Factology Prime

A boy born with only two percent of his brain has defied doctors' predictions after his brain grew back to eighty percent of the average size. Doctors had advised the parents to terminate the pregnancy not once, but five times.

On the California side of the US-Mexico border, there's a city called Calexico, and on the opposite side there's a town called Mexicali-their names are just "California" and "Mexico" swapped.

Michael Caine says he only became an actor because, as a teenager at his youth club, he saw that all the pretty girls were in the drama group instead of the basketball court.

At Oxford University, a tiny bell in the Clarendon Laboratory has been ringing almost continuously since 1840, powered by two mysterious "dry pile" batteries whose exact composition is still unknown. Scientists don't want to dismantle it until it finally stops.

When 61 UK companies tried a four-day workweek with full pay, most kept it: a year later, 54 were still on the shorter week, revenue was up about 35% on average, and staff reported less burnout and better health.

In the early 1900s, you could order an entire house from the Sears catalog.

Your chosen design arrived by train as a numbered kit, and you (or a local carpenter) built it from the instructions.

Two circus elephants spent just one winter together as youngsters, then were separated for over two decades but instantly recognized and bonded with each other when they met again at a sanctuary.

Hugh Jackman skipped dance lessons as a kid after his older brother called dancing "is for sissies," but years later, his brother apologized, told him he belonged on stage, and Jackman went on to win a Tony for Best Actor in a Musical.

A man in Shaanxi, China, realized that the long-handled object he'd been using for 25 years to crack walnuts was actually a hand gr***de.

Bolivia's San Pedro prison works like a self-run town: inmates buy or rent their own cells, elect leaders, work to pay "rent," and many live there with their families while police mostly just guard the outer wall.