Shower Thoughts: True Facts That Sound Completely Made up

Have you ever paused to think about how one of the most famous sentences of all time doesn't make grammatical sense? Well, because we all apparently heard it wrong and continue to say it wrong, according to the man himself, Neil Armstrong, what he did say that day when he stepped foot on the moon was, "One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind," which makes much more sense.

There can be a lot of things that sound strange at first, but as we've all come to find out, sometimes reality can be stranger than fiction. Like how the sounds of the T-Rex speaking in Jurassic Park are actually just tortoises having sex and how the ego only sounds like this because of Hollywood magic, when in reality it sounds more like this. Here are true facts that sound completely made up.

It's pretty common knowledge at this point that humans can live with just one kidney, but did you also know that you can live without a spleen, an appendix, a gallbladder, tonsils, six of your ribs, and one lung? In fact, many people do, and they lead pretty normal lives. The only thing you can't do with just one lung is participate in strenuous exercises or run long distances. But with just one lung, you could run from the United States to Russia since the shortest distance between the two countries is just 2.4 miles. How comforting! This distance is measured from Russia's Big Diomede Island to America's Little Diomede Island. Why is America's island smaller? We might never know.

But you know what is really big, thick, and long? A giraffe's neck! Considering how massive these things are, it's incredible to think that they have the same number of bones as a human neck. They're just way bigger, and it's not just them and us. All mammals have the same number of bones in their neck.

When we were younger, we were taught that there are seven days in a week, four weeks in a month, and 52 weeks in a year, but the truth is that's wrong. Well, technically it's correct, but it only works here on Earth. On other planets, it's completely different. On Venus, for example, a day is longer than an entire year. It's probably helpful to mention that a day on a particular planet is defined as the time it takes that planet to spin around once on its axis, and a year is the time it takes for the planet to orbit around the star—in this case, the Sun.

Pluto sadly wasn't able to complete a full orbit around the sun in the 76 years from when it was discovered in 1930 to when it was declassified as a planet in 2006. A small planet with a really long orbit! But you know what is really, really long? It's the name of the hill in New Zealand. You're welcome.

Here's a true fact that sounds completely made up: as of December 2022, more than half the people who earned six figures in the US reported living paycheck to paycheck. This is why I recommend investing in today's sponsor, Masterworks. This award-winning fintech company in New York City allows everyday investors with little capital to invest like billionaires and reap the potential benefits by allowing ordinary people to invest in shares of contemporary art from legends like Picasso, Basquiat, and Banksy.

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We've all faced rejections and insults; don't let them get to you. They're just lessons that we all had to learn one way or another. The founder of Lamborghini, for example, had to be rejected by Ferrari before he got the desire to create Lamborghini. Steve Jobs had to be kicked out of his own company before he could bring it back to life. Microsoft had to stop producing newer versions of Internet Explorer to realize that they shouldn't have ever made it in the first place. But you get the point.

Time is an illusion, and if you don't study history, it can be quite jarring to learn that sometimes things aren't as timely as we think. Did you know that we sent a man to the Moon before we put wheels on suitcases? Just imagine how stressful it must have been for Neil to carry all that luggage to and from space. The invention of the iPhone in 2007 is closer to the existence of Cleopatra than Cleopatra was to the building of the Pyramids of Giza.

Although Oxford University is older than the Aztec Empire, it isn't the first university to ever exist. India's Nalanda University was in operation for hundreds of years before Oxford. We made lighters before we made matches. Sharks existed before grass! Heck, sharks were in existence before the rings of Saturn. It really makes you appreciate the beauty of human civilization. We've only been here for a short time, but we've been able to achieve so much. We're so special, aren't we?

That's what I told Rebecca before she broke up with me. But now I know I was wrong because she wasn't special; she was bananas! I don't mean that as an insult because we're all bananas—at least 50% of each of us—because humans share 50% of our DNA with bananas and with fruit flies, as it turns out. Our profound exclusivity is neither profound nor exclusive.

