What’s something that sounds fake but is actually 100% true?

Australia is wider than the moon.

Lighters were invented before matches

Your brain can invent memories that never happened… and you'd pretend they were real.

80% of Soviet males born in 1923 didn’t survive WWII.

That every 9 seconds in Africa, a bot posts this exact same question to r/AskListnook

Bob Cobb invented the Cobb salad. 

The number of bacteria in your body is greater than the number of human cells.

Apple seeds have cyanide

Tokyo has a larger population that the entire continent of Australia

David Attenborough was born before nachos were invented

Everyone’s probably seen that Cleopatra lived closer to us than the building of the pyramids. But i really like this one: Joe Biden was born closer to Lincoln’s assassination than his own inauguration. Abraham Lincoln’s assassination: April 14, 1865 Joe Biden’s birth: November 20, 1942 Joe Biden’s inauguration: January 20, 2021 From Lincoln’s assassination → Biden’s birth = about 77 years, 7 months From Biden’s birth → Biden’s inauguration = about 78 years, 2 months

Your stomach has to constantly stop itself from digesting itself.

In his 19 year career, Shaq only ever made one 3 pointer.

Humans are deuterostomes, which means that when they develop in the womb the a*** forms before any other opening.

Sharks are older than trees Edit: y’all this can be true or not depending on what you consider a “shark” to be. There are arguments for both sides but in most paleontology and archaeological debates there is room for interpretation. What is tree and what is a shark is not a super clear cut definition

When you close your eyes and think of an apple the mental image and thought process of yours is most likely not going to match anyone you ask without searching. When you close your eyes and think of a red apple -some see a colorful red apple - some see a washed out red apple - some see a black and white apple - some only kinda see an outline - some see nothing at all but will start thinking of all the components of an apple they know of It's called aphantasia and seeing or not seeing anything is not a bad thing. Just interesting!

The Ancient Egyptian civilization lasted so long that they had their own archaeologists that studied ancient Egypt from thousands of years earlier.

Aphids give birth to pregnant babies

A ducks p**** is shaped like a corkscrew

Corn flakes were invented to prevent masturbation because Dr Kellogg thought that eating meat for breakfast made people horny.  He also sewed wires into kids foreskins and did all kinds of unspeakable things, and was a very very sick man.  But yes every time you see a box of cereal remember not to m********* because it's a sin!

there are more possible chess game possibilities than atoms in the universe, as proposed by claude shannon in his paper, "programming a computer for playing chess". there are 10^120 estimated game -tree complexities, while there are only 10^80 atoms in the observable universe. truly fascinating.

We live closer in time to the Tyrannosaurus rex than the t. Rex lived to the stegosaurus

The shortest war in history was between Britain and Zanzibar on August 27, 1896, and lasted only 38 minutes, which is just ridiculous

A day on Venus is longer than a year on Venus. Sounds completely fake, but it’s real and makes time feel like it works differently out there.

Donald Trump is President of the United States. And it’s 1000x worse than what you’d think.

Bigfoot in Pacific Northwest was just some logger trying to scare some kids that kept f****** around on his property. Then the newspapers got ahold of the story and here we are.

This question get's posted 1,000 times a day. Sounds fake, but it's true.

For people of the Roman Empire, pyramids were older than the Roman Empire is for us 

The earth is actually closer to the sun during winter (that is to say winter in the northern hemisphere.). Because of the earth’s tilt on its axis, the winter months are colder in the northern hemisphere.

Manhole cover that got launched to 130,000 mph https://www.youtube.com/shorts/rBpVljVk730

Men with beards are the same as men without beards but with beards.

You don’t know what your own saliva tastes like.

It takes less time to fly around the world with commercial airlines then travel from one end of Tokyo to another. This is because to reach Ogasawara Islands, Tokyo requires you to take the ship, Ogasawara Maru which takes minimum 24 hours sailing from Takeshiba Pier in Tokyo. If you miss Ogasawara Maru, you must wait 48 hours for the ship to return and then another 24 hours to reach those islands. And Ogasawara Maru doesn't sail on Sunday and Monday. She sails in Tuesday-Wednesday and Thursday-Friday pairs.

