World's Best Facts: The scrolling you'll actually learn from.

worldsbestfacts

Inside a wild-type banana

The scrolling you'll actually learn from.

Fact of the dayFood

Berry

Bananas are berries. Strawberries are not.

Read why it's true

Most mind-blowing

A modern McDonald's restaurant in Franklin, North Carolina

McDonald's makes most of its franchise money from rent, not burgers.

Venus from Mariner 10

A rotation on Venus takes longer than its entire year.

Octopus vulgaris (common octopus)

Octopuses have three hearts and blue blood.

Pyramid of Khufu - May 2023

Cleopatra lived closer in time to the Moon landing than to the building of the Great Pyramid.

Inside a wild-type banana

Bananas are berries. Strawberries are not.

Human Skeleton on Exhibit at The Museum of Osteology, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Babies are born with about 300 bones, but adults have only 206.

Trojan Room coffee pot as seen in its early network camera image

The first webcam was pointed at a coffee pot.

Bora Bora in French Polynesia, a French overseas territory

France has more time zones than any other country.

Glass water triple-point cell for temperature calibration

Water can boil and freeze at the same time.

NintendoCards

Nintendo was founded in 1889 to sell handmade playing cards.

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Money

A modern McDonald's restaurant in Franklin, North Carolina

McDonald's makes most of its franchise money from rent, not burgers.

NintendoCards

Nintendo was founded in 1889 to sell handmade playing cards.

$1.5 hot-dog combo at Costco Wholesale Queens, October 21 2023, New York

Costco's hot dog and soda combo has cost $1.50 since 1985.

Bubble Wrap

Bubble Wrap was invented in 1957 as a textured wallpaper.

Play dough

Play-Doh started out as a putty for cleaning soot off wallpaper.

Lego wheels in different sizes

LEGO was recognized as the world’s largest tire maker by count in 2011.

Dried Anchovies in a wholesale food market in Busan Korea

Samsung began in 1938 as a small shop selling dried fish and noodles.

Several Original Pringles in the Franklin Farm section of Oak Hill, Fairfax County, Virginia

The man who designed the Pringles can had his ashes buried in one.

Yap stone money at the village of Gachpar on Yap.

Yap’s stone money could change owners without moving.

Historical Chinese Jiaozi paper currency from the Northern Song dynasty

Paper money circulated in China centuries before European banknotes.

Medieval tally sticks

A split wooden stick could serve as a matching record of debt.

A plåtmynt displayed in the Finnish National Museum.

Some Swedish copper money weighed almost 20 kilograms.

Swedish Credityf Zedels, 1666

A Swedish bank issued Europe’s first banknotes in 1661.

Riksbankshuset, headquarter of Swedish National Bank. Inaugurated 1976. Architect: Peter Celsing. The Riksbank building (Riksbankshuset) is located at Brunkebergstorg 11 in Stockholm city.

The world’s oldest surviving central bank was founded in Sweden.

View of the Bank of England building in July 2022

The Bank of England began as a privately owned bank.

US-$100000-GC-1934-Fr-2413

The United States printed a $100,000 note that was never for public spending.

Obverse of the steel cent

America’s 1943 pennies were made from zinc-coated steel.

Obverse of the series 2021 $10 Federal Reserve Note.

U.S. paper currency is made from cotton and linen.

Australian banknotes in wallet

Australia completed its switch to polymer banknotes in 1996.

1971 Decimal Coins

Britain once divided a pound into 240 pennies.

This coin is listed in the Standard Catalogue of British Coins under the ID 3397.

A guinea was worth one pound and one shilling.

Joachimsthaler 1525

The word dollar traces back to a European valley.

Philip V Coin silver, 8 Reales Mexico

A piece of eight was literally a coin worth eight reales.

United States Mint Philadelphia

The United States Mint was established in 1792.

ShareCertificate SouthSeaCompany 1733

The South Sea Company was created partly to manage government debt.

Rue Quincampoix, 75004 Paris, France.

France’s Mississippi Bubble burst in the same year as Britain’s South Sea Bubble.

A gold bullion weighing 12½ kg. Property of the Polish National Bank

The United States stopped dollar-to-gold conversion for foreign official holders in 1971.

Mt. Washington Hotel

Forty-four Allied countries helped design the postwar monetary system in 1944.

The euro existed for three years before its notes and coins arrived.

Photo of ERNIE 1 the first premium bond number producing machine in the science museum

British Premium Bonds distribute prizes instead of paying each saver interest.

History

Pyramid of Khufu - May 2023

Cleopatra lived closer in time to the Moon landing than to the building of the Great Pyramid.

