Facts that sound false but are true — Page 38
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
Nintendo was founded when the Ottoman Empire still existed.
Nintendo was founded in eighteen eighty-nine as a playing card company. The Ottoman Empire was only officially…
The first one-gigabyte hard drive weighed over two hundred and fifty kilograms.
Launched by IBM in nineteen eighty, the model thirty-three eighty was the size of a refrigerator and required complex…
The password for US nuclear silos was eight zeros for twenty years.
To ensure rapid launch, the code for all bases was set to 00000000 from 1962 until the mid-eighties, against the…
There is a giant cloud of alcohol in space.
The Sagittarius B2 cloud contains enough vinyl alcohol to fill billions of pints of beer, although it is dispersed…
A teaspoon of a neutron star weighs billions of tons.
The matter in these stars is so compact that protons and electrons fuse, creating an unimaginable density on a human…
The first webcam was invented to watch a coffee pot.
Scientists at Cambridge University created the system in 1991 so they could see if the breakroom coffee pot was full…
To produce half a kilo of honey, bees visit two million flowers.
A single bee produces only one twelfth of a teaspoon of honey during its entire life, making collective work…
The oldest known writing comes from Mesopotamia and is five thousand years old.
The Sumerians developed cuneiform writing around 3400 BC to record commercial transactions and administer cities.
The Sun rotates faster at the equator than at the poles.
Due to its gaseous nature, the Sun has differential rotation, completing one turn in about twenty-five days at the…
Babies are born with about three hundred bones.
As they grow, many bones fuse together, resulting in the two hundred and six bones of the adult skeleton.
We know the surface of Mars better than the ocean floor.
Only about twenty percent of the ocean floor has been mapped in detail, while the entire surface of Mars has been…
The shortest war in history lasted thirty-eight minutes.
The Anglo-Zanzibar war of 1896 ended with a ceasefire after the sultan's palace was bombarded by the British.
The tongue print is unique to each person.
Just like fingerprints, the texture and patterns of the tongue's surface are individual and can be used for…
The oldest university in the world still operating is in Morocco.
The University of al-Qarawiyyin, founded in 859, is recognized by UNESCO as the oldest higher education institution…
Light takes eight minutes to reach Earth from the Sun.
Traveling at about three hundred thousand kilometers per second, light covers the one hundred and fifty million…
Human skin completely regenerates every month.
The human body produces about three hundred and forty thousand new skin cells every minute, completely replacing the…
The pressure at the bottom of the Mariana Trench is one thousand times greater than at the surface.
At a depth of about eleven thousand meters, the pressure reaches over one thousand atmospheres, equivalent to having…
The World Wide Web was invented at CERN.
Tim Berners-Lee created the web in 1989 to facilitate information sharing among scientists at the European…
The world's largest flower can measure over one meter.
The Rafflesia arnoldii, found in Indonesian forests, can reach one meter in diameter and weigh over ten kilograms.
Human blood vessels could circle the world.
If we stretched out all the arteries, veins, and capillaries of an adult, they would reach about one hundred thousand…
The shortest reign in history lasted only twenty minutes.
Louis XIX of France was technically king in 1830 between the time his father abdicated and the time he himself signed…
It rains diamonds on Jupiter and Saturn.
Storms turn methane into carbon soot, which as it falls hardens under the extreme pressure of the atmosphere, turning…
The human liver can regenerate even if it loses a large part.
It is the only internal organ capable of natural regeneration, able to recover its original size and function even…
Liquid helium can climb up the walls of its container.
At temperatures near absolute zero, helium becomes a superfluid, losing all viscosity and managing to escape from…