33 Facts That Seem Wildly Improbable But Are Unbelievably True

Recently, Reddit user CivilReaction asked, "What’s a fact that sounds fake but is 100% true?" and there were some super interesting and surprising responses — here's what people had to say!*

*Along with some replies from this post and the Reddit thread it rounded up.

1.There have been studies that show that people's heart rates synchronize to a degree with music's rhythm...and people listening to the same story or song, or even watching a movie together, actually synchronize not only their heart rate but their breathing and some of their movements).

2.Here's another fascinating fact about the human body: Your blood type can actually change if you receive a bone marrow transplant. Not only that, but you'll have different sets of DNA in your blood versus other parts of your body (like skin cells, saliva, hair, teeth) — meaning that if you were involved in a crime, you might leave the DNA of your donor. Oh, and also you may develop the allergies of your donor.

3.One more weird body fact — "Your ribs, if removed, can actually grow back as long as the perichondrium membrane is intact. They're the only bones in mammals known to do so."

4.We all know and love Häagen-Dazs ice cream, yes? Like me, you probably assumed it was European. Nope! It was founded by the Polish and Jewish couple Reuben and Rose Mattus in the Bronx, New York. And "Häagen-Dazs" is just gibberish – the couple made it up because they thought a foreign-sounding name would make their ice cream sell better, and they went with a Danish-sounding name because of Denmark's actions to save Jewish people during WWII.

5.Speaking of product names — Pepsi was originally called "Brad's Drink," after Caleb Davis Bradham, who created it. When it was renamed, "Pepsi" came from a word for indigestion, because the cola drink was meant to soothe your stomach. It was originally sold at pharmacies (as was Coke).

6.Whenever you shuffle a deck of cards to create a new order, it is almost guaranteed that that specific order has never before existed in the history of card-playing. In fact, according to this article from McGill, there are more ways to order a deck of cards than there are atoms on Earth — and "even if someone could rearrange a deck of cards every second of the universe’s total existence, the universe would end before they would get even one billionth of the way to finding a repeat."

7."The population of the Earth would fit inside Texas at the same density as NYC."

8."John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence."

9.In case you want to completely distort your sense of history, Pocahontas and William Shakespeare died within a year of each other, and less than 150 miles apart from each other.

10.Anne Frank, Martin Luther King Jr., and Barbara Walters were all born in the same year: 1929.

11.And to further distort your sense of history..."There was a time when a samurai could have sent a fax to Abraham Lincoln. The fax machine was invented in the 1840s, and the first commercial fax service was started in 1865. Samurai were around until the late 1870s, and Abraham Lincoln was alive until 1865."

12.Speaking of Abe — "Joe Biden was born closer to Abraham Lincoln’s second inauguration than he was to his own."

13."John Tyler, the tenth president of the US, has a living grandchild (as of May of this year)."

14."The timespan between the use of copper swords and then steel swords is longer than the timespan between the use of steel swords and the nuclear bomb."

15."Lighters were invented before matches."

16.And..."Canned food was invented about 100 years before can openers."

17."-40C and -40F are the same temperature."

18."A kind of moth is found in Madagascar that almost entirely subsists on the tears of sleeping birds."

19.Another fun bug fact: "Dung beetles navigate using the Milky Way."

20."There are more castles in Germany than there are McDonald's In the United States."

21."Drinking a good amount of 100% pure water will kill you. It will leech vital minerals out of your body."

22.Kangaroos have three vaginas — and the third one only forms during pregnancy.

23.Oh, and in case you're wondering, here's what the inside of a kangaroo's pouch looks like — with a baby inside!

24.Cows are the deadliest animal in the UK.

25."Octopuses have a brain in each of their tentacles as well as a main one in their body."

26.Puppies in the same litter can each have a different father.

27.And this is possible in human fraternal twins as well.

28."The guy that invented dynamite also created the Nobel Peace Prize."

29."Coffee is not a bean. It is the pit of the coffee plant which is a fruit."

30.And relatedly...Bananas are berries, but strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries are not.

31.Australia is wider than the moon: the moon is 3400 kilometers wide while Australia is 4000 kilometers wide.

32."Alaska is the northernmost, the westernmost, and the easternmost state in the United States."

33."And Maine is the closest state to Africa."

34.And finally..."Most people have an above-average number of limbs."