20 Amazing True Facts that are Very Hard to Believe

It's great to learn something new every day. These mind-boggling facts sound made-up but are actually all true. I also did the research to back up all these facts. Here, take a look.

The unicorn.
Image credit: Pixabay

1. The National Animal of Scotland is a Unicorn.

A fictitious creature may seem odd a choice for a country's national animal, but the unicorn has been a Scottish heraldic symbol since the 12th century, when it was used on an early form of the Scottish coat of arms by William I. The unicorn was believed to be the natural enemy of the lion- a symbol that the English Royals adopted around a hundred years before.

According to folklore, the lion and the unicorn hated each other- a tradition going back to the ancient Babylonians in 3500 B.C. In western parts of the world, the unicorn was believed to be real and was adopted as Scotland's national animal by King Robert in the late 1300's.

2. Nintendo was founded in 1889.

On September 23, 1889, Fusajiro Yamauchi at Kyoto, Kyoto Prefecture, Japan, founded Nintendo. Based in Kyoto, the business produced and marketed a playing card game called "Hanafunda". The word Nintendo can be translated as " leave luck to heaven" or alternatively as "the temple of free hanafunda".

3. Saudi Arabia imports camels from Australia

While there are plenty of camel farms in Saudi Arabia, their camels are bred for domestic uses and racing. The camels from Australia are mostly used for meat, which is a delicacy in many countries in the Middle East.

Yes, Australia has camels. They were imported into the continent in the 19th century from Arabia, India, and Afghanistan because they were well suited for the Outback. However, when the automobile came, the camels weren't needed and were released into the Outback where they grew in numbers. To keep numbers down, Australia started exporting camels for meat in 2002.

Emu, a flightless bird.
Image credit: Pixabay

4. In Australia, there was a war called the Emu War. The Emus won.

Back in 1932, emus were causing chaos for farmers in the western Australian district of Campion. Emus are indigenous to Australia and are very large flightless birds.

The end result of the war was that the emus won via outlasting the humans. While there were no human casualties, only 986 of the roughly 20,000 emus were killed and 9860 bullets used.

5. The current American flag was designed by a 17-year-old boy.

Robert G. Heft designed the current 50- star American flag for a school project when he was 17 years old. He received a B- on the design.

6. The youngest known mother was 5 years old.

Lina Medina of Peru is the youngest confirmed mother in medical history giving birth at the age of 5 years, 7 months and 17 days. She was born on September 27, 1933, and gave birth on May 14, 1939, to a baby boy she named Gerardo after her doctor. She was diagnosed with a rare condition called precocious puberty which is basically early onset of sexual development.

Bonus: At age 70, Rajo Devi Lohan became the oldest person to give birth to a child.

7. France last used the guillotine to execute someone after Star Wars premiered.

On September 10, 1977, convicted murderer Hamida Djandoubi, a Tunisian immigrant residing in Marseilles, was the last person to meet his end by the "National Razor". He was found guilty of the torture-slay of his girlfriend and received the death penalty. Still, the machine's 189-year-old reign only officially came to an end in September 1981 when France abolished the death penalty for good.

Star Wars: Episode IV- A New Hope premiered in theatres May 25, 1977.

8. The lighter was invented before the match.

The match was invented in 1826 by John Walker of England. Unfortunately for him, his matches weren't very reliable, so the match at that time did not see success. It wasn't until 5 years later that a certain Charles Sauria of France managed to develop a match that used white phosphorus. They were easily ignited and were highly toxic. It was only in the 1900's that the US government with Europe forced manufacturers to switch to a non-toxic chemical instead.

As for the lighter, a German chemist named Johann Wolfgang Dobereiner is credited for inventing the first ever lighter called "Dobereiner's Lamp" in 1823. It was quite unsuccessful as well for it used the reaction of hydrogen to a platinum sponge to emit heat. However, in 1903, a man named Carl Auer Von Welsbach, patented ferrocerium (usually mistaken as flint) and paved the way to the lighters we know today.

