Ask HN: In one sentence, tell me a random useless fact.

  • Approximately 36 million people starved to death in China in 1958-61, during peacetime and normal weather conditions. And yet it's not in Chinese history books.

  • Bennett Park, in the Washington Heights neighborhood in north Manhattan, occupies the highest point of land in Manhattan, 265.05 feet above sea level.

    Fun fact: I used to play there as a kid.

  • Magpies are self-aware and in tests have used mirrors to assist in removing stickers placed on their plumage.

    They are also the only species of bird resident in every EU country.

  • There is a way to partition a sphere into six subsets such that, using only isometries, you can build two spheres, identical to the first one, with those six subsets.

  • Monkeys open bananas from the end opposite the stem.

  • When water converts to steam at 100 degrees Celsius it also expands in volume by 1700%.

  • The U.S. Postal Service has lost more than 5 billion dollars over the past year.