Useless trivia and facts

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A horse normally has more than one horsepower. A study in 1993 showed that the maximum power a horse can produce is 18,000W, around 24 horsepower.

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Your signature could reveal personality traits. A study in 2016 purports that among men, a larger signature correlates with higher social bravado and, among women, a bigger signature correlates with narcissistic traits.

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One in 18 people have a third nipple. Known as polythelia, the third nipple is caused by a mutation in inactive genes.

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Bananas are radioactive. Due to being rich in potassium, every banana is actually slightly radioactive thanks to containing the natural isotope potassium-40. Interestingly, your body contains around 16mg of potassium-40, meaning you’re around 280 times more radioactive than a banana already. Any excess potassium-40 you gain from a banana is excreted out within a few hours.

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There’s no such thing as a straight line. Zoom in close enough to anything and you’ll spot irregularities. Even a laser light beam is slightly curved.

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Deaf people are known to use sign language in their sleep. A case study of a 71-year-old man with rapid eye movement disorder and a severe hearing impairment showed him using fluent sign language in his sleep, with researchers able to get an idea of what he was dreaming about thanks to those signs.

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Finland is the happiest country on Earth. According to the World Happiness Report, it has been for six years in a row. It’s not really surprising, given that Finland is the home of Santa Claus, reindeer and one sauna for every 1.59 people.

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Hippos can’t swim. Hippos really do have big bones, so big and dense, in fact, that they’re barely buoyant at all. They don’t swim and instead perform a slow-motion gallop on the riverbed or on the sea floor. In fact, hippos can even sleep underwater, thanks to a built-in reflex that allows them to bob up, take a breath, and sink back down without waking.

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The Moon looks upside down in the Southern Hemisphere. Compared to the Northern Hemisphere, anyway. This means that the ‘Man in the Moon’ is upside down in the Southern Hemisphere and looks more like a rabbit.

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You can yo-yo in space. In 2012, NASA astronaut Don Pettit took a yo-yo on board the International Space Station and demonstrated several tricks. It works because a yo-yo mainly relies on the laws of conservation of angular momentum to perform tricks, which, provided you keep the string taut, apply in microgravity too.