#1 The movement of falling cats is used as part of an astronaut’s training.
The way cats try to correct themselves when falling was studied and analyzed by NASA scientists.
They then used their findings as a means to teach falling astronauts how to correct their movements in zero gravity.
#2 We have a house fire to thank for The Sims.
Will Wight, creator or the iconic gaming franchise, suffered a tragic house fire in 1991 where he lost everything to the flames.
Afterwards he had a vision of rebuilding his house, which led him to thinking of a game where one would create a “virtual dollhouse”, and from that The Sims was born.
#3 Three types of Australian birds deliberately spread wildfires.
Why would they do that? Well, it’s Australia, what did you expect?!
Black kites, whistling kites and brown falcons all purposefully aid the spread of wildfires by picking up and dropping flaming sticks just so the fire will flush out their prey and make it easier for them to catch.
#4 An Italian punk band once ate spaghetti on stage instead of playing any songs.
In 1979, at the height of punk, Italian comedy punk band Skiantos wheeled a kitchen, a table, a TV and a fridge onto their set stage, boiled up some spaghetti and then sat there eating it.
Unsurprisingly, the audience was less than pleased at the “gig”!
#5 Woodpeckers eat brains when they get too hungry.
Nope, not zombie woodpeckers, just normal woodpeckers.
If they’ve gone too long without food, they will pin down other birds and peck at the back of their heads until they crack through their skulls and then eat their brains. Freaky.
#6 Italy has 34 native languages in use today.
Surprisingly, most of these different languages are not, in fact, dialects of Italian.
Rather they are evolved independently from common Latin.
#7 Amsterdam’s Royal Palace sits on 13,659 wooden poles.
Because of the thick layer of fen and clay present in Dutch soil, all the buildings in the Netherlands are built on wooden poles.
These wooden poles are fixed into a sandy layer over 35 feet below ground-level!
#8 There is a gargoyle with Darth Vader’s head on it on the Washington Cathedral.
It was placed there after a child’s “design a carving” competition was held in the 80s to decide what character should adorn the Cathedral.
#9 Dolph Lundgren has an IQ of 160.
That’s right; the “If he dies, he dies” meme fellow from Rocky IV is actually a super genius!
He has a Master’s Degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Sydney and the Royal Institute of Technology, alongside a Fulbright scholarship to MIT.
Oh, he was also the European Champion of Karate in 1981.
#10 Two stealth nuclear submarines once bumped into each other by accident.
In 2009 in the Atlantic Ocean, two stealth-cloaked nuclear submarines (one from France and one from Britain) bumped into each other out of sheer coincidence.
They were both cloaked so well from each other that neither submarine could detect the other, even when they were only a couple feet apart.
#11 The Hawaiian flag purposefully looks like a combination of the British and American flags.
This is because it was designed by then-King Kamehameha I in 1812, and he wanted a flag that would appeal to both the Americans and the British.
#12 NASA’s internet speed is 91 GB per second!
This means on NASA’s internet you could download a high-quality 1080p movie in mere milliseconds!
Normal household internet speeds are roughly 25 MB per second, which is dwarfed by NASA’s hugely superior internet speeds.
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