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- Herausgeber: Bellanova Books
- Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
- Serie: Amazing Facts
- Sprache: Englisch
"Be More Interesting"
Already in its seventh edition, Jenny Kellett brings you her bestselling HUGE Book of Amazing Facts, updated for 2023.
Chock-full of incredible, curious, and mind-blowing Facts, you'll be able to impress your friends or simply improve your knowledge with over 800 of only the very best hand-picked trivia facts.
The facts are divided into categories for easy reference. Whether you're into sports, history, science or something a little bit bizarre—there are hundreds of amazing facts for you.
Did you know...
• The word 'quarantine' comes from quarantena, meaning 40 days in old Venetian. During the Black Plague, the Venetians imposed a 40-day ban on arrivals into the city.
• 'Mountain Dew' was once a slang term for moonshine (homemade whiskey) in the south of the US and parts of the UK. Neil Armstrong and his Apollo 11 colleagues had to go through US Customs when they landed back on Earth from the moon.
• The time difference between the Stegosaurus and Tyrannosaurus Rex is greater than the time difference between Tyrannosaurus Rex and the first humans.
• In ancient Egypt, Pharaohs would smear their servants with honey so that they would attract the flies.
Discover these amazing facts and hundreds more in The Huge Book of Amazing Facts and Interesting Stuff 2023. It's the ideal gift for children (12+) and adults. Give the gift of knowledge with the internet's most up-to-date fact book.
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Seitenzahl: 153
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
Ähnliche
The HUGE Book of
Amazing
Facts and Interesting Stuff
2023
Hello, fact lover!
Welcome to The HUGE Book of Amazing Facts and Interesting Stuff! We have spent countless hours trawling through incredible, curious facts to bring you only the very best knowledge-boosting titbits.
Since the last version of this book was published, a lot has happened. Besides the war in Europe, 2022 will be remembered as the year that we slowly started returning to normality after two unprecendetedly crazy years.
Science & Technology
The world is changing at a rapid pace thanks to advances in science and technology. Who would have thought twenty years ago that we would be carrying phones in our pockets that were smaller and more powerful than a PC? Or that we could have video chats with people on the other side of the world for free? It’s amazing, really.
Enjoy these science & technology facts, and here’s to another decade of amazing advancements.
Alexander Graham Bell invented the metal detector in 1881 to help find a bullet that was lodged inside President James A. Garfield.
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Scientists have recently discovered that a chain reaction of supernovae that occurred around 14 million years ago created a 1,000-light-year-wide bubble at the center of which lies our galaxy. All the local star-forming regions sit on its surface, providing the first explanation for the formation of stars in the Milky Way.
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In 2019, a lost continent was found. Greater Adria is located in the Mediterranean region and was discovered by researchers at Utrecht University.
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The famous Facebook ‘like’ button was almost called the ‘awesome’ button before Mark Zuckerberg vetoed it.
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The food with the highest caloric value is pure animal fat, with nearly 900 calories per 100 grams.
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When NASA’s Perseverance rover arrived on Mars in 2020, it deployed a colourful parachute containing a coded message written in binary meaning ‘dare mighty things’. It was taken from a quote by President Theodore Roosevelt.
A study conducted in 2022 found that women with greater exposure to green spaces had a higher cognitive function and improved mental processing speed and attention.
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Humans could never land on Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus or Neptune because they are made of gas and have no solid surface.
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The smallest thing ever photographed was the shadow of an atom.
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Adults spend nearly 50 per cent of their time letting their minds wander, according to a study from Harvard University, which tracked users via an app.
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Every person is only 0.1 per cent genetically different from each other; our closest living relatives — chimpanzees — are 1.2 per cent different from us.
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Approximately one per cent of descendants of Northern Europeans are immune to HIV. Swedes are the least likely to be infected.
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If you could get into your car and drive 60mph (96.5 km/h) straight up, it would only take one hour to reach outer space.
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The average person checks their phone every six minutes.
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The more full your fridge is, the more energy-efficient it is. This is because less air can escape.
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There are enormous floating mountains of ice on Pluto.
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In Sweden, blood donors get a text message when their blood has been used in a patient.
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Before the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine, which was developed and licensed within 11 months in December 2020, the fastest vaccine to go to market was for mumps, taking four years in 1967.
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GPS may be free to use, but it costs around $2 million per day to run. GPS is a constellation of 24 satellites, which initially cost $12 billion to put into orbit.
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The only letter that is not in the periodic table is J.
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The first letter to be sent over the internet was ‘L’.
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Water is repelled by a magnet. Try it.
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A study found that if you look at a photo of a loved one, you can reduce pain by around 40 per cent.
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If you could throw a snowball fast enough it would completely vaporise when it hit a brick wall.
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Just over two-thirds of cancer patients treated in the USA are cured.
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The sky on Mars is red and the sunsets are blue. This is due to the type of dust in the air there.
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Up until the 1950s, many doctors believed exercise was dangerous for people over the age of 40. They would prescribe bed rest to heart disease sufferers.
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Katy Sullivan, the first woman to walk in space, also became the first female to travel to Challenger Deep — the lowest reachable depth on Earth. While there, she had a call with the International Space Station.
