98 Fun Facts About True or False

Which of these claims about lightning is TRUE?

It strikes tall buildings again and again: the Empire State Building takes about two dozen hits a year. Lone trees get the same treatment, because a bolt goes for the local high point.

Which claim about China's Great Wall is TRUE?

A 1932 cartoon called it visible from the Moon: Ripley's named the wall the only human work to be seen from there, decades before anyone could check. Built from local stone and earth, it blends into the land even from low orbit.

Which claim about Napoleon Bonaparte is TRUE?

He was about average height for his era: his recorded 5 ft 2 was in French units, about 5 ft 6 in British ones. The tiny, raging 'Little Boney' was the work of the cartoonist James Gillray.

Which claim about camels is TRUE?

Their humps are stores of fat, a food reserve that shrinks and flops to one side as it is used up. Water is another matter: a thirsty camel can gulp down about 30 gallons at one go.

Which statement about Viking warriors is TRUE?

Wagner's operas made their horned helmets famous: the costume designer for his 1876 Ring cycle put horns on the Norse characters, and the look stuck. The Viking helmet dug up at Gjermundbu in Norway is a plain rounded iron cap.

Which of these is a TRUE statement about bats?

All species have eyes and can see, and the big fruit bats, which mostly do without echolocation, find their way by sight. Only three of some 1,400 species feed on blood.

Which claim about goldfish is TRUE?

They can remember things for months: goldfish taught that one colour means food keep picking it long after the training stops, and they can be trained on sounds too.

Which claim about Albert Einstein is TRUE?

He was studying calculus at twelve, years ahead of his class, and laughed off a Ripley's column that claimed he had failed maths. At 16 he did fail the Zurich Polytechnic entrance exam, but not on maths or physics, where he shone.

Which claim about Marie Antoinette is TRUE?

Rousseau wrote the line in her childhood, crediting it only to 'a great princess' while she was still a girl in Vienna. A version had been told a century earlier about Marie-Thérèse, wife of Louis XIV.

Which claim about the Salem witch trials is TRUE?

Nineteen of the convicted were hanged, and the elderly Giles Corey was crushed to death under heavy stones because he refused to enter a plea at all.

Which claim about George Washington is TRUE?

His dentures used ivory and human teeth, held together with brass and gold, and he had a single tooth of his own left when he became president. Stained ivory may have passed for wood and started the myth.

Which claim about the US Declaration of Independence is TRUE?

Congress broke with Britain on July 2, voting for independence on the day John Adams told his wife would be celebrated for generations. July 4 is when it approved the Declaration's wording and sent it to the printer.

Which claim about Benjamin Franklin is TRUE?

His proposal for the seal was an image of Moses drowning Pharaoh in the Red Sea, with the motto 'Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God'. His turkey remark came in a letter to his daughter, griping that an eagle design looked like one.

Which claim about Isaac Newton is TRUE?

He told the apple story himself: over tea under some apple trees in 1726, he told William Stukeley that a falling apple had set him thinking about gravity. Plague had shut Cambridge, so he was home at Woolsthorpe when it fell.

Which claim about Julius Caesar is TRUE?

His mother was alive when he was 45: Aurelia is said to have lived to hear of his invasion of Britain, and in Rome the operation was performed only on women who were dead or dying.

Which claim about the Egyptian pyramids is TRUE?

Paid labourers built them: digs at Giza found a workers' town that fed its crews beef, and tombs for them right beside the pyramids. Slaves would not have been buried with such honour.

Which claim about Cinco de Mayo is TRUE?

It marks a victory over the French at Puebla in 1862, when an outnumbered Mexican force beat Napoleon III's army. It is a minor holiday in Mexico, where independence falls on September 16.

Which claim about the Gettysburg Address is TRUE?

Lincoln began writing it at the White House, on Executive Mansion paper, and finished it in Gettysburg. The two-hour speech that day was Edward Everett's; Lincoln's ran about two minutes.

Which claim about bulls and bullfighting is TRUE?

The cape's movement draws the charge: cattle are colour-blind to red, and bulls rush the matador's magenta-and-gold capote just as hard. The small muleta is red by tradition, and to mask the blood.

Which claim about dogs is TRUE?

