Browse all fun facts636

A 'jiffy' is one trillionth of a second in physics.

A 'moment' was medieval unit of time equal to 90 seconds.

A baseball has 108 stitches.

A blue whale's heart is roughly the size of a small car.

A blue whale's tongue can weigh as much as an elephant.

A bolt of lightning is five times hotter than the surface of the sun.

A bristlecone pine named Methuselah is over 4,850 years old.

A cloud can weigh more than a million pounds.

A cloud weighs around a million tonnes.

A cricket ball is harder than a baseball.

A crocodile can't stick its tongue out.

A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.

A day on Jupiter lasts only about 10 hours.

A day on Mercury lasts 59 Earth days.

A day on Venus is longer than a year on Venus.

A flock of crows is known as a murder.

A glory is a ring-shaped optical effect that can appear in mist or cloud.

A group of barracudas is called a battery.

A group of bears is called a sleuth.

A group of butterflies is called a kaleidoscope.

Bacteria on your skin cause your itches.

Badminton is named after a duke's estate in England.

Bamboo can grow more than an inch in a single day under ideal conditions.

Bamboo can grow over 35 inches in a single day.

Bananas and grapes are berries; strawberries are not.

Bananas are berries, but strawberries are not.

Bananas are curved because they grow towards the sun.

Bananas are slightly radioactive because of their potassium.

Banging your head against a wall for one hour burns 150 calories.

Barbie's full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts.

Baseball may have roots in older bat-and-ball English games.

Basketball was invented with peach baskets as hoops.

Bats are not blind and use both vision and echolocation.

Bats tolerate many viruses that sicken other mammals.

Beavers don't actually live in dams.

Beavers live in lodges behind dams, not inside the dam structure itself.

Beer can produce about twice as many bubbles as champagne for a similar serving.

Beer can produce more bubbles than champagne for the same serving size.

Bees can recognize individual human faces.

Being bored is actually a 'high arousal state' physiologically.

Camel humps store fat, not water.

Canada has more lakes than the rest of the world combined.

Carrots were originally purple or white, not orange.

Cashews grow on the outside of a fruit, not inside a shell.

Cats can't taste sweetness.

Cats have a reflective eye layer that makes them glow in the dark.

Cats have a reflective layer behind the retina that helps them see in low light.

Cats prefer to sleep on their left.

Chainsaws were first invented for childbirth.

Chainsaws were originally developed for medical bone-cutting procedures.

Cherophobia is an irrational fear of fun or happiness.

Cherophobia is the fear of fun or happiness.

Chess may have originated in India around the 6th century.

Chewing gum while chopping onions may help stop tears.

Chewing gum while you chop onions helps keep you from crying.

Chocolate was once used as currency by the Aztecs.

Cilantro tastes soapy to some people because of a gene variant.

Cleopatra lived closer in time to the Moon landing than to the building of the Great Pyramid.

Color is created by your brain, not by objects alone.

Comets smell like rotten eggs.

Daydreaming uses the same brain networks as creative thinking.

Deaf people are known to use sign language in their sleep.

Diamond rain may occur in the atmospheres of ice giant planets.

Dice are among the oldest gaming tools known.

Dogs tilt their heads when you speak to them to better pinpoint familiar words.

Doing someone a favor can make them like you more.

Dolphins have names for each other.

Dolphins sleep with one eye open.

Dragonflies have been around for about 300 million years.

Dreamt is the only common English word ending in mt.

Earlobes have no biological purpose.

Earth has more trees than the Milky Way has stars.

Earth is 4.54 billion years old.

Earth is about 4.54 billion years old according to radiometric dating.

Earth's poles are moving.

Earth's rotation is changing speed.

Earth's rotation is slowing by about 1.8 seconds every century.

Electrons might live forever.

Elephants are the only mammals that can't jump.

Elephants can detect seismic vibrations through their feet.

Emperor penguins can dive deeper than 500 meters on a single breath.

Every atom in your body heavier than hydrogen was forged inside stars.