Siegsdorfer Mammut

Woolly mammoths were still alive when the Great Pyramid was built.

aerial panorama of Oxford

Oxford University is older than the Aztec Empire.

View of the northwestern corner of the Old Yard (see Harvard Yard), showing Hollis, Stoughton, and Holworthy Halls.

Harvard University is older than calculus.

Destroyed Palace and other buildings after the attack in the Anglo-Zanzibar War.
In Stone Town, Zanzibar City.

The shortest war in history lasted less than 45 minutes.

Samsung SF-3100 fax machine with inkjet printing on normal paper, 1999. The device has an integrated digital answering machine, a telephone and a copier function.

The fax machine was invented before the telephone.

France, circa 1790
Costumes; Accessories
Wool felt with silk plain weave ribbon
Purchased with funds provided by Michael and Ellen Michelson (M.2010.33.1)
Costume and Textiles

Napoleon was not short. He was about average height for his time.

Eiffel Tower, Paris France

The Eiffel Tower was only supposed to stand for 20 years.

The Rosetta Stone in the British Museum.

The Rosetta Stone has three scripts, but only two languages.

Magna Carta (British Library Cotton MS Augustus II.106)

Four original exemplifications of the 1215 Magna Carta survive.

Detail of image:Odo_bayeux_tapestry.png

The Bayeux Tapestry is not technically a tapestry.

Gregorian Tower in Vatican City, built for observations supporting Gregorian calendar reform

The first Gregorian-calendar adopters skipped ten calendar dates.

New Style date on Cliffe memorial, Mathon, near to Mathon, Herefordshire, Great Britain.
One of several monuments to members of the Cliffe family in Mathon church. This one has an interesting date. About two thirds of the way down it gives the date of Allen Cliffe's death as "Octr 10th 1752 New Style", which was just 26 days after the Gregorian calendar was adopted in Britain following the calendar (New Style) Act of 1750.

Britain’s September 1752 jumped from the second to the fourteenth.

Interior of Crossness Pumping Station, Belvedere, Kent

London’s Great Stink helped spur a new sewer system.

The Monument to the Great Fire of London

London’s fire monument is as tall as its distance from the fire’s starting point.

Plaque erected in 1986 by the Worshipful Company of Bakers at Faryners House, 25 Monument Street, London EC3R 8BQ (corner of Monument Street and Pudding Lane)

The Great Fire of London began in a bakery.

Sutton Hoo burial site

Sutton Hoo’s buried ship survived mainly as an imprint, not an intact wooden vessel.

Terracotta Army in Xi'an, China

Farmers uncovered the Terracotta Army in 1974.

Great Isaiah Scroll

The Dead Sea Scrolls are not all written in Hebrew.

Aerial image of Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius (view from the southeast)

Pompeii’s famous body casts were made by filling voids in volcanic deposits.

Aurochs, horses and deer painted on a cave

The original Lascaux cave was closed to visitors to protect its art.

Iss016e019375

The Suez Canal connects two seas without locks.

Barco cruzando las Esclusas de Agua Clara, Gatún, Canal de Panamá. A la derecha la Torre de Control de las esclusas.

The Panama Canal lifts ships to a lake above sea level.

The original Golden Spike used to connect the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railways in 1869 near Ogden, Utah. This spike was driven in by Leland Stanford and is on display at the Cantor Arts Museum at Stanford University.

The first U.S. transcontinental railroad joined at Promontory Summit.

The Crystal Palace, general view from the Water Temple.

London’s Great Exhibition recorded more than six million visits.

The Italian Terraces, Crystal Palace Park

The Crystal Palace was rebuilt in south London after the Great Exhibition.

Preserved Metropolitan Railway Class "A" 4-4-0T No.23 built by Beyer Peacock in 1866 and not withdrawn (as London Transport No.L45) until 1948, by when it had been reduced to hauling maintenance trains. Now on display at the London Transport Museum.

The world’s first underground passenger railway used steam trains.

First world postal stamp ever issued : the Penny Black, Great Britain, 1840.

The first public adhesive postage stamp cost one penny.

Text of Exeter Domesday Book of 1086, under the heading "The King's Demesne belonging to the kingdom in Devenesscira", for the manor later known as Molland-Bottreaux. Latin text: "Mollande tempore regis Edwardi geldabat pro iiii hidis et uno ferling. Terra est xl carucis. In dominio sunt iii carucae et x servi et xxx villani et xx bordarii cum xvi carucis. Ibi xii acrae prati et xv acrae silvae. Pastura iii leugae in longitudine et latitudine. Re

Domesday Book was a property survey, not a census of everyone in England.

Authentic Viking recreation, Newfoundland, CanadaJuly 17 - 30, 2003

A Norse settlement in Newfoundland predates Columbus by centuries.

