“What’s The Saddest Fact You Know?” (88 Answers)

As much as we’d like to be cozy, comfortable, and content all the time, that’s really not how the world works. Life is full of sadness—it’s an inseparable part of the human condition and we need to learn to embrace the less-than-savory parts of life alongside the pleasant ones. You can’t have happiness without sadness and each gives the other meaning.

Redditor Graham_craker invited their fellow internet users to share some of the saddest facts that they know in a viral thread. And, we’ve got to say, these hit hard. Really, really hard. For instance, the recording of the Kauaʻi ʻōʻō bird singing its mating call and not getting a response because it was the last of its kind, hit me in the feels so hard, I just want to curl under a warm blanket and eat ice cream all week long.

You might end up feeling blue just like us and Eeyore the Donkey. Remember to upvote the facts that made you appreciate life and how fragile it is even more as you scroll down. Just remember to grab a pack of tissues because you might end up tearing up. (PS—here’s a wholesome post to pick up your mood afterward.)

Of course, constantly living just with negative emotions and nothing else isn’t good for your mental health. Bored Panda spoke about depression, how to recognize it, and how it doesn’t always look like sadness with Emma Morton from the University of British Columbia. You’ll find her insights below, so be sure to read on, dear Pandas.

#1

All whales eventually lose the energy to surface for oxygen, so they essentially begin to sink and drown

Image credits: XRPLAMBO

#2

There's a recording of the last Kaua'i Oo bird singing before it went extinct. It was a mating call sung by a male bird. The song has breaks for the female bird to respond. There's no response because the male Kaua'i Oo is the last of its kind.

Image credits: azalea

#3

Elephants will mourn other elephants in their group dying and will hold funerals for them and will even recognize the bones of said elephant and cry out in sadness.

Image credits: wanderingstalker

Morton from the University of British Columbia explained to Bored Panda that depression doesn’t always look like sadness, even though some people assume that it does.

“While teariness and low mood may be a warning sign of depression, people may seem more tired or mentally ‘scattered’ than usual, lose interest in their usual hobbies or activities, become withdrawn, or change their sleep and eating patterns,” the researcher went into detail about how we act when we’re depressed.

#4

Swans can die of a broken heart when their mates die.​

Image credits: supadupaman

#5

For animal testing involving dogs, most laboratories use beagles as they are the most forgiving of the people inflicting pain on them.

Image credits: ShutUpChunk

#6

Dodo birds were really friendly because they had no natural predators and we killed them all.

Image credits: Zach_Zootah

Morton warned that those of our friends and family members who are constantly talking about death, expressing hopelessness about the future, or increasingly use alcohol or other substances may be “particularly at risk of suicide.”

However, it’s not always easy to recognize depression, as some people can pretend that everything is all right, even though they’re not doing well at all. According to the professor, perfectionists are especially prone to doing this.

#7

Whales that sing in the wrong key get lost and are alone in the ocean.

Image credits: MeowthePrettyKitty

#8

Laika, the first dog to be sent out to space, died alone up there. She had no idea what was happening and I still find it extremly cruel that she got sent to space "for science". Poor Laika :/

Image credits: NineTailedDevil

#9

There has been a day when you and your childhood friend got out to play for the last time and none of you two was aware of it.

Image credits: Authwarth

“People with perfectionism may invest a lot of energy in keeping up appearances, so this is not always easy for friends and family to detect. If someone you know experiences a lot of pressure or stress in their work, family life, or relationships, it’s important to listen for the signs of toxic perfectionistic thinking, and to show you care and express your concerns,” the researcher said.

#10

There is a plastic bag at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

Image credits: Meh657

#11

Animals are routinely horrifically abused and neglected, and nobody cares unless they're a cat or dog.

Image credits: reddit

#12

A majority of people, when asked, would rather die at home than at the hospital. A majority of people, when recorded, die at the hospital rather than at home.

