Bet you didn't know.

Just a number of interesting things that I bet you didn't know and will never need to know but just might be glad to know when you find yourself on a first-date and the conversation lulls to a painful halt and you've already asked her what her favorite fill-in-the-blank is.

A herd of cattle, a pack of wolves, even a pod of seals, you've heard of, but did you know that just about every assemblage of creatures has its own name? Some of them are freaking awesome and most of them are politically incorrect and discriminatory:

A shrewdness of apes, a prickle of porcupines (do porcupines ever hang out in groups? because that could make for a really negative encounter), a richness of martens, a business of ferrets, a BLOAT of hippopotamuses, a murder of crows, an exaltation of larks (what's so great about larks?), a crash of rhinoceroses, an UNKINDNESS of ravens (spoooky), a shiver of sharks, an intrusion of cockroaches, and a plague of locusts.

I bet sometime someone somewhere had terms for groups of certain types of people. It's best those terms aren't in use, but I can think of some pretty good ones. Like a malediction of mother-in-laws. A festering of lawyers. A warmth of grandmothers.

Ever heard of prosopagnosia? Yeah, neither had I. It's commonly referred to as face blindness and is a legit condition that impairs the brain's ability to recognize faces. And it's not simply having a hard time putting a face to a name; it makes it impossible for you to recognize the faces of close friends, family members, and sometimes even yourself. People with this condition have to use clothing, voices, or gait to recognize acquaintances. Don't believe me? Check out Harvard's research page on it or read Heather Seller's book.


Colors are interesting when it comes to languages. There are no words in the English language that rhyme with orange, purple, or silver. In Romanian not only are oranges called oranges, but tomatoes are called reds. In some Asian languages, blue and green are considered varying shades of the same color. In Italian and Russian, azure is a basic color and is distinguished from regular blue as habitually as English differentiates red and pink.


Thomas Jefferson, who did a lot of great things for this country, introduced french fries to the United States in 1802 when he served them at a White House dinner.


Peladophobia is the fear of bald people. (Sidenote: If you're going to throw this word around, be careful how you pronounce it. Pedophilia is something completely different and not a good conversation jump-starter. At all.)


NOW YOU KNOW.