- [Narrator] There are a lot of facts that everybody seems to know. But whether they're from textbooks, the internet or your teachers, we tend to believe a lot
of them without questioning whether they're actually true or not. Well it turns out some
of these well-known facts are actually lies passed
down through the ages. Others are just downright wrong and the truth behind them
is almost unbelievable. So prepare to have your mind
blown into another timezone as we take a look at some
facts that sound so crazy, you won't believe they're true. (upbeat music plays) The Spaghetti Singular. Imagine you have a super tasty bowl of spaghetti in front of you. You twirl your fork around and pick up one lone spaghetti noodle. It's just that, right? A single strand of spaghetti? Well, actually it has a name. It turns out spaghetti, an Italian word, is the plural noun for all
those strings of pasta. Here's a quick crash course in Italian. An I on the end of a noun usually indicates that it's plural, where an O or an A
indicates it's singular. This means a single strand of spaghetti is actually called a "spaghetto", and the pasta madness doesn't stop there. "Gnocco" is the singular for gnocci. "Fettucino" is the singular for fettuccine and "raviolo" is the singular for ravioli. But this leaves me with just one question. What in God's name is a SpaghettiO then? I don't think I'm ready to know. Dubious Columbus Day. Every year, Americans all
over the great US of A celebrate Columbus Day. This is a holiday commemorating
the Italian born explorer, Christopher Columbus landing in America and discovering the New World in the name of Europe back in 1492. There's just one small,
tiny, minuscule problem. Christopher Columbus didn't
discover North America in 1492. In fact, he didn't discover it, period. Columbus had originally set sail to chart a western sea
route to China, India, and the other fabled lands of Asia. But in October 1492, he actually landed in the Bahamas. Though it technically was the Americas, it wasn't the America that most Americans like to celebrate. But the expedition didn't end there. Later that October, Columbus sighted Cuba and assumed it was mainland China. Then in December, his
expedition landed in Hispaniola, which is now Haiti and
the Dominican Republic, which he thought was Japan. Ultimately, Columbus made
many journeys back and forth between Europe and South
and Central America, but never once stepped foot in what's now known as the United States. I don't know about you, but I have a bone or two to pick with my old history teachers. Independence Derp. Columbus Day isn't the
only national holiday that the Americans have
got wrong in their diaries. They celebrate July 4th
as the all-important day that the nation officially became free from the rule of the British. The only problem is that
date's a little off. Not by a few days or even
weeks, but a whole month. The Declaration of
Independence is a document that announced the separation of 13 North American British colonies from Great Britain's rule back in 1776. The Declaration was approved
by the British on July 2nd and was ratified by Congress on July 4th. But here's the thing, it
wasn't made legal on that day. It turns out seven
essential Congress members were absent on July 4th. So it took almost a month
before the Declaration was finally signed by all 56 members of the second Continental
Congress on August 2nd. Seems like the Americans were just keen to confirm their freedom. But knowing that, I reckon we should make August 2nd a national holiday as well. That being said, I don't think we should start a war over it, but if you think that's appropriate, there's nowhere better to
train up your tactical skills than in the historically accurate world delivered by the sponsor of today's video, World of Tanks. This free to play massively
multiplayer online PC game lets you choose from
over 600 authentic tanks of countless categories as you roll out across open
fields, forests, deserts, and urban zones in over 40 battle arenas. Fight with or against the
100 million current players, earning experience to modify
and upgrade your tank, ensuring that when you say you want a national holiday on August 2nd, nobody dares say no. Download World of Tanks using the first link in the description and register using the
promo code TANKMANIA to get seven days premium
account membership, 250,000 credits, tier five
premium tank Excelsior and three beefy tier six rental tanks, the Tiger 131, Cromwell B, and T34-85M, for 10 battles each all completely free. Now back to some facts
even more unbelievable than that deal. The Great Walls of China. School might have taught you
that the Great Wall of China is the only manmade structure
that can be seen from space, but this claim can leave kids
confused for a few reasons. Number one, which Great Wall? The main span of the Great Wall, which was built to stop nomadic armies invading China from the north, stretches almost 5,500
