Fun Facts That’ll Actually Make Your Life Better

[01dragonslayer]

A sheep, a duck and a rooster were the first passengers in a hot air balloon.

You read that right – in 1783, the first hot air balloon was launched carrying a sheep, duck, and a rooster.

The flight lasted for 8 minutes before landing safely with its passengers.

[01dragonslayer]

In Uganda, around 48% of the population is under 15 years of age.

Of the 41 million inhabitants, nearly half of those are youths.

If you were to expand the age to just 30, that brings the percentage up to 77%!

[01dragonslayer]

The average male gets bored of a shopping trip after 26 minutes.

Meanwhile, women don’t get tired of shopping until around 2 hours!

So next time you see a couple at a retail store with a bored looking boyfriend, you know they’ve been out for more than half an hour.

[01dragonslayer]

In the 16th Century, Turkish women could initiate a divorce if their husbands didn’t pour coffee for them.

Today, this would be unheard of. But back then, coffee was an integral part of Turkish society. So much so, that it was “grounds” for divorce.

No one knows why exactly this was acceptable, but the fact remains that it was!

[01dragonslayer]

Recycling one glass jar saves enough energy to watch television for 3 hours.

Yup, that’s how important recycling is!

The average person has the chance to recycle 25,000 cans in their lifetime – that’s 75,000 hours of television!

[01dragonslayer]

After the premiere of “16 and Pregnant,” teen pregnancy rates dropped.

MTV may not have the most wholesome programs, but after the premier of this show, teen pregnancy dropped by 5.7% within 18 months of the show airing.

[01dragonslayer]

Approximately 10-20% of U.S. power outages are caused by squirrels.

Harmless and cute as they seem, these fuzzy little creatures aren’t as innocent as you think!

Squirrels have a tendency of chewing the wires, but luckily it’s a simple fix.

[01dragonslayer]

Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are all banned in China.

Those aren’t the only ones either – over 8,000 domain names are blocked.

Other major banned social network sites include Pinterest and Tumblr.

[01dragonslayer]

95% of people text things they could never say in person.

Are you guilty of this? I know I am.

[01dragonslayer]

Honeybees can recognize human faces.

Whereas before it was thought that only large brained mammals could distinguish faces, but honeybees can do this as well!

They see faces in a compilation of 5,000 individual images – kind of like pixels.

[01dragonslayer]

The Battle of Hastings didn’t take place in Hastings.

The famous Battle of Hastings actually took place 7 miles from Hastings in a town that is today known as Battle. Fitting, right?

[01dragonslayer]

While trying to find a cure for AIDS, the Mayo Clinic made glow in the dark cats.

This is due to their use a specific protein that was fluorescent green.

They used this protein to find out if their tests worked: if the animal glowed, the outcome was successful.

[01dragonslayer]

A swarm of 20,000 bees followed a car for two days because their queen was stuck inside.

When the car parked, the thousands of bees swarmed onto the car and had to be taken off by beekeepers.

The next day, the bees were back on the car because the queen was still inside and the swarm had to be taken off again.

[01dragonslayer]

Eating carrots can turn your skin orange.

Called carotenemia, this can happen if you eat three large carrots or more every day for a long period of time.

This is because the carrots give the body too much beta-carotene, which causes the changing color of your skin.

[01dragonslayer]

Bob Dylan’s real name is Robert Zimmerman.

Yep, his full name is Robert Allen Zimmerman – he started going by Bob Dylan early on in his career for no real reason. Simply because he wanted to!