Image credits: DaShortRound

However, not everyone will be up to sharing what’s going on in their inner world of emotions straight away, so it’s important to be patient and polite but persistent. “People might not open up the first time you ask, so continuing to check in regularly and establishing yourself as a safe person to talk to is important. These can be challenging and stressful conversations to have, so it’s important for loved ones to get support in asking these questions and look after their own mental health.”

#13

I learnt today that if a grizzly bear has a single cub it will abandon it

Image credits: Korekiyos-seesaw

#14

One of my neighbors has a nine year old daughter who has a very rare genetic condition. She's not expected to live much beyond her mid - late teens. The girl doesn't know and believes she's a perfectly normal child. It's heartbreaking to hear her saying that she wants to be a hairdresser when she grows up. She ain't never gonna grow up

Image credits: Johhnymaddog316

#15

Stephen Hawking died a little over a year before the first photograph of a black hole

Image credits: AdvocateSaint

#16

Researchers accidentally killed the oldest animal in 2006

Image credits: ppmanstrikes

#17

A guy in my area had just retired on a Friday. The following Wednesday he was out fishing and a thunderstorm came up. He pulled his boat out of the lake and while standing next to his car on the boat ramp lightning took him out. 5 blessed days of retirement.

Image credits: Hoppertime

#18

It hit me like a brick. Was thinking about my dad who died at 73. Thinking about my age (44) I realized my life was likely more than halfway over.

Image credits: kgold0

#19

Some astronauts in the Challenger disaster survived the initial explosion and only died once the orbiter hit the water

Can't imagine how the few felt when their shuttle exploded, some of their colleagues dead and they are plummeting rapidly to their deaths

Image credits: kazoosportacus

#20

785 million people do not have access to safe water. (Access includes having having water within a 30 minute round trip for collecting it and carrying it home).

Image credits: moinatx

#21

On december 5 1942 in Auschwitz-Birkenau, after the round-call of the morning, which was atrocious since you would need to stand still for hours until the count matches, the SS took the entirety of the women camp moved them in front of a ditch within the camp and asked the 6000 present alive women to get naked.

Then, the SS armed with whips, pistols and canes got over the ditch, made two parallels lines to create some sort of corridor. Then they screamed the women prisonners to jump over the ditch and run through the corridor of SS soldiers.

During the run, the SS with the whips and cane struck/whipped/pulled away all the women they deemed "unfit for labor" due to sickness and physicall exhaustion. Out of the 6000 women that day, around 1500 made it to the end of the corridor without being pulled away : They were the lucky ones and the camp commandant made a speech sort of like "You were chosen to live".

The 4500 women pulled away by the SS or who couldn't jump far enough to pass the ditch were pushed into trucks and send to the gas chamber. They apparently screamed like banshees full knowing they were sent to their death.

Very few women survived from 1942 to 1945 in auschwitz, but the detail of this day is present in the few books/testimonies from survivors because of how horrible it was.

Image credits: Matrozi

#22

One day, sometime far far far in the future, someone is going to speak your name for the very last time and then you’ll be completely forgotten about.

Image credits: all0fherheart

#23

Mine is that there are a lot of dead bodies inside the death zone on Mount Everest, and they will just lay there forever because no one can go to retrieve them

Image credits: graham_craker

#24

There is a genetic disorder that makes it impossible for some people to sleep. So far only 20 people are known to have it, and none have lived past 30...

Image credits: Safebox

#25

There's more people in slavery now than in the 17-1800's. Pretty sad

Image credits: Gunner253

#26

Somewhere right now a child is being abused or fearing it happening again. Child abuse is the saddest f**king thing to me

Image credits: LikeDingledodies

#27

Life can be heartbreakingly unfair. A friend‘s sister suddenly passed away because of a heart attack last summer at age 40, leaving behind a bright, young, then orphaned son. My friend and his wife immediately took him in, gave him a home, and cared so much for him. They were very careful, loving, and considerate. They found a preschool for him, went to therapy with him and participated in it in order to support him getting through the trauma of losing your only parent. In December my friend passed away because of a heart attack.