Every heavy atom in your body was forged inside a star.

Every photo is a record of light from the past.

Facing mirrors do not create truly infinite reflections; each bounce gets dimmer.

Fencing has appeared at every modern Summer Olympics.

Figure skating was once a Summer Olympic event.

Fingernails grow faster than toenails.

Fingernails tend to grow faster in warm weather.

Finland has ranked among the happiest countries in global surveys for years.

Finland is the happiest country on Earth.

Fish form orderly queues in emergencies.

Flamingoes aren't born pink.

Flamingos are born gray and turn pink from the algae and shrimp they eat.

Fold a sheet of paper in half 42 times and it would reach the Moon.

Football teams wearing red kits play better.

Foreign genes have entered the human genome through horizontal gene transfer.

Fortune cookies were popularized in America, not China.

France has the most time zones of any country due to overseas territories.

Fresh fruit is hard to overeat because fiber and water slow digestion.

Giraffes hum to communicate with each other.

Giraffes hum to each other, especially at night.

Glass sponges can live for 15,000 years.

Go has more possible board positions than atoms in the universe.

Goal-line technology was first used at the 2014 World Cup.

Goldfish can recognize human faces.

Golf is one of only two sports played on the Moon.

Google processes more than 8.5 billion searches every single day.

GPS needs Einstein's relativity equations to stay accurate.

Hail can fall at speeds over 100 mph.

Half your cells by count are microbes, though they weigh almost nothing.

Handwriting may help you remember more than typing.

Handwriting may improve memory more than typing for some kinds of information.

Hibernating animals don't dream.

Hibernating animals generally do not dream, with rare exceptions.

High heels were first designed for Persian cavalry riders.

High heels were originally worn by Persian cavalry to help riders stay in stirrups.

Hippos can't actually swim, they walk along the riverbed.

Honey never spoils; ancient tomb honey was still edible.

Honey never spoils. Archaeologists found 3000-year-old honey in Egyptian tombs that was still edible.

Horses cannot vomit.

Horses physically cannot vomit.

Hot water freezes faster than cold water. This is called the Mpemba effect.

Humans are the only animals that blush.

Humans blink about 15 to 20 times per minute.

Humans can maintain close ties with about 150 people - Dunbar's number.

Humans share 60% of their DNA with bananas.

Hummingbirds are the only birds that can fly backward.

Ice cream cones became popular at the 1904 World's Fair.

Ice hockey pucks are frozen before games to reduce bouncing.

Iceland has no mosquitoes.

Identical twins don't have the same fingerprints.

If the Earth doubled in size, trees would immediately fall over.

If you lift a kangaroo's tail off the ground it can't hop.

In any group of 23 people, there is about a 50% chance two share a birthday.

In Switzerland it is illegal to own just one guinea pig.

Insects can fly up to 3.25km above sea level, at least.

It is physically impossible to hum while holding your nose.

It rains methane on Saturn's largest moon.

It takes about eight minutes for sunlight to reach Earth.

It's actually fine to drink alcohol on (most) antibiotics.

It's almost impossible to get too much sugar from fresh fruit.

It's possible for two lucid dreamers to communicate mid-dream.

It's surprisingly easy to escape quicksand.

Japanese has many distinct words for different kinds of rain.

Japanese has over 20 different words for different types of rain.

Jigsaw puzzles were first made as geography teaching tools.

Ketchup was once fermented fish sauce before it used tomatoes.

Ketchup was once sold as medicine in the 1830s.

Koalas have fingerprints nearly identical to humans.

Lake Baikal holds about 20% of the world's unfrozen freshwater.

Laughing came before language.

Laughing likely evolved before spoken language in our ancestors.

Laughter boosts immune function and lowers stress hormones.

Le Duc Tho refused a Nobel Prize in 1973 over the Vietnam War.

Leap years exist because Earth's year is not exactly 365 days.

Learning physically rewires connections in your brain.

Leftover pasta has extra health benefits.

LEGO bricks can withstand enormous compression before failing.