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Space

Venus from Mariner 10

A rotation on Venus takes longer than its entire year.

Moving heart of the Crab Nebula

A teaspoon of neutron star would weigh about a billion tons.

Buzz Aldrin's bootprint on the Moon, AS11-40-5877

Apollo footprints can remain on the Moon for thousands of years.

Usamljeni jasen

Earth’s estimated tree count exceeds the Milky Way’s estimated star count.

Lightning during an overnight storm at the port and lighthouse in Port-la-Nouvelle in the Aude department in southern France.

A bolt of lightning is about five times hotter than the surface of the Sun.

Mars sunset PIA01547

Sunsets on Mars are blue.

Saturn global view from Cassini, rings open Better Colour

Saturn is less dense than water, so in theory it would float.

Sun over Lake Hāwea, Otago, New Zealand

The sunlight hitting your face right now left the Sun about 8 minutes ago.

Mercury in true color

One sunrise-to-sunrise day on Mercury lasts about two Mercury years.

Venus in real colors, processed from clear and blue filtered Mariner 10 images.
Source images are in the public domain (NASA)

Images processed by Ricardo Nunes, downloaded from http://www.astrosurf.com/nunes/explor/explor_m10.htm

Venus is hotter than Mercury even though it is farther from the Sun.

Uranus Voyager2 color calibrated

Uranus rotates almost on its side.

Neptune Voyager2 color calibrated

Neptune was predicted mathematically before its confirmed discovery.

Ganymede photographed by Juno in 2021,
Projected from the perspective of '3.

Jupiter’s moon Ganymede is wider than Mercury.

I've taken a slightly larger image that is processed by Kevin M. Gill, with far less noise. Titan's color in this image also more closely match with its spectra color.

Titan has lakes and seas of liquid hydrocarbons.

Io highest resolution natural color

Io is the solar system’s most volcanically active world.

PIA17202 - Approaching Enceladus

Enceladus sprays icy material into Saturn’s E ring.

A full-disc mosaic of Triton

Triton orbits Neptune opposite the planet’s rotation.

Charon in True Color - High-Res

Pluto and Charon orbit a shared center outside Pluto.

Ceres - RC3 - Haulani Crater (22381131691) (cropped)

Ceres is the only recognized dwarf planet in the asteroid belt.

Olympus Mons - ESA Mars Express - Flickr - Andrea Luck

Olympus Mons is a volcano roughly 600 kilometers across.

Phobos colour 2008

Mars’s moons are named for fear and panic.

The Sun in white light

The Sun contains about 99.8 percent of the solar system’s mass.

ESO-VLT-Laser-phot-33a-07

~230 million years

The Sun takes about 230 million years to orbit the Milky Way.

PIA02202 Neptune's full rings

Four ring systems

All four giant planets have rings, not just Saturn.

This is Europa in true color, cropped from Juno's flyby of Europa at Perijove 45.

Europa likely hides a saltwater ocean beneath its icy surface.

Apollo 11 Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment

The Moon is moving away from Earth by about 3.8 centimeters a year.

Dinkinesh First Look L'LORRI

An asteroid moon discovered by Lucy is itself a double-lobed object.

NASA's Voyager 2 Testing

Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to have visited all four giant planets.

The James Webb Space Telescope's 18 mirrors are seen fully installed on the James Webb Space Telescope structure at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn
Read more: www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasas-james-webb-space-telesco...

NASA Image Use Policy
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~1.5 million km

Webb operates near a point about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.

Arecibo Telescope

The first confirmed exoplanets were found around a pulsar.

Animals

Octopus vulgaris (common octopus)

Octopuses have three hearts and blue blood.

Common Wombat (Vombatus ursinus tasmaniensis) on Maria Island, Tasmania, Australia. The entire island is a national park, Maria Island National Park. The adult is just under a metre in length on average.

Wombats poop cubes.

A close-up of a sea otter, taken in Morro Bay, California in 2016.

Sea otters hold hands while they sleep so they don't drift apart.

James's Flamingos at Laguna Colorada in Bolivia

A group of flamingos is called a flamboyance.

Grey reef shark (Carcharhinus amblyrhynchos)

Image ID: corl0207, NOAA's Coral Kingdom Collection
Location: Pacific Remote Islands, Kingman Reef
Photo Date: 2015

Photographer: Kevin Lino NOAA/NMFS/PIFSC/ESD

Sharks have been around longer than trees.

A koala climbing up a tree, Great Otway National Park, Victoria, Australia. Canon 10D, 70-200mm f/2.8L @ f/3.2 1/200s

Koala fingerprints have loops and whorls remarkably similar to ours.