Bonus: 1892- matchbook matches were patented in the US by Joshua Pussey
              1888- Ebeneezer Beechen patented the first ever match making the machine
              1932- George G. Blaisdell invented the Zippo lighter in Bradford, Pennsylvania

9. Betty White is older than sliced bread.

Sliced bread is a loaf that has been sliced in a machine and packaged for convenience. It was first sold by the Chillicothe Baking Company in Chillicothe, Missouri on July 7, 1928, and advertised as "the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped". This led to the popular phrase " greatest thing since sliced bread". Otto Frederick Rohwedder of Davenport, Iowa invented the first loaf-at-a-time bread slicing machine. He built a prototype in 1912 which was destroyed in a fire and it was not until 1928, that Rohwedder had a fully functioning machine.

Betty White is 95 years old and was born on January 17, 1922.

Pluto is now considered a dwarf planet. Located in the Kuiper Belt.
Image credit: Pixabay

10. From the time it was discovered to the time it was demoted to a dwarf planet, Pluto hadn't made a full trip around the Sun.

Pluto, named after the Roman God of Death, was discovered by American astronomer Clyde William Tombaugh on February 18, 1930, and was the first object from the Kuiper belt ( a ring of bodies beyond Neptune) to be discovered. Tombaugh received a job offer from Lowell Observatory after submitting research he had done. He was assigned to locate the ninth planet, a search instigated by Percival Lowell. He used a 33cm (13-inch) telescope to photograph the sky and an instrument called a blink comparator. On February 18, 1930, Tombaugh pinpointed Pluto and on March 13 (the birth anniversary of Lowell) Lowell Observatory announced the discovery of Pluto.

However, on August 24, 2006, the International Astronomical Union announced that Pluto would no longer be considered a planet, due to new rules that said planets must "clear the neighborhood around its orbit." Since Pluto's oblong orbit overlaps Neptune's, it was disqualified.

Pluto takes 248 years to orbit the Sun. From discovery to the demotion to dwarf planet, 76 years.

11. The lighter the roast of the coffee, the more caffeine it has.

The usual color of the raw coffee bean is green (the best being grayish-blue). To produce coffee, beans are roasted. The darker the color, the longer they have been roasted. While a stronger dark roast may seemingly have higher caffeine content (if based on taste), this is not true based on the roasting process. The longer coffee beans are roasted, the more caffeine is burned off thus, the caffeine level decreases as the roast gets darker. Light roasts aren't as strong in flavor but, they pack the most caffeine.

12. The Oxford University is older than the Aztec Empire.

The Aztec Empire, or the Triple Alliance, began as an alliance of three Nahua, "altepetl" city-states: Mexico-Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan. These three city-states ruled the area in and around the Valley of Mexico from 1428 until they were defeated by the combined forces of the Spanish conquistadores and their native allies under Hernan Cortes in 1521.

The University of Oxford (informally Oxford University or Oxford) is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. It has no known date of foundation but, there is evidence of teaching as far as 1096 making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world.

Bonus: The oldest existing and continually educational institution in the world is the University of Karueein founded in 859 A.D. in Fez, Morocco. The University of Bologna, Italy, was founded in 1088 and is the oldest one in Europe.

13. There is a church made mainly of cardboard.

The Cardboard Cathedral in Christchurch, New Zealand, is the transitional pro-cathedral of the Anglican Diocese of Christchurch. It opened in August 2013. It was designed by "disaster architect" Shigeru Ban and was constructed using mainly cardboard tubes as its primary building material. 98 giant cardboard tubes coated with multiple layers of waterproof polyurethane was used in the construction of the Cardboard Cathedral which cost $6 million to build and is designed to last up to 50 years.

14. Nokia was originally founded in 1865.

Nokia Company's history started in 1865 when mining engineer Frederick Idestam established a groundwood pulp mill on the banks of the of the Tammerkoski rapids in the town of Tampere, in southwestern Finland. The company's name came from the Nokia town and Nokianvirta river where Idestam built a second mill. The predecessors of the modern Nokia were the Nokia Company (Nokia Ab), Finnish Rubber Works Ltd. (Suomen Gummitehdas Oy) and Finnish Cable Works Ltd. (Suomen Kaapelitehdas Oy).

