Tell me a fun fact

You sit down at an interview, Zoom meeting, or dinner party and get asked to share a fun fact about yourself. Should you talk about your biggest accomplishment or hidden talent? Should you tell that funny college story or a childhood secret? What “fun fact” should you share that won’t sound boring or braggadocious? If you have no idea what to say, here are 101 ideas for the next time you get asked to share “fun facts about me” at work, school, or a social group. 3 Quick Tips to Choose Interesting Facts About Yourself Most people make a For a captivating introduction with fun facts, remember the acronym CAP. The best facts to share about yourself are: • Conversation-Sparking • Appropriate • Personalized and Prepared Conversation-Sparking The whole point of sharing fun facts is to break the ice between a new group of people so they can get to know each other. • In an interview, you probably want to share something that makes you more hirable by catching the interviewer’s interest. • On a Zoom call, you may want to share something that helps your coworkers relate to you. • At a party, you want to share something funny or intriguing that can help you connect with people. Your “fun facts” should spark further questions and conversation regardless of the situation. Don’t shut down the dialogue with a conversation blocker. Conversation-Blocking (Avoid) Conversation-Sparking Fun Facts I listen to RNB music. The first concert I ever went to was Usher in Vegas when I was 18. I spend...

Photo: artisteer/Getty Images/iStockphoto As if starting a new job (or joining a new group) But if you once again find yourself in a situation in which you must produce a fun fact — and you will — you might as well be prepared. The ideal fun fact is two things: (1) interesting enough to ensure nobody makes you do it over, and (2) not so interesting that everyone has lots of follow-up questions. It doesn’t have to be fun. It will rarely be fun. You just need something to say. Here are 31 ideas and prompts you can keep in your back pocket for the next time you’re asked. 1. Your proudest atypical accomplishment: the year you made every recipe in Deb Perelman’s cookbook, the time you built an Ikea dresser in an hour flat, your Jenga title, your famous Super Bowl dip. 2. Your most prized collection. Whether it’s old coins, stamps, or something less grandfatherly, this is a perfect “fun” fact. 3. Your biggest (nonserious fear). You don’t want to get too vulnerable here (“My biggest fear is death” may chill the room a bit), but if you’ve got a very specific, less common fear, like chipmunks or something, go with that. 4. The first job you wanted when you were a little kid. 5. Your high-school superlative. ( Unless you won, like, “Most Popular” or “Most Likely to Succeed.” No, thanks! Keep it to yourself!) 6. Your go-to comfort-binge TV show. Say something like The Office, Friends, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and people will be like “Ha, same!” and never think of it again. (Ideal...

If you're answering this question in an interview setting, relate it to the job with equal parts sincerity and creativity. These three facts about you are great because they shed lighton your formative years, describe a situation in which you learned and grew, and allow you to share stories about your favorite things. In an interview setting, these sorts of fun facts can also help the interviewer to open up, too. • When I was young, I wanted to be a [JOB PROFESSION] because [STORY]. • The most embarrassing thing that ever happened to me at work was [EMBARRASSING THING] and I learned [LESSON LEARNED]. • My favorite word is [WORD] and why. (Bonus points for obscure words or words that don't exist in English.) While that might not be everyone's dream of a first date, it was ultimately what won my mother over. • Your high school superlative. Did you win the best laugh? (*Don’t use it if it makes you seem arrogant or conceited.) • The most money you've ever won on a scratch-off or lottery ticket • Your favorite food to eat or your favorite comfort food • Your favorite food to make • Your hometown, especially if it’s vastly different from your current location • Your most-prized possession • A prized object you carried everywhere with you as a child (extra points if you still have it!) • The first book you ever remember reading More Random Fun Facts About Me • Your favorite book and why • A formative memory or your earliest memory—especially if it pertains to the job • The color...

