15 Surprising Facts That Seem Like Lies

The internet is filled with wild facts that seem too good to be true. If you’re looking for some unbelievable tidbits to whip out at parties, the latest episode of The List Show has plenty. You can read a few of them below, and get the full list by watching the video above.

1. Letters are called “uppercase” and “lowercase” because of where they were stored.
2. Until recently, John Tyler had two living grandsons.
3. Sharks are older than trees.
4. Bananas are naturally radioactive.
5. Butt is a real unit of measurement.
6. You’re covered in stripes.
7. The song “Baby Got Back” is older than you think.
8. Other Facts Featured in the Video

Letters are called “uppercase” and “lowercase” because of where they were stored.

If you assumed we call letters “uppercase” and “lowercase” because uppercase letters are taller than lowercase letters, you’d be wrong. The technical terms for the letters are majuscule for uppercase scripts and miniscule for lowercase scripts, which both have Latin roots. We call them “uppercase” and “lowercase” because printers kept letters in trays called “cases.” In those cases, capital letters went in the upper case and minuscule in the lower case. It seems almost too silly and literal to be true.

Until recently, John Tyler had two living grandsons.

Up until the 2020s, John Tyler—who was born in 1790 and became the 10th president of the United States in 1841—had two living grandsons. Not great-great-grandsons; not great-grandsons; grandsons.

Lyon Gardiner Tyler was born in 1853 when his dad, John Tyler, was in his sixties. Lyon Tyler and his second wife had two sons: Lyon Gardiner Tyler Jr. in 1925, and Harrison Ruffin Tyler, who was born in 1928. Lyon Gardner Tyler Jr. died in 1935, but his sons lived until September 2020 and May 2025, respectively.

Mental Floss broke the news on this seemingly impossible fact in 2012, kicking off a string of press for Tyler’s grandsons. Harrison, who occasionally gave tours at his grandfather’s homestead, told New York magazine in an interview that year, “I am sometimes called the great-grandson—we have to correct that.”

Sharks are older than trees.

The first thing we’d call a tree, Archaeopteris, dates back 350 million years, and it’s now extinct. Sharks, meanwhile, have been around for 400 to 450 million years.

Bananas are naturally radioactive.

Bananas have high levels of potassium, and some potassium is radioactive—and that means bananas are naturally radioactive. It’s not a lot of radiation, though. As the Environmental Protection Agency explains, “Consuming one banana would deliver a total dose of 0.01 millirem (0.1 microsieverts) of radiation. […] To put that in context, you would need to eat about 100 bananas to receive the same amount of radiation exposure as you get each day in [the] United States from natural radiation in the environment.”

Butt is a real unit of measurement.

If you’ve ever talked about having a “buttload” of something, hold on to your butts, because butt is a real unit of measurement. It was at one point used for casks of liquids like wine and whiskey. As Adam Clark Estes so elegantly put it at Gizmodo, “That means if you fill the barrel up, you technically have a buttload of wine—though you’d probably just call it a full butt.” A butt amounts to about 108 imperial gallons, or about 130 American gallons.

You’re covered in stripes.

Like zebras and tigers, you have stripes. But these stripes—which cover you from head to toe—are invisible. They’re known as Blaschko’s Lines after dermatologist Alfred Blaschko, who noticed that moles and other skin conditions tended to show up in line-like formations on his patients, and the lines didn’t correspond to any known system of the body. Today, we know that this is a holdover from our development from a single cell to a whole human. You can see the stripes under UV light.

The song “Baby Got Back” is older than you think.

In June 2025, Dr. Sam Ghali tweeted, “Hit me with a shocking medical fact,” to which Medic Kim replied, “‘Baby Got Back’ is older than the first policy requiring women and minorities to be included in clinical trials and medical research.”

Other Facts Featured in the Video

1. The U.S. Nuclear launch system used floppy disks until 2019.
2. Ladders kill more people than sharks.
3. Sharks are also older than the North Star.
4. The U.S. Capitol Building is radioactive.
5. Jimmy Carter once peed radioactive urine.
6. Farts can leak out of your mouth if you hold them in.
7. The last time all of humanity was on Earth was October 31, 2000.
8. Oxford University is older than the Aztec civilization.
9. Presidential assassin Charles Guiteau belonged to a utopian community.

This story was adapted from an episode of The List Show on YouTube. Don’t forget to subscribe for fascinating videos every week.