😴 100 Weird Useless Facts to Help You Fall Asleep | 25-Minutes of Relaxing Facts with 8 Hours of White Noise & Deep Sleep Music 💤
08:53:39 Share

Welcome to 8-Hour Sleep Music. Peaceful soundscapes with 8 uninterrupted hours of relaxing music and nature sounds. Our soundscapes are designed to block out noise, calm the mind, and reduce stress and anxiety so you can fall asleep fast and stay asleep all night. Don't forget to follow, subscribe, or leave a comment down below if you've enjoyed the podcast.

We hope you have a good night's rest.

This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. Not everyone is careful with your personal information, which might explain why there's a victim of identity theft every five seconds in the U.S. Fortunately, there's LifeLock. LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity. If your identity is stolen, a U.S.-based restoration specialist will fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year by visiting LifeLock.com slash podcast. Terms apply.

This episode is brought to you by 8-Hour Sleep Music Premium. With Premium, you can support the show and get completely ad-free and intro-free listening.

And now, with Premium Plus, you can get the Friday night bonus episode, as well as ad-free listening of all three of our podcasts. 8-Hour Sleep Music, 8-Hour Binaural Beats, and the brand new Deep Sleep Stories podcast. That's three podcasts and four bonus episodes per month.

including video episodes on Spotify and extended 12-hour episodes for the heavy sleepers. Click the first link in the description to try it out free for 7 nights. Hey Sleepyheads, tonight we're going to try something a little bit different. 100 strange and interesting facts to help you fall asleep. Let us know down in the comments below if you enjoyed it. You're about to embark on a journey into the strange.

the curious, and the delightfully odd corners of the world. There's nothing to solve, no tasks to complete. This is a time for rest, for wonder, and for letting go. As you lie back and close your eyes, imagine yourself floating gently, as if cradled by soft clouds or drifting across a still, moonlit lake. Let each breath grow slower

softer, and deeper. Tonight, I'll be sharing 100 unusual and unexpected facts. Some quirky, some mind-bending, some entirely useless, all gently fascinating. Let each one wash over you like a passing breeze. You don't need to remember anything. You don't even have to pay close attention.

Just let the rhythm of the words lull you into a peaceful, cozy sleep. If your mind wanders, that's perfectly okay. If you drift off partway through, even better. So take one more slow, calming breath and let's begin. Bananas are berries, but strawberries aren't. Botanically speaking, bananas meet the criteria for berries.

while strawberries do not. Octopuses have three hearts, who pump blood to the gills, while one pumps it to the rest of the body. Cows have best friends. They form close bonds and even get stressed when separated from their companion. Wombat poop is cube-shaped. This helps it stay in place and mark territory without rolling away.

There's a species of jellyfish that can live forever. Turritopsis dohrnii can revert to its polyp stage and start life over. The Eiffel Tower grows in the summer. Heat expands the metal, making it about six inches taller. Sloths can hold their breath longer than dolphins. They can slow their heart rate and hold their breath for up to 40 minutes.

The unicorn is the national animal of Scotland. Chosen for its purity and strength, it's entirely mythical. You can hear rhubarb grow. As it grows rapidly in the dark, it makes creaking and popping sounds. Butterflies can taste with their feet. Their taste sensors are on their toes and help them choose food sources. The moon smells like gunpowder.

Apollo astronauts reported the lunar dust had a strange burnt odor. A group of flamingos is called a flamboyance. It's a fitting term for such vividly colored and social birds. Your belly button is basically a rainforest. It can harbor hundreds of types of bacteria, some never seen before. There's a cloud in space that tastes like raspberries.

It contains ethyl formate, the same chemical that gives raspberries their flavor. Frogs can freeze solid and come back to life. Some frogs survive freezing in the winter and thaw out in the spring. A day on Venus is longer than a year on Venus. It rotates so slowly

that one rotation on its axis takes more time than a single orbit around the Sun. Peanuts aren't nuts. They're legumes, more closely related to beans than tree nuts. Sharks existed before trees. They've been around for over 400 million years, predating most land plants. Some turtles can breathe through their butts.