A tardigrade

Tardigrades can survive being exposed to outer space.

Royal Unicorn, Edinburgh Mercat Cross

Scotland's official national animal is the unicorn.

Short-snouted seahorse on knotted wrack.
The animal was caught at 51°36′18.48″N 2°40′56.92″E / 51.6051333°N 2.6824778°E / 51.6051333; 2.6824778 on the Oosthinder banks in the Belgian part of the North Sea

Male seahorses carry developing young in a brood pouch.

Green turtle, Chelonia mydas is going for the air.

Incubation temperature helps determine a sea turtle hatchling’s sex.

Duck-billed platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus), Scottsdale, TAS, Australia

The platypus is a mammal that lays eggs.

Angolan giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis angolensis) female with young 2 months, Chobe National Park, Botswana

A giraffe usually has seven neck vertebrae, just like a human.

Cheetah at Working with Wildlife, South Africa

Cheetahs have partly retractile claws that help grip the ground.

A lone honeybee (Apis mellifera) sits atop a hive.

Honeybees have five eyes: two compound eyes and three simple ones.

Blue-poison.dart.frog.and.Yellow-banded.dart.frog.arp

Dietary defense

Many poison frogs acquire their defensive skin toxins from their diet.

Lithobates sylvaticus (Woodfrog)

Freeze tolerance

Wood frogs can survive winter with ice forming outside their cells.

Big eared townsend bat (Corynorhinus townsendii)

Bats are the only living mammals capable of sustained powered flight.

Tachypleus gigas

Horseshoe crabs are more closely related to arachnids than to true crabs.

Amphiprion ocellaris (Clown anemonefish) in Papua New Guinea.

A breeding male clownfish can become female.

A Pacific sea nettle (Chrysaora fuscescens) at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California, USA

Jellyfish coordinate movement without a centralized brain.

Portuguese man-of-war (Physalia physalis)

A Portuguese man o’ war is a colony of specialized zooids.

Sponges in Caribbean Sea, Cayman Islands

Sea sponges are animals that filter water through porous bodies.

A variety of corals form an outcrop on Flynn Reef, part of the Great Barrier Reef near Cairns, Queensland, Australia.

Reef-building corals are colonies of small animals, not underwater plants.

Reef starfish (Stichaster australis) apparently lifting itself out from the rock, probably feeding on a mussel. This view is from above; water below the starfish is visible along the top of the frame. Found at low tide level on the north side of Lion Rock, Piha, near Auckland, New Zealand.

Sea stars move with tube feet powered by a water vascular system.

Dromedary camel in outback Australia, near Silverton, NSW.

Camel humps store fat rather than a reservoir of drinking water.

Female polar bear (Ursus maritimus) near Kaktovik, Barter Island, Alaska.

Polar bears look white even though their guard hairs lack white pigment.

Ruby throated hummingbird hovering near a red flower while sucking up the nectar

Living hummingbirds are native only to the Americas.

Eurasian eagle-owl (Bubo bubo sibiricus) in captivity.

An owl’s facial disc helps funnel sound toward its ears.

Indian elephant in musth

Elephants use blood-rich ears to help shed body heat.

Platypus is a mammal with a beaver tail and a duckbill.

Electroreception

A platypus can detect prey-generated electrical signals with its bill.

Human Body

Human Skeleton on Exhibit at The Museum of Osteology, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Babies are born with about 300 bones, but adults have only 206.

zh:尖沙咀香港科學館2010年7月, zh:骨骼展覽

You are about a centimeter taller in the morning than at night.

Brain autopsy lateral view after formalin fixation

Your brain is about 2% of your body weight but burns around 20% of your energy.

Histology of normal fundic mucosa. H&E 10x; square 40x. Antral mucosa is formed by branched coiled tubular glands lined by secretory cells similar in appearance to the surface mucus cells.

Your stomach replaces its inner lining every few days.

Artéria elástica vista em corte histológico, microscopia óptica, coloração HE, tecido conjuntivo elástico pode ser visto

Your body contains a vast network of microscopic blood vessels.

Meissner's corpuscle incidentally noted in normal skin from the plantar aspect of the foot

Pathological and histological images courtesy of Ed Uthman at flickr.

Your brain usually makes your own touch feel less ticklish.

Title Skin Surface (Human)
Description A scanning electron micrograph of the surface of human skin.
Topics/Categories Anatomy -- Skin Cells or Tissue -- Abnormal Cells or Tissue
Type B&W, Photo
Source National Cancer Institute

Humans actually glow in the dark, just too faintly to see.

DNA extraction from an orange.

Any two people share about 99.9% of their DNA.