miles across the country, but it's not the only wall. Different walls were
constructed all over the north from five BC all the way up to 17 AD depending on where China was
being attacked in each area. If all these sections
were lined up end to end, the wall would actually be an unbelievable 13,170 miles long. But even then, that wouldn't
make the wall wider. So with that in mind, how can it be seen from space if at all? Well, let's find out. Here's a picture of the Great Wall from a low level orbit in space. Can you see it? I don't know about you, but all the mountainous ridges and lines look the same to me. Thankfully, NASA kindly pointed
out some key sections here. While if you can kind of make it out, it's not exactly the massive monument I imagined when my teacher told me you could see it from space. Hilarious Human Priorities. We all know that it was
"One small step for man and one giant leap for mankind" when Neil Armstrong first set
foot on the moon back in 1969. But while humanity was busy
proving its space age prowess, people back on earth were still carrying their luggage around by
handles like Neanderthals. It wasn't until three years later in 1972 that someone thought to
put wheels on suitcases and the very first patent for
wheeled luggage was filed. Good to see humanity has its
priorities in the right order. As unbelievable as it
sounds, there's a good reason it was done this way around. The space race of the 1960s forced a lot of innovation
in the space industry while long haul travel
wasn't as common back then. Still, I find it pretty astonishing that man went to the moon before he thought to put
tiny wheels on suitcases. You know what else I find astonishing? The fact that you haven't hit those Like and Subscribe
buttons yet, and that's no lie. Go ahead and hit them up for even more amazing fact-filled content every week. Great, now where were we? Clouds Weigh a Ton. As light and fluffy as they
look floating up in the sky, clouds aren't as
weightless as they appear. Clouds are created when water vapor condenses into tiny droplets on particles like dust or sea salt floating in the air. All clouds are made up of
a bundle of these droplets, but are still light enough to defy gravity and stay in the air. Now researchers have calculated that the average cumulus cloud, the big white fluffy ones
you see on a sunny day are approximately one kilometer across. They're also about as
tall as they are wide, meaning they have a volume of
around 1 billion cubic meters. They've also established
that there's roughly 0.5 grams of water droplets
per cubic meter of cloud. That may not sound like much,
but when it's all added up, that means these clouds are a
staggering 500,000 kilograms or roughly 1.1 million pounds. For perspective, that's about the same as 100 African elephants. Anyone else suddenly very aware of how many clouds are
floating above them right now? (gulps) Body Odor Oddness. Anyone who's ever been
in a hot crowded place like a subway train knows
that people's sweaty armpits can get really stinky really quickly. This is because skin-dwelling bacteria thrive in warm moist areas
like sweaty underarms. As they encounter your sweat, they break down a sweat-specific protein produced by a gene called ABCC11. It's this protein, which is broken down into smelly products called
thioalcohols by the bacteria that causes the nauseating
stench of body odor. While decent people solve
this nose-pinching problem with a few sprays of deodorant, most Koreans don't need to. That's because even
though they produce sweat, around 99% of the Korean population has a non-functional ABCC11 gene. So they don't produce
that all important protein and in turn, don't smell compared
to the rest of the world. Scientists believe that being stinky was evolutionarily selected against around areas of east Asia
thousands of years ago, meaning that while
stinky people died alone, fresh smelling individuals
passed the genes onto their children. Man, this makes me wish
I'd been born Korean. I'd save so much money on deodorant and I'd probably have a girlfriend. Crazy Combat Dolphins. You might know that the military regularly uses animals like dogs to help them detect and dispose of bombs thanks to their superior
olfactory abilities. This is handy for operations on land, but what about operations out at sea? Well, it turns out that
navies around the world have been working with
specially trained sea dogs. And no, I don't mean
dogs wearing water wings. Since the 1960s, before underwater drones became a major military tool, dolphins were trained to carry radars, detect mines and search
for underwater enemies. Over in Soviet era Russia, though, dolphins weren't just
tools, they were weapons, trained by experts to attack
enemy divers and even warships. While this sounds like some
insane conspiracy theory, there's financial proof
