The Fact Ledger

A single sneeze can travel at 100 miles per hour and release 100,000 droplets.

Your body uses a sneeze to clear out things that irritate your nose like dust or pollen. It uses muscles in your chest and throat to create a powerful burst of air.

One bushel of corn produces enough syrup to sweeten 400 cans of soda.

Factories turn the starch found in corn into a very sweet liquid called high-fructose corn syrup. Because corn is easy to grow and process, it is the main sweetener used in most so...

You cannot tickle yourself because your brain predicts the sensation before it happens.

When you move your own hand, your brain already knows where it is going and what it will feel like. It ignores the touch because it is not a surprise. A tickle from someone else is...

A bright red waterfall called Blood Falls flows from a glacier in Antarctica.

The water comes from a lake trapped deep under the ice for two million years. It contains a lot of iron that turns red when it touches the air. This is the same process that makes...

Underwater lakes with their own shorelines and waves exist on the ocean floor.

These lakes form when salt deposits dissolve and create water much saltier than the rest of the ocean. This heavy salt water sinks into pits and stays separate from the normal seaw...

Water makes up about 60% of an adult human's total body weight.

This water stays inside your cells, in your blood, and between your organs. It helps move nutrients to where they are needed and keeps your brain safe from bumps. It also helps you...

The Moon is actually dark grey and reflects about the same amount of light as an old asphalt road.

The Moon looks bright because it is surrounded by the pitch-black darkness of space. This contrast makes our eyes and brain see the dark grey dust as a glowing white object.

Ancient Romans added a poisonous lead syrup to their wine to make it taste sweeter.

Winemakers boiled grape juice in lead pots to create a thick sweetener called sapa. This process created lead acetate, a chemical that tastes like sugar but is highly toxic. The sy...

The first chocolate bars were gritty and bitter because they were not ground long enough to become smooth.

Early chocolate makers mixed cocoa powder and sugar into a rough paste. In 1879, Rodolphe Lindt invented a machine that stirred and ground chocolate for several days to make it cre...

Your hair and fingernails are made of the same protein as bird feathers and reptile scales.

This protein is called keratin. It is a strong material that protects your body from the outside world. It is also found in animal claws, hooves, and beaks.

The first non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean happened in 1919, eight years before Charles Lindbergh's famous trip.

British pilots John Alcock and Arthur Brown flew a modified bomber plane from Canada to Ireland. They completed the journey in less than 16 hours despite freezing weather and equip...

A single male elephant seal can guard a group of up to 100 females during the breeding season.

These large groups are called harems. The male seal stays on the beach for months to protect his group from other males. This behavior happens in crowded breeding areas called rook...

Montpelier, Vermont, is the only state capital in the United States without a McDonald's.

The city has a very small population and strict rules about how buildings must look. Residents prefer to support local businesses instead of large national chains.

Sticky rice holds parts of the Great Wall of China together.

Workers during the Ming Dynasty mixed sticky rice soup with lime to make a powerful glue. This mixture is stronger and more waterproof than regular cement. It has helped the wall s...

The first handheld mobile phone call happened in 1973 using a device that weighed as much as a brick.

Motorola engineer Martin Cooper made the call while walking on a sidewalk in New York City. He used a prototype phone to call a rival scientist at another company. This proved that...

A group of rabbits is called a colony and lives in a network of underground tunnels called a warren.

These tunnels can go 10 feet deep and have many exits for quick escapes. Rabbits use these shared homes to stay safe from predators and keep a steady temperature year-round.

A 21-year-old inventor named Philo Farnsworth demonstrated the first fully electronic television in 1927.

Earlier televisions used spinning mechanical discs to create images. Farnsworth used a beam of electrons to capture and show pictures instead. This system allowed for much clearer...

Your ears are usually at different heights and have slightly different shapes to help you find where sounds come from.

This uneven placement creates a tiny delay in when sound reaches each ear. Your brain uses this time difference to figure out if a noise is above, below, or beside you.

The world's oldest surviving movie is only 2.11 seconds long.

French inventor Louis Le Prince filmed this scene in 1888 in Leeds, England. It shows four people walking in a garden seven years before the first famous public cinema shows began.

The Burj Khalifa uses a Y-shaped design and a central core to stay stable against strong desert winds.

At 828 meters tall, wind is the biggest threat to the building's stability. The three wings support each other around a center point to prevent the tower from twisting or leaning....

Humans have two eyes to see the world in 3D and judge distances accurately.

Each eye sees a slightly different image because they are about 6.3 centimeters apart. The brain combines these two flat pictures into one 3D image. This process lets you know exac...

Sheep have a natural instinct to copy everything their neighbors do.

This behavior is called allelomimetic behavior. If one sheep moves or jumps, the rest of the flock follows immediately to stay safe. This keeps the group together so predators cann...