They sweat mainly through their footpads, which is why a hot or nervous dog can leave damp paw prints. That sheds very little heat, so panting does most of the cooling.

Which claim about hippos is TRUE?

A red skin secretion works as their sunscreen: it oozes out clear, turns red within minutes and soaks up ultraviolet light. Its pigments also slow the growth of bacteria.

Which claim about lemmings is TRUE?

A 1958 Disney film faked the cliff-jumping: the White Wilderness crew brought a small group of lemmings to landlocked Alberta and pushed them off a riverbank for the camera.

Which claim about ostriches is TRUE?

They lie flat on the ground to hide, neck stretched out along the soil. The pale head and neck blend in, so from a distance only the body shows and the head looks buried.

Which claim about a duck's quack is TRUE?

Its echo is just hard to hear: Salford University acousticians recorded a quack echoing round a reverberation chamber in 2003. A quack is quiet and fades out, so the echo blurs into it.

Which claim about sharks is TRUE?

Tumours have been found in many species of shark. The myth took off with a 1992 bestseller, Sharks Don't Get Cancer, whose author was promoting shark-cartilage pills as a cancer treatment.

Which claim about chameleons is TRUE?

They change colour mostly for mood and heat: a male flushes brighter to face down a rival, and a cold chameleon turns darker to soak up warmth.

Which claim about the "boiling frog" story is TRUE?

Biologists say a heated frog climbs out: frogs control their temperature by moving, so one in warming water leaves when it gets uncomfortable. The tale traces to disputed 19th-century lab reports.

Which claim about houseflies is TRUE?

They live for a few weeks as adults, typically two to four. A day is nearer the time their eggs take: those hatch into maggots within about 24 hours.

Which claim about earthworms is TRUE?

The head half may regrow a tail, but only if the cut falls behind the clitellum, the swollen band near the front. The tail half usually dies, so most cuts leave one worm, not two.

Which claim about mature sunflowers is TRUE?

The heads face one fixed direction, usually east: only young buds track the Sun. East-facing blooms warm up faster in the morning, and warm flowers draw more bees.

Which claim about hair and nails after death is TRUE?

Skin dries and shrinks, so they look longer: as a body dehydrates, the skin pulls back from the nails and from stubble on the chin. Real growth needs a working blood supply, so it stops at death.

Which claim about shaving is TRUE?

It leaves each hair with a blunt tip: an uncut hair tapers to a fine point, so stubble looks darker and feels coarser. A 1928 trial found shaving changed nothing about how hair grew back.

Which claim about swallowed chewing gum is TRUE?

It passes through like other matter: the body cannot break down gum base, but the gut pushes it along and out in the stool. Doctors who scope stomachs and bowels do not find old gum lodged there.

Which claim about blood in human veins is TRUE?

It is dark red in the veins, and bright red once it picks up oxygen. Veins look blue because of how skin scatters light and how the eye reads colour, not because of the blood inside.

Which claim about sugar and children is TRUE?

It left behaviour unchanged in blind trials, even among children whose parents called them sugar-sensitive. In one study, mothers told their sons had eaten sugar rated them more hyperactive, though every boy got a placebo.

Which claim about vitamin C is TRUE?

Daily doses shorten colds a little, by about 8 per cent in adults, but do not stop most people catching them. Started after symptoms appear, vitamin C shows no consistent benefit.

Which claim about antibiotics is TRUE?

They are ineffective against viruses because they attack parts only bacteria have, such as the cell wall. Colds and flu are viral, so a course taken for one only helps resistant bacteria spread.

Which claim about cracking your knuckles is TRUE?

Its pop comes from gas in the joint fluid, released as the joint is pulled apart. To test the arthritis claim, one doctor cracked only his left hand for over 60 years, and won an Ig Nobel Prize.

Which claim about human ribs is TRUE?

Men and women both have 24, in twelve pairs; the idea that men are one short likely comes from the story of Eve made from Adam's rib. A rare few people do carry a spare, a small extra rib in the neck.

Which claim about coffee is TRUE?

In moderation it hydrates like water: 50 men who swapped four daily mugs of coffee for water, then back, showed no difference in body water. Regular drinkers grow used to caffeine's mild pull on the kidneys.

Which claim about drinking alcohol is TRUE?