Image credits: Esist1996

#28

Many people go through the last years of their life sad and chronically lonely

Image credits: bettyfordslovechild

#29

There are over 2,500 ancient languages that are either already extinct, or in danger of being forgotten forever.

Image credits: Back2Bach

#30

About 80% of ducklings won't reach their first birthday

#31

Read about a dolphin who had learned some basic communication and was in some sort of pen. Dolphins can suicide by going under water and refusing to go back up for air. This dolphin was miserable and told it's handler goodbye before going under and killing itself. The fact the dolphin was sentient enough to chose suicide breaks my heart.

Image credits: MsAnj77

#32

i forget the percentage of it but a shocking amount of people die alone with no spouse or family. this always seemed to be a pessimistic estimation to me but it really sunk in when i worked in a hospital. which means our chances of dying alone in some nursing home or house is higher than we think.

Image credits: holloheaded

#33

Yesterday I found out my wife has only a week left

Image credits: CitronThink

#34

The Ukranian Famine (Holodomor) killed at least 3.5mil people back in 1932-1933. Stalin's insane plans to optimize state crops while starving out the farmers themselves is some of the most horrific sh*t I've ever heard of. Death by starvation has got to be one of the worst possible ways to go.

#35

The United States government:

Fed radioactive oatmeal to mentally challenged children to see what would happen.

Allow black men with syphilis to believe they were being treated while actually letting them die from it to see what happened when it was left untreated.

Plus:

There are people that do not vaccinate their children because of internet memes.

There are people that truly believe the world is flat.

Image credits: Howabouthatnow

#36

The money in off shore bank accounts 5 years ago could end world poverty for 50 years. Forbes once had the headline: Poverty is a choice, just not by the ones in poverty.

#37

Whenever I change an old spiral florescent or incandescent lightbulb in seldom used fixture, I think to myself, "This bulb will probably out live me."

I'm not dying of anything that I know of, but I'm at that age where I know most of my years are probably behind me.

#38

There is a remote island in the south Pacific that had a lighthouse built on it in the 1700s. The keeper kept a cat to keep him company. Everyday the cat would bring the keeper a dead bird. The keeper had never seen birds of this type before, so he kept the tiny carcasses to show scientists who'd be on exploration ships. The scientists determined that they were flightless songbirds - the only known species of flightless songbird ever discovered, then and now. One day the cat just stopped bringing the birds to the keeper. One cat caused the extinction of an entire unique species. No one ever saw a living specimen and no one ever heard their song.

#39

You never get to see your child's entire life.. Or you do..

#40

Last year in the worst of the pandemic, residents of North Korea had to hand over their pets to supply food. I can't even imagine how heartbreaking it had to be to send your source of happiness to let others and yourself eat it.

#41

the teen suicide rate is steadily increasing in multiple states (last time i checked)

#42

Whenever you see a lone Canada Goose, it has lost it’s family..

#43

Mother hamsters will sometimes eat their newborn babies. This can be for a variety of reasons, but one of the major problems is that a mother hamster will get stressed out and assume that she does not have enough food or space for all of the babies to survive inside of their tiny cage.

#44

1 in 4 women will loose a pregnancy or infant

#45

On 9/11 the search and rescue dogs were getting so sad from finding so many dead bodies that the search and rescue helpers hid themselves in rubble to make the dogs happy.

Bonus fact: dogs stay up thinking about their problems just like humans do.

#46

At the 9/11 museum I learned the unfortunate fact that Flight 93 flew upside down for a period of time before crashing in the field. Apparently, people all over the plane were vomiting. If you’ve even been on a flight where someone throws up nearby, you can imagine how disgusting, awful, and traumatizing this had to have been. Breaks my heart just thinking about it.

Another sad fact is that 8 children were on those planes. 3 were on a trip to California with their teacher. Two siblings (ages 8 and 3) were traveling with the parents, and after missing their original flight, were put on Flight 77 (crashed into the Pentagon.)