Scanning electron micrograph showing tiny pores in a glomerular capillary

Each human kidney contains about a million filtering units.

Right kidney

Your kidneys help regulate red blood cell production as well as filtering blood.

High magnification micrograph showing liver cholestasis. Liver biopsy. H&E stain.

Made ≠ stored

Your liver makes bile; your gallbladder stores it.

This image comes from the archive of Josef Reischig and is part of the 384 pictures kindly donated by the authorship heirs under CC BY SA 3.0 license as a part of Wikimedia Czech Republic's GLAM initiative.

Starch digestion begins before food reaches your stomach.

Trasversal section of human esophagus

Food travels down your esophagus through coordinated muscle contractions.

This image comes from the archive of Josef Reischig and is part of the 384 pictures kindly donated by the authorship heirs under CC BY SA 3.0 license as a part of Wikimedia Czech Republic's GLAM initiative.

The small intestine has three named sections.

Visualised using double immunostaining
Colours: red = glucagon antibody, blue = insulin antibody

Generated in Laboratory of nervous system development, FSBI Human Morphology SRI RAMS, Moscow

Digestive juice

Your pancreas sends digestive enzymes into your small intestine.

islet of Langerhans, haemalum-eosin stain

Insulin is produced by specialized beta cells in the pancreas.

Dissection of the heart performed by medicine students of Monterrey Tech. In the photo, the entrance of the big atria can be observed

Your heart has two receiving chambers and two pumping chambers.

Heart and lungs

Your right lung normally has three lobes, while your left has two.

Lateral chest radiograph showing the diaphragm below the lungs

Down to breathe in

Your diaphragm moves downward when you inhale.

Labelled photograph of the Ossicles, the three bones of the middle ear. They are the malleus, the incus, and the stapes.

Three tiny middle-ear bones transmit vibrations toward your inner ear.

Illustration from Anatomy & Physiology, Connexions Web site. http://cnx.org/content/col11496/1.6/, Jun 19, 2013.

Inner-ear hair cells turn sound-driven motion into electrical signals.

Micrograph showing optic nerve head and retina. H&E stain.
Related images

Optic nerve & retina - low mag.

Retina - intermed. mag.

Retina - high mag.

Retina - very high mag.

Light → signals

Your retina converts incoming light into electrical signals.

This image comes from the archive of Josef Reischig and is part of the 384 pictures kindly donated by the authorship heirs under CC BY SA 3.0 license as a part of Wikimedia Czech Republic's GLAM initiative.

Human taste detects at least five basic qualities, including savory umami.

A person smells wine during a tasting, illustrating aroma’s role in flavor

Much of what you call a food’s flavor comes from smell.

Title Skin: Epidermis and Dermis
Description Line drawing showing cross-section of dermal and epidermal skin layers.
Topics/Categories Anatomy -- Skin
Type B&W, Medical Illustration
Source National Cancer Institute

Your skin is an organ that helps prevent dehydration.

This photomicrograph of a Prussian blue stained bone marrow sample, revealed that there was normal amount of iron stores. Normal iron stores are seen as dark blue-stained material in the bone marrow.

Bone marrow is a major site of blood cell production.

High magnification micrograph of a tendon removed in an excision for fibromatosis. H&E stain.
Related images

Intermed. mag.

High mag.

Very high mag.

High mag.

Different links

Tendons connect muscle to bone; ligaments connect bone to bone.

This image comes from the archive of Josef Reischig and is part of the 384 pictures kindly donated by the authorship heirs under CC BY SA 3.0 license as a part of Wikimedia Czech Republic's GLAM initiative.

Minerals can return

Early tooth decay can sometimes be reversed before a cavity forms.

Transmission electron micrograph of a chondrocyte, stained for calcium, showing its nucleus (N) and mitochondria (M).

Human mitochondria contain their own DNA.

Microscopic photograph of locus coeruleus tissue in the pons, part of the brainstem involved in sleep regulation

Most skeletal muscles become temporarily inactive during normal REM sleep.

Food

Inside a wild-type banana

Bananas are berries. Strawberries are not.

Peanut plant roots with developing pods attached

Peanuts are not nuts. They are legumes, like peas and beans.

Different ketchup in a plate 122425

Ketchup was once sold as medicine.

Carrots of many colors cropped

Carrots were originally purple and yellow, not orange.

Fresh wasabi rhizomes

Most wasabi served outside Japan is actually dyed horseradish.

Honey-miel

Well-sealed honey resists spoilage thanks to its unusual chemistry.

Young cashew nuts

Every cashew grows out of the bottom of a fruit called a cashew apple.

