12 Family-Sized Bits of Premium Trivia We’re Leaving in a Bowl on Our Front Porch; Please Take Only One
We’re going to a party across town, but we don’t want to be that website that doesn’t leave anything out for you young rascals. We’ve been in your shoes — we know that not giving out trivia tidbits tonight is grounds for an egging. And so, we picked up a package of absolute top-of-the-line trivia for you, and we’re gonna leave it in a bowl in the lap of our trusty scarecrow.
There’s a delicious bit about the quaint Bavarian housing projects where rent is but a single Rhenish gulden per year, a big chunky bit about McDonald’s failed $300 million rebrand, and oh, our favorite, a delicious morsel about dogs’ favorite direction to face when dropping a deuce.
We just ask that you take only one of these delectable tidbits, and leave the rest for the other kids. We know you’ll do the honorable thing.
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The Longest Any Human Has Ever Run Without Stopping Is 350 Miles
As a child, Dean Karnazes would run home from kindergarten. In 2005, at the age of 43, he ran 350 miles in about 80 hours (a little under 14 minutes per mile). He’s done a ton of other ridiculous running-related stuff, like completing 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 days.
The World’s Oldest Housing Project Costs One Dollar Per Year (Oh, and Also Three Prayers Per Day)
Fuggerei is a public housing community in Germany that was built in 1516 by a rich dude called Jacob Fugger the Younger. Since the day it opened, rent has been one Rhenish gulden a year. Residents are also required to pray for their community three times a day, and work one part-time job.
This Rare Disease Makes You Get Drunk Without Drinking
Auto-brewery syndrome affects people with a gut biome made up of just the right (or wrong) types of bacterias and yeasts, causing carbohydrates to ferment and produce enough ethanol to get you messed up.
Beluga Whales Can Mimic Humans Almost as Well as Parrots
Belugas who spend time around humans can make a garbled string of nonsense “words” that sound enough like real speech that divers have reported being duped into believing there was someone else down there with them, trying to get their attention.
Every Kit Kat Contains the Ghosts of Rejected Kit Kats
Instead of being thrown out, any broken wafers discovered during production are ground up and used in the filling between the wafers of future batches.
Dogs Prefer to Poop Facing North or South
Researchers studied 70 dogs for two years — observing a total of 1,893 poops and 5,582 pees — and discovered that, “under calm magnetic field conditions,” dogs will make sure to align themselves with the north-south axis when they go.
The First Anesthesia Was a Party Drug
Nitrous oxide, aka laughing gas, used to be mainly recreational. In 1844, dentist Horace Wells witnessed someone huff a bunch of it, accidentally slash his leg open — and not feel a thing. He then started using the gas to conk out his dental patients. Wells started self-experimenting with other gasses and concoctions, got himself addicted to chloroform and died in a mental hospital at age 33.
McDonald’s Spent $300 Million Trying to Market Itself as a Big Boy Hamburger Joint
In 1996, they went hard in the paint trying to appeal to anybody but their core demo of manic children at the mall and their exhausted parents. They spent the modern equivalent of $560 million marketing the Arch Deluxe — a legitimately good sandwich (burger, cheese, peppered bacon, potato bun) that nevertheless didn’t strike adults as particularly sophisticated. It was the largest amount spent on a fast-food marketing campaign at the time, and it failed spectacularly.
A Swarm of About One Million Mosquitoes Could Drain You Completely
It’s estimated that it would take 1.2 million mosquitoes at maximum suckage to get every last drop of blood from your veins.
Breakdancing Is Now an Olympic Sport
The roster of sports gets shuffled around at every Olympics, so some sports are temporarily retired, while new, popular sports can have their time in the spotlight. Breaking was a huge hit at the 2018 Youth Olympics, so the IOC added it to the 2024 Paris games. Similarly, squash and flag football are both slated to make their Olympic debuts in the 2028 Los Angeles games.
The Least-Visited American National Park Is Possibly Its Most Badass
The Gates of the Arctic is a massive, 8-million-acre expanse right in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness. It’s entirely above the Arctic Circle, and is completely devoid of roads or even trails. The park gets about 7,000 visitors per year (compare that to the Grand Canyon’s 4.5 million visitors).
The Most Lucrative Lunch in History
While finishing up Toy Story, John Lasseter and three of his writers dedicated a lunch break to figuring out what their next project should be. Writer Andrew Stanton says, “We thought, well geez, if we're going to make another movie we have to get started now.” In a single lunch, they came up with A Bug’s Life, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo and WALL-E.
