So far, two diseases have successfully been eradicated: smallpox and rinderpest. The last case of smallpox was in 1977, and the last of rinderpest was in 2001.
100 Mind-Blowing Far Facts
The earliest mention of the mythical creature, the Unicorn, dates back as far as 2700 BC in Asia and was described as a creature of great power and wisdom.
The Sun makes a sound but we can’t hear it. In the form of pressure waves, the Sun does make a sound. The wavelength of the pressure waves from the Sun is measured in hundreds of miles, however, meaning they are far beyond the range of human hearing.
There are more bacterial cells in your body than human cells. The average human is around 56 per cent bacteria. This was discovered in a 2016 study and is far less than the earlier estimates of 90 per cent. As bacteria are so light, however, by weight, each person is over 99.7 per cent human.
LEGO bricks withstand compression better than concrete. An ordinary plastic LEGO brick can support the weight of 375,000 other bricks before it fails. This, theoretically, would let you build a tower nearing 3.5km in height. Scaling this up to house-size bricks, however, would cost far too much.
To determine how far away a lightning storm is from you, National Geographic Kids says you can count the seconds between the flash and the crack and watch for the flash of lightning from a safe location. Time how many seconds elapse before you hear thunder. Divide the number of seconds by five and the answer is the approximate number of miles away.
The longest English word is 189,819 letters long. We won’t spell it out here, but the full name for the protein nicknamed titin would take three and a half hours to say out loud. While this is, by far, the longest word in English, the longest word in the Oxford English Dictionary has 45 letters, and the longest made-up word has just 28. Just a few more interesting facts for your next cocktail party!
No one knows for sure how dinosaurs mate. It’s easy to get caught up in a dinosaur’s grotesque features, but have you ever wondered how dinosaurs mated in the first place? With all those spines and armour, how did they do it enough to roam the world before us? So far, no dinosaurs have been found with their reproductive organs intact. Until then, only cross-referencing from existing descendants (birds and reptiles) as well as computer modelling can give us hints as to how they’d done the deed.
The continental plates move at the same rate that fingernails grow. Research suggests that sometime in the far future, a supercontinent may form. The continents are continuously moving a few centimetres a year.
The state of Virginia may contain hidden treasure. The Beale CIphers are a set of coded texts that are said to reveal the location of hidden treasure. Research believes that this is worth over $43 million in gold, silver, and jewels. Only one of three texts has been encoded so far.
Snakes can predict Earthquakes. Studies have found that most species of snakes can detect Earthquakes before they occur. They are also able to sense quakes that occur as far as 75 miles away and up to five days away. I guess you could say, they’re just that down to Earth.
Most known asteroids in our solar system are located between Jupiter and Mars. Research has found that the main meteor belt resides and orbits between the two planets. This main asteroid belt is found to be more than two and a half times as far as the Earth is from the sun.
The pea is the oldest known vegetable. Historians have found traces of its origins dating back as far as the Stone Age. Since then it has been heavily cultivated and consumed.
NASA saw 168 errors in the space film Armageddon. The film Armageddon is so scientifically inaccurate that NASA uses it as a test for its management training program. NASA shows the film to new managers and makes them spot as many errors as possible. So far, about 168 have been found.
Humans have farted 17 quadrillion times since the beginning of time. If you want a picture of how far the human race has come, you can measure it in farts. The average person farts 14 times a day. The next time you’re questioning your contributions to society hold on to these kinds of WTF facts.
The average person spends 2 years using their phone. We’ve heard it from adults billions of times: “You spend way too much time on that phone!” However, they may not be exaggerating. So far, the average person spends an entire 2 years on their phones throughout their lifetime.
The movie’s impact reaches far and wide. “Schindler’s List” has been screened and recognised in numerous countries, fostering a global dialogue about the Holocaust and the importance of remembrance.
A lion’s roar can be heard from as far as five miles (eight kilometres) away, making it one of the loudest roars in the animal kingdom.
Dust from the Sahara Desert in Africa can travel great distances—even as far as Texas.
The Moon is lemon-shaped. Despite its appearance in the night sky, our natural satellite is nowhere near round. The Moon is shaped like a lemon, with flattened poles and bulges on both the near and far sides around its equator. This strange shape is thought to have been created during interactions with Earth soon after its formation.
