All facts

Every interesting thing we've published — browse by category or jump into today's five.

🐙 Animals

• A snail can sleep for up to three years
• A group of flamingos is called a flamboyance
• Octopuses have three hearts

🎬 Entertainment

• Toy Story was the first fully computer-animated feature film
• The first video played on MTV was 'Video Killed the Radio Star'
• Mickey Mouse was almost called Mortimer

🍕 Food

• Ketchup was once sold as medicine
• The Aztecs used chocolate as currency
• Potatoes were the first vegetable grown in space

🗺️ Geography

• Lake Baikal holds about 20% of the world's unfrozen fresh water
• No bridge crosses the Amazon River
• Mount Everest isn't the tallest mountain on Earth

🏛️ History

• The shortest war in history lasted 38 minutes
• The Great Pyramid was the tallest structure for 3,800 years
• Cleopatra lived closer to the Moon landing than to the Great Pyramid

🦴 Human Body

• Your cornea has no blood supply
• Your body contains about 60,000 miles of blood vessels
• Your stomach gets a new lining every few days

💡 Inventions

• Velcro was inspired by burrs stuck to a dog's fur
• Post-it Notes came from a failed super-glue
• The microwave oven was invented by accident

🗣️ Language

• 'Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo' is a correct sentence
• 'Goodbye' comes from 'God be with you'
• 'E' is the most common letter in English

💰 Money

• The first modern credit card was Diners Club, in 1950
• Paper money was invented in China
• The word 'salary' comes from the Latin for salt

🏆 Records

• The coldest temperature ever recorded was -89.2 °C
• The blue whale is the largest animal ever
• The oldest person ever recorded lived to 122

🔬 Science

• Bananas are slightly radioactive
• Lightning is about five times hotter than the Sun's surface
• Honey never spoils

🪐 Space

• The Moon's footprints will last millions of years
• A neutron star can spin 600 times per second
• A day on Venus is longer than its year

⚽ Sport

• The marathon's 26.2 miles come from the 1908 London Olympics
• No women competed in the first modern Olympics
• Ancient Greek Olympic athletes competed in the nude

💻 Technology

• The first text message said 'Merry Christmas'
• The QWERTY keyboard was designed to stop keys from jamming
• The first computer 'bug' was a real insect

🤯 Weird & Wonderful

• A single cloud can weigh over a million pounds
• Wombat droppings are cube-shaped
• Sharks existed before trees

🌍 World

• Russia spans 11 time zones
• France has the most time zones of any country
• The Pacific Ocean is larger than all of Earth's land combined

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