Interesting Factlets

Here are some interesting, crazy, and bizarre factlets to help brighten your day.

10. The Hawaiian language requires only twelve letters (and the apostrophe symbol which refers to the glottal stop in words like Hawai’i – this is called the ‘okina.)

9. In 18th Century Britain, you could take out insurance against going to hell.

8. Apollo 11 had 20 seconds of fuel left when it landed. If only it had 11 seconds, we would see all these crazy “The Number 11″ theories and a cheesy horror movie on the subject.

7. Believe it or not, it is possible to accidentally plagiarize something. Cryptomnesia is a memory bias in which a person believes they have conceived of a new idea when in fact they are simply remembering someone else’s idea. This actually occurs quite frequently on Things People Hate.

6. Clinical lycanthropy is the very rare psychological disorder in which a person believes they have been transformed into an animal. This can result in the person experiencing hallucinations and mimicking the actions of the animal they think they have become.

5. In English gambling dens in the 18th century, there was a person who was hired solely to swallow the dice in the event of a police raid. No word whether it was a traditional male or female role.

4. “Tim while Kyle had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the police man” – is a completely legitimate English sentence. However, the challenge is to place the sentence in correct punctuation to make it understandable.

3. Hyperthymesia is a condition (known to exist in only four humans so far) in which a person retains an almost perfect memory of everything they have experienced. A hyperthymestic person can be asked a date, and describe the events that occurred that day with many seemingly trivial details that most people would not be able to recall. These people, or should I say four people, make great storytellers.

2. The youngest parents in recorded history were eight and nine and lived in china in 1910.

1. In 18th Century Britain, you could take out insurance against going to hell.