that it's all real. Back in 2007, the US military
spent a whopping $14 million on Marine mammal research while training as many as 75 dolphins. These sea creature commandos
were so good at their jobs that it's believed that dolphins have saved more lives in open
waters than human life savers thanks to their bomb-detecting abilities. Wow, give that sea dog a bone. Bananas Don't Grow on Trees. Looking at the massive leaves and branches that bananas grow on, which can reach a staggering 30 feet high, you might be forgiven for thinking that bananas grow on trees, right? Wrong. But if that's not a tree,
what else could it be? Maybe some kind of massive palm or perhaps it's some sort of huge bush? Well brace yourself,
because the banana plant is actually an herb. That's right, bananas grow on the largest herbaceous flowering plants in the world. Though their brown bases make you think they have tree trunks, these are actually pseudostems made up from a series of
tightly packed leaves. But wait a minute, if this isn't a tree, then what kind of fruit does
that make a regular banana? Oh boy, do I have news for you. Bananas Are Berries. You might think that all
berries are easy to identify thanks to their names like
strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries, but here's the kicker. The word berry is
actually a botanical term, not an English one. And according to the laws of botany, a berry has three distinct fleshy layers, the exocarp or outer skin, the mesocarp or fleshy middle and the endocarp, AKA the innermost part, which holds the seeds. Now by this logic, strawberries
are not in fact berries, but fruits like bananas bizarrely are, and the madness doesn't stop there. Other fruits that can
be classed as berries are oranges, grapes, and even eggplants. Though you won't see me adding an eggplant to my fruit salad anytime soon. So where does this leave strawberries? Botanically, they're
classed as accessory fruits like pineapples and figs, the flesh of which develops from a single flowering receptacle. It's this red flesh that's embedded with what is technically the real fruit which people commonly
think of as its seeds. So not only is a strawberry not a berry, but its seeds aren't even real seeds. Anyone else starting to think
their entire life is a lie? The Real Forbidden Fruit. One of the oldest and most
well-known stories in the Bible revolves around a five
principle characters, Adam, Eve, God, Satan in
the form of a talking snake and an apple. The story goes that God
creates Adam and Eve, lets them live in a very nice garden and says they can eat anything except the apples hanging
on the Tree of Knowledge. Spoiler alert, the Satan
snake persuades Eve to eat the apple and all of a sudden, both of them are banished. This famous tale has been perpetuated and passed down through art, illustrations animations and even films for centuries. But here's the strange part. The fruit that Eve eats isn't an apple. I'm not kidding, despite all
the stories you might've heard, there's no mention in the
original Book of Genesis about the fruit being an apple. Translated from the original Hebrew, the story only ever refers
to "the fruit of the tree". Now with that in mind, this forbidden fruit
could have been anything that grows on a tree like a fig, a peach, a pear, a pomegranate,
maybe even a durian? Ouch. Wouldn't want to be picking one of those while I was in my birthday suit. There Were No Three Wise Men. If the God botherers were mad to learn about the lack of apples in the Bible, then they're really gonna
hate what's coming next. The tale of the three wise men
is a popular Christmas tale for Christians the world over, but even the most devout of
them probably haven't noticed that at no point in the
original Book of Matthew were there ever
specifically three wise men. It's assumed there were three, because in the Bible, they presented three famous
gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to celebrate the birth of Jesus. But what about the Bible's references to the three kings then? I can hear the Christian Karens crying. Well, funnily enough, the Book of Matthew in the New Testament doesn't support the three
kings interpretation. Three kings was just a
phrase from a prophecy in the Book of Isaiah
in the Old Testament. In other words, we don't know for sure just how many wise men really turned up. There could have been four, five, 20, maybe even 100. Well, that's gonna make carol singing a lot more interesting this year. Taking the Pith. We all know that watermelons
are green on the outside and deliciously red on the inside. But what you might not know is that they didn't always look this way. Around 1645, Italian
artist Giovanni Stanchi painted this collection of fruits. He used peaches, pears,
and even a few squash. But hang on, what is that
freakishly fleshed fruit down in the corner? That, my friends, is
