Useless Facts

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Montpelier, Vermont, is the only U.S. capital without a McDonald's.​

In many cities, you can pick up a Quarter Pounder or some McNuggets on every other block. However, it's not as easy for residents of Montpelier, Vermont, to get a Big Mac. That's because it's the only U.S. state capital that doesn't have a McDonald's. As the smallest state capital in terms of population (approximately 7,500), the city doesn't have a Burger King, either. Sorry, Whopper lovers! To enjoy a meal from either fast food chain, Montpelier residents can simply head over to the neighboring city of Barre.

 

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Apple seeds contain cyanide.​

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As they say, an apple a day keeps the doctor away—unless you eat too many apple seeds, that is. The tiny black seeds found in the fruit contain a plant compound called amygdalin that turns into hydrogen cyanide if the seeds are chewed or digested, according to Medical News Today. Seeing as cyanide is poisonous (even deadly in high doses), you should definitely spit those seeds out. Do the same for apricot, peach, and cherry seeds, which contain the compound as well.

 

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Mulan has the highest kill-count of any Disney character.​

Walt Disney
Mulan is fierce, brave, and incredibly inspirational. But she's also incredibly deadly. In fact, she was not only the first Disney princess to kill someone on-screen in the 1998 film Mulan, but she also has the highest kill-count of any Disney character, according to UNILAD. Mulan took out nearly 2,000 people over the course of the animated film, including the evil Hun leader, Shan Yu, and 1,994 Huns by triggering an avalanche.

 

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A cubic inch of human bone can bear the weight of five standard pickup trucks.​

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Human bodies can sometimes feel vulnerable and fragile. But if you want to feel like a superhero, keep in mind that human bone is actually stronger than both steel and concrete. "Bone is extraordinarily strong—ounce for ounce, bone is stronger than steel, since a bar of steel of comparable size would weigh four or five times as much," biomedical engineer Cindy Bir told Live Science in 2010. "A cubic inch of bone can in principle bear a load of 19,000 lbs. (8,626 kg) or more—roughly the weight of five standard pickup trucks—making it about four times as strong as concrete."

 

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A frigate bird can sleep while it flies.​

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Birds can do some pretty amazing things. For example, frigate birds can sleep while flying. That's because they can snooze while using only one hemisphere of the brain at a time, according to a 2016 study published in the journal Nature Communications.

 

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Jupiter is twice as massive as all the other planets combined.​

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Maybe you already knew that Jupiter was the biggest planet of them all. But did you know just how big? Not only is it more than twice as massive as all the other planets combined, but if Earth were the size of a grape, Jupiter would be the size of a basketball, according to NASA.

 

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Your body contains about 100,000 miles of blood vessels.​

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Blood vessels are incredibly small, measuring around five micrometers (for reference, a strand of our hair is about 17 micrometers). However, because we have so many in our body, The Franklin Institute explains that if you laid them out in a single row, a child's blood vessels would stretch more than 60,000 miles, while an adult's would measure around 100,000 miles long.

 

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The little dot above a lowercase "i" and "j" has a name.​

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While many other languages include written accents throughout their alphabets, English only has two letters that include a "diacritic dot," according to Dictionary.com. That small mark you make over a lowercase "i" and a lowercase "j" is called a "tittle." It's likely a combination of the words "tiny" and "little" since it is an itty-bitty dot.

 

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The chicken and the ostrich are the closest living relatives of the Tyrannosaurus rex.​

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While we used to think that dinosaurs were giant lizard-like creatures that roamed the earth, it's now widely accepted that dinosaurs have more in common with present-day birds than they do with oversized reptiles. Research out of Harvard University in 2008 confirmed that the Tyrannosaurus rex shared more of its genetic makeup with ostriches and chickens than with alligators and crocodiles.

 

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There's a trademark on the world's darkest shade of black.​

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In the late 2010s, artist Anish Kapoor won the exclusive rights to use the color called vantablack, the "blackest black," meaning no other artist could use it. This didn't sit well with other creative-types, which is why Stuart Semple created the "pinkest pink," which he made available for purchase to anyone except Kapoor.

 

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The average American spends about 2.5 days a year looking for lost items.​

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When Pixie Wireless Tracker commissioned the largest independent lost and found survey in the U.S. in April 2017, the research showed that Americans spend around 2.5 days each year in total looking for their lost things. The most commonly misplaced items, according to the survey, are remotes, phones, keys, and glasses. Luckily, the survey also found that 29 percent of people who have lost their wallet or purse have had them returned to them. Those are pretty good odds!

