People have been sharing their interesting facts. These 23 form a treasure trove of trivia
If you fancy yourself as a bit of a quiz buff – or wish you could become one – this post and the responses will be right up your street.
It started with this fact from Cora Harrington, avid student of Fashion and Textiles.
I want to learn something. Share one interesting fact you know.
I’ll start. We were able to get an idea of when humans first began wearing clothes – which was 10s of 1000s of years earlier than the oldest clothing we’ve found – because of when body lice diverged from head lice.
— Cora Harrington (@lingerie_addict) January 3, 2024
Although we’re now feeling a little itchy, we found that fact to be fascinating – and it opened the floodgates. Read the responses and the quotes for the full picture, but not until you’ve enjoyed our edited highlights.
1.
Similarly there’s a theory that we can date when shoes were invented in the Stone Age because of changes in the robustness of toe bones https://t.co/13oXinW96a
— Greg Jenner (@greg_jenner) January 3, 2024
2.
horses cannot breathe through their mouths at all. their epiglottis (flap that keeps food out of the lungs) forms a completely airtight seal over their windpipe. shady racehorse owners used to kill their horses for insurance money by putting ping pong balls up their nostrils. https://t.co/oBWhCrNTHg
— Janel Comeau (@VeryBadLlama) January 3, 2024
3.
in pre reformation europe, common prayers like paternosters were included in recipes as a way to measure time, like how we use egg timers now 🙂 https://t.co/lOhUNJCPY8
— m.l weston is querying (@authormlweston) January 3, 2024
4.
Perception of the color blue is relatively recent in human history https://t.co/mcw3JCoUfK
— Ashley Regan (@AshleyKTLA) January 3, 2024
5.
Injecting mercury into the penis was, at one point, a common "treatment" for syphilis https://t.co/qpWPZceyd5
— Dianna Gunn (@DiannaLGunn) January 3, 2024
6.
The winning Apollo spacesuit design was done by women seamstresses from Playtex. NASA engineers wanted a rigid suit, but all attempts failed in testing. https://t.co/ES7CSu7d3C
— Karl the Obscure (@h8socialmedia97) January 3, 2024
7.
Whale Sharks have "tiny teeth" in their eyes, they're called dermal denticles. https://t.co/nsXG4ao6x3
— Tati – Anton's Swearwolf (@bpdedwardteach) January 3, 2024
8.
The Appalachian Mountains are older than the rings of Saturn. That's all I've got.
— Andrew Klein (@ASargusKlein) January 3, 2024
9.
Archaeologists (I’m an anthropologist, a related scientific discipline) can use rope / cordage, etc, to tell how many people in the past were left handed – they twist the rope with their dominant hand or something. Even 100,000+ years ago, it was ~10% of the pop, same as today
— L’aakaw Éesh KAW (@LaakawEesh) January 3, 2024
10.
There are a LOT of custard based desserts that claim their origins among nuns
this is because they used egg whites to starch their wimples, and if you have excess egg yolks, custard is an obvious solution
— Rikibeth.bsky.social (@rikibeth) January 3, 2024
11.
When they first invented gene sequencing, they were able to accurately date the population bottleneck in Europe, caused by the last Ice Age! Our junk DNA offers intriguing evidence that only a few thousand people survived it
— St. Paulite (@Angrydomo) January 3, 2024
12.
The least damaging way to dry out a wet book is to stick it in a deep freezer and wait for it to sublimate
— jeskalibur (@ArgyleFetish) January 3, 2024
