‘What is a completely useless piece of information that you will never forget?’ – 21 facts seared into people’s brains forever

The human brain is allegedly capable of incredible feats of cognition and memory, and yet what it mostly chooses to do is remember utterly pointless bits of information while forgetting the important stuff, like where you left your car keys.

Over on the AskReddit page, Initial-Ingenuity451 posted this question:

What is a completely useless piece of information that you will never forget for some reason?

And lots of people chimed in with the absolute nonsense they are unable to let go of, like these…

1.

‘I have a NASCAR one. On July 7th, 2007, otherwise known as 07/07/07, the 07 car of Clint Bowyer finished 7th.’
–Beginning-Yogurt3146

2.

‘The dot above a lowercase i and j has an official name — it’s called a tittle. Known this since I was nine years old. Have deployed it exactly twice in conversation. Both times people looked at me with an expression somewhere between impressed and concerned. Still completely worth the storage space honestly.’
–ItsTheoDarby

3.

‘Antarctic means ‘without bears’ and Arctic means ‘with bears’. They are called that because you can see the bear constellations, Ursa Major/Minor, in Arctic regions but not in Antarctic regions.

However, by fun coincidence, the Antarctic doesn’t have bears and the Arctic does.’
–tychobrahesmoose

4.

‘I still remember the license plate number of a truck that almost ran my stepdad off the road during a family road trip when I was like 13. (22 years ago). Completely useless.’
–PossibleOk7738

5.

‘I still remember our phone number from the 1970s.’
–lovelyb1ch66

6.

‘A group of flamingos is called a flamboyance. I learned this in 4th grade, have never once needed it, and it has taken up permanent rent-free residence in my brain while I forget important passwords weekly.’
–RyanMitchell04

7.

‘A jiffy is an actual unit of time. It’s 1/100th of a second.’
–NotThePyroTraveler

8.

‘The fact that sea otters hold hands while they sleep so they don’t drift apart. Totally useless for survival, but I’ll never forget it.’
–Zealousideal-Sky-973

9.

‘a2 + b2 = c2. A CLASSIC.’
–MateusTheGreat

10.

‘El Paso, Texas is closer to San Diego, California than it is to Houston, Texas.’
-Metzae

11.

‘Bees fart. Whenever I see a bee flying by I start to ponder to myself if it’s tooting as it’s buzzing by.’
–MatthewM69420

12.

‘The difference between initialism and acronym. They both represent the first letters of a phrase or series of words but FBI is an initialism because you say the letters. NASA is an acronym because you say the word.’
–OK_HS_Coach