I was in middle school at the time, but nearly 20 years later, 9/11 facts continue to haunt me.

#47

People treating animals horribly will never stop.

#48

A dog will lie awake at night after getting in trouble or having a bad day thinking about it. Additionally dogs feed off our energy so if you are having a bad day, anxious or depressed that actually rubs off on your dog.

#49

Identity theft is not a joke. Millions of families suffer every year.

Image credits: mugglem

#50

Hachikou was a Japanese Akita dog who each day would wait at the train station for his owner to return from his commute. One day his owner had an aneurysm at work and passed away. Hachikou would spend the next ten years waiting at the station.

We don’t deserve dogs, they are too good.

Image credits: lnfomorph

#51

I'm madly in love with my wife of 35 years. We are each others best friends and we are together 24/7. We do massages on each other every morning and snuggle/spoon together all night. We haven't spent a night apart in 3 decades. We are older now and I know one of us is going to die alone.

Image credits: Hopguy

#52

Cats are the most euthanized pets in shelters even over pitbulls.

I worked at an animal shelter when I was a you g lad and every f**king time someone came to adopt a pet it was a dog! I even heard a family say “ we want a dog only cats don’t love you”

I socialized many of their cats and most of them were so sweet, and cuddly and made me just so sad inside everyday watching people adopt dogs and ignore the cats. This was a no kill shelter but still it was so heart wrenching I quit because of that.

Cats do love you back you just have to earn their trust and they show it differently than dogs. All animals show love in their own special way.

Image credits: MrAtomMissileer

#53

The inevitability of entropic decay I guess

I used to worry about death, then I thought I could live on through others, then I realized those others will eventually die, then I realized that even if they build a statue of your greatness and fill history books with your name, civilizations will crumble, history will be forgotten, stars will burn out, until eventually the heat death of the universe

I used to romanticize star trek as the ultimate goal of humanity, but now I realize that no matter how much we progress, how well we get along and focus on a common goal, how much of space we explore, how many planets we terraform, no matter how much we try to bring peace and order to chaos, everything and everyone will eventually die and become nothing

And what's worse, in this incredibly temporary and meaningless existence most conscious creatures get, they are miserable, mistreated, exploited, unfulfilled, trodden upon and left behind for others to get ahead

So basically working on a saturday is a nonesense

Image credits: Thereisnoyou

#54

You can do everything in your power and work as hard as you possibly can, sometimes [stuff] just doesn't work out. You very well won't ever accomplish your dream, despite all your efforts.

Image credits: booksoverppl

#55

The first and only time most men receive flowers is at their funeral.

Image credits: BellaFace

#56

One day, the person who loved you and held you the most as a baby put you down and never picked you up again.

Or that likely dozens of species go extinct every day.

Image credits: afeeney

#57

eating disorders affect at LEAST 9% of the global population (that’s huge) and anorexia is the most lethal mental disorder there is, 1 in 10 people affected by it will die. not the most lethal eating disorder, the most lethal MENTAL disorder. and eating disorders rates have been climbing very rapidly these past few years.

Image credits: retropomme

#58

"Life is made up of meetings and partings. That is the way of it"

Kermit : The Muppet Christmas Carol

#59

No human alive today will ever see atmospheric CO2 levels below 400 ppm.

#60

Junko Furuta's killers are alive and well and free.

#61

That sex trafficking children is real, actively ongoing, and adults will be professionally doing it all across the world at any given point

#62

Diarrhea is the #1 leading cause of death in children

#63

An Octopus dies after giving birth because she stops eating while hatching their eggs.

Edit: She lays eggs and does not give birth. And she protects that egg and therefore eats nothing until it has hatched. I really didn't think right while typing the sentence I'm sorry.

#64

The Christmas after the peaceful Christmas during WW1 was one of the bloodiest days of the war

#65

When you die off most of your stuff you loved in life will probably get thrown out

#66

Tomorrow isn't guaranteed.