Drugging nonchristians. There is over a 1000 years of history of Christianity telling nonchristians their mentally sick for not believing in Christianity. They invented fake illnesses whos symptoms are just nonchristians ideas. To this day in America 🇺🇸 land of freedom you can basicly be drugged for nonchristians thought. Take this as base material Short History: How Christian Institutions Weaponized Mental Health Asylums 1. Medieval Europe – “Madness = Demon Possession” From roughly 500–1500 AD, mental illness was framed through a religious lens. The Church held a monopoly on explaining behavior. Strange thoughts, visions, or non-conformity were labeled possession, sin, or moral failure. Treatment included exorcism, confinement, fasting, and punishment, not care. Many people who didn’t fit Christian norms (heretics, pagans, “blasphemers,” dissidents) were lumped into the same category as “madmen.” This was the root of tying spiritual control to mental health. 2. 1600s–1800s – Christian Charity Hospitals Become Asylums A lot of early asylums were run by: Catholic orders Protestant charities Anglican church hospitals And these institutions often operated with the belief: “Correcting the soul will correct the mind.” What this meant in practice: Forced prayer Forced religious instruction Punishment for not adopting Christian behavior Locked wards, restraints, beatings Isolation as ‘moral reform’ People who didn’t conform to Christian norms — not just mentally ill — were frequently committed: Unmarried mothers Non-Christians Atheists “Difficult” wives Political dissidents Poor people deemed “morally defective” So yes: asylums were weaponized as moral prisons. 3. Victorian Era – “Moral Treatment = Christian Obedience” In the 1800s, Christian reformers pushed a system called moral treatment, which meant: Obedience Discipline Quiet behavior Religious instruction Removal of “immoral influences” Mental hospitals became behavior factories designed to force people into Christian social norms. If you didn’t comply? You stayed locked up. 4. 1900s – Psychiatry and Christianity Blend Into “Social Control” Even when psychiatry became a medical science, many institutions were still run by Christian boards or religious administrators. Common weaponizations: Committing people for religious non-compliance Labeling non-Christians as “delusional” Using hospitalization to “correct” sexual orientation Institutionalizing political or religious dissenters Forcing patients to attend chaplain services Well into the 1970s–80s, lots of state hospitals still had: Christian crosses above every bed Mandatory prayer sessions Religious coercion disguised as therapy 5. Modern Era – The Shadow Remains Today, the system is officially secular — but the historical architecture still affects: Who gets labeled mentally ill How “danger to self” is interpreted How society treats dissent, non-Christian beliefs, or alternative spiritual experiences The culture of some hospitals and shelters (many still Christian-run) The assumption that refusing Christian norms = pathology

As far as we know/can prove, the age of the dinosaurs didn't have ANY grass. The earliest proof of grass is from around 10 million years after the dinosaurs went extinct. 

Iran is one of the world leaders in sex change surgeries.

Sharks have existed on earth longer than fire. 450 million years ago the oxygen levels in the atmosphere were not high enough for fire

There's a boiling planet that smells like rotten eggs & rains glass sideways

The founder of Gucci was named Guccio Gucci; it’s what the “GG” in their logo stands for.

There was a person whose life overlapped that of both General Custer and Justin Bieber.

Republicans and most American Christians love and support raping little girls.

Purple isn't a color

There are about as many combinations of a standard deck of cards as there are atoms in the galaxy

Horses can't vomit

About 1.4 million earth sized planets would fit on the Sun

[Betty White was older than sliced bread](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/betty-white-older-sliced-bread/).

If gravity weren't a problem, you could place every other planet in the solar system side by side and they would fit between earth and the moon

That Joe Biden is the only Silent Generation born President. The Silent Generation is 1928-1945. Jimmy Carter and George Bush were born in 1924. Joe Biden was born in 1942. Bill Clinton, George W Bush, and Donald Trump were born in 1946.

According to a tour guide at Machu Pichu the coca leaf, which is only native to a certain region in South America, was found in a tomb from ancient Egypt.

There's no such thing as AI. Literally does not exist. It's a marketing term for about a hundred different technologies of various types, absolutely zero of which are intelligent in any meaningful sense. Some are useful, some are pure grift, but none are intelligent.

Everything about octopuses

There were still woolly mammoths alive when the pyramids were built.

