We live in a very diverse world where people from one part of the world can find things happening in another part of the world to be very strange and even bizarre. But there is one thing that most of us can agree on and that is reading strange and weird facts.
These facts can be about anything like history, geography, animals, or anything that comes to mind, and oftentimes, they can leave you scratching your head or totally baffled. So, in this spirit, we have compiled a list of ten weird but very interesting and informative facts for you.
1. Bananas Are Berries, but Strawberries Aren’t
When one thinks of berries, strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries come to mind. But did you know that strawberries are not berries, however bananas are? This is because, according to botanical definitions, berries must develop from a single ovule and need to have three distinctive layers with a seed inside.
Reading this, you can obviously see how bananas fit the criterion, but the strawberries don’t, as they have their seeds outside.
2. Octopuses Have Three Hearts
The romantics among us are ever willing to give their hearts away, but this leaves them in a pinch because if they give their only heart away, then they are left with no heart. But octopuses don’t have to worry about such trivial matters as they have not one, not two, but three hearts.
Two of these hearts pump blood to their gills, while the third pumps blood to the rest of the body, and if this fact wasn’t weird enough, octopuses' blood is blue due to them having copper-rich hemocyanin instead of iron-rich hemoglobin, unlike us humans.
3. Honey Never Spoils
It is strange to see how we take refrigerators for granted when they are so essential to our daily lives. Without them, our food can spoil in a matter of days, but not if it's honey, which can stay edible forever. Archeologists have found pots of honey in ancient Egypt that are 3,000 years old and still good for consumption.
4. Wombat Poop Is Cube-Shaped
Australia is home to some very unique fauna and flora, and among the fauna, we have the wombat, a cute but, let’s be frank, weird-looking animal. But what is even more weird is that they poop in cubes. Their poop is cube shaped thanks to the elasticity of their intestine, so talk about weird physiology.
5. There’s a Town Where It Rains Fish
This fact is so weird it might as well have come out of the Bible itself, for when one hears about raining fish, it sounds ominous to say the least. But this is the case with the small town of Yoro, Honduras, where fish seem to fall down from the sky at least once a year.
This phenomenon is called "Lluvia de Peces" (Rain of Fish), and it happens because of heavy storms that carry the fish from water to the land.
6. A Day on Venus Is Longer Than a Year
Time is relative as there are days that go by so fast, and then there are days that never seem to end. The latter is especially true if you are an alien living on Venus, where the planet takes 243 Earth days to spin on its axis, but only 225 days to orbit the sun, which makes a day on Venus longer than a year, so one has to wonder, how the calendar works on Venus.
7. The Eiffel Tower Can Grow in the Summer
Those who know remember their high school science, won't be surprised by this fact, but did you know that the Eiffel Tower can grow in the summer. This is because metal tends to expand when heated and shrink when it's cooled, and we all know what the Eiffel Tower is made of.
8. Some Turtles Can Breathe Through Their Butts
This one is perhaps the weirdest fact on the list and perhaps the funniest, at least for those of us who like this kind of comedy. There is a turtle specie in Australia, called Fitzroy River turtle, that can breathe through its butts. Before you move to the next fact, you may want to take a few seconds to imagine how that would look underwater.
9. The World’s Largest Desert Isn’t Full of Sand
When you think of desert you think endless dunes of sand, but did you know that the largest desert in the world is actually Antarctica? This is because a desert is not defined by heat but by low precipitation levels, and Antarctica receives very little rainfall.
10. Scotland Has More Redheads Than Anywhere Else
People who are good at geography and general knowledge know that Scotland has the most redheads in the world, but what makes it a weird and interesting fact is that they make up about 13% of the overall population of the country, which is a significant number.
