Vast amounts of water have been found in space. Earth’s oceans may not be that unique. Three of Jupiter’s moons (Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto) and two of Saturn’s (Enceladus (pictured above) and Titan) are thought to have underwater seas. Europa’s ocean may contain over twice the volume of water found on Earth. However, the most water ever discovered surrounds a black hole some 12 billion lightyears away. This region contains vast amounts of water vapour, the equivalent of 140 trillion times the volume of water in Earth’s oceans. There is more water in space than you might think.
100 Mind-Blowing Be Facts
Our days are getting longer. Earth’s spin speed is slowing: every year, it takes our planet a little longer to complete one full revolution on its axis. The change is miniscule, however. Every century, Earth slows by 1/500th of a second; 1,000 years from now, one day will be two-hundredths of a second longer than today.
The Moon is getting farther away every year. The Moon exerts a pull on Earth, causing our planet to be slightly egg-shaped. It affects water even more, creating tides and causing the oceans to pile up towards one side of the planet, forming a ‘tidal bulge’. This bulge is dragged around with the Moon as it orbits. As Earth rotates faster than the Moon – 24 hours versus 27.3 days – the bulge moves slightly ahead of the Moon’s position in orbit. The Moon pulls back on it, effectively trying to slow it down and causing Earth’s rotation rate to gradually slow down over time as a result. As the two bodies interact through gravity, this tugging causes Earth to lose energy while the Moon gains energy. Because of this energy boost the Moon is slowly spiralling outwards, moving away from us by 3.8cm per year.
The heat from the Big Bang is still around today. The early Universe consisted of a hot soup of ionised gas: a sort of opaque plasma. About 380,000 years after the Big Bang, this gas cooled sufficiently enough that atoms were able to form. Radiation left over from the Big Bang is still around us today and is known as the cosmic microwave background (CMB). It can’t be seen with the naked eye, but various missions over the years have been able to study it in microwave light, including ESA’s Planck satellite and the WMAP mission.
Venus spins backwards. Venus spins in the opposite direction to the rest of the planets in our Solar System. This is a puzzle that requires solving if we are to understand more about the formation and evolution of our Solar System. Could it be that, in the early days of the Solar System, Venus was hit by another object, sending it spinning in the opposite direction? The truth is, there is no confirmed theory as to why Venus spins backwards relative to the other planets. But that’s not the only strange thing about Venus’s orbit. The planet also rotates slowly, with the Venusian day equivalent to 243 Earth days, and longer than the Venusian year of 225 Earth days.
Uranus is the coldest planet in the Solar System. Some facts about space seem to defy simple logic. Neptune is the farthest planet from the Sun, so you might expect it to be the coldest planet. But it’s not: Uranus is. The question is, why is Uranus the coldest planet in the Solar System? Could Uranus’s plummeting temperature be related to the planet’s atmosphere? Did Uranus lose most of its primordial heat early in its life? Or could it be related to the planet’s strange tilt, relative to the rest of the planets that orbit our Sun?
Black holes give off light. Venture beyond the event horizon and you’ll not be able to escape the powerful gravity of a black hole. Black holes are objects so dense that not even light can escape their gravitational pull. Yet despite this, black holes can shine brightly, and this may be one of the most contradictory-sounding facts about space on our list. Supermassive black holes can illuminate the centre of galaxies and are known as active galactic nuclei. How can this be? As cosmic material falls into a black hole, it forms an accretion disc that swirls around it. This material gets very hot and glows: it can even power jets of material that shoot out of the black hole into space. This all occurs just outside the event horizon and is one of the ways astronomers can detect black holes even though they can observe them directly.
5 billion Suns could fit in UY Scuti, one of the biggest known stars. Compared to the rest of the worlds of our Solar System – even colossal Jupiter – our Sun is pretty big. But it’s nothing compared to the biggest stars we know of red hypergiant stars that would positively dwarf our Sun if ever there was a cosmic ‘who’s the biggest star?’ contest. UY Scuti is one such stellar giant. It’s often referred to as the biggest known star in the Universe (although this can’t definitively be proven). But what calculations have revealed is that if UY Scuti were to replace our Sun, its outer edge would sit beyond the orbit of Jupiter. 5 billion Suns, 7 trillion Jupiters or 7 quadrillion Earths would fit inside UY Scuti! What’s more, UY Scuti is 300,000 times brighter than the Sun but is so far away you wouldn’t know this when observing it in our night sky.