Certain species use their cloaca to extract oxygen from the water. Elephants can't jump. They're the only mammal that can't lift all four feet off the ground at once. Tomatoes have more genes than humans. They have around 31,000 genes, while humans have about 20 to 25,000. A narwhal's tusk is actually a tooth. It grows through the upper lip

and can be up to 10 feet long. The inventor of the frisbee was turned into a frisbee. His ashes were molded into a flying disc after he passed away. You can smell the rain. The scent is called petrichor and comes from oils and a compound called geosmin. Birds don't urinate. Instead, they excrete uric acid in a paste with their feces.

Starfish don't have brains. They instead use a decentralized nerve net to navigate and respond to stimuli. The shortest war in history lasted only 38 minutes. It was between Britain and Zanzibar in 1896. Some cats are allergic to humans. Though rare, cats can develop allergies to human dander.

A jiffy is an actual unit of time. In physics, it refers to about 1/100th of a second. Apples float because they're 25% air. That's why bobbing for apples is even possible. Pigeons can do math. They can learn numerical rules and perform basic counting tasks. A snail can sleep for three years. In extreme conditions, they enter long states of dormancy.

Baby puffins are called pufflings. They spend their first weeks in burrows before taking flight. There's a species of fungus that glows in the dark, known as foxfire. It can light up forest floors at night. The heart of a blue whale is as big as a car. It weighs over 400 pounds and can be heard beating from two miles away.

The smell of freshly cut grass is actually a plant distress signal. It's a chemical cry for help, released when the blades are injured. The human nose can detect over one trillion scents. Our olfactory system is far more sensitive than once believed. A crocodile can't stick out its tongue. A crocodile's tongue is attached to the roof of its mouth.

The dot over a lowercase i is called a tittle. It's a tiny mark with a charming name. Some lobsters are naturally blue. A genetic mutation gives them a striking cobalt color. Koalas have fingerprints. They're so similar to humans that they can confuse crime scenes. There's a basketball court at the top floor of the U.S. Supreme Court. It's known as the highest court in the land.

Bees can recognize human faces. They use the same pattern recognition skills we do. Slime molds can solve mazes. Despite lacking a brain, they find efficient paths to food. The longest hiccuping spree lasted 68 years. Charles Osborne hiccuped non-stop from 1922 to 1990. Some fish cough.

It's how they clean their gills of debris. The first webcam watched a coffee pot. Researchers at Cambridge used it to avoid wasted trips for coffee. Your bones are constantly being replaced. Every 10 years, you essentially get a new skeleton. A day on Mercury lasts 1,408 Earth hours. That's about 59 Earth days long.

The smell of vanilla is calming. Studies show it reduces startle reflexes and anxiety. Penguins propose with pebbles. Male Gen 2 penguins offer the smoothest pebble to win a mate. The world's largest living structure is the Great Barrier Reef. It's even visible from space.

The dot in the number seven segment digital display is called a decimal point. And yet, it often isn't used at all in clocks. Seahorses hold tails when they swim together. It helps them stay connected in rough currents. The average cloud weighs over a million pounds. Thankfully, that weight is spread over a large area. You can tell the temperature by counting cricket chirps.

The faster they chirp, the warmer it is. A single strand of spaghetti is called a spaghetto. It's the singular form of the word. The inventor of Pringles is buried in a Pringles can. His family honored his wishes with an original flavor canister. The tongue is the only muscle attached at just one end. It is uniquely free-moving and incredibly strong.

Some frogs glow under ultraviolet light. It helps them communicate in low light conditions. A bolt of lightning is five times hotter than the sun. It can reach temperatures of 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The word "nerd" was first coined by Dr. Seuss. It appeared in his 1950 book, If I Ran the Zoo. Antarctica is the largest desert in the world.