There are stars we will never be able to see. Ever since the Big Bang, most objects in space have been moving away from one another. The expansion of the Universe is accelerating. This is one of the facts about space that has rocked the cosmological boat over the past few years. As regions of space are whizzing away from one another at an ever-increasing rate, the first population of stars to form in the Universe are now too far away for us to ever hope of spying on them – even using the best present or future telescope. Hope is not lost; we can attempt to spot them indirectly via the energetic bursts of radiation they emit at the end of their lives.
Black holes have theoretical opposites known as white holes. Black holes are known for their voracious appetites; their influence is so strong that even light can’t escape their gravity. But they have a theoretical converse – white holes. They are effectively the opposite of their dark relatives, spitting out light and matter instead of trapping it. So far, they are purely hypothetical objects; astronomers are contemplating how they could form in reality.
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 lion has the loudest roar of all the big cats. It can be heard as far as 5km (3 miles) away.
Emperor penguins can stay underwater for up to 27 minutes and dive as far as 500m deep.
The cartoon character Tweety was originally named Orson. He was also naked, far more aggressive, and saucy.
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!
71% of people in Iceland have a Costco membership. With just under 357,000 people, Iceland is far from being an overly-populated country. That means that there are around 253,000 Icelanders with access to the members-only wholesale retailer. While this is far less than the number of members in the US, there’s only one Costco store in the entire country!
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!
How much digital data has been created so far in the world? In 2018, the Global Datasphere amounted to 33 Zettabytes of data. Nearly 60% of that data was stored on traditional hard drives. IDC predicts the Datasphere will explode to 175 Zettabytes by 2025. Cloud storage continues to lead growth in data storage solutions as time goes on. By 2025, nearly 50% of the world’s data may exist in the cloud. China should soon become the country with the most cumulative data. Growth in the country is expected to outpace the rest of the world by 30%. As time goes on, cumulative data storage should continue to explode in growth around the world.
There are twice as many pyramids in Sudan then there are in Egypt. When most people think of pyramids, they instantly think of Egypt, but this couldn’t be more wrong! Sudan has somewhere between 200 to 255 pyramids, while Egypt is home to just 118 to 138 of them. So how did so many pyramids end up down in Sudan? From 3,000 BC, Egypt’s armies were sent south to conquer whoever they found, reaching as far as modern-day Sudan. There they lorded over the locals until the Egyptian empire collapsed in 1,070 BC, but their influence remained for much longer. Less than three hundred years later, the new rulers of this region, the Kush, still believed in the Egyptian Gods and started constructing pyramids en masse.
Gravity is also the reason why our days are getting longer. Over a billion years ago, a day on Earth lasted around 18 hours. Our days are longer now because the moon’s gravity is causing Earth’s spin to slow down. In Earth’s earlier days, the moon wasn’t as far away, which caused Earth to spin much faster than it currently does. Longer days also mean shorter years—kind of. The time it takes the Earth to orbit the sun hasn’t changed, but the amount of days within a year has. Back when the dinosaurs ruled 70 million years ago, days were only around 23.5 hours long, and a year was made up of 372 of those slightly shorter days.
So Far, in 2024, The Worldwide Antivirus Software Market has Increased to $4.25 Billion. According to a report from The Businesses Research Company, the worldwide market of Antivirus Software has expanded from $4.06 billion in 2022 to $4.25 billion in 2023. It shows a CAGR rate of 4.5% between the two years for the industry.
About 30.69 Million Antivirus Customers Used the Platform Daily in 2024. Over 30.69 million antivirus users use their software every day to scan for malicious files and folders. Some software programs run automatically, and some run in the background daily. So far, the most common kinds of malware are ransomware, adware, and Trojans.
The Global Cybersecurity Market Valuation was $202.72 Billion in 2022. So far, in 2023, the market valuation has accrued $172.32 billion and is expected to increase by a CAGR of 13.8% to $424.97 billion in 2030.
So far, data breaches exposed 7 billion records in the first half of 2024. (IT Governance)
Over 80% of attacks are financially motivated (Verizon): For the last several years, Verizon’s reports on the hacking and cybercrime landscapes have revealed the number one motivator for attacks is finances. In 2020, the number of financially motivated attacks far outweighed the number of attacks prompted by reasons like espionage. The most common figures behind hacking attacks are those in the organised crime world. Organised criminal syndicates account for around 80% of all attacks. Verizon notes only around 5% of attacks in North American organisations in 2020 were motivated by espionage, while 3% were motivated by grudges, often involving former employees.
A fun AI fact: according to a study by Bespoken, Google’s AI far exceeded that of Alexa and Siri.