What is exclusive, however, is a randomly shuffled deck of cards. It may seem rather mundane, but the sequence of a randomly shuffled deck of cards has never been seen before and will never be seen again. A standard deck of cards has 52 cards, which means there are 52 factorial different ways the cards can be arranged when shuffled randomly. That number, 52 factorial, is 8 with 67 zeros after it.

To put this in perspective, the universe has existed for over 13 billion years but let's round it up to 15 billion. Let's also assume there are around 2 trillion galaxies, each containing approximately 100 trillion star systems. Each star system had 10 planets, and in each planet hosted 10 billion life forms. Every one of those life forms could shuffle a deck of cards every second since the beginning of time, and they still wouldn't produce a repeated sequence. That is simply insane!

Speaking of arrangements, some countries aren't arranged the way we think they ought to be. Finland and North Korea are separated by just one country. New York is closer to the Equator than it is to Rome. Bangladesh went to war and won against Pakistan—two countries that are separated by India, the seventh largest country in the world. And get this: all three countries were once considered the same country! Talk about sibling rivalry.

The logistics for that war must have caused several butt loads, which is a legitimate unit of measurement equal to 126 gallons. Remember when you were young and your mom told you not to swallow apple seeds, or a tree would grow in your belly? Well, it turns out she was wrong: trees can't grow in people. But she was right in telling you not to swallow apple seeds—eating apple seeds can lead to cyanide poisoning. Don't worry too much, though; you'd need the seeds from at least 150 apples for that!

Speaking of apples, Steve Jobs chose the name of his company to get back at his former employer, Atari, because phone books—a book that had a list of names, addresses, and phone numbers of the businesses in the area—were written in alphabetical order. Apple would come before Atari, so whenever people searched for a computer business in the phone book, they would find Steve's company first. Suffice it to say that they no longer need that slight competitive advantage.

Fresh, clean water can do wonders, but how fresh is the water we drink? Did you know the probability that at least one of the molecules of the water you drink today passed through a dinosaur is one hundred percent? We somehow keep coming back to dinosaurs; maybe it's a sign that Rebecca and I should be Tyranno and work things out.

Because at the end of the day, mistakes happen. Like the time Switzerland accidentally invaded another country in 2007. Around 171 of Switzerland's troops accidentally went into Liechtenstein. The Swiss government formally apologized, but the governor of Liechtenstein wasn't worried and excused the situation. "It's happened before," he said. "Uh, Liechtenstein is really nice, as you can see."

So nice, in fact, that in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, Liechtenstein sent a company of 80 soldiers to war only to have 81 return. Not only did they not have any casualties, but an Austrian liaison officer joined them on the way home!

But it also helps to have luck. Luck like Anatoli Bragowski had. He was a researcher working at the Soviet Union's most powerful particle accelerator, the U70 synchrotron. He was down there one day to fix something; he leaned down to look at a part of the machine without realizing the accelerator was active at the time and stuck his head directly into the beam bath. He reported seeing a tremendously bright flash, likely due to his optic nerves being excited through the roof.

Believe it or not, he actually wanted to cover it up and decided to continue working. As time passed, Anatoli noticed huge swelling developing along the regions where the beam had entered and exited his head. He slowly started developing radiation sickness; there was no hiding anymore, so he sought help. The physician in charge feared the worst, but as it turned out, Anatoli had unintentionally received a version of proton beam therapy often used to treat cancer. Thanks to the physics of the proton beam therapy, most of the energy that might have otherwise killed Anatoli was deposited outside of his skull.

Despite suffering seizures and epilepsy, Anatoli lives on to this day. However, he refused an offer from the United States to be a research subject. Oh, and half of his face stopped aging! Talk about expensive Botox! It's something Rebecca would have needed. I mean, I like—oh well, she's gone. No, but I mean for all her flaws, she was always very kind to me, despite what we went through. Despite how rough the breakup was, she put her hand in mine, looked me in the eye assuredly, and told me we can still be cousins. That, of course, was completely made up. Or was it?