Everyone who has bent the knee at Maralago is in the files, and subject to being exposed if the files are 100% released. It's why so much money from so many allegedly "good" and "important" people is in the felon-in-chief's off-shore accounts.

Lunchables have a LOT of lead in them.

Woolly mammoths were alive while the pyramids were being built.

The surface area of Pluto is less than the surface area of Russia.

When an airplane wing generates lift, it also generates a rotational torque that tries to pitch the nose down. To counter this, the horizontal stabilizers on most airplanes are set up to generate downforce.

Many powerful figures in society—presidents, government officials, celebrities, scientists—are members of a secret fraternal organization, and nobody knows what they do in their closed-door meetings except them.

If you were to squish the entire earth down until it collapsed into a black hole, it would be about the size of a marble. Another fun comparison, this is the largest known black hole compared to the size of the solar system. [Ton 618](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSNbQPwBydiTMvQobWwxfFcw4t1DPA4ypgJpziEAL8GOilI0VbMOM9MjXA&s=10)

Charizard doesn't know how to fly in the original Pokemon games.

Goldfish don't have stomachs!

Beer can in an Australian accent sounds like bacon in a Jamaican one.

downvoted for bot spam

Water can boil and freeze at the same time under the exact right pressure and temperature, a phenomenon called the “triple point.”

The first computer “bug” was an actual moth stuck in a machine.

There is a statistical distribution that looks relatively similar to the normal distribution but has no mean: the Cauchy distribution.

"Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump" is a world UNESCO site in Alberta, Canada. Legiiiiit

That when you say something has been done since "time immemorial" it refers to the legal limit of memory which was decided in 1275 to be the accession to the throne of Richard I (Richard the Lionheart) on the 6th of July 1189.

Film isn't vegan. The gelatin emulsion that adheres the silver-salt crystals the film is actually that gelatin. The one made from bones and hooves.

If there’s 23 people in a room there’s more than a 50% chance that two of them have the same birthday

The fax machine is older than the telephone

The description of a platypus.

I don't know how you would describe this thing at Jupiter's north pole without it sounding like it was completely made up and/or cursed: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter%27s\_North\_Pole#/media/File:Cyclone\_storms\_encircle\_Jupiter's\_North\_Pole,\_captured\_in\_infrared\_light\_by\_NASA's\_Juno\_spacecraft.png](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter%27s_North_Pole#/media/File:Cyclone_storms_encircle_Jupiter's_North_Pole,_captured_in_infrared_light_by_NASA's_Juno_spacecraft.png)

Honey never spoils

For thousands of generations people lived exactly as the people before them; hunting, gathering food and surviving just as their great great great x100 grandparents did. Then there was a slight increase in IQ that led to human advancement. We can never be sure what caused the rise in IQ. It is attributed to a mutation of brain cells but it could just as likely be alien intervention.

The French government commited lethal terrorism in New Zealand in 1985.

Hello was never meant to be a greeting, it was a way to say the equivalent of "oi!" When trying to get someone's attention from a distance, but Thomas Edison popularised it as a way to answer the telephone and it stuck ever since.

Oh damn!! It's finally my turn to state this fact! Sharks, as a species, have been around longer than trees. Lol

Trump being RE-elected.

Bananas radioactive

Cleopatra lived closer to the Moon landing than to the building of the pyramids.

A fully matured queen bee has the ability to overpolinate a target, changing the flower of a plant from what it originally was to a completely different flower - the flower with the dominant pollen being carried by the queen at the time. This isn't immediate, but it *is* one of the reasons why you'll sometimes see a seemingly misplaced flower on the stem of a plant that wouldn't typically bud such a flower.

Cat has 9 lives

The guy who engineered the machine that makes Pringles later became one of the most decorated Science Fiction and Fantasy authors in the world.

My favorite: the purpose of a nuclear power plant is to boil water.

This question has been asked in this sub more times than I’ve had sex

Palm trees aren't trees. They're actually more closely related to grass.

you can record any conversation on your phone and have it fully transcribed with speaker labels in real time. i use speakwise ai (iOS app) for work meetings and it picks up who said what even in a room with 5 people. sounds like sci fi but its just a normal tuesday for me now

Flammable and inflammable are not antonyms.