‘What’s a little-known fact that will immediately make all of us feel stupid?’ – 21 fascinating truths to blow your tiny mind

You probably think you’re pretty smart, right? You’ve had some education and read a couple high-falutin books, so there aren’t many subjects you don’t have at least a vague grasp of.

Turns out, you’re probably not as bright as you think, as the people of the AskUK subreddit have discovered. Redditor AnonymousTimewaster asked ‘What’s a little-known fact that will immediately make all of us feel stupid?’ and bravely followed it up with their own example…

‘I just found out that percentages are reversible. E.g. 8% of 25 is the same as 25% of 8, and one of them is much easier to do in your head.’

There were plenty of people ready to jump in with recently learned nuggets of truth that boggled their brains.

1.

‘The divide ÷ symbol is actually used to symbolise a fraction with the dots representing numbers.’
–Kind_Ad5566

2.

‘The big circular lumps in the trees are not nests they are mistletoe.’
–purply_otter

3.

‘You know when you go on Google maps and press satellite view? Unless you’re really far zoomed out those are not satellite images, they’re photos taken from planes.’
–missuseme

4.

‘Technically speaking humans can’t feel wet as we don’t have the receptors (hygroreceptors like spiders have). What we perceived as wet is a temperature/texture/pressure change on our skin.’
–djdavies82

5.

‘The smell of fresh cut grass is a chemical distress signal to warn other plants of danger. I shit you not.’
–non-hyphenated_

6.

‘The word ‘footage’ refers to the length of a piece of film – comparable to ‘voltage’ and ‘acreage’.’
–wasdice

7.

‘Something costing ‘an arm and a leg’ is because when people sat for oil paintings, they’d have to pay extra for their arms and legs to be included.’
–GrandDuty3792

8.

‘Not necessarily stupid but few comprehend the difference between a millionaire and a billionaire. A million seconds is about 11.5 days, a billion 31 years 5 months.’
–Awkward-Tax102

9.

‘Loofahs (big, long, spindly wash your back in the shower things) are a type of marrow.’
–doofcustard

10.

‘Rosa Parks wasn’t a sweet old lady with tired feet sparking a revolution, she was an activist mimicking a set of circumstances that had happened prior to someone else. It’s weird how we were taught about her in the UK. I only found out when we visited the civil rights museum in Memphis.’
–flyingmonkey5678461

11.

‘Claudette Colvin was her name, her story was not publicised or used by the leaders of the civil rights movement because she was 15, pregnant, and unmarried. Rosa Parks said: ‘If the white press got ahold of that information, they would have had a field day. They’d call her a bad girl, and her case wouldn’t have a chance.”
–SensiFifa