Odd facts. Straight face.

True stories that sound made up.

A bridge that closed because people walked on it. A bat bite you never feel. A planet made of lava. Short videos with Otto, and the longer story here, with the sources.

Read the stories From the videos

Otto, a man in glasses, hanging upside down from a branch next to a bat, an orangutan, a sloth and a flamingo.

Latest stories

All stories

An illustrated crowd leaning on a swaying footbridge over the Thames, with one man in the middle wearing the number 165.

Engineering

The bridge that closed because people walked on it

London's Millennium Bridge opened in June 2000 and shut two days later. Nobody marched, nobody jumped. A crowd simply walked across it, and that was enough.

A cartoon man lies rigid in bed at night while a tall shadow in a wide-brimmed hat leans over him in a blue-lit bedroom.

The mind

You wake up, you can't move, and someone is in the room

Sleep paralysis is common, frightening and harmless. It happens when your mind wakes up before your body gets the message.

A cartoon man strokes his chin next to a thermal camera pointed at a metal cage shaped like a pear, with a red apple inside, in a white laboratory.

Science & tech

The real invisibility cloak only fools one kind of camera

Engineers have built a solid block that steers heat around whatever is inside it. It is impressive, and nothing like the cloak you're picturing.

A cartoon man asleep on a pillow in a dark room, with a small black bat sitting on his face and glasses.

The body

The bat bite you never feel is the dangerous one

An 11-year-old woke up with a bat on his face, found no mark and felt fine for three weeks. By the time symptoms appeared, rabies could no longer be stopped.

A cartoon man with bright orange skin, wearing glasses and a dark green jacket, holds a half-eaten carrot.

The body

Yes, carrots can turn you orange. Here's how many it takes

It has a medical name, it's harmless, and it works in much the same way as a flamingo's colour. You would need to eat around ten carrots a day for weeks.

A cartoon man in a park with a nest and a pigeon on his head, while a large flock of pigeons flies past under a blue sky.

Nature

City birds flee from women sooner than men, and nobody knows why

Across five European countries, birds took off about a metre earlier when a woman approached. The researchers matched height and clothing, and still have no explanation.

How this site works

Every fact has a source

What we read is listed at the bottom of each post, so you can check our work. If we couldn't confirm something, we say so or leave it out.

Jokes are labelled as jokes

The videos are illustrations, not footage. Each post says what in its video is a joke or a reconstruction.

Ads are labelled

Any commercial link is marked where it appears, and nothing here depends on buying anything.