The footprints on the moon will be there for 100 million years.
Cilantro and coriander are considered to be the same.
Regardless of their size, naval tradition declares submarines to be called “boats” rather than “ships.”
Some tornadoes can be faster than Formula One race cars!
It can be too warm to snow, but never too cold.
Many people believe that early mermaid sightings can be attributed to dehydration + manatees.
The Great Hammerhead can weigh as much as 1000 lbs. and be as long as 20 feet.
But don’t be fooled by their size: they are gentle giants. They graze on water grasses, weeds and algae. They are the only aquatic herbivore.
The tusk can grow as long as 10 feet. A narwhal can be 17 feet in length (plus the tusk!).
They can weigh between 8-17 pounds and grow to be between 21–29 inches in length.
Russia is just 2 miles from Alaska. Who would’ve thought they’d be so close? Crazy!
Experts predict that there will be 9.7 billion people on Earth by 2050.
Ketchup used to be sold as medicine. That’s right; the popular condiment was once thought to be a cure for indigestion.
Earth isn’t round. While this sounds like an elaborate joke, we’re serious. Earth isn’t flat, but it’s not perfectly round either. Earth’s rotation causes the planet to bulge at the equator and flatten at the poles, while the distribution of mass on Earth (which is not perfectly uniform) causes small variations in the gravitational pull at different locations on the planet. These variations are too small to be seen in pictures of Earth from space, so they appear round to the human eye. The shape seen in the video above is not technically the shape of the planet, but its ‘geoid’, the shape of its mean sea-level surface extending around the entire globe. The map was produced using data collected from ESA’s Gravity and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) and shows the most detailed map ever created of Earth’s gravity field.
Atacama is the driest place on Earth. The Atacama Desert, located in South America, is widely considered to be the driest place on Earth, outside of the Antarctic dry valleys. This vast expanse of land spans over 100,000 sq km and receives an average of less than 1 mm of rainfall per year. The harsh climate of the Atacama is due to a combination of factors including its location in a rain shadow caused by the Andes mountains, the presence of the cold Humboldt Current offshore and a lack of moisture-bearing winds. Despite its arid conditions, the Atacama is home to several unique species of plants and animals that have adapted to survive in this harsh environment. The desert is also known for its stunning landscapes, including salt flats, geysers and towering volcanoes – making it a popular destination for adventurous travellers.
Earth’s magnetic pole is creeping westward. Unlike our geographic North Pole, which is in a fixed location, Earth’s magnetic north wanders. Until the early 1990s, the magnetic North Pole was known to lie some 1600 km south of true north, in Canada. Yet scientists realised that the location of the magnetic north wasn’t fixed and was drifting at a rate of 15 km a year. Since the 1990s, however, the drift of Earth’s magnetic pole has turned into more of a sprint. Its present speed is around 50-60 km a year and is making a dash towards Siberia at a pace not seen before. Why? Scientists studying the drift of Earth’s magnetic north pole, using data from ESA’s Swarm mission, have pinpointed a change in the circulation pattern of magnetic blobs deep below Earth’s surface. They learned a change in the flow underneath Canada has caused a patch of magnetic field at the edge of Earth’s core, deep within the Earth, to be stretched out. This has weakened the Canadian patch and resulted in the pole shifting towards Siberia.
