Fun Facts and Trivia

Human Body

• The nose can detect a trillion smells.
• A quarter of your bones are in your feet.
• Human teeth are as strong as shark teeth.
• Your blood is as salty as the ocean.
• Not only does everyone have unique fingerprints, humans also have unique tongue-prints.
• The average brain weighs about 1.4 kilogram.
• Your nose and ears never stop growing.

Animals

• Dogs have two different air passages, one for breathing and another for smelling. This allows them to store scents in their nose, even while they are exhaling.
• Cats do not have collar bones, and their backbones are very flexible. When a cat walks, its back paws step in almost exactly the same place that its front paws previously were, allowing them to make less noise and leave fewer track marks.
• Killer Whales, also known as Orcas, are not whales at all, and are actually a type of dolphin. They are the largest breed of dolphins in existence.
• Hummingbirds are the only birds in the world that can fly sideways, backwards, up and down, and even hover in mid-air. They can beat their wings up to 200 times per second.
• Ostriches can run faster than horses, and male ostriches can roar like lions.
• The largest living animal is the blue whale, which can measure as much as 100 feet.

Amazing Space

• The Moon is very hot (224 degrees Fahrenheit/106.667 degrees Celsius, average) during the day but very cold (-243 degrees Fahrenheit/-152.778 degrees Celsius, average) at night.
• Venus spins clockwise. It’s the only planet that does this.
• One million Earths could fit inside the Sun.
• Even in an airplane, a trip to Pluto would take about 800 years.
• It takes 8 minutes and 19 seconds for light to travel from the Sun to Earth.
• The footprints on the Moon will be there for 100 million years.
• Jupiter is the fastest spinning planet in the solar system (it only takes about 10 hours to complete a full rotation on its axis).

Technology

• The internet and the World Wide Web is not the same thing. The internet is a network of other smaller networks that link computers together all over the world. The World Wide Web is a collection of linked pages that can be used with the help of the internet and a web browser.
• Over 3.8 billion people use the internet today, which is 40% of the world’s population.
• Electronic computers were developed around the 1940s and were the size of a large room. Today, computers have gotten so small that they have been embedded into other things like microwaves, toys, cell phones, automotives, etc.
• In 1495, Leonardo da Vinci sketched out designs for a humanoid robot. Today, there are many robot prototypes being made.
• There are more than 300 million photos uploaded to Facebook every day, 800 million likes per day, and 175 million love reactions per day.
• 250 million hours of TV shows and movies are watched daily via Netflix.
• More than 56 million hours of music is streamed daily.
• 10 years ago (2007), Apple launched its first iPhone, over 2.3 billion people now own an iPhone now.
• Candy Crush earns more than $1.74 million per day and over USD 636 million per year.

Engineering

• Out of the Ancient Wonders of the World, the Great Pyramid of Giza, is the oldest and the one that remains mostly intact.
• The way engineers solve practical problems is through mathematical and scientific knowledge. The word Engineer itself comes from a Latin word, which means “cleverness.”
• The Atlantic and Pacific Oceans are joined by the Panama Canal, which was one of the most difficult and dangerous engineering projects of all time.
• The tallest wind turbine has rotor tips measuring over 656 feet above the ground.
• Telecommunications satellites, and other satellites that need to maintain their position above a specific place on the earth, must orbit at 35,786 kilometres and travel in the same direction as the Earth’s rotation.

Food

• The world’s longest French fry is 34-inches long.
• Garlic bulbs are full of Vitamin C, iron, potassium, magnesium, zinc and more. It also has 17 amino acids.
• The strawberry is the only fruit that bears seeds on the outside.
• Ice cream was once called “cream ice.”
• Apples float because they are one quarter air.
• Cabbage is 91% water.
• Carrots were originally purple in colour, changing in the 17th Century to orange with newer varieties.
• Chocolate is a particularly good source of magnesium, potassium and calcium. It also has antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. On the down side it contains caffeine and has a high fat level.

Nature

• The world’s largest reef system is found in Queensland, Australia. It is called The Great Barrier Reef.
• Pineapples take 2 years to grow.
• There is an area around the Pacific Ocean where tectonic plates meet, called the Pacific Ring of Fire. It holds around 75% of the volcanoes on Earth.
• A lightning strike can reach up to 54,000 degrees Fahrenheit (30,000 degrees Celsius). This is around six times hotter than the surface of the sun. While a lightning bolt may look huge, its actual size is only as long as that of a ballpoint pen.