In the world of fake news, shams, and bogus claims, it’s hard to tell a fact from fiction. And you simply get used to doubting things. You read "unicorns exist" and the mind detects deceit. But what if I tell you they’re just bulky and we call ‘em rhinos? Sounds about right.

So when someone on r/AskReddit asked what fact sounds fake at first but is actually real, redditors rolled up their sleeves. 26K upvotes and 14.3K comments later, we have the finalists of these mind-boggling facts ready down below. Get ready to get that trivia muscle pumped up for the next game after quarantine is over. After you're done, take a look at our previous lists of crazy-sounding facts here.

#1

Ancient sailors believed that cats were magic and would often risk their own lives, even in an "every man for himself" situation, to save a cat from a sinking ship. All ships had at least one ship's cat as cats would eat the rats that have always plagued ships. The ship's cat would often be given a rank and sailors would generally take excessively good care of their cats.

#2

There isn’t a single bridge across the amazon river.

#3

Jack the Ripper was still active when Nintendo was founded

#4

Distance from USA to Russia 4 kilometers

This fact is always amusing.

#5

A typical cumulus cloud actually weighs 1.1 million pounds (498,951 kg)

#6

Pocahontas and Shakespeare lived during the same time

#7

You can fit all the planets in our solar system touching end to end between Earth and the moon.

#8

A lot of the earliest war gods were actually goddesses.

#9

It takes 2 years for a pineapple to grow.

#10

The guy who sang Peanut Butter Jelly Time died in a police shootout. Also, his brother in law was there trying to talk him out of shooting himself. You know who that brother-in-law was? F***ing Snoop Dogg

#11

Netflix was founded before Google

#12

One ten inch pizza is more pizza than two seven inch pizzas.

#13

The day Michael Jackson's hair caught on fire was the exact middle of his life, to the day.

#14

The 10th president of the US, John Tyler (1790-1862), has 2 living grandchildren.

#15

The Ethiopian calendar is seven years behind the rest of the world. Edit; yeah guys it's still 2013 there

#16

That ants don't take fall damage

#17

Cheetahs can't roar. They meow like house cats.

#18

Iran arrested 14 squirrels on suspicion of espionage

#19

Orcas are a natural predator to moose

#20

Chickens are one of many species of birds that dont have penetrative genitalia. Read; cocks are cockless. The method of reproduction they use is commonly called a "cloacal kiss" and you can think of it as chickens scissoring, because "bumping holes" is the grossest possible way to phrase chicken sex.

Also chickens are not a flightless species like lots of people think and are generally totally capable of short flight.

#21

When compasses were first used on ships, sailors were afraid of them because they thought it had evil powers. Compasses were stored in boxes called a “binnacle”

#22

The founders of Adidas (Adi Dassler) and Puma (Rudolf Dassler) are brothers.

..and their HQs are literally next door to each other in Germany.

#23

On average Mercury is the closest planet to Saturn.

#24

One horse is actually 15 horsepower.

#25

lyrebird's imitations will seriously sound exactly like the thing they're trying to imitate. If they imitate a chainsaw, you will think it's a chainsaw. It sounds like a perfect recording.

#26

Every Canadian is allowed to get a free Canadian flag from the government. However, if you ordered a flag today you would get it in about 110 years.

#27

In a room of just 23 people there’s a 50-50 chance of at least two people having the same birthday

#28

There is no Date between 03-Sept-1752 to 13-Sept-1752,

Checkout the September Calendar of 1752. 11 days are missing in the Calendar.

This is due to the fact that we converted our Calendar from Julian to Georgian calendar on 2nd of September 1752.

#29

People in Europe feared the tomato for over 200 years because they thought eating it would kill them. It was even nicknamed the "poision apple"

#30

It takes about 3-4 generation before your entire existence is completely forgotten (assuming you don't invent the cure for cancer or discover the fifth dimension or anything like that)

#31

Because the number of possible combination of genes isn't infinite, there are probably at least 7 humans that looks the same as you.

#32

Antarctica is technically a desert

#33

President Coolidge got sent a raccoon for Thanksgiving one year, but instead of eating it, he granted it a pardon because it was "cute"

#34

The entire state of Wyoming only has 2 escalators.

#35

During WWII, the Polish Army had a brown bear in their ranks. The bear was really helpful to the force, particularly for carrying heavy artillery.

#36

The Nazis were the first ever people in modern history to start an anti-smoking and tobacco movement.

Or being from Scotland, and finding out the national animal is the unicorn!