LEGO bricks withstand compression better than concrete.

Light from the nearest star takes over four years to reach Earth.

Lightning can heat the air to 30,000°C.

Liquid helium can climb container walls when cooled near absolute zero.

Male deep-sea anglerfish permanently fuse to much larger females.

Maple syrup comes mostly from sugar maple tree sap.

Mars isn't actually round.

Martial artists who smile before the start of a match are more likely to lose.

Memories shift slightly every time you recall them.

Men are more likely to be colorblind than women.

Mercury, not Venus, is the closest planet to Earth on average.

Methuselah, a bristlecone pine, is among the oldest known non-clonal trees on Earth.

Minecraft has sold more copies than any other video game.

Mirrors facing each other don't produce infinite reflections.

Monaco is smaller than Central Park in New York.

Monopoly was originally called The Landlord's Game.

More people in the world have mobile phones than working toilets.

More than half of all people alive today have never made a phone call.

Most 'silver' spoons are actually made of stainless steel.

Most ginger cats are male.

Most maps of the world are wrong.

Most of the universe's mass-energy is invisible to telescopes.

Most people cannot lick their own elbow.

Most people stroke cats the wrong way.

Naked-eye stars may be thousands of years old when their light reaches you.

Napoleon was average height for a French man of his era.

NASA's X-43 experimental aircraft reached hypersonic speeds far above Mach 9.

NASA's X-43 jet flew at nearly ten times the speed of sound.

Newborn babies don't actually see in black and white.

Nintendo was founded in 1889 as a playing card company.

No two snowflakes with the same shape have ever been documented.

Not only plants photosynthesise.

Octopuses can taste with their arms.

Octopuses have three hearts and blue blood.

One hour near a black hole can equal seven years on Earth.

Orcas wear other animals as hats.

Ostriches can run faster than horses.

Our immune systems can detect bad bacteria from good.

Our solar system has a wall.

Owls cannot move their eyeballs.

Oxford University is older than the Aztec Empire.

Pac-Man was designed to appeal to women as well as men.

Painting one wind turbine blade black can reduce bird collisions significantly.

Paper clips were popularized in the 1890s.

Parents in the US consistently rank as the world's unhappiest.

Parrotfish produce much of the white sand found on tropical beaches.

Peanuts are legumes, not true nuts.

Peanuts aren't nuts, they are legumes.

Penguins propose with pebbles and often mate for life.

People make tens of thousands of decisions each day, many unconsciously.

People who eat whatever they want and stay slim have a slow metabolism, not fast.

Physics has no single universal present moment.

Pigeons can recognize themselves in a mirror.

Pigs can't look up at the sky without rolling over.

Pigs cannot look straight up at the sky.

Pine cones close up when humidity rises, which can signal rain.

Pine trees can tell if it's about to rain.

Pineapples take about two years to grow.

Pizza was once considered peasant food in Naples.

Placebos can cause real symptoms even when you know the pill is fake.

Plants came before seeds.

Queue is pronounced the same when you remove four letters.

Quicksand is denser than the human body, so you cannot sink completely in it.

Rainbows are full circles, but the ground usually hides the bottom half.

Rats laugh when tickled.

Reading for six minutes can reduce stress more than music.

Remove the empty space in your atoms and a human could fit through a needle eye.

Right now you are orbiting the Sun at about 67,000 mph.

Rubber erasers were discovered when rubber was used to erase pencil marks.

Russia spans 11 time zones.

Saffron is one of the world's most expensive spices by weight.

Saturn would float if you could find an ocean big enough.

Saturn would float if you dropped it into a giant bathtub.

Scientists turned plastic waste into vanilla flavoring with bacteria.

Scotland's national animal is the unicorn.

Scrabble was invented during the Great Depression.

Sea cucumbers breathe through their butts.

Sea level is not perfectly level because of gravity and Earth's spin.

Sea otters hold hands while sleeping so they don't drift apart.

Sea turtles and salmon can sense Earth's magnetic field to help them navigate.

Sharks existed on Earth before trees did.

