@fungusfacts
fact: Mars did not appove of the deep-fried Mars bar, an indulgent snack likely originating from The Haven Chip Bar in Scotland. In 2012, the chip bar announced their potential application of the EU's Protected Food Name Scheme, which would designate their shop as the origin of the recipe. However, Mars later contacted the owner stating that their food item and application did not foster the company's mission to "healthy, active lifestyles." Following Mars’s request, the bar posted a disclaimer to inform customers that the food item was not authorized by the company, and the bid was never filed.
fact: The current oldest living man and the current oldest living chimpanzee share the same name, Joao, which is the Portuguese equivalent of John.
fact: The smell that humans are best at sensing is petrichor, the earthy odor of rain falling on dry soil. In fact, the human nose can discern geosmin in the air, the compound that produces petrichor, at concentrations as low as 5 parts per trillion. Geosmin is also responsible for the unique taste of beetroots.
fact: Google owns googlesucks.com. they also own tens of thousands more domains so yeah
fact: Aside from providing entertainment as a computer game, Microsoft Solitaire was intended to familiarize new users of Windows 3.0 with graphical user interfaces and the basics of a mouse like the drag-and-drop gesture utilized to move cards. Being a familiar game that eases in new users into the operating system, it was the most used application on Windows for its early years as computers were rising in popularity. Minesweeper introduced in 3.1 served an analogous purpose, which additionally taught users the right-click button and trained their mouse speed and accuracy.
fact: The 100,000 U.S. dollar bill exists. To put it into perspective, that’s more than 9,999,999 cents.
fact: In a 2025 study of English-language children’s books featuring anthropomorphised animals, only cats, ducks, and birds were more often depicted as female as to the rest of the animals, which were more frequently portrayed as male.
fact: Mars Inc. makes more money from petcare than it does from chocolate plus all of their other food brands.
fact: The first Polish-language encyclopedia, published in 1745, lists the definition for a horse as “Everyone knows what a horse is.“
fact: The Campaign for North Africa is a board game published by Simulations Publications, Inc. in 1978. It takes ten players and an estimated 1,500 hours to complete a game, thus often dubbed the most detailed and longest wargame to finish, replicating the entire North African Campaign of WWII from 1940 to 1943.
fact: Catalonia was a region of Spain that was an independent country for a mere 8 seconds in 2017, holding the record for the shortest lifespan of a nation.
fact: Every receipt in Taiwan is a lottery ticket. With many prize categories, customers can most notably win up to 10 million NTD (300 thousand USD) if the exact eight-digit code listed on the receipt matches another code announced on live television every two months. Due to the possibility of a reward, a customer will be more inclined to request a receipt, minimizing tax evasion via unrecorded sales.