It only feels warm as blood vessels dilate: warm blood rushes to the skin, where its heat escapes, so core temperature falls. That is why first-aiders never give alcohol to someone with hypothermia.

Which claim about Twinkies is TRUE?

They keep for about six weeks: the official shelf life is 45 days, up from 26. Leaving out fresh dairy, which spoils fast, is what buys the time.

Which claim about fortune cookies is TRUE?

They resemble a cracker from 1800s Japan, a savoury one made with miso that carried a paper fortune. That is most likely where they came from, and China itself barely knows them.

Which claim about the word "sushi" is TRUE?

It refers to the vinegared rice, which can be paired with raw seafood but need not be. A cucumber roll with no fish at all counts as sushi, while sliced raw fish served on its own is sashimi.

Which claim about chili peppers is TRUE?

The white pith is the hottest part, because that is where the fruit makes its capsaicin; the seeds make none and only pick some up from it. Birds cannot feel the burn, so they eat the fruit and spread the seeds.

Which claim about MSG is TRUE?

It occurs naturally in tomatoes and cheese, and a Japanese chemist first extracted it from seaweed broth in 1908. In placebo tests, people who call themselves sensitive to it do not react consistently.

Which claim about Santa Claus's red suit is TRUE?

Thomas Nast and other 19th-century illustrators had already settled the look.

Which claim about the name "Frankenstein" is TRUE?

It is the scientist who made the creature, Victor Frankenstein, and Shelley never gives his creation a name. The creature reaches for one itself, telling him: "I ought to be thy Adam."

Which claim about Mozart and Salieri is TRUE?

Salieri later taught Mozart's son, Franz Xaver, along with Beethoven, Schubert and Liszt. The poisoning rumour spread while Salieri was still alive, and he denied it.

Which claim about the Beatles' 1965 Shea Stadium show is TRUE?

It set a record for concert attendance, with more than 55,000 fans. Stadium shows were not new, though: Elvis had played Dallas's Cotton Bowl to a crowd about half the size back in 1956.

Which claim about the word "golf" is TRUE?

It first appears in a royal ban: in 1457 Scotland's James II outlawed the game for keeping men from archery practice. The word likely comes from the medieval Dutch colf, a club.

Which claim about the origin of baseball is TRUE?

It grew out of older bat-and-ball games played in England. Jane Austen's heroine plays baseball in Northanger Abbey, written some 40 years before Doubleday's supposed invention in 1839.

Which claim about the Fisher Space Pen is TRUE?

Its maker paid to develop it himself: Paul Fisher reportedly put $1 million of his own money into the pen, then offered it to NASA. The Soviets bought it for their Soyuz crews too.

Which claim about drying a wet phone in rice is TRUE?

Open air beat it in two tests: in one, a soaked sponge left out lost more water than any sealed in with a drying agent. Rice did worst of all the agents tried, behind cat litter and couscous.

Which claim about a browser's incognito mode is TRUE?

It mostly just skips saving your history, cookies and form entries once the window closes. That hides a gift search from someone sharing your laptop, but websites, your employer and your internet provider see you as usual.

Which claim about the Sahara is TRUE?

Most of it is bare rock and gravel: stony plateaus and plains make up the bulk, and the dune seas of the postcards are the smaller share. Snow even dusted the dunes near Algeria's Ain Sefra in 2016, the first there since 1979.

Which claim about the direction of the world's waterways is TRUE?

Many major rivers flow northward, among them the Nile and Siberia's Ob, Yenisey and Lena. Rivers follow gravity, not the compass, so they run downhill whichever way the land slopes.

Which claim about the Amazon rainforest is TRUE?

Its net oxygen output is roughly zero: the trees breathe some of it back in, and the microbes rotting the forest's dead leaves use up the rest. The oxygen we breathe built up over billions of years, mostly from ocean plankton.

Which claim about the "dark side" of the Moon is TRUE?

"Dark" meant unknown; nobody saw it until spacecraft went round in 1959.

Which claim about our planet's orbit is TRUE?

We are nearest the Sun in January, around the 3rd, when the northern half of the world is deep in winter. Seasons come from the tilt of Earth's axis, which leans each hemisphere toward the Sun for its summer.

Which claim about glass is TRUE?

