Facts that sound false but are true — Page 25
Our highest surprise rating: the facts people most often refuse to believe until they read the explanation. Every one of them is documented.
1017 facts
Hakarl is a fermented cheese from Iceland.
Hakarl is an Icelandic dish made from fermented and dried Greenland shark meat. The meat is buried for weeks to…
Surstromming is considered one of the foods with the strongest smell in the world.
Surstromming is a Swedish fermented herring that undergoes a fermentation process producing acetic acid, propionic…
On the island of Socotra there are trees that bleed when cut.
The Dracaena cinnabari, or dragon's blood tree, is native to the island of Socotra, in Yemen. When the bark is cut…
The Giant s Causeway is a man-made rock formation.
The Giant s Causeway, in Northern Ireland, is a natural formation of about 40,000 hexagonal basalt columns, created…
The Richat Structure in Mauritania is visible from space and looks like a giant eye.
The Richat Structure, also known as the Eye of the Sahara, is a circular geological formation about 40 kilometres in…
Machu Picchu was built without mortar.
The stones of Machu Picchu were fitted so precisely that no mortar was used to join them. The Incas carved each block…
The stones of Stonehenge all came from England.
The bluestones of Stonehenge came from the Preseli mountains in Wales, about 250 kilometres away. The larger stones…
The Catatumbo lightning in Venezuela occurs almost every night for half the year.
The Catatumbo lightning is an atmospheric phenomenon that occurs at the mouth of the Catatumbo River in Venezuela…
There are formations of snow and ice in the shape of sharp blades called penitentes.
Penitentes are formations of snow and ice that resemble blades or needles pointing towards the Sun. They form at high…
A sundog is a type of rainbow that appears at night.
A sundog, or parhelion, is an atmospheric optical phenomenon that appears during the day, usually when the Sun is low…
Aerogel is one of the lightest solids in the world.
Aerogel is a solid material with very low density, composed of up to 99.8 percent air. It is so light that a block…
The muon is a particle that does not interact with the magnetic field.
The muon is an elementary particle similar to the electron but heavier. It interacts with the magnetic field and…
Time crystals are a new state of matter.
Time crystals are structures that repeat in time, not just in space, like normal crystals. They were proposed in 2012…
Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, has water geysers at its south pole.
The moon Enceladus ejects jets of water vapour and ice from cracks at its south pole. The Cassini probe flew through…
Fast radio bursts are cosmic signals that last milliseconds.
Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are pulses of energy that last only a few milliseconds, but can release as much energy as…
Google was originally called BackRub.
Google was originally called BackRub, a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University in…
Linux was created by Linus Torvalds in 1991.
The Linux kernel was created by Linus Torvalds, a Finnish student, in 1991, when he was 21 years old. He made the…
Huitlacoche is a type of Mexican cheese.
Huitlacoche is an edible fungus that grows on corn, considered a delicacy in Mexico. Also called the Mexican truffle…
Fire tornadoes can form during wildfires.
Fire tornadoes, or fire whirls, form when hot air from flames rises and creates a vortex. These whirls can reach…
The Kuiper Belt is a region of the solar system beyond Neptune.
The Kuiper Belt is a ring of icy bodies orbiting the Sun beyond Neptune, between 30 and 50 astronomical units. It…
The Aztec Sun Stone is not a calendar.
The Aztec Sun Stone, often called the Aztec calendar, is actually a ceremonial monument representing Aztec cosmology…
Buckyballs are carbon molecules shaped like a ball.
Buckyballs, or fullerenes, are carbon molecules with 60 atoms arranged in a hollow sphere, similar to a football…
The salmon returns to the river where it was born using its sense of smell.
The salmon memorises the unique smell of the water of the river where it was born. Years later, when it returns from…
The sand temperature determines the sex of turtle hatchlings.
In many species of sea turtles, the sex of the hatchlings is determined by the temperature of the nest sand…