More human twins are being born now than ever before. beeboys/Shutterstock Do you get the feeling that there are more twins around these days than there used to be? No? Well, you should, because according to Human Reproduction, the "twinning rate" has increased by one-third since the '80s—up from 9 to 12 twins per 1,000 deliveries. Currently that adds up to about 1.6 million twins born each year across the world—meaning one out of every 42 babies is a twin. Helping drive this is the increasing use of medically assisted reproduction, and the delay in childbearing (twinning has been found to increase with a mother's age). For more pieces of trivia to impress your friends, here are The first person convicted of speeding was going eight mph. GreenCam1/Shutterstock According to Guinness World Records, the Walter Arnold of the English village of Paddock Wood, Kent. On Jan. 28, 1896, Arnold was spotted going four times the speed limit in his 19th-century Benz—but since the speed limit at the time was just two miles per hour, that meant he was not going too fast by today's standards. The constable had to chase him down on his bicycle, issuing a ticket for £4 7s and earning Arnold the speedy distinction. For more trivia to impress, here are The severed head of a sea slug can grow a whole new body. Francesco_Ricciardi/Shutterstock It sounds like something out of a horror film, but it's all too real: The Elysia cf. marginata, a type of sea slug, has been found to not only survive dec...

Want to dominate your weekly trivia contest? Just looking to expand your knowledge with a variety of random facts? We’ve got you covered! This article contains 113 interesting facts about topics ranging from outer space to history to pop culture. By reading these facts, you’ll learn what camels actually store in their humps, why sunsets on Mars are blue, what crazy use ancient Romans had for human urine, and more. We’ve organized these facts into eight categories. Read all of them or just focus on the specific areas you want to learn more weird facts about! Fun Facts About Space • The sun makes up more than 99% of the mass in our solar system. • Lined up, all of the planets in the solar system could fit between the Earth and the moon. • The Great Wall of China is not actually visible from space. • One million Earths could fit inside the sun. • It rains diamonds on both Jupiter and Saturn. On these planets, lightning turns methane in the atmosphere into carbon, which hardens into bits of graphite and diamond as it falls to the ground. • Outer space is completely silent. • It takes about ten minutes for light to travel from the sun to the Earth. • The largest known volcano in the solar system is Olympus Mons, located on Mars. It’s roughly triple the height of Mt. Everest. • On Mars, sunsets appear blue due to the way light is captured in the atmosphere. • Because there is no atmosphere, wind, or water to erode them, astronaut footprints on the moon will likely remain there f...

LinkedIn and 3rd parties use essential and non-essential cookies to provide, secure, analyze and improve our Services, and to show you relevant ads (including professional and job ads) on and off LinkedIn. Learn more in our Select Accept to consent or Reject to decline non-essential cookies for this use. You can update your choices at any time in your The most infamous icebreaker you will encounter in the workplace is, “Tell me a fun fact about yourself.” But how do you answer? Here, we look at fun fact ideas, and whether there is a more effective way to know your co-workers. By Can you tell us a fun fact about yourself? And it can’t be something we know from your resume or LinkedIn profile. Have you heard this on your first day of work and panicked? This question is often asked as a way to meet co-workers. So you have to pick a fact unique enough to be interesting, but not so strange you negatively stand out. However, even if you think nothing is interesting about yourself, you can find a cool and original fun fact. I spoke with Thornley-Brown and Farber to discuss which kinds of facts are interesting to share and what alternatives to fun fact-sharing exist. Fun Fact Ideas Managers or team-builders often ask new employees the “fun fact” question as a quick get-to-know-you exercise. Thornley-Brown says it is the go-to icebreaker for many because it is the most common one people encounter in meetings and team-building sessions. “You want the icebreaker to serve the purpose ...

Here’s our big list of the 101 greatest animal facts. This includes some of the most asked, fun, surprising and crazy animal facts from across the animal kingdom. The loudest, deadliest, fastest, largest, most bizarre and random, are all here in our big animal fact list. 1. The loudest animal in the world is a mere 2cm long, prawn. The Pistol Shrimp is capable of snapping its claw shut so rapidly, that it creates a bubble which collapses to produce a sonic blast, louder than a Concorde’s sonic boom. The shock wave can reach 230 decibels, also louder than the sound of a gunshot. The imploding bubble for split seconds also generates temperates of 4,400C, nearly as hot as the sun, killing its prey. 1 2. Flamingos are not pink. They are born grey, their diet of brine shrimp and blue green algae contains a natural pink dye called canthaxanthin that makes their feathers pink. Flamingos in zoos often lost their colouring, until zoo keepers supplemented their diets. 2 3. Otters “hold hands” while sleeping, so they don’t float away from each other. And it’s super-cute. Look. 4. Hummingbirds are the only known birds that can also fly backwards. They often do this when retreating away from flowers. 3 5. Dolphins use toxic pufferfish to ‘get high’. A documentary witnessed them passing around pufferfish in a pod, before floating just underneath the water’s surface, apparently ‘mesmerised by their own reflections’ afterwards. 4 6. The Inland Taipan (also known as, the Western Taipan) is...

