50 Fascinating Trivia & General Knowledge Facts

I have always loved collecting little tidbits of information, and trying out my luck on pub trivia nights and other quizzes over the years - I always seemed to win a little something during the night. So it follows that here I am sharing a little bit of the trivia I love so well.

50 fascinating facts seemed a nice round number to give you your daily trivia hit, so here we go:

• Charles Dickens is believed to have suffered from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
• Excarnation was more commonly practiced in the past. Also known as 'defleshing' it is where the dead have their flesh and organs removed until only the bones are left.
• The Romans called Friday 'Day of Venus'
• Japanese people were sold into slavery to the Portuguese in the 16th and 17th century. As a result small numbers of Japanese turned up in Portugal's various colonies.
• The Aztecs and other Mesoamerican peoples used cacao beans as currency.

• We were always taught that there are 3 states of matter - solid, liquid and gas. But in this fast-evolving world our primary school education just doesn't hold up does it? In fact, there are said to be 6 states of matter now, the additional 3 being plasma, Bose-Einstein condensates and fermionic condensates.
• Did you know that Oxygen comes in solid form? It needs to be chilled to a very low temperature to solidify, but once it does it is a pale blue colour.
• There are people who study snails and other molluscs. They are called malacologists.
• Wombats are cute furry animals native to Australia. They have a short gestation period of only 20 days.
• You may have wondered why the chemical symbol for Silver is 'Ag'. It is taken from the Latin name for silver: 'argentum'.

• The human hand is an amazing thing and enables use to do so many complex tasks. 27 bones make up the human hand.
• The word 'robot' comes from the Czech word 'robota', meaning 'slave'.
• PageRank is an algorithm used to rank web pages. It isn't named after the pages you find on websites, however. It is named after Larry Page, one of Google's founders.
• Pedology is the study of soil
• YouTube was created by employees of Paypal

• An old-fashioned name for a tomato is 'love apple'.
• MacDonalds used to sell Onion Nuggets.
• A quark is an elementary particle in quantum physics. It is also a type of sour milk product common in Europe.
• In Thailand a popular beer snack is pak ped tod - marinated and grilled ducks beaks.
• Raw oysters are alive when you swallow them.

• The first fruit to be eaten on the Moon was canned peaches.
• Entomophagy is the practice of eating insects.
• Earth ovens are a common tradition among people of the Pacific. They go by different names but all involve the use of an earth pit filled with hot stones used to bake meat, vegetables and root crops together.
• Lachanophobia is an irrational fear of vegetables.
• Cinnamon was used by the ancient Egyptians in their process of embalming.

• I have been using the word 'hangry' for years! Hangry is a common slang for getting angry or grumpy because you are hungry. And in 2018, 'hangry' has finally been added to the Oxford English Dictionary. Success!
• There are ever more ways to beautifully memorialize your loved ones. Many of these involve creative use of cremation ashes - in the form of swirl-pattern-ash paper weights, portraits painted using ashes and various forms of jewelry made of or containing the ashes of the deceased person.
• 3D metal printers are now a thing. This paves the way for more easily creating replacement parts for cars and other machines.
• Speaking of 3D, Somalia issued 3D coins in 2008. They come in interesting shapes including a solid cone, a sphere, a pyramid and a cylinder. They were so popular they were reissued in 2014.
• Families of the U.S president - or 'first families' - have been known to leave the White House in debt. While they are not expected to pay rent they do have to pay for many expenses incurred while living in the White House - many of which are unnecessary and more about keeping up appearances. Perhaps not the best example to set.

• Element collecting is the hobby of collecting as many of the elements from the periodic table as possible.
• Hikaru Dorodango is a Japanese hobby that involves drying balls of soil and polishing them till they resemble shiny billiard balls.
• Tapophiles like to spend their spare time hanging out in cemeteries.
• Billionaire Warren Buffet plays the ukelele.
• Philluminy is the hobby of collecting matchboxes.

• In 2018 a trapdoor spider died at the age of 43. The spider had been part of a study monitoring trapdoor spiders since 1974.
• Snails have been known to hibernate for up to 3 years.
• Mangrove seeds plant themselves in a novel way. The seed of a mangrove is shaped like a spear that is tapered at both ends and about a big as your hand. It floats upright in this way in the ocean and when it approaches shore it is simply 'stabbed' into the soft mud by the going down of the tide.
• The helmeted hornbill is a striking-looking bird that can be found in parts of Asia. It is under threat because it's 'helmet' is much in demand for use in ornamental carvings. It is even more expensive than elephant ivory.
• Female squirrels adopt orphaned baby squirrels if they are closely related to them.

• Some types of turtles can stay longer underwater by breathing through their butt. Very handy!
• A king penguin named Nils Olav was knighted in Norway in 2008.
• Dogs can be identified by their nose prints.
• The wood frog has so much glucose in their blood that although they appear to be completely frozen during their Winter hibernation, their vital organs do not freeze. The wood frogs do, however stop breathing during this hibernation and their hearts even stop beating. But they awaken when temperatures rise - no worse for the wear.
• Baby elephants suck on their own trunks for comfort the way children suck on their thumbs.

• The word 'grimalkin' is an archaic word for a cat.
• The Latin meaning of the name Katherine is 'pure'.
• John Ronald Reuel Tolkien is the full name of 'The Lord of the Rings' author J.R.R Tolkien.
• Your small intestine is 6 metres long.
• Some ants are nocturnal.