Pound cake, September 2007 (cropped)

Pound cake got its name because the original recipe used a pound of each ingredient.

Vanilla planifolia 1

Natural vanilla comes from the cured fruit of an orchid.

Baton de cannelle

Cinnamon sticks are rolled pieces of tree bark.

Ginger cross section

The part of ginger used in cooking is an underground stem.

Curcuma longa roots

Underground stems

Turmeric powder is made from the plant’s rhizomes.

Coffee cherry cross section

Coffee beans are seeds inside a fleshy fruit.

TeaLeaves

Black tea and green tea come from the same plant species.

Clove close up

Cloves are dried flower buds.

Close-up photograph of black Piper nigrum pepper fruits growing in clusters

Black and white pepper come from the same species of vine.

Dried Hungarian paprika on string

Paprika is made from dried, ground pepper fruits.

Cooked quinoa grains on a plate beside a fork

Quinoa provides all nine essential amino acids.

White, brown, red and wild rice grains

Brown rice retains the bran and germ that are removed to make white rice.

Chopped white chocolate chunks

White chocolate contains cocoa butter but not the dark cocoa solids.

PopcornGettingCookedInA Pan

Popcorn pops because heated water inside the kernel builds pressure.

Romanesco broccoli, a cultivated form of Brassica oleracea

Broccoli, cabbage and kale are cultivated forms of the same species.

Hydrogenuhličitan sodný

Baking soda releases leavening gas when it reacts with an acid.

Joghurt

Bacterial culture

Yogurt is milk transformed by bacterial fermentation.

Syrup grades large

Concentrated sap

Maple syrup is made by removing water from maple sap.

Ripe red apples growing on a tree

Apples produce ethylene, a gas involved in ripening.

Dried red kidney beans

Cook thoroughly

Raw or undercooked kidney beans can contain harmful levels of lectins.

Green potato tubers exposed to light

Green potatoes can indicate elevated natural toxins.

Nutmeg fruit seed and aril

Nutmeg is obtained from the seed of a tropical tree.

Coriandrum sativum 003

Leaves + fruits

Cilantro leaves and coriander spice come from the same plant.

Geography

Bora Bora in French Polynesia, a French overseas territory

France has more time zones than any other country.

Lake Superior photographed from the International Space Station

Canada has more lakes than the rest of the world combined.

Volcanic terrain on Semisopochnoi Island in Alaska's Aleutian Islands

Alaska is the most western and the most eastern US state.

Downtown Reno 2

Reno, Nevada is farther west than Los Angeles.

Fryxellsee Opt

Antarctica is the largest desert in the world.

Hawaiian island chain photographed from orbit

Hawaii moves a few inches closer to Japan every year.

WadiSuraSwimmers

The Sahara Desert was once green, with lakes, grasslands and hippos.

Earth and the Moon photographed from space, illustrating the remoteness of ocean locations

At Point Nemo, the closest people to you are often astronauts.

Lake Baikal in winter

Lake Baikal is the world’s deepest lake.

Lines of sargassum Sargasso Sea

No land boundary

The Sargasso Sea is bounded by ocean currents rather than coasts.

Þingvellir National Park, Bláskógabyggð (6969755432)

Earth’s longest mountain system lies mostly underwater.

Waves in pacifica 1

The Pacific Ocean basin is large enough to contain all the continents.

Early Morning view from Sehlabathebe House - panoramio

All of Lesotho lies more than 1,000 meters above sea level.

View over Vaduz in doubly landlocked Liechtenstein

Only Liechtenstein and Uzbekistan are doubly landlocked countries.

Bosphorus Bridge (1973) in Istanbul

Europe and Asia

Istanbul extends across both sides of the Bosporus.

Satellite view of clouds over Africa

Four hemispheres

Africa has land in all four hemispheres.

Harbor and coastal settlement in Greenland

~2.16 million km²

Greenland is the world’s largest island when continents are excluded.

Panoramic view Andes-Chile

The Andes are the world’s longest continental mountain range.

Chimborazo 2022-12-05

Equatorial bulge

Chimborazo’s summit is farther from Earth’s center than Everest’s.

Mauna Kea from the ocean

Mauna Kea rises about ten kilometers from its submarine base to its summit.

Caspian Sea Kazakhstan Mangistau

The Caspian Sea is the world’s largest enclosed inland body of water.

View of Lake Titicaca along the road to Bolivia

Lake Titicaca lies about 3,810 meters above sea level.

Victoria Falls on the Zambia-Zimbabwe border

Victoria Falls straddles the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Angel Falls descending a cliff in Venezuela

Angel Falls has a total height of about 979 meters.

Namib Desert dunes beside the Atlantic Ocean

The Namib Desert runs along the Atlantic coast of southern Africa.