It is dry and barren despite all that snow. Crocodiles can climb trees. They're surprisingly agile for their size. You're taller in the morning. Spinal discs compress during the day, making you slightly shorter by bedtime. Bacteria in your body outnumber your cells. You are more a microbe than human, numerically speaking. Mosquitoes are attracted to the color black.

Wearing darker clothes can make you a bigger target. Gorillas burp when they're happy. It's their way of expressing contentment. Giraffes only need 5 to 30 minutes of sleep per day. They take short naps while standing up. The inventor of the microwave got the idea from a melted bar of chocolate. He noticed it melted in his pocket near radar equipment. Pigs can't look up at the sky.

Their neck structure limits upward vision. Butterflies remember being caterpillars. Some neural connections survive the transformation. Rats laugh when tickled. It's a high-frequency chirp that's hard for us to hear. Banging your head against a wall burns 150 calories an hour. Not recommended, of course, but technically true. The human stomach gets a new lining every few days.

It protects against being digested by its own acid. Male seahorses give birth. They carry and deliver the babies after the eggs are transferred. Apples wake you up better than coffee. Their natural sugars and crunch stimulate your senses. The M's in M&M's stand for Mars and Murray. They were the businessmen who created the candy.

A bolt of lightning contains enough energy to toast 100,000 slices of bread. But harnessing that energy isn't exactly easy. Turtles can breathe through their butts. Yes, it's so strange we listed it twice. Spiders can't fly, but they can balloon. They release silk and ride the wind like tiny parachutes. The human eye can detect a candle flame 30 miles away.

That's under perfect dark sky conditions. A jigsaw puzzle company once made a puzzle with no image. It was a solid color and notoriously difficult. Jellyfish have no brain or heart. They're powered by a simple nerve net and drift with the current. Earth is smoother than a billiard ball. If scaled down to the size of a ball, Earth's mountains and valleys would barely register.

Flamingos get their color from shrimp. Their diet is rich in carotenoids, which turn their feathers pink. The longest recorded flight of a chicken was 13 seconds. Not bad for a bird that's not supposed to fly. The average person walks the equivalent of five times around the world in a lifetime. Now that's a lot of steps. The smell of lavender helps with sleep.

It can slow the heart rate and reduce anxiety. Raindrops aren't tear-shaped. In fact, they're shaped more like hamburger buns as they fall. A group of porcupines is called a prickle, which sounds just about right. The word "robot" comes from a Czech word meaning "forced labor." It first appeared in a 1920 play. Some ants explode to protect their colony.

They sacrifice themselves by rupturing toxic glands. There's a species of lizard that can squirt blood from its eyes. It's a defense mechanism to scare off predators. The average cloud moves at 30 to 40 miles per hour. They drift faster than most people think. A full head of human hair can support 12 tons. If you gathered it all and tied it together, it's incredibly strong.

Some sea cucumbers fight by ejecting their intestines. It distracts predators long enough for an escape. Crows hold grudges. They remember faces and can recognize people who treated them badly. The inventor of Velcro got the idea from burrs stuck to his dog. He noticed their hook-like structure and mimicked it. If you shuffle a deck of cards properly,

It's likely in a unique order that has never existed before. There are more possible card combinations than atoms on Earth. And now, our journey through the Wonderfully Weird is complete. Maybe you're still listening. Or maybe, somewhere along the way, your mind slipped into dreaming. Either way, you are now wrapped in a sense of calm, safe, and deeply at ease.

You've given your mind something gentle and light to wander through. And now, your body can fully rest. Let the quiet linger. Let your breath remain slow and steady. Let the warmth of sleep carry you deeper into stillness. Tonight, you've filled your thoughts with gentle curiosity and soft surprise. There's nothing more you need to do. Just sleep and dream.

Good night, my sleepyheads.