 

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If you plug your nose, you can't tell the difference between an apple, a potato, and an onion.​

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If you've ever been told to pinch your nose while taking medicine so that you don't have to suffer through the awful taste, you might want to follow that advice. Our sense of smell is responsible for interpreting around 80 percent of what we taste, according to the University of Florida's Center for Smell and Taste. That means that without being able to smell apples, potatoes, and onions, they're indistinguishable. If you want to watch a few people try, check out this video from Food Beast. Or just trust us—it works!

 

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Punctuation wasn't always a part of our written language.​

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It would be nearly impossible to properly read without periods, commas, exclamation points, and question marks. But it turns out that punctuation wasn't always a part of our written language. According to the BBC, a librarian named Aristophanes from the Egyptian city of Alexandria in the 3rd century B.C. attempted to introduce a form of punctuation into a system that not only didn't use it, but also didn't bother to use capital letters or include spaces between words. While Aristophanes' version of punctuation didn't stick around, Christian writers in the 6th century began to punctuate their text, and eventually, we ended up with the punctuation system we use today.

 

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The real name of Monopoly mascot Uncle Pennybags is Milburn Pennybags.​

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The game of Monopoly dates back to 1903, according to The New York Times. And while it's seen plenty of changes throughout the years, the current version we know and love features a snazzy top hat-wearing man with a mustache who's holding a cane. While you may know him as rich Uncle Pennybags, his real name is Milburn Pennybags. And he's not the only member of the game who has a name. The Monopoly policeman is officially called Officer Edgar Mallory.

 

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The infinity sign is called a lemniscate.​

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If you were to draw an infinity sign, you would create a sort of figure-eight that looped in a continuous, unbroken line. You could also say that you're sketching out a lemniscate, which is another word for the infinity sign and means "decorated with ribbons" in Latin.

 

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Taco Bell was named after its owner, Glen Bell.​

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Taco Bell may feature a big bell on its logo, but the fast food chain didn't take its name from the musical instrument. The restaurant was actually named after its owner, Glen Bell, who opened the first Bell's Drive-In and Taco Tia in San Bernardino, California, in 1954. Bell's first restaurant named Taco Bell opened in Downey, California, in 1962.

 

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You can't hunt camels in Arizona.​

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While we'd hope you wouldn't hunt down a camel even if you did see one, you should know that in Arizona it's actually illegal, according to the Maricopa County Bar Association. And while this might seem like a useless law, it was once totally necessary. That's because camels did, in fact, populate the Arizona desert back in the 1800s after they were brought to the States by the U.S. Army.

 

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There are giant technicolor squirrels in India.​

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The squirrels in your neighborhood are most likely brown, black, or grey. But in southern India, there are giant technicolor squirrels. Weighing around four pounds and measuring up to three feet from head to tail, the Malabar giant squirrel looks more like a rainbow-inspired muppet than something that you'd find in the forest stateside. Amateur photographer Kaushik Vijayan was able to snap some spectacular shots of one of the creatures in 2019 and told CBS News, "I felt so amazed by how drop-dead gorgeous it looked. It was indeed a jaw-dropping sight to behold."

 

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The inventor of Pringles is buried in a Pringles can.​

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In 1966, Fredric Baur developed the ingenious idea for Procter & Gamble to uniformly stack chips inside a can instead of tossing them in a bag.

Baur was so proud of his invention that he wanted to take it to the grave—literally. He communicated his burial wishes to his family, and when he died at 89, his children stopped at Walgreens on their way to the funeral home to buy the burial Pringles can for his ashes. They did have one decision to make, though. "My siblings and I briefly debated what flavor to use," Baur's eldest son, Larry, told Time. "But I said, 'Look, we need to use the original.'" And that's exactly what they went with.

 

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Riding roller coasters can help you pass kidney stones.​

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After multiple people claimed that they had passed kidney stones while riding Walt Disney World's Big Thunder Mountain Railroad ride, a research team from Michigan State University decided to take a look at the situation in 2016. When they conducted tests using a model kidney, they found that there was a 64 percent successful pass rate for those seated in the rear of the roller coaster. But that number was just 16 percent for those seated in the front.