Ögmundarhraun lava field in Iceland

Iceland sits across the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

Straits of Mackinac connecting Lakes Michigan and Huron

Lakes Michigan and Huron form one connected body of water hydrologically.

Danube River and Parliament building in Budapest

The Danube passes through or along four national capitals.

Island in the Gambia River near Juffureh

The Gambia is a narrow country built around the lower Gambia River.

Bosphorus aerial view

Water flows through the Bosporus in opposing layers.

Science

Glass water triple-point cell for temperature calibration

Water can boil and freeze at the same time.

The Great Wall of China at Jinshanling-edit

The Great Wall is difficult to distinguish from orbit with the naked eye.

Eiffel tower by Loki

The Eiffel Tower grows about 15 centimeters taller in summer.

Diamond and graphite2

Diamond and graphite are two very different forms of carbon.

Bunches of ripe yellow bananas displayed at a market

Bananas are slightly radioactive.

Equipment used to collect multibeam sonar data underwater

Sound travels more than four times faster in water than in air.

NASA's Deep Space Atomic Clock hardware, illustrating precision timekeeping

GPS would fail within a day if it ignored Einstein's relativity.

Cumulus mediocris atmospheric instability 01

An ordinary puffy cloud can weigh more than a million pounds.

Metric standards Rijksmuseum

The meter is defined using the speed of light in a vacuum.

NIST-F2 cesium fountain atomic clock

The second is defined by a cesium-133 atomic transition.

A piece of high-purity zone-refined silicon

6.02214076 × 10²³

A mole contains an exact number of specified particles.

Watt balance, large view

The kilogram is no longer defined by a metal cylinder.

Cryogenic equipment used in preparing the WISE spacecraft

Absolute zero is exactly -273.15 degrees Celsius.

Frozen Wappinger Creek

Water expands by about nine percent when it freezes into ordinary ice.

Liquid gallium

Gallium can melt at a temperature below normal human body temperature.

Liquid mercury being poured

Mercury is liquid at ordinary room temperature.

Helium glowing in an electrical discharge tube

Helium was detected in sunlight before it was isolated on Earth.

Vial of bromine enclosed in an acrylic block

Bromine is the only nonmetallic element liquid at ordinary room temperature.

Thin layers of Earth's atmosphere seen from space

Nitrogen makes up about 78 percent of dry air.

Historical Siemens apparatus for producing ozone

Ozone and breathable oxygen are different molecules of the same element.

Colored pH indicator solutions arranged for comparison

One pH unit represents a tenfold change in hydrogen-ion activity.

Mercury thermometer used to measure temperature

Celsius and Fahrenheit give the same number at minus forty.

Magnetite sample with a neodymium magnet

Cutting a bar magnet does not isolate a north pole.

Historic vacuum pump and glass bell jar in a science museum

Sound cannot travel through an ideal vacuum.

Double rainbow over an Alaskan landscape

A primary rainbow is centered on the point opposite the Sun.

Blue daytime sky with white clouds

Short wavelengths

Air scatters short wavelengths of visible light more strongly than long ones.

Dry ice pellet subliming in water

Dry ice turns directly from solid to gas at normal atmospheric pressure.

Crystal glass

Not a slow liquid

Ordinary window glass is an amorphous solid, not a slowly flowing liquid.

Stickstoff gekühlter Supraleiter schwebt über Dauermagneten 2009-06-21

Zero resistance

A superconductor can carry direct current without electrical resistance.

Accelerator mass spectrometer used for isotope measurements

Carbon-14 decays with a half-life of about 5,730 years.

Tech

Trojan Room coffee pot as seen in its early network camera image

The first webcam was pointed at a coffee pot.

Photograph of the original wooden computer mouse prototype

The first computer mouse was made of wood.

1947 computer logbook page with a moth taped to it

One of the most famous computer bugs was an actual moth.

3600-front

The first .com domain ever registered was symbolics.com, in 1985.

Timesharing and Development KA-10s at BBN, circa 1970

Email is about 20 years older than the World Wide Web.

Remington 2 typewriter (Martin Howard Collection)

The QWERTY keyboard layout dates back to typewriters from the 1870s.

Elephants at the San Diego Zoo 3

The first video ever uploaded to YouTube was 19 seconds long, at a zoo.

Paper mill buildings beside the Nokianvirta river in Nokia, Finland

Nokia started out in 1865 as a paper mill.

Replica-of-first-transistor

The first working transistor was built in 1947.

EPROM Microchip SuperMacro

An integrated circuit puts multiple electronic components on one chip.

Intel 4004 open

An early commercial microprocessor contained just 2,300 transistors.