It is a solid at room temperature: its atoms are jumbled like a liquid's but locked in place, and it flows only when heated by hundreds of degrees. Old panes are uneven because they were made that way.

Which claim about toads and warts is TRUE?

Their bumps are glands that ooze poison: a frightened toad pushes a milky toxin from the big ones behind its eyes to put off predators. Human warts come from a human virus, so no toad can pass them on.

Which claim about cats and catnip is TRUE?

Only around two thirds respond: in one test of 100 house cats, one in three ignored it, because the taste for catnip is inherited. For the rest, the high fades within about 15 minutes.

Which claim about the dinosaurs is TRUE?

Birds are their living theropod descendants, from the same meat-eating group as T. rex, and about 11,000 species are alive today. Pterodactyls were flying reptiles on a separate branch, not dinosaurs at all.

Which claim about Christopher Columbus is TRUE?

His critics thought Asia was much farther away, and they were right: he had badly underestimated the globe. Washington Irving's 1828 biography spread the flat-Earth tale.

Which claim about the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 is TRUE?

Its true cause was never determined, though the blaze did begin in or near the O'Leary family's barn. A reporter later boasted that he had made up the cow, and in 1997 the city council formally cleared Catherine O'Leary.

Which claim about US Prohibition is TRUE?

Drinking alcohol at home stayed legal: the federal law banned making, selling and transporting liquor, not swallowing it. Under it, a cellar stocked before January 1920 could still be poured, and the wealthy bought out whole shops.

Which claim about Kennedy's 1963 Berlin speech is TRUE?

His famous German line was correct: Berliners call the jelly doughnut a Pfannkuchen, so the crowd heard no pastry. He had the words written out phonetically, and the doughnut joke surfaced some twenty years later.

Which claim about Disney's Snow White is TRUE?

An Argentine feature beat it by 20 years: El Apóstol, animated with cardboard cutouts in 1917, ran 70 minutes. Its only copy burned in 1926, which leaves Germany's Prince Achmed (1926) as the oldest that survives.

Which claim about the Chevrolet Nova in Latin America is TRUE?

It sold well in Mexico, and GM never renamed it. Spanish speakers hear "nova" and "no va" as different words, and Mexican drivers were already filling up with a petrol brand called Nova.

Which claim about the Bible's magi is TRUE?

Only Matthew's gospel mentions them, and it gives no head count: three is a guess from the three gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Syriac churches often count twelve.

Which claim about what Eve ate in Eden is TRUE?

It is only ever called fruit: Genesis names no species, and figs were an early guess. The apple is usually put down to a pun in Latin, where malum can mean both "evil" and "apple".

Which claim about ancient Greek and Roman statues is TRUE?

They were originally painted in colours, with red lips, dark hair and gilded limbs, until weather and zealous cleaning stripped them. Later artists took the bare marble for the ancient look and copied it.

Which claim about Space Invaders (1978) is TRUE?

Its aliens replaced human soldiers: designer Tomohiro Nishikado found planes moved badly on screen and people animated best. Shooting humans was ruled out, and Star Wars turned his mind to space.

Which claim about tampered Halloween candy is TRUE?

Its most famous poisoner killed his own son: in 1974 Texan Ronald O'Bryan laced a Pixy Stix with cyanide for the insurance money. No child is known to have been killed by a stranger's Halloween treat.

Which claim about the presidential "nuclear football" is TRUE?

It holds a list of strike options, the so-called Black Book. There is no button: the president authorises a strike and the military carries it out.

Which claim about bourbon whiskey is TRUE?

It can be made in any US state: federal rules fix the recipe, at least 51 per cent corn, and the new charred oak barrel, but not the address. Kentucky still makes most of it.

Which claim about the origin of the Caesar salad is TRUE?

It was created in Tijuana, Mexico, where Italian immigrant Caesar Cardini ran a restaurant for Americans dodging Prohibition. His daughter dated it to a Fourth of July rush in 1924, though his brother Alex is also credited.

Which claim about the octopus, an eight-armed relative of squid and snails, is fact, not fiction?

An octopus has three hearts, and the main one stops beating whenever it swims, which is why the animal tires quickly and mostly crawls instead.

Which claim about Venus, the solar system's hottest planet, is fact, not fiction?