actually a watermelon. You might be thinking that this is just an unusually unripe melon, but the black seeds indicate this fruit was perfectly ripe at
the time it was painted. So what's going on here? For hundreds of years,
humans have selectively bred and cultivated watermelons
to yield more delicious fruit and less of the bitter seed strong pith. That means the watermelons
you enjoy have been engineered to look and taste the way they do today. But those engineering efforts
don't stop with watermelons. The big juicy peaches many people enjoy actually started out as
small cherry-like fruits with very little flesh. They were cultivated all
the way back in 4,000 BC by the Chinese, and apparently tasted more
like a lentil than a fruit. Fast-forward to today though, and after 6,000 years
of selective breeding, these fruits are now 64 times larger, 27% jucier and 4% sweeter. I may not be great at math, but I reckon that makes them 100% better. The Earth isn't Round. Now thanks to the
countless amount of proof provided to us by the means
of photography and physics, we all know that the earth is round. But despite what you've
been taught in school, it actually isn't a perfect sphere. And before the comments
section of this video becomes a troll fest of flat-earthers, no, it isn't a disk either. The earth isn't perfectly solid, which means that as it
spins through space, the centrifugal force
drags the mass within it out at the equator while
the poles remain unaffected. This results in the earth
bulging slightly at the equator, making it look ever so slightly squashed, emphasis on the slightly. The effect is so small that the earth is only 0.3% wider at the equator than it is between the two poles. And it may not sound like much, but it's still a massive 26 mile bulge. For perspective, that's more
than 94 Empire State Buildings stacked on top of one another. Maybe from that height, the flat-earthers might finally be able to get some perspective. Cleopatra Wasn't Egyptian. Cleopatra is without a doubt one of the most iconic ancient
Egyptian rulers of all time. She's been portrayed on the silver screen and in works of art as a brilliant beauty who reigned supreme as the
ultimate queen of Egypt. But for all her adoring disciples and goddess-like depictions,
Cleopatra wasn't Egyptian. She was actually the last of
a Macedonian Greek dynasty called the Ptolemaic line who ruled Egypt from the time of Alexander
the Great's death in 323 BC. But not being ethnically Egyptian was the least of Cleopatra's problems. Like many royal families of the time, the Ptolemaic line often
married within the family to keep their bloodlines
(clears throat) pure. It was such a prevalent practice
that researchers believe Cleopatra's parents were
probably brother and sister. Ugh. Well, if a non-Egyptian woman
who's a product of incest can become a supreme queen of Egypt, I guess anyone can achieve anything. The Cookie Monster's Real Name. Learning the alphabet was pretty boring when you were a kid. A is for apple, B is for ball, but C, C is for cookie, which most of us learned
from a world famous Muppet called the Cookie Monster. But in a somewhat disturbing twist, it turns out that Cookie Monster isn't this Muppet's real name. During a 2004 interview with Frank Oz, who does the voice of miss
piggy and Fozzie Bear, he revealed that before
eating his first cookie, the Cookie Monster had a different name and that name was Sid. Just Sid, not Sid Cookie,
not Sydney Snacks, just Sid. A little bit anticlimactic if you ask me. A few years later, the Muppet
cast made the name canon when in 2007, the Cookie Monster sang "The First Time Me Eat Cookie." - [Cookie Monster] In fact, back then I think me name was, Sid, yeah. - [Narrator] Yep, you heard
this childhood-shattering truth straight from the Cookie Monster's, or should I say, Sid's mouth. Mammoth Monuments. Woolley mammoths are a now
extinct species of pachyderm that flourished in the Ice Age of the Pleistocene Epoch
nearly 5 million years ago. Without knowing any better, a lot of people assume
these elephant cousins were only alive during the super cold Neanderthal period of human evolution, but that's not strictly true. While mammoths died out
due to climate change and hunting about 10,000 years ago, the very last of them only
went extinct around 1650 BC, just 3,600 years ago. And here's the mega mind-blowing part. That's about 1000 years after the Great Pyramids of Egypt were built. That's right, the ancient Egyptians and woolly mammoths existed
at the same time in history. It's lucky they didn't exist
in the same place as well, otherwise the mighty
mammoths might've been roped into helping build the pyramids. Bubble Wrap Rooms. There's nothing on earth more satisfying than popping bubble wrap, but as fun as the
protective stuff is to pop, it wasn't originally designed to be a prominent packaging material. Back in 1957, inventors Alfred