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Nomophobia is an addiction to mobile phones. Over 200,000 people suffer from this phobia, which leaves you afraid to leave your home without your mobile phone.
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92 per cent of the world’s currency exists digitally — the rest is physical money.
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Venus is the only planet in the solar system that spins backwards.
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A Japanese Google employee, Emma Haruka Iwao, calculated Pi to a record 31 trillion digits using the company’s cloud computing service.
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US astronauts at the International Space Station are sent ballot papers to allow them to vote in elections.
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If you spin a ball as you drop it, it will fly. This is called the Magnus effect.
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Water can boil and freeze at the same time when at certain pressures.
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There are more mobile phone connections than people in the world.
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In our galaxy alone there are over 100 billion planets.
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Over three billion people in the world use a mobile phone. Three and a half billion use a toothbrush.
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Popping a cork from a champagne bottle releases the same level of shock waves as a jet.
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In the UK, over 86 per cent of breast cancer patients now survive for at least five years.
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Scientists were able to reverse-engineer chickens to have dinosaur snouts.
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Some flowers smell like chocolate, including the Chocolate Daisy and the Chocolate Cosmos.
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An owl can hear a mouse more than 50 feet away.
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There are over 23,000 pieces of ‘space junk’ orbiting the Earth, leftover from space missions. In total, these weigh more than 8,000 tons.
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If you crack an egg underwater, it looks like a jellyfish.
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People who can function on only a few hours of sleep a night may have a gene mutation, according to a 2019 study.
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Lasers can get trapped in a waterfall — an example of total internal reflection.
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Certain types of beer have the same microbial and probiotic benefits as food products such as sauerkraut, yoghurt, and kimchi.
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Before 1995, domain name registrations were free!
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A new beetle discovered by scientists in 2019 was named after Greta Thunberg. The Nelloptodes gretae has antennae that look like braided hair — the most popular style worn by the young activist.
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Sodium in cheese can protect your body from cardiovascular disease caused by other salts.
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If you squeeze lemon juice on apples and bananas, you can prevent them from turning brown (oxidation).
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The longest-ever spacewalk lasted around nine hours.
A small percentage of the static you see on ‘dead’ TV stations is leftover radiation from the Big Bang.
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Email existed before the World Wide Web.
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There are 20 to 30 times more bacteria on the average mobile phone than what you find in a toilet bowl.
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QWERTY keyboards were invented partially to slow down how fast you could type. This was because people were typing too fast and jamming their typewriters.
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The first-ever personal computer was called ‘Simon’.
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If you use a lighter style font when printing, you can save up to 10 per cent ink so your printer cartridges will last longer.
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In 1956, 5MB of data literally weighed a tonne and required a forklift to move it.
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Over 90 per cent of text messages sent are read within three minutes of being delivered, and 99 per cent are ever read.
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Mars is covered in rust, which is why it appears red.
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Osmium and iridium are the densest metals in the world, while plutonium and uranium are the heaviest metals based on relative atomic mass.
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One in three deaths around the world is caused by cardiovascular disease.
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The dots in Gmail addresses are redundant. For example, if your email address is [email protected], someone could email [email protected] and it would still get to you.
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Human bodies can move for more than a year after death. Don’t be alarmed though, this is caused by the body’s ligaments shrinking, drying out and contracting.
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700 million years ago, Venus may have been hospitable.
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When you move your eyes, your eardrums also move.
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A ‘jiffy’ is an actual unit of time. It has been redefined over the years but was originally defined as the time it takes for light to travel one centimetre in a vacuum.
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Some studies have shown that intelligent people have more copper and zinc in their hair.
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Time slows down near black holes. Inside of them, it completely stops.
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When lightning strikes a sandy beach that is high in silica or quartz, it produces glass.
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A hurricane can produce as much energy as 10,000 nuclear bombs during its life cycle.
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On average, humans remember 5,000 different faces.
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It’s impossible to burp in space.
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Komodo dragons have a suit of armour made of tiny bones underneath their already scaly skin.
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In zero gravity conditions, a candle’s flame is blue and round, because fire behaves differently in space.
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More lifeforms are living on your skin than people on the planet. Most of the time we have over 90 trillion microbes living on us.
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Goats can snack on poison ivy with no issues.
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The US has blown up multiple atomic and hydrogen bombs in space. The most famous was in 1962, 250 miles above the Pacific Ocean. There is some spectacular video footage if you search online.
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Strawberries are the only fruits that have their seeds on the outside.
Two million blood cells die every second. It’s ok, though—two million blood cells are also created every second.
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It takes about 168 litres (37 gallons) of water to produce a single cup of coffee.
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You can clean your toilet using Gatorade. Simply pour two cups of the drink into the toilet, leave for one hour, and then brush away.
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Hot water freezes faster than cold water. This is called the Mbemba effect.
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The Dvorak keyboard is 74% faster to type on than the QWERTY keyboard, once you have completed training.
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There are more nerve connectors in your brain than there are stars in the galaxy. A piece of brain tissue the size of a grain of sand contains over 100,000 neurons.
