Millions Of Dollars Of Gold And Silver Flow Through Switzerland’s Sewers Every Year

  A study carried out in July 2017 revealed that Switzerland’s sewers are filled with valuable materials. The research showed that somewhere in the region of $1.8 million worth of gold and $1.7 million of silver enters the country’s sewage system every year. That is the equivalent of almost 7,000 pounds of precious metal being pumped into wastewater.

  Researchers believe that the material probably comes from the extensive gold refineries and pharmaceutical industry in Switzerland, both of which play a major part in the economy of the country. Unfortunately, there is no viable way to reclaim the gold and silver that is lost into the sewers.
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  (#2) There Are More Trees On Earth Than Stars In The Milky Way

  The sheer scale of the universe that encompasses the Earth often makes it seem like space must be infinite, with an uncountable number of stars surrounding it in every direction. Yet, NASA scientists have come up with very good estimates for the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy. This number stands at around 400 billion. While that is certainly a lot, it is dwarfed by the number of trees that are on the planet’s surface. Recent studies have concluded that there are around 3 trillion trees on Earth, almost 10 times the amount of stars in the galaxy.
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  (#3) The Universe Is Beige

  Looking out at the night sky, you would be forgiven for thinking that the universe is black. Apart from the pinpoint light given off from stars, space appears to be a vast collection of nothingness. That hasn't stopped researchers from trying to discover what the real color of the universe is. Surprisingly, it isn’t black, but a sort of beige. By analyzing the cosmic light given off by hundreds of thousands of galaxies and billions of stars, they were able to see what the spectrum would be interpreted as in the human eye.
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  (#4) Half Of The Water On Earth Is Older Than The Sun

  Everyone knows that the Sun was around a long time before the Earth. In fact, the Sun’s life first began some 4.6 billion years ago. While that is certainly old, it turns out that as much as half of the water on our home planet may be even older than that. According to research carried out by astrophysicists, much of the water on Earth could have come from interstellar gas that froze when the solar system was first formed. It was then able to travel through space before crashing into the rocky planet humans call home.
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  (#5) Russia And Pluto Are About The Same Size

  Pluto has had a hard time recently. It was downgraded from its status as a planet because it was too small and hadn’t cleared out the debris in its surrounding area. To make matters worse, people have now realized that the dwarf planet is only around the same size as Russia. According to NASA’s New Horizons Mission, Pluto has a total surface area of 17,646,012 km2. As the biggest country in the world, Russia has a surface area that is roughly comparable to the former planet, with estimates putting the total at 17,125,200 km2.
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  (#6) The First Recorded Use Of OMG Was In A 1917 Letter To Churchill

  OMG would seem to be one of those modern terms that have become popular with the rise of the Internet and text messaging. It and other shorthand messages are one of the main ways that people communicate informally with each other. Despite this, OMG is far from a modern invention. The first recorded use of it comes from a 1917 letter between Winston Churchill and the First Sea Lord of the Admiralty. Pleasingly, Lord Fisher even explains that the acronym stands for “Oh! My God!”
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  (#7) Wyoming Only Has Two Escalators In The Entire State

  Escalators are a common sight around the world. Whether you are in a mall, a department store, or an airport, it is difficult to find a large building without a set of escalators for people to travel between different floors. That isn’t the case in the US state of Wyoming. There are only two sets of escalators in the entire state, both of them located in banks in the town of Casper. Local government officials believe that the lack of escalators comes from the fact that many of the buildings in Wyoming are older and not suitable whilst stairs and elevators are cheaper to install and maintain.
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  (#8) The Surveyors Who First Measured Mount Everest Gave The Wrong Figure On Purpose

  Measuring the exact height of Mount Everest was a difficult job, and the first official figure came in 1856, when the Great Trigonometric Survey was carried out by Sir Andrew Waugh. When the measurement was first calculated, the height was revealed to be exactly 29,000 feet. Waugh was so worried that this number would be considered a guess or a rounding-off of the actual height that he decided to add an extra two feet to the total to create a more believable figure. Bizarrely, this actually resulted in a more accurate total as most officials now consider the official height to be 29,029 feet.
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  (#9) Sharks Have Been Around Longer Than Trees

  It's common knowledge that sharks have been around for a long time. In fact, they have managed to survive at least four mass extinction events and are pretty durable. Still, you might be surprised to learn that they are actually older than trees. The first recognized shark first emerged 400 million years ago. This is a full 50 million years before the earliest species of tree inhabited the land that is now the Sahara desert.
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  (#10) Clouds Can Weigh Hundreds Of Tons

  Clouds often have certain properties associated with them – such as being fluffy and soft – that lead people to imagine that they must not weigh very much. After all, they float high above the ground, and they have to be light to stay up there. Right? The truth, though, is that clouds can be incredibly heavy. It makes sense when you think about it, as clouds are effectively just water. Even small cumulus clouds can be as heavy as 200 tons, while the super dense cumulonimbus clouds are able to reach weights of up to one million tons.
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  (#11) You Can Hear The Difference Between Hot And Cold Water

  Various experiments over the past decade or so have revealed that people can quite easily tell the difference between hot and cold water using just their hearing. The sound given off by pouring water is distinct enough that the vast majority of individuals are able to distinguish between them with almost 100% accuracy. The reason is that colder water is more viscous, which effectively makes it thicker and gives it a different sound than hot water, which is less “sticky” and so produces a higher frequency noise.
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  (#12) The First Adult Film Was Screened In 1896

  The history of cinema dates back to the 1880s, although proper films were not screened until 1895. The very first erotic film, which became known as "stag films," was the seven-minute-long French recording Le Coucher de la Mariée (Bedtime for the Bride). It is believed to be the very first adult film and was screened in Paris in 1896. Only two minutes of the original film have survived, which show the actress performing a striptease behind a screen.
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  (#13) Hot Water Can Freeze Faster Than Cold Water

  The Mpemba effect is a phenomenon that people have been aware of since ancient times. Although it doesn't always happen, it is easy to regularly observe hot water freezing faster than cold water, something that would seem counterintuitive. The effect has puzzled scientists for decades and there have been a number of theories proposed to try to come up with an answer for exactly why it happens. One of the most recent explanations is that the hot molecules in the water are able to stretch as they move further apart. This allows their covalent bonds to relax and release energy – a process that is effectively the same as cooling down.
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  (#14) The Pyramids Were Built By Paid Workers Not Slaves

  The common consensus until very recently was that the pyramids of Egypt were constructed using huge numbers of slaves. How else would the ancient civilization have been able to construct such huge structures? However, those involved in the field of Egyptology have known for decades that the people who built the pyramids were paid workers, not slaves. This has been proven with recent tomb finds, which show the workers buried honorably near the massive buildings with beer and bread to prepare them for the afterlife.

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