Trees are breathers. Trees are one of the most effective tools we have to combat climate change. Forests are home to around 80% of biodiversity on land and tropical forests alone produce over 40% of the oxygen we breathe. Covering around 30% of Earth’s land surface, we depend on forests for our survival. Forests absorb around 8 Gigatonnes a year of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and play a crucial role in the carbon cycle and climate system. However, climate change, forest degradation and deforestation are causing much of this stored carbon to be released back into the atmosphere. Recent research found that recovering tropical forests was only successfully combating a quarter of the current carbon emissions which indicates the importance of preserving and restoring our tropical forests. To better understand the role of trees in regulating our planet’s carbon cycle, ESA’s upcoming mission called Biomass will use advanced radar technology to measure the amount of carbon stored in Earth’s forests and other biomass, providing a more accurate assessment of carbon storage and uptake than ever before. By monitoring changes in biomass over time, scientists will be able to assess the effectiveness of forest conservation efforts and better understand the impact of deforestation on our climate.
You wouldn’t be able to walk on Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus or Neptune because they have no solid surface!
If you enjoy pumpkin-spice-flavoured foods, you likely appreciate cinnamon and nutmeg. Nutmeg adds a warm and spicy flavour to foods and drinks in small amounts. However, in larger amounts, it can cause hallucinations and ultimately be fatal.
There is a species on Earth considered to be immortal. The “Immortal Jellyfish” is aptly named as it can transform some of its cells into a childhood state. This reaction usually occurs when the animal feels threatened. The jellyfish also has a habit of hitchhiking on boats and scientists have found them throughout the world now.
Newborn babies are incredibly different from what they will grow up to be. At birth, a baby’s head is approximately one-quarter of its body weight. The baby’s brain will also double in size in one year. Babies also have 300 bones while adults have 206.
Talking to your dog might not be crazy after all. Dogs are highly intelligent and can learn some English. Dogs can learn up to 165 words, particularly words with the hard “t” or “r.” This might explain why all dogs recognise the word “treat.”
One Japanese man, Tsutomu Yamaguchi, was in Hiroshima for a business trip on August 6, 1945. This just happens to be the day the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city. He somehow survived with burn injuries and went back home to Nagasaki. Then, on August 9, 1945, another atomic bomb hit that city. Yamaguchi and his family survived this attack, as well.
Airplane food might not be that bad. During flights, elevation causes dryness and reduces sensitivity. This fact limits the amount passengers can taste while flying.
THERE USED TO BE THOUSANDS OF BLUE WHALES IN THE ANTARCTIC. It’s estimated that there were over 225,000 Antarctic blue whales before their exploitation in the 1900s. Today, there are estimated to be less than 2,000 Antarctic blue whales left in the world.
WE STILL DON’T KNOW ALL THERE IS TO KNOW ABOUT OUR FORESTS. We don’t know how many tree species there are on Earth, but scientists estimate there are about 63,000 known species. There could be as many as 9,000 tree species still unknown to science.
A vampire bat’s teeth are so sharp that its bite may not be felt at all. Their saliva dulls any pain, so a bat may drink its victim’s blood for up to 30 minutes.
The lion has the loudest roar of all the big cats. It can be heard as far as 5km (3 miles) away.
Interestingly, pink, white and albino axolotls are more common when bred in captivity. We’re not sure why this is, but you’ll rarely see a pink or white axolotl in the wild. Instead, they’re much more likely to be brown or green.
Experts believe they could hold the key to the secret of evolution and regeneration. That’s right, they may be difficult to examine, but scientists continue to persevere with sequencing the axolotl’s DNA. Many experts agree that the species could unlock the secret of evolution, while others say that gaining a deeper understanding of their regenerative abilities could revolutionise human medicine forever.
It can take thousands of years for a natural beach to be created. Beaches don’t form overnight! It takes thousands of years for them to form. They form because of the water that is moving constantly.
The longest beach is Praia Do Cassino in Brazil! The Praia Do Cassino beach is long! It’s around 150 miles long which would be over 5 marathons. That would be a very long beach walk.
Beaches are constantly changing. Although you might not be able to tell the difference, beaches are always changing. They can get bigger, smaller or even change shape. It can happen because of the waves, wind or extreme weather!
Gelotophobia is the fear of laughter. Those who suffer from gelotophobia respond to all laughter as if it is at their expense. Up to 13% of the population could be afraid of laughter.
