41 Facts About the World That Will Surprise Even the Most Intelligent Person
1. A strawberry is not a berry, but a banana is a berry
2. The average chocolate bar contains eight insect pieces
3. There are more stars in the sky than grains of sand in the world
4. Humans completely replace their outer skin every month
5. You can use your hand for a quick measurement of angles. Spread out your fingers as far as they can. Your little finger represents 0°. The angle between the thumb and the little finger will be 90°, the angles between the little finger and the other fingers are 30°, 45°, and 60°, respectively.
6. You can also use your hand to remember which months have 31 days. Make a fist and start counting your knuckles and spaces between your knuckles. The knuckle of your index finger is January (knuckle means 31 days), then the space between your index and middle fingers is February (space means less than 31 days)and so on. Once you reach your little finger knuckle (July) count it again (August) and move in the opposite direction.
7. Mosquitoes have killed more humans than all wars in history
8. You’re twice as likely to get killed by a vending machine than a shark
9. For every human on earth, there are 1.6 million ants
10. France was still executing people by guillotine up until 1977
11. The word ‘set’ has the most number of definitions (464) in the English language
12. In an average lifetime, a person will walk the equivalent of 5 times around the equator
13. The jaw is the most commonly used joint in the human body
14. Starfish are not fish (they’re sea urchins) and killer whales are not whales (they’re dolphins)
15. Speaking of dolphins, they can actually call each other by name
16. One piece of space junk returns to earth every day
17. The naked mole rat is immune to cancer and can live with almost no oxygen
18. Due to gravity, the theoretical maximum height of a tree is 130 meters
19. The mouth of a blue whale can hold its own bodyweight in water
20. An average adult contains 7 quintillion joules of potential energy (or, 30 hydrogen bombs)
21. The technology in one Gameboy exceeds all the computing power used to put man on the moon
22. 99% of the earth’s gold is located in its core
23. Getting struck by lightning heats skin up to 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit
24. Honey is the only food that does not spoil
25. The Hawaiian alphabet only has twelve letters (A, E, I, O, U, H, K, L, M, N, P, and W)
26. The lighter was invented ten years earlier than the match
27. The strongest muscle in the human body (proportional to its size) is the tongue
28. Whips make a cracking sound because the tip actually moves faster than the speed of sound, creating a small sonic boom
29. Charles Darwin was the first person who had the idea to attach wheels to his office chair to move around more quickly
30. To tell a real diamond from a fake one, breathe on it. Fake ones will fog up while real ones will stay clear
31. The 3 most sold products in human history are the iPhone, Harry Potter books, and Rubik’s Cube
32. A cockroach can live a few weeks without its head, before eventually dying of hunger.
33. Besides the 5 senses, you also have proprioception, awareness of the position of your body parts.
34. The Spanish word ‘esposas’ means both ‘handcuffs’ and ‘wives’
35. When you gain or lose weight, your fat cells don’t disappear — they simply change in size..
36. 99% of the microbes that live inside humans are unknown to science.
37. Paper cuts are more painful than regular cuts because such a wound almost never bleeds; instead, nerve endings stay open to the air which irritates them.
38. If you wanted to burn 1 calorie by clicking on a mouse, you would need to click a mouse button 10 million times
39. If you make ice cubes with tap water, they will be white; if you use boiled water, they will be transparent
40. It takes such little electricity to charge your phone that if you calculated the yearly cost of it, it would be less than $1
41. Animals avoid power lines because they are scared of ultraviolet flashes invisible to the human eye
Remember…
As much as we think we know about this world, there’s still a beautiful mystery to it! These surprising facts just help prove that there’s so much more to explore.
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