Random facts.
November 1, 2025
The average ticket price for last night’s World Series game in Toronto was around $1,900.
About 36% of Americans say Halloween is their favorite holiday.
The word “dystopia” is derived from the Greek for “bad place.”
Elon Musk launched Grokipedia—his own version of Wikipedia. Entries will be edited by xAI, his artificial intelligence company.
The Rubik’s Cube is the most popular puzzle toy in the world, with over 350 million sold since its invention in 1975.
Nepal has chosen its new Kumari—2-year-old Aryatara Shakya—a living child goddess revered by Hindus and Buddhists. She will live in a temple palace, appearing only for festivals, until puberty ends her role. Many former Kumari struggle with social reintegration once they return to ordinary life.
Food allergies fell 38% in the US after a 2015 change in guidelines suggested parents should give their children peanuts from a young age.
Long stretches of Germany’s highways don’t have speed limits. With few exceptions, like Afghanistan and the Isle of Man, there are highway speed limits essentially everywhere else in the world.
Taylor Swift’s “The Life of a Showgirl” broke Adele’s record for most albums sold in one week with 3.5 million sold in just five days.
The Boston Marathon officially allowed women to register for the first time in 1972.
Flamingos were hunted nearly to extinction across the Caribbean in the late 1800s, thanks to the women’s fashion trend of adorning hats with bird feathers. A few populations survived and have since rebounded under protection.
86.9% of US point-of-sale transactions were cashless last year.
Amazon has a plan to automate 75 percent of its operations, internal documents show. That would mean robots replacing more than half a million jobs.
The Church of England has named a woman, Sarah Mullally, the next Archbishop of Canterbury for the first time in the role’s 1,400-year history.
More than 1,500 CEOs left their posts in the first eight months of 2025.
Billboard Hot 100’s Top 40 includes no rap songs, a first since 1990.
Nordic countries don’t have a word for “please.”
Sports betting apps now let players wager on nearly any moment of a game, live. These in-game bets are one of the fastest-growing areas of the industry.
Humans are the only creatures with chins.
A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit from a man who was featured as a naked baby on the cover of Nirvana’s 1991 album. The man claimed he had been the victim of child sexual abuse imagery.
The 1883 eruption on the volcanic island of Krakatoa ruptured eardrums 40 miles away and remains the loudest sound ever recorded at 310 dB.
Boy Scouts can now earn merit badges in AI and cybersecurity.
Bears have mauled more than 100 people in Japan this year. The government is preparing to send troops to stop them.
Whooping cough diagnoses in the US state of Florida rose 81% from 2024 to 2025, driven by a collapse in immunization.
Japan elected its first female prime minister, Sanae Takaichi. She’s a heavy metal drummer and a hard-line conservative.
Smucker’s accused Trader Joe’s of copying Uncrustables, the premade PB&J sandwiches that have become a mainstay of kids’ lunchboxes.
The average life span of a (major league) baseball is seven pitches.
Researchers have linked fathers’ exercise regimens to endurance and metabolic health of children, suggesting that sperm microRNAs transmit benefits of physical activity.
It’s impossible to burp in space.
Once the planned fleet of 30,000 Starlink satellites is in place, five will burn up every day.
A practice known as “bluetoothing”—in which people inject themselves with blood from a drug user to get a cheap high—has helped to fuel an H.I.V. epidemic in Fiji.
Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai, winner of the 2025 Nobel Prize in literature, wrote his latest novel, Herscht 07769, as a single, 400-page-long sentence.
Toronto has 18 miles of underground pedestrian tunnels.
Workers are quitting far less than in recent years, a trend Korn Ferry calls “job hugging”—clinging to their jobs for dear life.
20 million acres of land were deforested around the world last year.
Dictionary.com announced that its 2025 Word of the Year is “6-7” (also “six-seven” and “67”), a slang phrase popularly used by Gen Alpha. While some interpret the phrase to mean “so-so” or “maybe this, maybe that,” it is also used as an exclamation.
When Philip Roth tried to correct an error on a Wikipedia page for his novel, its editors told him he’d need a secondary source.
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