#37

Astronomer here! The coldest place we know of in the universe is actually... on Earth!

To explain further, the coldest places we know of that naturally occur in the universe are inside dark nebulae with little to no star formation, and thus no starlight to heat things up. The coldest one known so far is the Boomerang Nebula, where the temperature has been measured as low as 1 degree above absolute zero (−272 °C or −458 °F). However, we regularly get below this temperature in labs on Earth! Specifically, absolute zero is at –273.15°C (or –459.67°F) and labs on Earth regularly get to within a tenth or even a hundredth of a degree of that.

Pretty cool!

#38

Cleopatra lived closer *in time* to the invention of the iPhone than the construction of the Great Pyramid.

Or that 1980 was FORTY YEARS AGO!

#39

There are more trees on Earth than there are stars in our galaxy.

#40

Disney Is the Second-Largest Buyer of Explosives in the World

#41

The Holy Roman Empire still existed when the US was founded.

#42

No matter where you touch a turtle on its body shell or otherwise it can feel it.

#43

There are more tigers in captivity in America than in the wild

#44

There used to be a species of parrot native to what is now Kentucky and Tennessee.

#45

The Panama Canal runs primarily north/south.

#46

The US and Russian military employed dolphins as part of their marines.

#47

The yearly risk in the US of dying from a shark bite is around 1 in 250 million and the yearly risk of dying from a vending machine accident is roughly 1 in 112 million. Therefore, vending machines are about twice as deadly as sharks

#48

A bunch of pissed of Scots who hated the way England played rugby is why we have the quarterback position in American football.

#49

The previous owner of the company Segway died from driving a Segway off a cliff

#50

If Titanic had had more lifeboats on board, more people would have died.

There are lots of unique factors that go into this. But the simple version is there was no time. Titanic's crew acted incredibly quickly as soon as it was known the ship had no chance of surviving. Preparing these massive, heavy lifeboats for launch and lowering them takes a lot of time and effort. Despite their efforts, the last two lifeboats were floated off deck. They needed every available second to launch the boats they did have.

Titanic had no time to launch more lifeboats. If there had been more boats on board, they would have been stacked which would have added time to the already laborious and lengthy preparation and launch of the boats. They also would have been stored on deck which would have added to an already crowded, chaotic scene the night it sank.

#51

There is a city in Turkey called Batman

#52

The sun is so loud, if space was filled with air instead of being a vacuum, we'd be hearing screeching sun noises at 125 decibel at all times.

#53

The combined weight of all the ants on the planet is greater than all the humans.

#54

That most of the oxygen on earth doesn’t come from trees. It’s comes from plankton in the ocean

#55

Baby koalas eat only diarrhea for the first 6-9 months.

#56

A Russian luxury SUV Manufacturer attempted and failed to use whale penis skin for their SUV interiors.

#57

A barnacle has a penis up to 10 times the length of its body.

#58

There was a week in American history where Tim Allen had the #1 film, tv show, and book.

#59

In his 19 year career in the NBA,Shaq only ever made one 3-pointer.

#60

Pumpkins are rarer than diamonds in Minecraft.

#61

The US government kidnapped and experimented on its own population

#62

Joseph Stalin was nominated for the Nobel peace prize. Twice!

#63

When large ships were first sailing sailed through electrical storms they would sometimes see a blue glow at the top of their mast. There was no lightning and they thought it meant they were cursed.

#64

T-Rex (~64 million years ago) is nearer to now in years than it is to Stegosaurus (~151 million years ago)

Images depicting them fighting are very very wrong.

#65

An octopus has blue blood

#66

Sharks are older than trees, sharks date back 450 million years, trees 350 million years

#67

Stop signs used to be yellow.

In 1922, the American Association of State Highway Officials met to determine a standard design for stop signs, and that's where they decided on the color: yellow (because they thought that would grab drivers' attention).

They'd also considered red, but there was no dye available at the time that wouldn't eventually fade. By 1954, sign-makers had access to fade-resistant porcelain enamel, and could finally start making stop signs the red color recognized today.

#68

During the Cold War the US had an idea to drop XL condoms labeled Medium all over Russia to make them think they are more "Manly"

#69

The average density of the universe is 1 proton in 3 cubic meters and the average temperature is 2.73 kelvin.

#70

It is estimated viruses kill about 50% of ocean biomass every 4 days.

#71

LEGO is the largest producer of tires in the world

#72

The average amount of arms humans have is less than 2

#73

Maine is the closet US state to the continent of Africa.

#74

One of the largest stadiums in terms of crowd seating in the world is located in North Korea