It’s a proven fact that learning something new is good for you. Some studies have found that lifelong learning boosts happiness, memory, confidence and productivity. It also helps beat boredom. The best thing is you don’t have to leave home to learn something new. Today, you don't even need to get out of bed, or off the couch. Just grab a cup of coffee and keep reading.
Bored Panda came across a cool Instagram account called Interestingash.ck. It shares amazing facts about anything and everything. It has over 2 million followers, and hundreds of educational posts. If you’re looking to learn something new, you might have come to the right place. From animals, to history, to movie trivia, there’s something for everyone. Keep scrolling for a list of our favorite facts from the page, and don’t forget to upvote yours.
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Dogs can smell when we’ll be back home. It’s just one of many facts from the Instagram page that caught our attention. So we sniffed a little more. Many of us already know that dogs have a keen sense of smell. But it turns out they have a sense of time too. Just not in the same way we do.
Alexandra Horowitz is a researcher with a special interest in mutts. In her book, "Being A Dog" Horowitz discusses how dogs are able to smell the “passage of time” by the intensity of a scent. Your scent is strongest when you are home. It weakens after you walk out the door and continues to fade throughout the day. Your furkid uses the level of your scent to predict your return.
Horowitz also writes that the movement of a scent can inform a dog about the past and the future. A weak scent that’s low to the ground shows that someone has passed by. A stronger scent wafting in the air signals someone could be saying hello soon.
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PetMD also reports that dogs can sense time. “However, they don’t know how many specific hours, days, or weeks have gone by. The theory of scent distribution and a dog’s ability to remember something based on scent is called olfactory memory,” wrote Erika Lessa on the site. “It’s plausible that a dog can track short amounts of time by the strength of an odor and use olfactory memory for long-term time tracking.”
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We were also interested to learn more about John Thompson. He’s the guy who lost both arms in a freak farming accident. But still managed to dial emergency services by using a pencil between his lips. AgWeek tracked Thompson down two decades after the accident to find out how he’s doing. “On Saturday morning, Jan. 11, 1992, Thompson was unloading pig feed with a grain auger and playing with the dog when he somehow got too close to the power takeoff shaft (PTO), which didn’t have a safety shield on it,” reported the agriculture magazine.
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Thompson told them during the interview that his shirt wasn't tucked in, and it's suspected it got twisted in the PTO shaft. The last thing he remembers was spinning on the shaft. He woke later to his dog licking his face and both arms gone. Thompson walked 100 yards to the house. And used his mouth to turn the doorknob, and a pencil to dial the phone to get help. “Then he sat in the bathtub to prevent blood from getting on his mom’s new carpet,” reports the magazine.
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Thompson was put into a coma for four weeks and almost died after contracting an infection. He miraculously made it through more surgery and months of rehabilitation. Thompson gave up farming for real estate once he’d recovered. But couldn’t receive a regular paycheck because of his disability insurance. He revealed that he’s suffered from depression for decades.
At the time of the interview, Thompson had written a book called “Home in One Piece", and was working on turning it into a screenplay. He was also doing weightlifting but said his big passion is singing. "It's just something that always brought me joy,” he said. “I mean, even growing up on the farm, I always looked forward to when the grain bins were empty and go inside the grain bin and sing because the acoustics were just unbelievable.”
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If you’re a Breaking Bad fan, you might recognise Giancarlo Esposito in the list of interesting facts. The Danish-born American actor and director plays the role of Gus Fring in the series. Celebrity Networth reports that he has a net worth of around $4 million. But he’s had to work hard to get to this point. As the Insta post states, Esposito declared bankruptcy after his divorce. And even considered arranging his death so his children could get the policy payout.
The actor made an appearance on SiriusXM’s Jim & Sam show earlier this year. He was open and honest about his financial struggles. “If I got somebody to knock me off, death through misadventure, they would get the insurance,” he said. “I had four kids. I wanted them to have a life. It was a hard moment in time.”
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Fortunately for his family and fans, Esposito didn’t follow through. “I started to think, that’s not viable because the pain I would cause them would be lifelong, and lifelong trauma that would just extend the generational trauma with which I’m trying to move away from,” he said on the show. “The light at the end of the tunnel was Breaking Bad. I had a few little things before to start to recover, but Breaking Bad was the light.”
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We certainly learned a few new things from the interestingash.ck page today. And we’ll definitely be sharing our newfound knowledge around the dinner table tonight. Which of the interesting facts on this list did you already know? And which of them surprised you the most? Let us know in the comments. And don’t forget to upvote your favorites.
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