Facts that sound false but are true — Page 39
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
Koala fingerprints are almost identical to human ones.
They are so similar that, on past occasions, forensic experts have confused koala prints with those of human suspects…
Albert Einstein was offered the presidency of Israel.
In 1952, the Israeli government invited the physicist to assume the country's presidency, but he politely declined…
The first person killed by a robot was in 1979.
Robert Williams, a Ford factory worker, was struck by a one-ton robotic arm in a Michigan plant, becoming the first…
Human stomach acid is strong enough to dissolve razor blades.
The pH of gastric acid is very low, allowing it to corrode metals like zinc and even certain blades, though it should…
The cashew grows hanging from the base of a false fruit called the cashew apple.
The true fruit is the nut, which develops outside the fleshy stalk to prevent the seed from being digested by animals.
Peanuts are one of the ingredients used in the manufacture of dynamite.
Peanut oil can be processed to produce glycerol, which in turn is converted into nitroglycerin, the explosive…
Cleopatra lived in an era closer to the Moon landing than to the building of the Great Pyramid.
The Great Pyramid was built around twenty-five hundred BC, Cleopatra lived near thirty BC, and the Moon was landed on…
Water can boil and freeze simultaneously under specific conditions.
At the so-called triple point, the exact temperature and pressure allow water to exist in all three physical states…
A teaspoon of matter from a neutron star would weigh millions of tons.
The density of these stars is so extreme that protons and electrons collapse into neutrons, compressing huge masses…
There is a giant cloud of alcohol at the centre of our galaxy.
The Sagittarius B2 cloud contains vinyl alcohol in quantities sufficient to fill billions of litres of beer.
The Greenland shark can live for more than four hundred years.
This cold-water shark grows very slowly, about one centimetre per year, and only reaches sexual maturity at around…
Leafcutter ants cultivate fungi for food.
They cut leaves not to eat them, but to use them as fertiliser in underground gardens where they grow a specific…
The human liver can regenerate even after losing a large portion of its tissue.
It is the only internal organ capable of natural regeneration, able to return to its original size as long as at…
The human body glows in the dark, but the light is invisible to the naked eye.
Chemical reactions in cells produce a small amount of light, with the face being the brightest area, but the…
Antarctica is technically the largest desert in the world.
A desert is defined by its very low annual precipitation. The interior of Antarctica receives less than fifty…
Mammoths still roamed the Earth when the pyramids of Egypt were built.
While the Great Pyramid of Giza was being erected about four thousand five hundred years ago, a small isolated…
Ancient Romans used human urine to bleach their clothes.
Urea decomposes into ammonia, a highly effective alkaline cleaning agent for removing tough stains and whitening…
Rainwater contains small amounts of vitamin B12.
Bacteria present in the atmosphere and soil produce this vitamin, which is then swept into clouds and falls with…
A lightning bolt is five times hotter than the surface of the Sun.
The electrical discharge heats the air around it to about thirty thousand degrees Celsius in an instant, which causes…
Blue eyes do not contain blue pigment.
The colour results from the Tyndall Effect, the same scattering of light that makes the sky blue. The lack of melanin…
On Pluto, it snows methane on the highest mountains.
The dwarf planet's thin atmosphere contains methane that freezes and falls as snow in elevated regions, creating a…
A large part of the Apollo missions code was written by women.
Teams of female programmers at MIT, led by Margaret Hamilton, developed the flight software that allowed the…
The snapping shrimp creates a flash of light when closing its claw.
The claw closes so fast that it creates a cavitation bubble. When the bubble collapses, it emits a flash of light and…
The mantis shrimp has sixteen colour receptors in its eyes.
While humans only have three, this crustacean possesses sixteen, allowing it to see polarised and ultraviolet colours…