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Diamonds can grow inside other diamonds. The first example was found in 2019.
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Shaking your head after getting water in your ears may cause brain damage.
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If you put grapes in the microwave, they will explode.
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An ear of corn always has an even number of rows (usually from 8 to 22) and an average of 800 kernels.
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Everyone has a unique tongue print, just like a fingerprint.
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If you removed all the empty space inside of humans, the entire human race would fit into the volume of a sugar cube. This is because we are 99.9999999999% empty matter.
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There is a disease called Alien Hand Syndrome (AHS), in which the person has no conscious control over his ‘alien hand’ and will blurt things out like: “I swear I’m not doing this”. It is also known as Dr Strangelove Syndrome.
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The Bee Gees’ song Stayin’ Alive is used to train medical professionals to provide the correct number of chest compressions per minute while performing CPR.
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Just 100 nanograms of botulinum toxin — the most deadly toxin in the world — could kill a human being. Just 1kg could wipe out the entire human race. However, people willfully use it in the form of Botox to freeze muscles in their faces to reduce wrinkles.
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Every hour, there are around 760 thunderstorms on Earth.
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The hardest working muscles in the human body are in the eyes. In one hour of reading, the eye makes nearly 10,000 movements.
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There are more drops of water in the ocean than there are atoms in a drop of water, but only just!
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California supplies over 80 per cent of the USA’s broccoli.
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Measured by weight, there will be more plastic in the oceans than there are fish by 2050.
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If you take part in physical exercise four hours after learning something, it has been shown to help improve your long-term memory.
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Feet have the highest concentration of sweat glands of any part of the body and can produce more than a pint of sweat a day.
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When you see most stars, you’re essentially looking hundreds or thousands of years into the past, as that’s how long the light takes to reach us.
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Rabies has a fatality rate of almost 100%.
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It takes 17 muscles to smile and 43 to frown. So, smile more!
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If you cut up a hologram, the entire image is retained in each piece.
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The Pratfall Effect is a psychological phenomenon whereby a person who is deemed attractive or competent by someone is found to be even more so if they commit a blunder, such as tripping over.
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People don’t get sick from cold weather; they get sick because viruses thrive better in cooler air. Also, we spend more time indoors when it’s cold, and are in closer contact with infected people.
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Females are generally better at recognising different tastes than males.
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A study found that hard-to-read handwriting is more convincing, as the reader has to read slower and consider the argument more carefully.
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Some spiders can make milk for their babies.
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Men who look up to superheroes often have a more positive body image.
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In June 2022, scientists published a study revealing the discovery of giant bacteria that can be seen without a microscope, challenging the belief that all bacteria are too small to be seen by the naked eye. The species thiomargarita magnifica grows to an average length of 0.35 inches. The bacteria was first discovered in a Caribbean mangrove forest in 2009, but it took scientists time to realize that it was a bacteria due to its large size.
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A set of human lungs has a surface area of around 180 m2, similar to that of a tennis court.
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The largest snowflake ever recorded measured 15 inches across. It was discovered by a ranch owner in Montana in 1887.
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The average human body contains enough fat to make seven bars of soap.
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Dirty snow melts faster than clean snow because the dark colour absorbs more energy from the sun.
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In May 2022, scientists took a picture of a black hole in the center of the Milky Way galaxy for the first time.
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Since being discovered in 1930, Pluto has not yet completed a full orbit of the Sun. One Plutonian year is 247.68 Earth years.
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Babies start dreaming before they are born.
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Scientists at Columbia University have been able to grow heart muscle from human stem cells.
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Men are more likely to develop long-term hiccups than women.
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In 2022, a clinical trial discovered a partially effective treatment for Alzheimer’s disease, where an antibody-drug reduced cognitive decline by 27% in 1,800 early-stage
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Alzheimer’s patients over 18 months. However, the treatment also has risks, including brain bleeds and swelling, and 7% of patients had to stop the treatment due to side effects.
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When glass breaks, the cracks move at speeds of up to 3,000 miles per hour (4,828 km/h).
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In one acre (0.4 hectares) of land, there can be more than one million earthworms.
In 2022, scientists found plastic in human blood for the first time. A study published showed that half of the people tested had a type of plastic used in water bottles and food packaging in their blood.
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When baby sharks are born, they swim away from their mothers and live on their own immediately.
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It can take a photon (a light-carrying particle) 40,000 years to travel from the sun's core to the surface but only eight minutes to travel the rest of the way to earth.
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In 2022, the first lab-grown meat was deemed safe in the USA. The meat is grown from actual animal cells and will initially be available in a few restaurants.
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In 1936, Russia built an analogue computer that ran on water called the Water Integrator. It could solve partial differential equations.
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Honey contains hydrogen peroxide, which makes it a great natural antiseptic.
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It is impossible to kill yourself by holding your breath.
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The first computer programmers were women. Ada Lovelace was the first person to publish an algorithm to be executed by the world’s first modern computer.
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In 2022, US renewable sources such as hydropower, wind, and solar produced more power than coal and nuclear, making up more than a fifth of all electricity.
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Peanuts are legumes and are not tree nuts.
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