Ignorance is bliss, whether we are talking about the heat-death of the universe or the amount of worm-like creatures happily living in your eyebrows, some things are better left alone. But like staring at a car crash or a house on fire, we do have a strange, somewhat morbid fascination with things that don’t seem real.

So, naturally, one netizen wanted the internet to share all the strange, unusual, and even creepy facts that do not seem real. So if you enjoy sleeping peacefully, consider another article, as the answers were deeply interesting but somewhat unsettling. If you do stay, be sure to upvote your favorites and comment your own facts. 

#1

You are more likely to be bitten by a New Yorker than a shark.

Image credits: Technolite123

#2

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Image credits: Raiyjinn

#3

The youngest person to ever give birth was 5 years old.

Image credits: kibufox

#4

If bees were paid minimum wage for their labor, a jar of honey would cost $182,000.

Image credits: Assorted_Education_

#5

In many countries in the world, cannibalism is actually legal, the only illegal thing is the way you obtain it.

It's made that way so that plane crash survivors won't be prosecuted for, you know, surviving.

Image credits: Khelthuzaad

#6

During World War 2, Japan bombed China with fleas infected with the bubonic plague.

Image credits: thisisprince

#7

Dolphins can be attracted to humans.

Image credits: Lucky-Comfortable-54

#8

As recently as 1980s, many researchers and doctors believed newborns and fetuses couldn't feel pain, so some were operated on without anesthesia.

Image credits: Mister_Trashman

#9

The Vatican Archives are something like 50 miles of information that almost nobody can see unless they know it's there and put in a formal request to see a specific thing. My understanding is that nobody can enter just to browse.

Image credits: djtills

#10

You're statistically more likely to randomly die during a USA Powerball lottery drawing than win it.

Image credits: Shawn_NYC

#11

Over 500,000 people go bankrupt annually from medical bills in the US.

Image credits: platoee

#12

The ford pinto was a flaming death trap that ford knew how to fix, and decided not to. The gas tank was fixed right behind an idiotically thin bumper, making puncturing the tank an almost absolute in the case of a rear end collision. If such a collision were to occur, the light frame would also most likely bend around the doors, trapping the driver inside. Ford knew of these defects, but instead of recalling the cars, they decided that on average, they would mostly like only have to pay out around $230,000 per death, which was much cheaper than the recall, which would of cost millions.

TL;DR: ford estimated the cash value of a human life instead of fixing their cars

Image credits: TheMeme_Historian

#13

Chainsaws were invented to cut through the pelvic bone to help women give birth.

Image credits: Millepedee

#14

The Taylor oil spill. So far it’s leaked over a million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. It started leaking in 2004, before Deepwater Horizon, and is still leaking oil into the gulf today. Next to nothing being done about it.

Image credits: pauliep13

#15

54% of adults in the USA read below a 6th grade level. Bonus, 1 in every 30 children in the USA is homeless.

Image credits: ubercorey

#16

In the 1980s the Bayer corporation sold a hemophilia drug that was made from processed donated human blood. In the early days of the AIDS epidemic it was discovered that the product was contaminated with HIV. They were forced to take it off the shelves in America and Europe. Bayer decided there had been too much financial investment in the product and rather than destroy the inventory they sold it in Latin American and Asian countries instead. They even continued to produce it for a few months until their supplies ran out.

There's no way to know how many people were infected with HIV as a result but at a bare minimum it had to have been in the thousands, plus however many those people may have unknowingly infected in turn and so on. In the 1980s when AIDS was pretty much a guaranteed death sentence.

Bayer knowingly killed probably tens of thousands of people and no one went to jail. $600 million settlement.

EDIT: Just a clarification, this treatment was not a dry pill that you swallow. That would be pretty unlikely to transmit HIV as some people have said. It was basically taking blood and removing the rejectable parts and concentrating clotting factors and injecting that into hemophiliacs. In terms of HIV risk it was basically a blood transfusion.

Image credits: sharrrper

#17

Humans are pretty slow runners compared to other races, but we are the best throwers on the planet. No other specie can throw stuff like we do. This is why in case of danger, throwing things in the direction of an hostile animal may scare the s**t out of it.

#18

I grew up Africa (Zambia) When we were 5 we were told not to swim in dirty water because of Bilharzia (schistosomiasis)

Microscopic worms that burrow into your skin or enter up your urinary tract and then lays eggs inside your body.

#19

France executed their last person by guillotine the same year Star Wars: A New Hope came out.

Image credits: themddoc

#20

The #1 cause of death for pregnant woman is murder.

#21

That bees kill wasps by sitting on them and then flapping their wings so hard. This creates a high heat that burns the wasp.

Image credits: Funner_YT

#22

There's a law that's still on the books in Georgia, states that anyone driving @ night is required to have another person running in front of the vehicle w/ a lantern so the driver can see what's ahead.

#23

The X Ray machine is largely responsible for the Child Protective Movement. In the 40’s and 50’s cases for Shaken Baby Syndrome were noticed causing a large push in child protection.

#24

That you are literally just data being interpreted by your brain. And we know for a fact your brain is not perfect, and might not be good at doing that.

A cool fact that illustrates it, is that your nose is obstructing your face 100% of the time. Your brain just removes it, and fills in the blanks. You can see your nose sometimes when you think about it, close one eye, or put the tip of your finger right on the tip of your nose.

If your brain is removing that kind of data as just a "default" setting, what other "default" settings do we have that are literally making so we can't see, feel, smell, or hear the things around us?

It's just wild to think that everything I see, hear, feel, smell, and taste, might just be my brain messing up interpreting the data. And the scariest part, is it could be consistent across the entire species.

What we perceive as "real" might not be real at all. Just an incorrect interrpertation.

