I was reading an interesting article on the Internet the other day…this should be your first red flag! The article gave a series of “facts” that it labeled as “things you didn’t know.” I am pretty sure, after reading some of them, that they don’t know either. I want to share some of these facts with you, only for the purpose of making fun of them. Not one of them has been “fact-checked,” and pretty much all of them are ridiculous in one way or another. Having issued that caveat, here we go:
Fact #1: 85% of statistics are wrong. I felt it was important to lead with this one, because so many of these statistics are questionable at best!
Fact #2: 30% of all traffic in cities is people circling around trying to find a parking spot! If you have ever circled the block ten times, praying a parking space magically appears so you can run in and pick up your cleaning or your prescriptions, you know that this one feels real, even if it isn’t. I’d rather hear some statistics on how many hours of my life I waste, looking for that space.
Fact #3: You can fit about $3 billion worth of plutonium into a shoebox. Now, as the article pointed out, plutonium is apparently radio-active (I’m not up on plutonium properties). That being the case, if you found a need to store something like this in your closet, it’s likely that one of two things will happen: you will be arrested for having it or you will die from the green cloud in your closet!
Fact #4: In feudal Japan, lords purposely built squeaky floors as a defense against ninjas. This one made me a little emotional, because if it were true, I have a home ready-made to sell to some feudal Japanese lord…and in the meantime, ninjas will not get me!
Fact #5: The human eye blinks about 4.2 million times a year. When the job comes up that calls for someone to sit and count the blinks of their eye for a year, I’m applying!
Fact #6: It would take 1.2 million mosquitos, each sucking just once, to drain an average human of blood. The nightmares this particular statement is going to give me have no end! Who is the unlucky fellow that this was tested on?????
Fact #7: Canada eats more mac n’ cheese than the US by volume. I don’t know exactly what this means, but I feel bad, because I didn’t know we had a competition going. I’ll step up my pasta game!
Fact #8: There is a state in the union where there are more tigers living with people than there are tigers in the wild anywhere. In that same state, it is illegal to own six or more sex toys (imagine being the cop on that case). I’m just going leave this one to your imagination.
Fact #9: Sperm count in men have gone down 50% since 1970. This has so many possibilities, I don’t even know where to begin, but if it were true (and imagine the testing), maybe it’s God unique way of “culling the herd?”
Fact #10: A wild boar can ejaculate up to a quarter of a gallon of semen in one go. Who is testing this, how are they testing it and most important WHY are they testing it?
Fact #11: If you are over 7 feet tall, there is a 17% chance that you will play in the NBA. But, there is a 100% chance that you will hit your head on the underside of my deck, because I do it all the time and I’m nowhere near that tall!
Fact #12: 6% of Americans think they could beat a grizzly bear in unarmed combat. I can feel the new reality show coming already: So You Think You Can Beat a Grizzly Bear: the show where everyone had better had their wills up to date!
I saved my favorite fact for the end, and it is this: Female fish (I believe it was goldfish) fake “sexual completion” to trick males into thinking they have been successful, so the female can move on to another mate. On top of the fact that I have no idea exactly how fish reproduce, who is the serious scientist out there with a clipboard asking some promiscuous female fish, about her sex life?
I know what you’re all thinking now and I do definitely agree with you: I’m going to stop reading fact articles on the Internet!
dropsinthewell 