All facts — Page 52
The complete ONAURE library, newest first. Every fact has an explanation and a source you can check.
2056 facts
Fugu is a Japanese fish whose liver is the most prized part.
Fugu (pufferfish) contains tetrodotoxin, a deadly poison concentrated in the liver, ovaries and skin. Only licensed…
The Champagne region produces about 300 million bottles per year.
The Champagne region in France has about 34,000 hectares of vineyards and produces about 300 million bottles of…
Bouvet Island is a territory of Denmark.
Bouvet Island is a territory of Norway, located in the South Atlantic, about 2,400 kilometres from the nearest…
The level of the Dead Sea is dropping about one metre per year.
The level of the Dead Sea is dropping about one metre per year, due to water extraction from the Jordan River and…
The IBM Simon was the first smartphone in history.
The IBM Simon, launched in 1994, is considered the first smartphone in history because it combined phone, diary, fax…
The transistor was invented in 1947.
The transistor was invented in 1947 at Bell Labs by John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley. They received…
The woodpecker's tongue wraps around its brain.
The woodpecker's tongue is very long and, when retracted, wraps around the animal's skull, between the skin and the…
Geckos can blink their eyes like humans.
Geckos do not have movable eyelids and cannot blink. To clean and moisten their eyes, they use their tongue, passing…
The naked mole-rat is one of the few cold-blooded mammals.
The naked mole-rat (Heterocephalus glaber) cannot regulate its body temperature like most mammals. Its temperature…
The fastest muscle in the human body is in the eyelid.
The orbicularis oculi muscle, responsible for blinking, is the fastest in the human body. Each blink lasts only about…
Blinking helps clean and lubricate the cornea.
Each blink spreads a film of tears over the cornea, removing dust and microorganisms and keeping the eye surface…
Umami was discovered by a Japanese chemist in 1908.
Umami, the fifth basic taste, was identified in 1908 by the Japanese chemist Kikunae Ikeda, who associated it with…
The Mediterranean Sea has always had its current extent.
About 5.6 million years ago, the Mediterranean almost completely dried up in an event known as the Messinian salinity…
The Library of Alexandria was not destroyed in a single fire.
The Library of Alexandria was not destroyed in a single event. It was gradually lost over several centuries, due to…
The House of Wisdom in Baghdad was one of the greatest centres of knowledge in the world.
The House of Wisdom, founded in Baghdad in the 8th century, brought together translation, astronomy, mathematics…
Snow rollers are man-made.
Snow rollers are natural cylinders formed when wind rolls up layers of fresh, moist snow on the ground. They can…
The Brocken spectre is a person's own shadow magnified in the mist.
The Brocken spectre is an optical phenomenon in which the observer's shadow is projected onto mist or cloud…
Light pillars are caused by lightning.
Light pillars are vertical columns of light that appear in the sky when sunlight or moonlight is reflected by ice…
The pitch drop experiment has been running for almost a century.
The pitch drop experiment began in 1927 at the University of Queensland in Australia, to demonstrate that pitch…
The Prince Rupert's drop breaks easily with a hammer.
The Prince Rupert's drop is a drop of molten glass cooled in water. The head is so resistant that it withstands…
Wine tears are due to the Marangoni effect.
Wine tears or legs are droplets that run down the walls of the glass. They form because ethanol evaporates faster…
Halley's comet only passes near Earth every 76 years.
Halley's comet completes one orbit around the Sun in about 76 years. Its last passage near Earth was in 1986, and the…
The Milky Way is an elliptical galaxy.
The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy, about 100,000 light-years in diameter. It has a central core crossed by a…
The Voyager 1 probe carries a gold record with sounds and images of Earth.
The Voyager 1 probe carries the Golden Record, a copper disc plated in gold with sounds, music and images of Earth…