#25

The shear size of the nuclear contamination zone thats in the middle of Washington state, called the Hanford reserve.

No one speaks of how the middle of our state is unlivable due to the polluted groundwater from all the improperly stored nuclear waste.

#26

In the beginning, Dupont f****d up their non-stick Teflon pans. They knew high exposure to tge stuff was bad but they never did anything about it. As a result, traces of "forever chemicals" can be found in 98% of the American population (and probably beyond).

Image credits: Delta4o

#27

Doctors actually used to do autopsies and get into a surgery or aid with childbirth without washing their hands. This of course resulted in a lot of deaths and I read somewhere that the first doctor to suggest washing hands was ridiculed, put in an asylum by his colleagues and there he was beaten by the guards and later died. (Probably because of the wounds he suffered from the beatings)

Oh and there is a surgery with a 300% mortality rate.

#28

1 in 2 men and 1 in 3 women (in the US) will have cancer at some point in their life.

Image credits: Benji_4

#29

In some countries children inherit debts of their deceased parents.

#30

There are 8 sunken nuclear submarines.

Image credits: EnUnLugarDeLaMancha

#31

The second most expensive house and one of the biggest slums of the world are in the same city.

'Antilia' ($1 Billion) is owned by India's richest man, Mukesh Ambani, and Dharavi, one of the biggest slums, both in the city of Mumbai.

Oh and 'Antilia' is second to Buckingham Palace ($2.9 billion).

#32

Ants have passed the mirror test. Few people know this.

EliminatedHatred replied:

It's a test to see if animals are self-conscious. they're placed in front of a mirror and if they notice they're in front of it and that they're seeing a reflection, they pass.

#33

Over 50 percent of Americans do not have access to $1,000 in case of emergency.

#34

During the Cuban Missile Crisis the world was the closest to nuclear fallout in history. A communist submarine spotted something suspicious and 2/3 of the commanding people agreed to launch a nuke. But because the third person voted no they couldn’t. Basically humanity rested on that one person and they didn’t even know it.

#35

In France you can still marry a dead person.
And you can't name your pig Napoleon.

Image credits: Ilikethe3DS

#36

There are more unsolved murder cases than there are solved and that's just the ones we know about.

There a lot of bodies at the bottom of most large bodies of water. Be it from accidents or suicides water seems to attract them.

Micro plastics are finding it way into absolutely everything. I don't recommend googling it.

Medical progress has a dark history of testing on the unknown masses.

#37

The CIA faked a vampire attack. I mean they really murdered a guy to achieve it. But something about the whole blood draining thing really takes it to the next level.

Image credits: TimDRX

#38

42 percent of America is obese.

Image credits: HazelNut768

#39

More aircraft were lost during WWII than there are airworthy aircraft flying today. The level of death and destruction in war is difficult to comprehend.

#40

A lot of people probably buried their hamsters alive because they didn’t know hamsters hibernate.

#41

There are more slaves in the world today than there has ever been, ever.

#42

If a man falls on they’re back and they have a boner you should’t move them because it means they got a very bad back injury.

#43

A lot of people who voted for segregation in the early 1960s are still alive. The youngest voters would be about 78 years old today.

#44

Human placentas now contain microplastics.

Image credits: br0wnb0y

#45

Dolphins will bite the heads off of smaller fish and use the corpses as a makeshift flesh light to get off.

#46

That koalas carry chlamydia.

#47

The United States has the largest prison population on earth, surpassing even China. On the other hand, China executes more prisoners per year than every other country on earth does combined. The majority of these executions occur in Autumn.

#48

Elephants can control their d**k like a second trunk.

#49

That we kill 100 million sharks A YEAR.

#50

The methods being used to create artificial human muscle grafts are pretty much the same methods used to make lab grown meat.

(Source: me, a PhD student making artificial muscle grafts. Also this is an oversimplification so in case my boss see’s this: sorry)

#51

Cleopatra lived closer to the invention of the iPhone than the building of the Great Pyramids.

#52

The creator of chocolate chips sold the idea for like a dollar. Or some other number that’s too low.

#53

The newborn baby megalodon shark was the same size as an adult great white shark.

#54

The astronauts in the Space Shuttle Challenger were still alive after the failure of systems and rapid expansion of fuel commonly viewed as an explosion.

#55

Fungi are much closer related to animals than either one are to plants, and specifically to protostomes: bugs and worms of all sorts. Fungus cell walls are made of the same polymer that arthropods' exoskeletons are made of, and are coded for by the same gene. There have been proposals to reclassify fungi in the animal kingdom.

#56

Data on the effects of radiation on human beings was largely obtained by tests performed by various governments on unwitting civilians, soldiers & POWs (even the US government is guilty of this).

Some of these tests were performed knowing full well that the subject would die of or be severely harmed by the radiation exposure (and the details of what happened with each increasing dose of radiation make for some pretty disturbing reading).

#57

JFK's convertible wasn't scrapped after he got shot in 1963. A roof was welded on and it was used by Presidents Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter - right through to 1977.

#58

Bounty hunting and Bounty Hunters are active in the United States as well as here in The Philippines.

While The practice of bounty hunting is illegal under the laws of most other countries.

#59

Pug owners are expected to know how to re-attach it's eyes. O_O

Another person replied:

It's not reattaching, but pushing the eyeball back into the socket, and it's better if done by a veterinarian. If it was unattached from the nerves and muscles, there'd be no point reattaching it.

#60

Humans are faster than horses over marathon distance.

For those questioning this, the post says over a marathon distance. This means over 26.2 miles. A horse is obviously faster than a human and this post does not mean every human can run faster than a horse.

#61

John Tyler, 10th president of the United States (1841-1845), still has a living grandson.

#62

The Earth rises up by a very small bit when you jump.