Fun facts you’ll want to share

They know what you want: What you ignore about the most popular apps

We carry these apps with us in our pockets everywhere we go. Yet how little we know about them… Did you know TikTok can learn how to make you laugh in less than an hour? Or that Google’s first server was literally built with toys? Or the percentage of songs on Spotify that have never been heard by anyone –ever? Here’s a list of fun facts that you’ll want to share with your friends.

This story sounds made up, but you can Google it yourself. In its very early days, Google’s founders stored the company’s first server in a box made of… Lego bricks! It held ten 4 GB hard drives.

As you can imagine, that colorful, practical, creative image cemented the same aesthetic that Google is nowadays so well-known for.

Gone are the days when we judged people harshly for posting pictures of the food they ate.

The strange habit of showing the world your meal via Instagram is a die-hard, worldwide trend. And the most Instagrammed food globally is #Pizza (with 75.6 million posts), followed by #Sushi (39.2 million).

Has this ever happened to you? You log into Netflix and find a romantic poster for a brand new series. But when your friend goes in through his account, the same series has a poster that makes it look like a horror show.

This is intentional: Netflix famously runs tests on almost everything, including the artwork you see for a show. They know what you’d prefer to watch!

Yes, many people use Twitter (a.k.a. "X"). But only about 10% of those active users are responsible for around 92% of all tweets.

In other words, most people lurk and use the site to get their instant news or a few laughs. Very few accounts produce the content!

The first logo of Facebook (around 20 years ago, when it was still "thefacebook.com") used a portrait; specifically, it was a white-and-blue profile of the young face of actor Al Pacino. You can still look up that old logo.

Massive and popular as Spotify is, a big part of it is completely unexplored. That’s because roughly 25% of the songs on Spotify have never been played.

Are you thinking about the poor artists whose songs have 0 plays? Well, consider this: A 2024 report showed that around 99,000 new tracks were uploaded every day!

If you type Relentless.com into a browser today, it still redirects to Amazon. That’s because "Relentless" was one of the early names considered.

"Cadabra" (as in abracadabra) was another early option, but it was changed because the founder’s lawyer noted it sounded too much like "cadaver."

It would be impossible for a human to watch even a third of YouTube’s content in a lifetime. The site has 5.1 billion videos, and the number keeps growing: More than 360 hours of new content are uploaded every minute.

WhatsApp is one of the world’s leading messaging apps, and it is currently owned by Facebook. But it was created by two former Yahoo employees who were repeatedly rejected from jobs at Facebook… and then Facebook ended up buying their app for 19 billion dollars.

TikTok’s algorithm is so precise that studies show it can figure out your preferences in about 40 minutes of use, just from what you linger on. That is scary-precise technology.

Also, TikTok has been the most downloaded app in the world since 2020, surpassing even Facebook and Instagram.

Wikipedia supports one of the largest knowledge bases on Earth. Yet it runs on a budget far smaller than people assume, roughly comparable to a mid-size NGO.

It’s edited by a surprisingly tiny active community. A small percentage of editors maintain a huge portion of the platform.

Would you trust information found in "r/AskReddit"? As it turns out, it is officially one of the site’s most influential subreddits and has shaped countless journalism pieces, TikToks, and YouTube videos. So, basically, it has transformed organically into a quiet content engine behind the internet.

Tango, Bravo

Codewords decoded: How many did you know?

In situations where clear communication is paramount, especially when lives are at stake, professionals often rely on standardized codewords and phonetic alphabets designed to prevent confusion. Either from movies or from personal experience, it's probable that you've heard at least some of these before, and many have found their way into everyday conversation. Let's find out how many of these code expressions you can recognize.

Mayday is the international distress call used when the sender is in immediate, life-threatening danger. Pilots and mariners use it to signal that they require urgent assistance due to situations such as engine failure, fire, flooding, or medical emergencies.

The word was introduced in 1923 by British radio officer Frederick Stanley Mockford, who based it on the French phrase m'aider, meaning "help me," in an attempt to make it internationally recognizable. Hearing this transmission immediately alerts emergency responders that every second counts.

Not every emergency is severe enough to warrant a mayday call. When a crew faces a problem that is urgent but not immediately life-threatening, the appropriate codeword is Pan-Pan.

Like mayday, it comes from French: it derives from panne, meaning a breakdown or mechanical failure. A Pan-Pan call might be used if an aircraft loses an engine but can still fly safely, or if a ship experiences equipment problems while remaining under control. It tells responders that assistance is needed, but that the situation has not yet become critical.

Few emergency signals are as universally recognizable as SOS. Contrary to popular belief, the letters do not officially stand for "Save Our Ship" or "Save Our Souls." It was adopted in 1906 because SOS is an extremely simple, easy-to-transmit, and unmistakable pattern in Morse code.

SOS remains one of the world's most enduring distress signals, and it's still recognized by rescue organizations all around the globe.

In the NATO phonetic alphabet, each letter is assigned a unique word to eliminate confusion when radio transmissions are distorted by noise or poor reception. If you've ever heard someone spell a name as "Mike Alpha Romeo Yankee," you've encountered the NATO phonetic alphabet.

The system was officially adopted by NATO in the 1950s and is now widely used by militaries, airlines, emergency responders, and many police departments worldwide. Using it greatly reduces the chance of misunderstanding important information over radio.

Roger dates back to the early days of radio communication, when the letter R stood for "received." Before the adoption of the NATO alphabet, the US military used Roger instead of Romeo to represent that letter_._

Although modern communications systems have changed and the US military has fully embraced the use of the NATO alphabet, Roger remains standard aviation terminology, and it's one of the best-known radio acknowledgments in the world. It conveys a very simple but important meaning: "I have received and understood your message."

Although many people assume Roger and Wilco mean the same thing, they actually convey different messages. Wilco is short for "will comply." In other words, it tells the sender not only that the message was received and understood, but that the instruction will be carried out.

Saying both Roger and Wilco is technically redundant in proper radio communication, since complying necessarily implies understanding, but the combination is often heard in movies and television.

In the NATO phonetic alphabet, Tango simply represents the letter T. However, US military personnel have also adopted it as a shorthand when referring to a target or a hostile.

This secondary meaning became widely known through military operations in the twentieth century and has since appeared in countless books, films, and video games in phrases like "We've got one Tango moving north."

Oscar Mike, NATO for the letters O and M, is military shorthand for "On the Move." It's a quick way of reporting that a unit has begun moving toward its objective.

The expression is especially common in the US military and has become more familiar to the general public through documentaries, memoirs, and films. It's finding its way into civilian life, meaning simply "I'm heading out."

Ten-codes were developed during the 1930s to allow for brevity and standardization of message traffic in radio communications. They were widely adopted by US public safety departments and by radio enthusiasts.

While the system is being slowly phased out in favor of plain language communications, many local police, fire, and sheriff departments keep using it, and it is still strongly associated with radio culture by the general public. One of the most famous ten-codes is 10-4, meaning "received and understood."

Hospitals around the world use color-coded announcements to communicate emergencies without causing unnecessary panic among patients and visitors. Perhaps the best known is Code Blue, indicating that a patient is experiencing cardiac or respiratory arrest and requires immediate medical assistance.

While some hospitals use their own custom color codes, Code Blue has become so widely recognized that it now appears frequently in television dramas and everyday conversation whenever someone refers to a life-threatening medical emergency.