#67

Jake Paul was in my grade up till we graduated high school. No matter how I live my life he will always be more successful then me. He was a sh*t back then too. Not as depressing as some of the other stories here but it makes it hard to go to work very day.

#68

The song (Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay is technically unfinished. The whistling you hear at the end of the song was an ad-lib, intended to be a placeholder for a final verse. Unfortunately, Otis Redding died in a plane crash before he could record that final verse and we will never know how he wanted it to end.

#69

My cat has a tumor in her stomach

#70

The average lifespan of an individual on the autism spectrum is 39 years.

#71

There's a rough 1:1 equivalent of pounds of CO2 produced to pounds of concrete produced in concrete production.

#72

The youngest mother in history gave birth aged five years, seven months, and 21 days.

Lina Marcela Medina de Jurado is a Peruvian woman who became the youngest confirmed mother in 1933. It's amazing that the human body could go through that, but so sad that she had to go through that and some pedo even thought it was a good idea to have sex with, at the time, a four year old.

#73

that i won't get to feel my husbands presence anymore...he passed away suddenly on the 11th i miss him every minute of the day

#74

Some people, either through loneliness, age, or mental health, are so closed off from the outside world that they either can't or don't know how to take care of themselves until they die. Most of the time the only way for anyone to notice that something is wrong is either by accident or the smell.

There is/was a Dutch guy who films the cleanup of those kinds of houses (he has a cleaning service specialized in those kinds of extreme cases). One woman's toilet backed up and she just did her business on the bathroom floor for months. In another case a guy had a square meter of space to sleep in, the rest was literal garbage halfway up the wall. He even made holes in the walls and floors to stuff it in.

#75

if a sheep is not sheared, it will be weighed down and eventually fall over, and ends up starving to death

#76

Roughly half of the Donner Party were children.

#77

I'm not going to find out what happened before the big bang, if there's life on other planets, if there's a reason for the existence of anything at all

#78

With the African slave trade America has many black people now who are descendants from the original people who were imported as slaves, pretty much common knowledge. In Asia with places like Saudi Arabia who also bought slaves they do not have this as males were castrated and I'm sure it was called "cock and bull" where both testicles and penis would be removed, this was happening to male boys as young as 12 and the survival rate of the procedure was as low as 1 in every 5.

#79

Chris Farley's last words where "Don't leave me", said to a prostitute who then stole his watch.

#80

Bill Finger, the man who created a vast majority of if not everything that makes Batman a success today, not only never got credit in his lifetime, but was also called a liar by Bob Kane.

Kane who came up with an idea of a bat themed vigilante called The Bat-Man, later used his fathers law firm to make up a contract in which he not only got sole credit but also any major proceeds stemming from the success of Batman.

Bill died penniless and on his couch in a bad apartment in 1974 while Kane was running around telling everyone he created Batman and such.

#81

how there’s probably some dude scamming an old lady rn

#82

The older we get, the older our parents get.

My mom was 22, and my father was 24, when they both had me. At the age of 8, my father passed away. He was 32 years old at that time. Now, i’m 23 years old, and my moms 46……only got one parent left, and as much as I hope to have her forever, sadly, one day, I’ll lose her, too.

And that’s just life.

#83

Rwanda genocide School children massacred with machetes It could have been prevented And this is why I hate the expression “everything happens for a reason)

#84

99% of all species that have lived on planet Earth have gone extinct.

#85

The grinch lived where everyone dumped their trash. So how do you think he obtained his dog max? Someone threw the dog away in a dump on the tip of a frozen cliffside, surely to die. F*ck the whos.

#86

That every 20 seconds, a child dies from a lack of accesss to clean water.

#87

Penguins sometimes get raped by sea lions. These young seals are those who can't mate with a female because a larger sea lion controls a massive harem.

After getting raped, the penguins' head are munched off most of the time.

#88

Otters are rapists. As soon as a female is of age, males will violently attack her. Sometimes killing her and continuing to assault her corpse.