The last man to walk on the moon, Gene Cernan, promised his daughter he’d write her initials on the moon. He did, and her initials, “TDC,” will probably be on the moon for tens of thousands of years.
Russia didn’t consider beer to be alcohol until 2011. It was previously classified as a soft drink.
Men are 6 times more likely to be struck by lightning than women.
Coca-Cola would be green if colouring wasn’t added to it.
Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.
In Singapore, when you turn 21, you’re automatically registered as an organ donor. The Human Organ Transplant Act (HOTA) was first introduced in 1987 due to extremely low organ donation rates. It was only in 2009 that citizens and permanent residents were automatically registered as organ donors. You can opt out, but you may not want to as you’ll be lower on the waiting list for organs should you need a transplant.
Samuel L. Jackson was an usher at Martin Luther King Jr’s funeral. Jackson studied at Morehouse College, where Dr. King and other prominent civil rights activists would often visit and have debates. When King was assassinated, his funeral was held in Morehouse College, which is how Jackson was able to be one of the funeral ushers. After this experience, Jackson became much more heavily involved in the civil rights movement.
Ancient Roman commoners went on strike by evacuating their cities, leaving the upper classes hopelessly fending for themselves. Secessio plebis (secession of the plebeians) is similar to a general strike but proved much more effective as the upper classes almost entirely relied upon the working classes. Pretty much everything in the city would close down, which proved to be incredibly effective at having the peasants’ demands met. Maybe this is something that we should try again in modern times.
Recessions may not be good for our finances, but it turns out that they’re good for our health. Researchers in the US initially studied data from previous economic crises expecting to find a correlation between mortalities and economic crises. What they found was surprising, as harder times seemed actually to reduce mortality rates instead of increasing them. This is because during a recession, there is less traffic, and cleaner air, and people have less money to spend on unhealthy things like drinking alcohol or smoking.
Tom Cruise got divorced from each of his three ex-wives when they reached the age of 33. Tom Cruise’s first wife was Mimi Rogers, he parted ways with her in 1989. Later he married Nicole Kidman, but they were not meant to be as they divorced in 2001. Cruise got married once again in 2006 to Katie Holmes but split with her just six years later in 2012. Fun Fact: Each of Tom Cruise’s ex-wives is successively eleven years younger than the last.
Roosters have built-in earplugs, so they don’t deafen themselves when they crow. Anyone who’s ever spent a night outside the city knows one thing, and that’s the fact that roosters are loud! Researchers measured how loud roosters do crow and found them to be as loud as 140 decibels – well over the amount needed to cause permanent ear damage and even deafness. When they studied what happens when roosters crow, they discovered that in opening their jaw to crow, their outer ear canals close up, essentially giving them natural earplugs.
As dogs were domesticated, their eyes evolved to look cuter. Have you ever seen a picture of a wolf’s eyes and seen something mysteriously menacing in them compared to those of a dog? Well, there’s a good reason for that. Dogs evolved muscles around their eyes, allowing them to change their facial expression slightly, commonly known as “puppy eyes.” It’s believed that they evolved so because dogs that looked cuter and friendlier were more likely to be looked after.
Books published in Norway are bought by the government to stock the country’s libraries. All books must first go through quality control, and one thousand copies will be purchased and distributed by Arts Council Norway if they pass this step. If it’s a children’s book, 1,550 copies are purchased instead. Not only does this keep small publishing businesses afloat, but it’s also of immense benefit to fledgling writers in Norway.
Shrek originally had a thick Canadian accent. The titular character of the instant classic was voiced by Mike Myers, who spoke in an amped-up version of his Canadian accent. When Myers watched the first rough cut, he loved everything about it, except his voice! He thought that Shrek would be better off with a Scottish accent to counter the English-accented villain, Lord Farquaad – a change that ended up costing about $4 million!