Fielding and Mark Chavannes were trying to create a new
kind of textured wallpaper that was all the rage at the time. Initially they put two pieces
of plastic shower curtain through a heat sealing machine, but they were left disappointed by the final flimsy sheet of film dotted with trapped air bubbles. They were under no illusion that no one would want to
paste this on their walls, so they patented the process and began thinking of other
uses for their invention. They improved its design and remarketed it as greenhouse insulation, though it didn't make waves
in that market either. After that, they finally discovered bubble wrap's true calling in the protective packaging industry. These days, around 240,000
miles of bubble wrap is made and used every single year. That's enough to loop around
the earth 10 times over. Pretty incredible to think this idea was once destined to become
the world's ugliest wallpaper. Snail Chops. Anyone who looks at a garden snail can point out its features
like its shell and its eyes, but where exactly is its mouth? Is it here or maybe even here? Well, it's actually here, located on its slimy underside. While it may not look like it, a snail's mouth is made up of a tiny jaw and a flexible band underneath that contains around
14,000 microscopic teeth called the radula. The jaw cuts off larger
pieces of food like leaves, which is then scraped down by the radula as it acts like a teeny
tiny cheese grater. But not all snail mouths look the same. Mystery snails, for example, are aquatic gastropods whose radula is located on a flexible structure that moves in and out of
their mouths as they scavenge. This allows them to
munch on organic matter while also using their mouth to remain suctioned to the
surface they're stuck on. And I thought those cheese grater teeth were horrifying enough
when they weren't moving. Mice Can Grow Human Body Parts. When organ transplants became
increasingly successful back in the 1980s, the demand for them skyrocketed and a huge problem suddenly
hit the medical community. The need for organs was much, much greater than the number of organs available, leaving them with a terrifying shortage. So in 1997, surgeons and engineers began experimenting with whether or not human body parts could be grown, not in a lab, but on animals. The experiment was a success
as proven by the Vacanti mouse, a rodent with a human
ear growing on its back. Surgeons achieved this by
creating a small scaffold, which they inserted
under the mouse's skin. They then injected cartilage cells, which grew around the scaffold, creating the shape of an ear. Amazingly, the cells thrived, resulting in a lab-grown human ear that helped prove extensive
tissue regeneration in living subjects was possible. It's this essential scientific discovery that's allowed doctors to regrow cartilage-based
features in humans like this ear grown on a
veteran soldier's forearm after he lost it defending his country. Once fully grown on a part of the body that receives good blood flow, the ear can be safely transplanted onto the side of the
head without much risk. And to think this amazing breakthrough was thanks in part to
a brave little mouse. This Isn't a Sonic Boom. If you've ever been lucky enough to witness an aircraft going supersonic, you'll know the only thing more impressive than the sound is the sight. - [Man] Whoa! (jet engines roaring) (man laughing) - [Narrator] That brilliant
cloudburst seems to appear when the jet breaks the sound barrier, and many people have been led to believe that this is a sonic boom, but it's not. Or at least, not quite. These little conical clouds
are called vapor cones, a physical effect that takes place as something approaches
the speed of sound, but it's not the sonic boom itself. As the aircraft approaches
the speed of sound, which is a breakneck 767 miles per hour, shock waves form around the aircraft. This causes a discontinuity in the local air pressure and temperature, forcing the air to lose
its capacity to hold water and condensation forms,
creating the vapor cone. But just to make things more complicated, vapor cones appear most prominently in a state of transonic flight. This is where some of the
air around the aircraft is flowing above the speed of
sound and some of it below. So the aircraft isn't
necessarily traveling at the speed of sound, but the air flowing over the wings is. On top of that, the climactic conditions have to be just right, where there's plenty of moist, warm air. This is why some sonic booms like this don't have that iconic vapor cone. (jet engines roaring) Even without the vapor cone, though, that's still seriously impressive. Well, that's my world view ruined forever. How about yours? Did any of these freaky facts
turn your world upside down and do you know of any others I might not have heard before? Let me know down in the comments
and thanks for watching. (upbeat music)