15. The Kitti's hog-nosed bat is the size of a bumblebee.

Yes, Kitti's hog-nosed bat of Thailand is the smallest bat in the world and shares the title with the Etruscan Shrew as the smallest mammal in the world. These cute little creatures are about 29 to 33 mm in length as small as a bumblebee hence the name the "bumblebee bat", weigh only 2 grams, with a wingspan of approximately 170 mm.

16. There is a lamp that uses no electricity at all.

In 2002, Brazilian mechanic Alfredo Moser invented the Moser lamp which makes use of a plastic bottle filled with water and the smallest bit of bleach (to stop the bottle turning green with algae) and works through the refraction of natural light- kicking out roughly 40-60 watts per lamp. This lamp is popular in many countries where electricity is an expensive commodity. In the Philippines alone, 140,000 homes have been fitted with the Moser lamp. Despite the success of his invention, Moser has not become rich but instead has a great sense of pride for his altruism.

A tea bag.
Image credit: Pixabay

17. The tea bag was an accidental invention.

A thrifty tea merchant from New York named Thomas Sullivan is credited with inventing the first tea bag in 1908. Looking to save some money, he distributed tea samples in small silken bags instead of metallic tins. His customers, not understanding that these were samples, dunked them and suddenly Sullivan was swamped with tea bag orders.

18. If eaten in one meal, 30 to 90 g of a polar bear liver is enough to kill a human being.

So great is the polar bear's ability to store vitamin A in the form of retinol (polar bear's liver contains 24,000-35000 I.U./gram) that if you were to consume the liver, you would more likely succumb to the effects of Hypervitaminosis A (Vitamin A poisoning). A healthy adult human can only withstand 10,000 I.U. of Vitamin A.

19. The Nazis were the first ever people in modern history to start an anti-smoking campaign.

After German doctors discovered the link between smoking and lung cancer, Nazi Germany initiated a strong anti-tobacco movement and led the first public anti-smoking campaign in modern history.

The German movement was the most powerful anti-smoking movement in the world during the 1930s and early 1940s. Adolf Hitler's personal distaste for tobacco and smoking and the Nazi reproductive policies were among the motivating campaign against smoking. The Nazis banned smoking in trams, buses and city trains, promoted health education, limited cigarette rations, held medical lectures for soldiers and even raised tobacco tax.

20. 2 Amazing Facts About the Philippines.

White sand beach, Camiguin Island.
Image credit: Pixabay

a.) Camiguin has the most number of volcanoes per square kilometer than any other island on Earth.

Camiguin, "The Island Born of Fire", is one of the smallest islands in the Philippines with a length of only 23 kilometers and a width that is a little over 14 kilometers. It is basically volcanic in origin, having 7 volcanoes in its territory with one still active (Mt. Hibok-Hibok) and the only place in the Philippines that has more volcanoes (7) than towns (5).

b.) There's an islet in the Philippines within a lake on an island within a lake on an island. 

Ok, let us take this one by one. In the Philippines, there's an islet (Vulcan Point) within a lake (Main Crater Lake of Taal Volcano, also largest crater lake in the world) on an island (Volcano Island) within a lake (Taal Lake) on an island (Luzon).

Vulcan Point is an islet inside the caldera filled with water/ crater lake known as the Main Crater Lake of Taal Volcano, the smallest active volcano in the world. Vulcan Point is also considered to be the world's largest islet within a lake on an island in a lake on an island (it's catchy) and is a remnant of the old crater floor.

Bonus: The world's smallest inactive volcano is Cuexcomate in Mexico. Taal Volcano is 39 times bigger than this volcano.

Taal Volcano by therealbrute
 is licensed under CC 2.0

This is Taal Volcano and its Crater lake.

* Credit to Sources:

• www.todayifoundout.com
• Wikipedia
• The Federalists Papers Project (www.thefederalistpapers.org) 30 Amazing Facts That Sound Made-up but are Actually True
• allfunny.info
• www.scotsman.com. Unicorn, National Animal of Scotland
• www.britannica,com
• www.mentalfloss.com 65 Amazing Facts That will Blow your Mind
• www.thefactsite.com 100 Crazy Facts to Truly Blow Your Mind by Jack Leithe De- Graaf
• www.faq.ph 10 Facts About the Philippines that will Blow Your Mind
• www.tourism.gov.ph Facts About the Philippines
• wwww.camiguin-island.com