There’s a mountain in Greece that women are prohibited from visiting. It’s not just the mountain, but an entire peninsula called Mount Athos. You see, Mount Athos has been home to a collection of monasteries since at least the 4th Century AD. For more than a thousand years, if not longer, the presence of women has been banned not just from the monasteries but from the whole peninsula. Mount Athos is an autonomous region of Greece controlled by the Greek Orthodox Church. According to the Church, the Virgin Mary blessed the peninsula and made it her holy garden, so no other women were allowed to be there. Other than wild animals and a few cats, the animals there are also all male.
There’s a soviet version of The Lord of the Rings, and it’s downright woeful. Titled Khraniteli (The Keepers) followed the plot of The Fellowship of the Ring, the first in JRR Tolkien’s legendary trilogy. It was released straight to TV in 1991, and much like the Soviet Union as a whole, it ended up being a complete and utter catastrophe. While the characters and plot may be recognizable to those who dare to watch Khraniteli, the special effects (if you can call them that!) are so lacking that it ruins the point of producing it in the first place.
Koalas may be cute, but they’re incredibly dumb. No, they have one of the smallest brains out of all mammals, and that’s in proportion to their body weight too! Their restrictive diet of non-nutritious eucalyptus leaves may be the cause, as this diet couldn’t possibly sustain a larger brain. To give you an idea of how clueless they are, when a koala is presented with a branch with leaves and a pile of leaves on a plate, they will eat the leaves on the branch as they cannot recognise those on the plate as food.
Psy didn’t want to upload Gangnam Style to YouTube because he didn’t want to be humiliated. The Korean pop superstar didn’t even really know much about YouTube when his friends recommended uploading his music video. Psy felt he would be humiliated with low views because he wasn’t very well known internationally. He couldn’t have been more wrong, though, as Gangnam Style became the first music video to reach 1 billion views on YouTube!
Studies have found that nine out of ten people experience phantom phone vibrations. It’s suggested that when we keep our phones in our pockets regularly, they become almost like an extension of ourselves. This is similar to wearing glasses for extended periods. When we experience any kind of muscle spasm, a shift in clothing, or any other form of vibration, we instantly assume that it is our phone. This is believed to be because we are much more high-strung these days and are always on the alert, so we don’t miss important texts or notifications.
Reindeer in the Arctic can see the world in ultraviolet light. While we cannot see ultraviolet (UV) light, reindeer seem to have developed this ability after moving to the Arctic. They likely evolved this ability to assist them in a world that would otherwise be very bright and white. Under UV light, both food and predators stand out much more against the harsh snowy background.
Arizona fines drivers under their unique “Stupid Motorist Law.” This law addresses something which Arizona is all too familiar with – flash floods and stupid drivers. When a section of an Arizona road is flooded, barriers are put up to prevent drivers from attempting to go any further. If you cross these barriers and need to get rescued, you will be fined under the Stupid Motorist Law to reimburse the cost of your rescue.
Chris Pratt stole his costume from the set of Guardians of the Galaxy. Pratt pinched the costume in the hopes that the film would be successful. He didn’t steal it for any nefarious purposes but a delightfully noble one. The lovably goofy movie star simply hoped to cheer up sick kids in hospitals by wearing the iconic costume.
When London taxi drivers tried to protest against Uber, they drove more customers towards their competitors. In 2014 as many as 10,000 London black cab drivers took to the streets and blockaded much of the city to protest against Uber. The drivers claimed not to be protesting against having competition. They protested because Uber drivers didn’t have to go through the 4-7 years of training a black cab driver must go through. In the end, Uber stated that the protest annoyed Londoners so much that, on the day of the strike, the Uber app was downloaded 850% more than normal.
The Internet has its very own patron saint. St. Isidore of Seville may not seem at first to be the best patron saint of the Internet, considering he lived back in the 7th Century. While he certainly lived well before the Internet was invented, he shared many values with it. He tried to record all the knowledge he could get his hands on during his life, which isn’t that far from what the Internet is – a great big collection of knowledge!
Roundabouts have been proven to reduce dangerous traffic incidents significantly. This is because they greatly lower the speed at which drivers go. They have also been found to improve traffic conditions compared to intersections with traffic lights significantly. They’re also much more versatile, as the wide range of roundabout designs can be adapted to fit many more traffic conditions.