On Venus one rotation outlasts its year: the planet needs 243 Earth days to turn once but only about 225 to complete an orbit, and it spins backwards too.

Which claim about the University of Oxford, teaching since about 1096, is fact, not fiction?

Oxford predates the Aztec Empire by centuries: its scholars were teaching by 1096, while the Aztecs' Triple Alliance ruled central Mexico only from 1428.

Which claim about wombats, marsupials whose pouches open backwards, is fact, not fiction?

Wombat dung is cube-shaped, and the animals set the cubes out to mark territory, a flat-sided shape thought to stop the droppings rolling away.

Which claim about the modern Olympics, revived by Pierre de Coubertin, is fact, not fiction?

Tug of war was once contested at five Olympics, from 1900 to 1920, until organisers dropped it while trimming the number of sports.

Which claim about Nintendo, founded in Kyoto in 1889, is fact, not fiction?

Nintendo began with playing cards: Fusajiro Yamauchi set it up to make handmade hanafuda decks, long before the company turned to toys and video games.

Which claim about Tyrannosaurus rex, whose name means "tyrant lizard king", is fact, not fiction?

Tyrannosaurus rex lived long after Stegosaurus: more than 75 million years separate the two, a wider gap than the 66 million between the last T. rex and us.

Which claim about Scotland, the land of Loch Ness, is fact, not fiction?

Scotland's national animal is the unicorn, which legend cast as the natural enemy of the lion, England's royal symbol; one still props up the UK's coat of arms.

Which claim about bananas, first domesticated in New Guinea, is fact, not fiction?

Bananas are botanically berries, fleshy fruits that grow from a single flower's ovary, and the 'tree' they hang from is really a giant herb with no woody trunk.

Which claim about the Statue of Liberty, whose frame Gustave Eiffel built, is fact, not fiction?

It was once reddish-brown and shiny: over the decades that followed, the statue's copper skin weathered into the green crust that now shields the metal beneath.

Which claim about Leonardo's Mona Lisa, begun around 1503, is fact, not fiction?

The Mona Lisa was stolen in 1911 by Louvre worker Vincenzo Peruggia, who hid it for two years, and the headlines helped make it the world's best-known painting.

Which claim about Bluetooth, the wireless standard begun at Ericsson, is fact, not fiction?

Bluetooth honours a Danish king, Harald Bluetooth, who united Denmark's scattered tribes a thousand years ago; the logo is his initials written in runes.

Which claim about cotton candy, known as candy floss in Britain, is fact, not fiction?

A dentist helped invent it: William Morrison and confectioner John Wharton built a sugar-spinning machine in 1897 and sold the result as Fairy Floss at the 1904 World's Fair.

Which claim about Saturn, the sixth planet from the Sun, is fact, not fiction?

Saturn is less dense than water, the only planet that is, so in a big enough ocean the giant would float even though it outweighs 95 Earths.

Which claim about basketball, devised by YMCA instructor James Naismith, is fact, not fiction?

Basketball began with peach baskets nailed up in a gym, and because their bottoms were left in, someone had to fetch the ball after every score.

Which claim about the Titanic, the liner sunk by an iceberg, is fact, not fiction?

One funnel was a dummy: only three of the Titanic's four stacks carried smoke, and the rearmost was added mainly for looks while venting the kitchens.

Which claim about the polar bear, the largest living land carnivore, is fact, not fiction?

A polar bear's skin is black beneath hairs that are see-through and hollow, so the dark hide soaks up heat while the coat only looks white.

Which claim about Play-Doh, a toy since the 1950s, is fact, not fiction?

Play-Doh began as wallpaper cleaner, a putty for lifting coal soot off walls, until a nursery teacher whose pupils loved modelling it urged the makers to sell it as a toy.

Which claim about Mauna Kea, a Hawaiian volcano crowned with observatories, is fact, not fiction?

It tops Everest base to peak because most of Mauna Kea is hidden: it rises more than 9,000 metres from the ocean floor, though under half of that shows above the waves.

Which claim about London's Big Ben, completed in 1859, is fact, not fiction?

The nickname first meant a bell, the 13.7-tonne Great Bell, while the tower around it was plain Clock Tower until it was renamed for Elizabeth II in 2012.