A few random facts can go a long way. Laying down some unsolicited knowledge will impress your peers and even superiors. One fun fact has the power to change a boring conversation into an awesome one. When someone asks you: Why do you know that? You’ll know it’s because you took the time to learn a few things about things. There’s that one person at every party that is full of random, Enjoy these 46 random and interesting facts Fun Facts 33. Recycle There is a swirl of garbage in the Pacific Ocean the size of Texas. It is aptly referred to as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. There are many interesting clean up proposals to remove this garbage without effecting ocean life. Contrary to popular descriptions as “an island of garbage,” it is more accurately “garbage soup:” water that has a high concentration of plastics, sludge and other debris. 30. Don’t Look Up Once a year, in the Honduran city of Yoro, it rains live fish in a weather event known as Lluvia de Peces or Rain of Fish. In the months of May or June, each year a large storm rolls through the town with very heavy rain, and once the storm has passed, living fish can be found on the streets. This phenomenon was confirmed by a National Geographic team in the 1970s but whether ot not the fish are literally raining from the sky is still unknown. Some scientist think the fish could be carried in waterspouts or water tornadoes which then drops the fish as the storm loses energy over land. 26. Show me the meaning of being l...

A few random facts can go a long way. Laying down some unsolicited knowledge will impress your peers and even superiors. One fun fact has the power to change a boring conversation into an awesome one. When someone asks you: Why do you know that? You’ll know it’s because you took the time to learn a few things about things. There’s that one person at every party that is full of random, Enjoy these 46 random and interesting facts Fun Facts 33. Recycle There is a swirl of garbage in the Pacific Ocean the size of Texas. It is aptly referred to as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. There are many interesting clean up proposals to remove this garbage without effecting ocean life. Contrary to popular descriptions as “an island of garbage,” it is more accurately “garbage soup:” water that has a high concentration of plastics, sludge and other debris. 30. Don’t Look Up Once a year, in the Honduran city of Yoro, it rains live fish in a weather event known as Lluvia de Peces or Rain of Fish. In the months of May or June, each year a large storm rolls through the town with very heavy rain, and once the storm has passed, living fish can be found on the streets. This phenomenon was confirmed by a National Geographic team in the 1970s but whether ot not the fish are literally raining from the sky is still unknown. Some scientist think the fish could be carried in waterspouts or water tornadoes which then drops the fish as the storm loses energy over land. 26. Show me the meaning of being l...

Photo: artisteer/Getty Images/iStockphoto As if starting a new job (or joining a new group) But if you once again find yourself in a situation in which you must produce a fun fact — and you will — you might as well be prepared. The ideal fun fact is two things: (1) interesting enough to ensure nobody makes you do it over, and (2) not so interesting that everyone has lots of follow-up questions. It doesn’t have to be fun. It will rarely be fun. You just need something to say. Here are 31 ideas and prompts you can keep in your back pocket for the next time you’re asked. 1. Your proudest atypical accomplishment: the year you made every recipe in Deb Perelman’s cookbook, the time you built an Ikea dresser in an hour flat, your Jenga title, your famous Super Bowl dip. 2. Your most prized collection. Whether it’s old coins, stamps, or something less grandfatherly, this is a perfect “fun” fact. 3. Your biggest (nonserious fear). You don’t want to get too vulnerable here (“My biggest fear is death” may chill the room a bit), but if you’ve got a very specific, less common fear, like chipmunks or something, go with that. 4. The first job you wanted when you were a little kid. 5. Your high-school superlative. ( Unless you won, like, “Most Popular” or “Most Likely to Succeed.” No, thanks! Keep it to yourself!) 6. Your go-to comfort-binge TV show. Say something like The Office, Friends, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and people will be like “Ha, same!” and never think of it again. (Ideal...