The moon has its Catholic bishop. You read that right; the Catholic church does claim the moon to be a part of their religious jurisdiction and has done so since man first landed on the moon. This is due to a Catholic law that states that any newly discovered territory falls under the jurisdiction of the bishop from whence the expedition departed. Because Apollo 11 was launched from the jurisdiction of Bishop William Donald Borders in Orlando, Florida, he became the bishop of the moon.
As many as 80% of Hong Kong’s toilets are flushed with seawater. In the 1950s, Hong Kong found the perfect solution to an overall lack of freshwater and installed a separate water distribution and waste-water management system. This system has since been installed in many coastal communities such as the Marshall Islands. Not only does it save precious drinking water, but it’s also even been found to be better for marine ecosystems!
The inventor of the USB originally designed it to be plugged in either way up. One of the most frustrating things to do with technology has got to be the fact that, try as hard as you will; whenever you go to plug a USB in, it’s the wrong way up. The original design would have been much better but ended up being canned as it would have cost twice the price to make it flippable. The inventor of the USB has since agreed that they made the mistake of not going ahead with the original idea.
Barbara Bush, George Bush Snr’s wife, once called The Simpsons the “dumbest thing I’ve ever seen.” The former First Lady seemed to be completely against the show and didn’t hold back when quizzed on the topic in 1990. Soon after this, she received a letter “penned” by Marge Simpson, which pleaded with Bush to reconsider her opinion and find a way out of the controversy. Barbara Bush wrote back to Marge, apologizing for her loose tongue, and even went on to call Homer Simpson handsome!
Stan Lee created the character for Iron Man as a challenge. Stan Lee had been playing around with the idea of a businessman superhero for a while and finally bit the bullet in 1963 when he came up with the concept for Iron Man. Marvel’s readers at the time were very much against war, so he thought it would be a unique challenge to create a character who fans would originally hate but come to love – and it worked!
A town in Antarctica forces would-be residents to have their appendices removed. Villas Las Estrellas lies on King George Island, one of Antarctica’s South Shetland Islands. The island itself has a rotating population of around 100 or so people, primarily made up of researchers and various military personnel. Because the island is so remote and the medical facilities there so small, anyone who wishes to live there must get their appendix taken out to ensure it doesn’t become a problem down the line.
Research has found that people who swear tend to be more honest. While society rejects those who utilise profanity on a general level, many people still swear worse than sailors if given the opportunity. A researcher from Stanford University was inquisitive about the connection between swearing and expressing one’s true feelings. Eventually, he concluded that there was a direct link between those who swear to their heart’s content and those who are generally more honest.
The quietest place on Earth is in Minnesota. Pretty much wherever you go in the world, there’s always going to be some sort of background noise, whether that’s the chirp of crickets or the slow, lazy whoosh of a gentle breeze. That’s the case everywhere except Orfield Laboratories in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where something called an anechoic chamber lies. While the background noise in a tranquil bedroom measures somewhere around 30 decibels, Orfield Laboratories anechoic chamber recorded an average of -13 decibels – that’s so quiet that the inner workings of your body are audible.
All those scam emails you get from Nigerian Princes have purposefully bad grammar. At this point, it’s almost certain that every person in the world has received one of these emails, including actual Nigerian royalty. It turns out that there’s a good reason these scams are littered with mistakes in spelling, grammar, and punctuation. This essentially filters out those who are less gullible and simply ignore the emails, while those more likely to be defrauded will ignore the typos and reply!
The more money people spend on their weddings, the more likely they are to get divorced. Maybe it’s time to ditch those plans of a fairytale wedding. It’s not just how much you spend on your wedding, but the engagement and wedding ring too, with bigger spenders finding themselves more likely to be looking for love again sooner than more frugal fiancés. Instead of splashing out on your wedding, it’s better to go all out on the trip of a lifetime!
