I’ll Never Look At McDonald’s Coffee The Same Way Again After Learning About What They Did, And 22 Other Wild Facts

1.Until 2015 in the UK, the coloring in red skittles contained carmine, which derives from the crushed abdomen of female beetles.

2.There’s an 80% chance your toothbrush has fecal matter on it. Even if it’s stored in a closed container. Even toothbrushes stored outside the bathroom may be contaminated with fecal matter.

3.Winnie the Pooh was banned from a Polish playground because he doesn’t wear pants.

4.The casting team for the Harry Potter movies was strongly against non-British actors being a part of the film, which meant that Robin Williams was turned down for Hagrid.

Jason Laveris / Getty Images, Warner Bros.

Liam Aiken was the only American actor who even got the chance to audition for Harry Potter. Aside from that one exception, the casting team insisted on hiring only British actors. Because of that rule, Robin Williams reached out to director Chris Columbus about playing Hagrid but was politely turned down. As casting director Janet Hirshenson later explained, once Columbus said no to Robin, there was no way he was going to make an exception for anyone else.

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5.Cows have accents, and it goes way beyond moo!

UK dairy farmers observed that cows seemed to moo with slight variations depending on the region. Curious about this, researchers from the University of London conducted a study and confirmed it — cows really do have regional differences in their moos. Interestingly, birds are also known to develop distinct local dialects.

6.Nutmeg isn’t just used in food. It can also be hallucinogenic if consumed in large doses.

7.McDonald’s used to have stirring spoons for their coffee until people began using them to snort cocaine.

8.Pirates wore eye patches not because they were missing an eye, but to keep one eye adjusted to darkness. This let them switch quickly between bright sunlight above deck and the dim conditions below deck, giving them an advantage in battle or while moving through the ship.

9.You can actually go to Hell…Hell, Norway that is, or even Hell, Michigan. And don’t worry, it doesn’t really get hot.

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10.Pope John Paul II is an honorary Harlem Globetrotter.

11.Believe it or not, the largest tire manufacturer in the world is…Lego.

In 2011, Guinness World Records named Lego the biggest tire manufacturer in the world. That year, the company produced 381 million tiny tires — far more than Bridgestone’s 190 million, Michelin’s 184 million, or Goodyear’s 181 million. Sure, Lego tires are much easier to make since they’re miniature and don’t require everything an actual motor vehicle tire needs, but the numbers are still surprising!

12.Roses are among the oldest plants on Earth, with fossils dating back 35 million years. The oldest living rose, which grows on a wall at Hildesheim Cathedral in Germany, is over 1,000 years old — and amazingly, it even survived a World War II bombing.

13.President Theodore Roosevelt had a pet hyena named Bill.

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14.There’s a pretty high chance that the ground coffee you use likely contains cockroaches.

15.On August 9, 1996, production on Titanic took an unexpected and alarming turn when almost 80 cast and crew members were sent to the hospital after eating clam chowder on set. At first, the incident was thought to be a case of food poisoning, but a Nova Scotia newspaper later reported that the chowder had been deliberately spiked with PCP. Among those affected were actor Bill Paxton and director James Cameron.

16.It’s wild to think about, but none of us have ever actually seen our own faces — only reflections and images. Every time we look in a mirror or scroll past a photo, we’re only catching a filtered representation. The world sees us directly, but we only know ourselves through glass and pixels.

17.Stop signs used to be yellow.

Before the 1920s, stop signs didn’t follow any uniform rules — they came in all different shapes and colors. In 1922, the American Association of State Highway Officials decided that stop signs should be yellow and octagon-shaped. At the time, they didn’t choose red because red paint tended to fade quickly and appeared too dark at night. It wasn’t until the 1950s, after more durable red paint was developed, that the now-familiar red stop sign became the standard.

18.There’s actually a gender-neutral word for “niece” or “nephew” — It’s “nibling.”

If you’re brother or sister is becoming a parent but they don’t know the sex yet, you could easily say, “I have a nibling on the way!”

19.“Paul Winchell, who voiced Tigger in The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, invented an artificial heart.”

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20.Technically, strawberries and raspberries aren’t berries, but bananas and avocados are.

Strawberries aren’t considered true berries because they don’t develop from a single ovary — instead, each tiny seed on the outside comes from its own ovary. Bananas, on the other hand, grow from a single ovary and meet the botanical definition of a berry, which is why they count as one.

21.Before people became obsessed with painting fake freckles on their faces, people wore fake moles made of things like silk, velvet, and even mouse skin as a fashion statement.

While stars like Marilyn Monroe, Eva Mendes, and Cindy Crawford popularized beauty marks, people wore facial patches for a variety of reasons. Some covered scars or blemishes, others made political statements, and some even used them to express their personality or relationship status. These patches came in all sorts of shapes — circles, hearts, stars, and moons. The trend saw a short revival in the 1940s before disappearing again.

22.The dot over the lowercase letters ‘i’ and ‘j’ actually has a name.

It’s called a tittle. It appears to be a blend of the words “tiny” and “little”…now how adorable is that?!

23.Lastly, Rapper Pusha T and Justin Timberlake wrote the “I’m Lovin’ It” jingle for McDonald’s. Unfortunately, they were only paid a one-time fee, and they don’t own any publishing rights.

Pusha T mentioned in a podcast that he received a $500,000 upfront payment for a jingle — a hefty sum, but he doesn’t hold any publishing rights to it. Since the jingle has been used for years, he likely could have made much more if he had. On the other hand, he also created the jingle for Arby’s “We Have the Meats” slogan, and he owns 40% of the publishing rights for that one.

Do you have a cool fact to share? Let me know in the comments!

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