22 Facts That Might Change Your Perspective On Certain Things By Factourism

Ferdio is an infographic agency in Copenhagen, Denmark, and they’re on a mission to inform the Internet about just how incredible our world really is.

To do so, Ferdio launched Factourism, a project dedicated to sharing facts that are 100% true and 100% fascinating. Tailoring them to fit online, Ferdo is illustrating the facts too, and the pictures are really cool.

Continue scrolling to check them out and fire up Ferdio’s earlier submission to Bored Panda if you want more interesting trivia.

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#1 Guard Geese

Geese have excellent hearing, exceptional eyesight, are very territorial, aggressive, and loud. For all of these reasons, some police stations in rural parts Xinjiang Province now have geese guarding at night.

“In a world where fake news, misinformation, and biased content are on the rise, it can be hard to separate truth from fiction. This shouldn’t be the case,” a Ferdio spokesperson told Bored Panda. “Actually, the world is fascinating without faking it. Therefore, we created Factourism — a place to explore all of the amazing facts of our world, combining our love for strange facts with our love for illustration.”

Ferdio wants everyone to have zero doubt when it comes to their facts’ legitimacy, so it provides the source for each one of them.

#2 Mary Kenneth Keller

Born in 1913, Sister Mary Kenneth Keller professed her vows with the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the 40s, before proceeding to get a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and a master’s degree in mathematics and physics in the 50s. Finally, she completed her PhD in computer science in the 1965, one of the first two of its sort in the US, with her thesis “Inductive inference on computer generated patterns”.⁠

“Sure, there already are a lot of fact-based websites and SoMe accounts, but most of these simply lack quality. When it comes to design and creativity, they often use stock images and/or text in a very generic way. The main problem, however, is that these facts are either doubtful or, even worse, non-existent in the first place.”

There really isn’t a theme that Factourism likes the most. “Our facts can both be hilarious, mind-blowing, horrifying and surprising covering all kinds of topics like nature, culture, brands, science, climate, history or technology,” the spokesperson said. “We like that you can explore all sort of things from farts, selfies, pizzas, sweat, Ikea, Nutella, you name it.”

#3 Power Of A Batman Costume

Kids aged four and six were asked to perform a repetitive task, but offered the option to take breaks playing video games instead. No need to say that they didn’t persevere much at the assignment. But across both ages, they did spend more time working in the case they were impersonating Batman.

Ferdio is constantly collecting and looking for new facts in order to present their followers with the most interesting stuff. “Our … list is massive, and we actually tend to skip more facts than we use for various reasons. But basically it comes down to whether or not a particular fact is surprising and trustworthy, as well as how much visual potential does it have.”

#4 Pioneers Of Agriculture

Several species of ants, attines, started farming 55 to 60 millions of years before humans did. They favourite food? Fungus. They organise themselves around cutting grass and leaves, bringing them back to their colony, watching after fungus growing on the harvested crop, and then collecting and eating the fungus. The fungus species evolves along with each ant species.⁠

Everyone in Ferdio has developed a keen interest in Factourism and the whole team is involved in one way or the other. Be it researching, designing, or publishing. “We’re a small team of eight people, mainly consisting of graphic designers. The concept of Factourism is established, but we like that everyone has a different take on each fact. Currently, we add 2-3 new facts every week, but we also have a business to run, so we often plan a big batch of facts for the upcoming month.”

#5 Calendar Configurations

Seven configurations for each of the days that can start the year, times two for leap and non-leap years, it’s that simple.⁠

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2020 started on a Wednesday and is a leap year, as we will get a February 29 like almost every 4 years. The last leap year to start on that day was 1992, as were 1964 and 1936, so search your attic and explore your local thrift shops, see if you can excavate a calendar to recycle for the new year!⁠

#6 Tiny Dinosaurs

It’s no secret that today’s birds are descendants to what used to be dinosaurs. To study the locomotion of dinosaurs, researchers from the faculty of science of the university of Santiago realised that by moving backwards the centre of gravity of common birds, chickens, from their hatching to their adulthood, they could get the birds to walk more or less like dinosaurs used to. How? By having the chickens wearing artificial tails.

#7 Apple Varieties

We know more than 7,500 cultivars of apples. Some are good for eating, others are better for cider, jelly, or ornamentation, certain are quite old and not fit for mass production.

