The holiday season is a time when we gather with family and friends. But it’s also a time when we mingle with co-workers, their spouses and strangers.
Here are 16 mind-blowing facts to spice up your holiday party conversations.
1. If you dug a tunnel through the Earth and jumped in it, you would get to the other side in 38 minutes and 11 seconds.
2. China has only one time zone, even though it is almost as wide as the continental United States. Eating dinner at midnight isn’t unusual for many residents.
3. If you spit in a test tube and send in your sample to the lab, an AncestryDNA test can tell you where in the world your genes came from hundreds of years ago.
4. Napoleon was attacked by hundreds of rabbits and the rabbits won. (Napoleon fled.) The hunted became the hunter.
5. There are about as many lifeforms living on our skin as there are people on the entire planet.
6. Hummingbirds and other small-bodied animals with fast metabolism see in slow motion.
7. Abraham Lincoln was a wrestler. He was defeated only once in 300 matches and is honored in the Wrestling Hall of Fame.
8. The population of the entire planet could fit in the state of Texas if it were as densely populated as New York City.
9. Those who were found guilty at the Salem Witch Trials weren’t burned at the stake. They were hanged.
10. The sunset looks blue on Mars.
11. Experts think King Tut was killed by a hippopotamus bite.
12. Pope John Paul II was made an honorary Harlem Globetrotter. He probably couldn’t dunk, though.
13. The official 50-star American flag was designed by a high school student for a class project in 1958. His teacher gave him a B-.
14. The Anglo-Zanzibar War in 1896 was the shortest in history at less than 45 minutes.
15. Tropical rain forests in the Amazon get their nutrients replenished by the Sahara Desert.
16. Biological siblings can have different ethnicities. You could be 22% Irish and your sibling could be 45% Irish. Weird right?
If you’re looking to blow your own mind, and maybe those of others at the next social event you attend, take an AncestryDNA test to find out where in the world your genes are really from.
It may totally challenge what you think you know about yourself. You could for a moment lose your cool, but it’ll make a heck of a good story later.