Zebras are black with white stripes. There are three different species of zebras, which can be found in Africa’s southern and eastern regions. Their overall coat of hair is dark in colour, broken up with stripes of white, unpigmented hair. We’re still unsure why they have stripes, but scientists suggest it may be some form of protection against predators.
Every year 22,000 tons of dust is blown from the Sahara Desert to the Amazon Rainforest. Long, long ago, the Sahara Desert used to be a lake, and the dust and sand left behind are rich in phosphorous. This is quite fortunate, as this phosphorous-rich dust is carried through the skies to the Amazon rainforest, which is surprisingly in need of fertilizer. The rainforest loses just about as much phosphorous as it gains because it all gets washed away through streams, creeks, and the Amazon River.
The longest train journey in the world is in Russia. This should come as no real surprise, considering the absolute enormity that is Russia. The 5,778 miles (9,300 km) long Trans-Siberian Railway runs from Moscow to Vladivostok in the country’s far east. If you combine the length of the Trans-Siberian with all the other railway lines in the country, it would be able to circumnavigate the world twice!
Recorders used to be a popular instrument. Many people around the world will fondly recall the moment in their early schooling years when they no longer had to screech out a horrifying rendition of Three Blind Mice or something along those lines on a recorder. This seemingly useless musical instrument, while shunned today, was all the rage back in the Baroque period of the early 1700s. It was so quiet that it was eventually replaced with the significantly louder flute so that the rest of the orchestra wouldn’t drown it out.
Alexander the Great was the first person to be pictured on a coin.
The word “good-bye” is a contraction of “God be with ye.”
A “50% off” sign increases sales, even if shoppers don’t know the original price or what a reasonable price for the product would be.
The Eiffel Tower was initially considered to be an eyesore. Its usefulness as a radio tower saved it from being dismantled in 1909.
The Incredible Hulk was initially supposed to be grey, but according to Stan Lee, an issue with the printer turned the Hulk green.
According to Plato, wine may be tasted in moderation until age 31, but when a man reaches 40, he may drink as much as he wants to cure the “crabbedness of old age.”
In Texas, it’s legal to be married by proxy (have a stand-in) if you’re deployed in another country and can’t make your ceremony.
It’s illegal to be an astrologer in Yamhill, Oregon. The practice of all “occult arts” including, fortune telling, phrenology, palmistry, clairvoyance, mesmerism, or spiritualism as a means of divination or giving advice is illegal in this city.
Elsa was originally supposed to be the villain in Frozen.
In 1969, the “Moon Museum” became the first piece of artwork to go to the moon and may still be there today.
The name Google was supposed to be called Googol, but when searching if the domain was taken, the creators accidentally searched “Google.com” instead of “googol.com” and liked it better.
Occupational therapy (OT) can be traced back to 100 BC.
The oldest person ever to have lived (whose age could be authenticated), a French woman named Jeanne Louise Calment, was 122 years old when she died in 1997.
This is one true animal myth: Eating parts of a pufferfish can kill you because, in a defence mechanism to ward off predators, it contains a deadly chemical called tetrodotoxin. There’s enough in one pufferfish to kill 30 people—and there’s no antidote. Still, pufferfish, called fugu, is a highly-prized delicacy in Japan, but can only be prepared by well-trained chefs.
All of an adult human’s blood vessels, if laid out end to end, would be about 100,000 miles, so they could encircle the Earth four times.
The origin of the word “sinister” reflects a historical bias against left-handed people. It comes from the Latin word for “left,” which was also seen to be unlucky or evil.
Among lost works, this story might be even worse: Ernest Hemingway’s first wife, Hadley, left a suitcase full of the author’s writing on a train. When she went back to get it, it was gone. “I had never seen anyone hurt by a thing other than death or unbearable suffering except Hadley when she told me about the things being gone,” Hemingway wrote in A Moveable Feast.
People started wearing pyjamas, originally spelt “pyjamas,” instead of nightgowns so they’d be prepared to run outside in public during World War I air raids in England.
Australia contains several pink lakes, but the most stunning is the Pepto Bismol-coloured Lake Hillier. The colour may be the result of certain algae.