10 of the Craziest Facts Out There, Part 1

The world is full of wacky facts of human existence and the natural world. Here are 10 gems—sure to make you laugh, cringe, or wonder: “But why!?”
10 of the Craziest Facts Out There, Part 1
Ai Ai, a 26-year-old chimpanzee, enjoys a cigarette after a meal at the zoo in Xian, in central China's Shaanxi province, file photo. In South Bend, Indiana, there's a law against monkeys smoking. (AFP/AFP/Getty Images)
8/23/2013
Updated:
11/5/2013

Planet Earth is full of crazy facts—wacky manifestations of human life and amazing truths of the natural world.  Here are 10 gems—sure to make you laugh, cringe, or ponder that big question: “But why!?”

#1. The voice actors for Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse actually got married in real life.

 

#2. A man in Saudi Arabia kicked a human statue 783 times in three minutes with one leg setting a world record.

#3. The British government cleared out an entire island—Diego Garcia, a coral atoll south of the equator in the central Indian Ocean—full of people for the U.S. to build a military base, by sending the citizens to live in America.

 

#4. Rats respond to tickling with laughter.

 

#5. It’s illegal to force a monkey to smoke a cigarette in South Bend, Indiana.

 

#6. 700 million people have blood sucking worms living inside them.

#7. Hitler’s doctor prescribed him to ingest human feces. They were pills made of the feces of Bulgarian peasants, whose diet of bulgar wheat meant their excreta was particularly high in fiber.

 

RECOMMENDED: 10 of the Craziest Facts Out There, Part 2

 

#8. At one point during World War I people referred to hamburgers as liberty steaks.

 

#9. Bananas were once said to produce hallucinogenic properties as a hoax to raise awareness of the ongoing drug abuse problem in the U.S.

#10. The world’s fastest production car, Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport Vitesse, has a 1,200 horsepower engine and can go 258 miles per hour on the highway.

 

Feel free to find your own crazy facts around the world and comment on this page. Let’s see what other whacky realities we can discover and share them with one another.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that hamburgers were called “liberty burgers” in WWII; in fact, it was WWI.

RELATED: 5 of the Craziest Scientific Facts Out There

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