Ask HN: In one sentence, tell me a random useless fact.

8 points·andrewhillman··10 comments

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2013/08/top-60-quick...

Approximately 36 million people starved to death in China in 1958-61, during peacetime and normal weather conditions. And yet it's not in Chinese history books.

Bennett Park, in the Washington Heights neighborhood in north Manhattan, occupies the highest point of land in Manhattan, 265.05 feet above sea level.

Fun fact: I used to play there as a kid.

Magpies are self-aware and in tests have used mirrors to assist in removing stickers placed on their plumage.

They are also the only species of bird resident in every EU country.

There is a way to partition a sphere into six subsets such that, using only isometries, you can build two spheres, identical to the first one, with those six subsets.

I thought this was interesting so I googled it. "Oh, that's cool", I thought, "I don't understand anything in the titles of the first 10 results."

https://www.google.com/search?q=sphere+subset+isometric

Monkeys open bananas from the end opposite the stem.

This one made me laugh.

Not that I eat a lot of bananas, but I realize this years ago when dipping in fondue. This way the stalk acts as a holder and it doesn't bruise the banana when peeling. I guess monkeys know best.

When water converts to steam at 100 degrees Celsius it also expands in volume by 1700%.

The U.S. Postal Service has lost more than 5 billion dollars over the past year.

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