Silent reading still activates your mouth and throat muscles.

Skateboarding grew from surfers wanting to roll on land.

Sloths can hold their breath longer than dolphins can.

Sloths only poop about once a week.

Smells can pass through liquid.

Smells can travel through liquids as well as air.

Snakes can help predict earthquakes.

Sneezes can exceed 100 mph.

So far, two diseases have successfully been eradicated: smallpox and rinderpest.

Table tennis began as an after-dinner parlor game.

Tea bags were invented by accident in the early 1900s.

Tetris was created in the Soviet Union in 1984.

The 'new car smell' is made of dozens of chemicals off-gassing from the interior.

The @ symbol in email predates the internet by centuries in commerce ledgers.

The @ symbol is centuries older than email.

The Andromeda Galaxy is the farthest object visible to the naked eye.

The Anglo-Zanzibar War may be the shortest war on record.

The average dinosaur lifespan was surprisingly small.

The average person spends six months of their life waiting for red lights to turn green.

The average person walks the equivalent of three times around the world in a lifetime.

The ballpoint pen took decades to become popular after invention.

The Benjamin Franklin effect suggests doing someone a favor can increase liking.

The Bermuda Triangle is no more hazardous than any other busy ocean route.

The Bermuda Triangle is not statistically more dangerous than other busy sea routes.

The biggest butterfly in the world has a 31cm wingspan.

The Boston Marathon is the world's oldest annual marathon.

The butterfly effect says tiny events can trigger huge ones.

The Caesar salad was invented in Tijuana, Mexico.

The can opener wasn't invented until 48 years after the tin can was invented in 1810.

Vanilla is the world's most popular ice cream flavor.

Vatican City is the smallest country in the world.

Velcro earned its name from velvet and crochet.

Velcro was inspired by burrs sticking to a dog on a walk.

Venus flytraps count touches before snapping shut.

Vikings reached North America around AD 1000.

Vincent van Gogh only sold one painting during his lifetime.

Vincent van Gogh sold only one painting while he was alive.

Voice actors for Mickey and Minnie Mouse got married in real life.

Volleyball was originally called mintonette.

Walking barefoot on grass may lower stress in some studies.

Water can exist as solid, liquid, and gas simultaneously at its triple point.

Water might not be wet.

Watermelon is botanically a berry.

We have mapped more of Mars than of our own ocean floor.

We've only explored 0.001 per cent of the ocean floor.

Wearing a tie can reduce blood flow to the brain by 7.5 per cent.

When you cut a worm in two, it regenerates.

White chocolate contains no cocoa solids.

Wi-Fi does not stand for wireless fidelity; it is a brand name.

Wind turbines kill between 10,000 and 100,000 birds each year in the UK.

Wombat poop is cube-shaped.

Yellowstone sits atop a supervolcano.

You can be heavily pregnant and not realise.

You can hear a blue whale's heartbeat from more than two miles away.

You can see stars as they were 4,000 years ago with the naked eye.

You can smell certain ants when they are threatened or crushed.

You can yo-yo in microgravity aboard the International Space Station.

You can yo-yo in space.

You can't fold a piece of A4 paper more than eight times.

You cannot burp normally in space.

You cannot fold standard notebook paper more than about eight times in practice.

You could sweat when you're anxious to alert others.

You don't actually lose most of your heat through your head.

You don't like the sound of your own voice because of the bones in your head.

You have a 50 per cent chance of sharing a birthday with a friend.

You inhale 50 potentially harmful bacteria every time you breathe.

You inhale microbes with every breath; your immune system handles most.

You make about 35,000 decisions a day, mostly unconsciously.

You never truly touch anything; atoms repel each other.

You produce enough saliva in a lifetime to fill multiple bathtubs.

You remember more dreams when you sleep badly.

'New car smell' is a mix of over 200 chemicals.

'Sea level' isn't actually level.

29th May is officially Put a Pillow on Your Fridge Day.

7% of American adults believe that chocolate milk comes from brown cows.