Handwritten log documenting the first ARPANET message

ARPANET’s first attempted login crashed after two letters.

First Internet Demonstration, 1977

ARPANET switched to TCP/IP on New Year’s Day.

Where the WEB was born

CERN released foundational Web software into the public domain in 1993.

Cutaway engine showing pistons, connecting rods, and crankshaft

QR codes were invented to label automobile parts.

A stick of chewing gum, the product type involved in the first retail UPC scan

The first retail UPC scan was a packet of chewing gum.

GPS Receivers

A GPS receiver normally needs four satellites to solve position and time.

Audio Compact Disc

An audio CD stores 44,100 samples per second for each channel.

DVD-R bottom-side

A standard single-layer DVD holds 4.7 billion bytes, not 4.7 binary gigabytes.

Red, green, and violet laser modules projecting colored beams

Blu-ray reads discs with a blue-violet laser.

USB-A demonstration

USB was designed to replace a jumble of computer peripheral connections.

Bluetooth headset

Bluetooth takes its name from a medieval Scandinavian king.

RouterBoard 112 with U.FL-RSMA pigtail and R52 miniPCI Wi-Fi card

Wi-Fi is not formally short for wireless fidelity.

Photograph of a computer monitor showing a pixel test pattern

PNG compression can preserve every original pixel value.

JPEG example image

Ordinary JPEG compression saves space by discarding image information.

Vintage Commodore desktop computer with CRT monitor and keyboard

A GIF image palette holds at most 256 colors.

ASR-33 teletype terminal associated with early ASCII computing

Original ASCII fits into seven bits.

Server racks in CERN's data center, illustrating network infrastructure

IPv6 has a vastly larger address space than IPv4.

Data center equipment illustrating distributed network infrastructure

The Internet’s naming system is distributed, not one giant address book.

Jacquard loom with a chain of punched cards at the National Museum of Scotland

Punched cards controlled textile patterns long before electronic computers.

Sports

Olympic stadium illuminated during a closing ceremony

The Olympic rings represent five continents, not five colour-coded continents

Panathenaic Stadium in Athens

The first modern Olympics opened in Athens in 1896

Anders Haugen competing in ski jumping at the 1924 Winter Olympics in Chamonix

The first Winter Olympics began as a winter sports week

Winter Olympic medals on display

An Olympic gold medal is gilded, not a solid lump of gold

Olympic torches displayed at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne

The Olympic torch relay began at Berlin 1936, not in antiquity

Runners gathered at the Helsinki City Marathon start

The marathon’s exact distance was standardised in 1921

Oval athletics track with marked lanes

A standard outdoor athletics track is measured along a defined running line

Centre Court at Wimbledon

The first Wimbledon Championships had just one event

Historic first basketball court

Basketball began with peach baskets and nine players a side

Pavilion at Lord’s cricket ground

Lord’s has occupied three London grounds, not one since 1787

Outdoor tennis court with baseline and sidelines

A regulation tennis court is 23.77 metres long

Indoor tennis courts with singles and doubles sidelines

10.97 vs 8.23 m

Doubles tennis uses a wider court than singles

Tennis court and net at Petäjävesi

0.914 vs 1.07 m

A tennis net is lower at the centre than at its supports

Basketball hoop and backboard

A regulation basketball ring sits 3.05 metres above the floor

Basketball court at the 2014 World Cup

A standard FIBA basketball court measures 28 by 15 metres

Basketball goal on an outdoor court

A successful FIBA three-point field goal is worth three points

Wide view of a volleyball match and court

Indoor volleyball has six players per team in play

Feather badminton shuttlecocks

A regulation feathered badminton shuttle has sixteen feathers

Assortment of golf clubs

Golf limits a player to fourteen clubs during a round

Assortment of 40 millimetre table tennis balls

A regulation table tennis ball has a specified diameter of forty millimetres

Grass association football pitch

Being in an offside position is not itself an offence

Corner flag and boundary lines on a football pitch

A football throw-in cannot score a goal directly

Association football goal and net

You can score directly from a goal kick against the other team

Cricket ball on the playing field

A cricket over contains six valid balls, not necessarily six deliveries

Cricket wicket and pitch during a match

A cricket pitch is 22 yards long, but the whole field is not

Cricket match at Walker Cricket Ground

A boundary six requires the ball to have been struck by the bat

Curling stone near the centre of the house

Only one team can score in a curling end

Curling ice sheet with stones and target rings

A curling skip does not have to throw the last stones

Goalposts on a sports field

A rugby union try and conversion are worth seven points together

Rugby School playing field

A rugby goal still counts if the wind blows it back after crossing

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