#8 First On The List

#9 Microwaved Grapes

When grapes are put in a microwave oven, especially when cut in two, their shape and material refract the waves in a way that eventually ionise the sodium and potassium content of the fruit and create plasma that ignites and takes fire. A popular science-fair/YouTube trick, Canadian scientists have since studied the phenomenon and reproduced it using artificial water beads. They note that the science behind it could serve as a base to develop wireless antennas and superresolution imaging. All thanks to someone who once wanted to eat warm grapes.⁠

#10 Emotional Cows

A researcher from the University of Sydney who studied a herd of cows for five months established that each cow was expressing themselves individually, voicing their emotions: excitement, arousal, engagement, or distress. In the context of farming, the research concluded that by understanding the different moos, farmers can give their attention to the individual cows who need it.⁠

#11 Giant Mushrooms

#12 The Dangers Of Cleaning

⁠Cleaning exposes your lungs to chemical sprays and other cleaning agents, which causes damage to respiratory health in the long term. It is especially true for people doing cleaning as their job. A study found out that over time, the impairment caused by cleaning is similar to smoking cigarettes: “This study suggests that […] long-term respiratory health is impaired 10–20 years after cleaning activities. […] The effect size was comparable to the effect size related to 10–20 pack-years of tobacco smoking.” (A pack-year being the number of packs smoked in a day multiplied by the number of years spent smoking)

#13 US Flag

The US flag, stripes and stars, has been having a similar design since the 18th century. But with the number of states changing all the time, the number of stars had to change too. And who says a different number of stars says a different arrangement, so that they all fit satisfyingly in the blue rectangle. With the addition of Alaska and Hawaii in early second half of the 20th century, there was a need for a 50-stars design. The designer of the winning arrangement, 9 lines of alternating 5 and 6 stars, is called Robert Heft and came up with it as part of a school project. He spent a weekend cutting and sewing his flag proposal, which was accepted as an official flag by congressman Walter Moeller and finally adopted in 1960.⁠

#14 Diamonds Inside Diamonds

Or rather, a diamond can grow around another diamond, although there is only one instance of the rare phenomenon known to us. In 2019, miners in Yakutia, Russia made a curious discovery: a diamond with an internal cavity, holding another diamond. It might be over 800 millions years old and geologists have been coming up with hypotheses concerning how it was formed.⁠

#15 Voting Rights

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station, and previously the Mir station, are not exempt of voting duty. They get their ballot as an encrypted PDF in their e-mail inbox, can cast their vote from one of the onboard computers, and send it back to their voting clerk. It initially required some adaptation in the law down back Earth to accommodate for this derogation, but now people in space can voice their political preference almost like anyone else.

#16 Face Touching

A small study, performed in 2008 in California on ten persons being recorded performing everyday office tasks, showed that they were on average touching their face 15.7 times an hour. If we consider a sleeping time of 8 hours, that’s about 250 times a day during waking hours.

#17 World’s Wealthiest

Billionaire Jeff Bezos, entrepreneur behind Amazon and richest person in the world, is worth $110 billion. He earns $2,489 a second. In 15 minutes, he earn as much as what an American with a bachelor’s degree earns in their lifetime. In the meantime, many are the Amazon workers who are edging the threshold of poverty. Bezos is notably using some of his money to launch manned space programmes.

#18 Gate Tower Building

Osaka is home of the Gate Tower Building (Gēto Tawā Biru), a 16-storeys tower opened in 1992 and designed by architects Azusa Sekkei and Yamamoto-Nishihara Kenchiku Sekkei Jimushō. Three of it floors are crossed by a motorway, going through a large hole in the building. The road does not touch the building and is held by a bridge, while the elevator go straight from level 4 to level 8.⁠

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#19 Visiting Stonehenge

The prehistoric monument of Stonehenge in South West England was built around 5000 to 4000 years ago and believed to have been a burial ground and to have been used for spiritual purposes. It has since become one of the most well-known landmarks, and has been forever attracting visitors. It’s very recently that the site has been protected: the land has had many owners before finally becoming public, buildings – now removed – has been built near to it, people would chisel off bits of rocks to take home as souvenirs, and until 1977 indeed, it was allowed to climb on the rocks.⁠

#20 Timeline

We often think of dinosaurs as all living in a period far in the past. But the Mesozoic Era, as it is called, lasted from 250 million to 66 million years ago. In other words, it lasted almost three times longer than the time that separate us from it now. An early dinosaur like Stegosaurus lived about 150 million years ago. A later specimen like Tyrannosaurus lived around 67 million years ago. As for humans, the earliest australopiths appeared 4 millions years ago.

#21 The Origins Of Hello

“Ahoy”. The nautical greeting could have been the first thing you say on the phone if the preferences of Alexander Graham Bell were followed. Rather, it is “Hello”, preferred by Thomas Edison and printed in the How-To guides of many early telephone books, that was adopted by the first telephone users. Its use then escaped the telephone lines to become the word we know today. Until then however, “Hello” wasn’t used as a greeting. It could express surprise of call for attention, but was not meant to mean “Hi”.

#22 Dirty Phones

Most people don’t clean their phone and most people touch about 3,000 times a day. That’s a lot less cleaning and a lot more touching than what happens to a toilet seat or flush. A study found a higher amount of bacteria, yeast and mould on phones than on toilets. Keyboards, mice and trackpads are also concerned.⁠

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