Fish use a special organ called a lateral line to swim in perfect sync without looking at each other.

This organ detects tiny pressure changes and vibrations in the water. Fish feel the movement of their neighbors and adjust their own speed and direction instantly.

Honeybees perform a figure-eight dance to tell their hive exactly where to find food.

A scout bee moves her body in a specific pattern called a waggle dance. The angle of her body shows the direction of the sun, and the length of the dance shows the distance to the...

Thousands of starlings fly in giant, swirling patterns called murmurations without any leader.

Each bird only watches its seven closest neighbors to decide where to move. When one bird turns, the others nearby follow instantly. This creates a ripple effect that moves through...

The Margherita pizza was designed in 1889 to look like the Italian flag.

Chef Raffaele Esposito used red tomatoes, white mozzarella cheese, and green basil to match the colors of Italy. He created this specific combination to honor Queen Margherita duri...

Silver is the best conductor of electricity of all the elements on Earth.

Electricity flows through silver more easily than through copper or gold. It has a specific atomic structure that allows electrons to move with very little resistance.

Over half of your blood is a yellowish liquid called plasma.

Plasma makes up 55% of your blood volume. It carries nutrients, hormones, and proteins to every part of your body while removing waste.

Alexander Graham Bell made the first telephone call on March 10, 1876, by asking his assistant to come to his room.

The device turned his voice into electricity that traveled through a wire. His assistant, Thomas Watson, heard the message clearly in a different room.

Sea Rocket plants can recognize their siblings and will stop competing with them for food.

When these plants grow next to strangers, they grow extra roots to grab as much water and nutrients as possible. If they grow next to a plant from the same mother, they limit their...

Sound cannot travel through space because there is no air to carry it.

Sound moves by making tiny particles like atoms vibrate and bump into each other. Space is a vacuum with almost no particles, so vibrations have nothing to move through.

Honeybees have five eyes.

Two large eyes on the sides of their head detect movement and shapes. Three smaller eyes on top of their head help the bee find the sun and stay balanced while flying.

A wolf pack is a family made of parents and their children.

Most packs do not have a boss who fought to the top. The leaders are simply the mother and father wolves. The older siblings help the parents raise the younger pups and hunt for fo...

Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer program in 1843, over 100 years before the first modern electronic computer was built.

She wrote a set of instructions for a giant mechanical calculator called the Analytical Engine. She realized that machines could do more than just math and could eventually create...

The world's first underground passenger train opened in London on January 10, 1863.

Steam engines pulled wooden cars through tunnels built right under the city streets. This new system helped clear up traffic jams caused by thousands of horse-drawn carriages.

Mushrooms and other fungi are more closely related to humans and animals than they are to plants.

Fungi and animals share a common ancestor that lived about 1.5 billion years ago. Unlike plants, fungi cannot make their own food from sunlight. They must eat other organic matter...

The first sticky postage stamp was the Penny Black, released in Great Britain on May 1, 1840.

Before this stamp, the person receiving a letter had to pay for the delivery. The Penny Black let the sender pay a flat rate of one penny to send mail anywhere in the country.

Nitrogen makes up 78% of the air on Earth.

Nitrogen is a stable gas that does not react easily with other chemicals. It thins out the oxygen in the air so things do not catch fire too easily. This balance allows plants and...

The human brain makes up only 2% of your body weight but uses 20% of your total energy.

Your brain never stops working even when you are asleep. It needs a constant supply of fuel to keep billions of nerve cells sending electrical signals throughout your body.

Sheep outnumber people in New Zealand by five to one.

There are about 25 million sheep and only 5.2 million people living in the country. New Zealand has many grassy fields and a mild climate that makes it perfect for raising large fl...

The Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena is the oldest bank in the world that is still open today.

It started in 1472 in Siena, Italy. The bank was first created to give cheap loans to people in need so they could avoid high-interest debt.

A group of rats is called a mischief.

Rats are social animals that live and work together in large families. They use their intelligence to solve problems and help other members of their group.

The oldest known rocks on Earth are 4.02 billion years old.

These rocks, called the Acasta Gneiss, are located in Canada. Scientists found them by measuring tiny crystals trapped inside the stone that act like ancient clocks.

Coffee beans are the seeds of a small fruit called a coffee cherry.

The coffee plant is a shrub that grows bright red fruits. Each fruit usually holds two seeds that are removed, dried, and roasted to make the coffee people drink.

Switzerland has enough underground nuclear bunkers to fit its entire population plus an extra 14 percent.

A 1963 law required every home and apartment building to have a protected shelter space for its residents. This created over 360,000 bunkers across the country.

The Great Lakes hold about 21% of all the surface fresh water on Earth.

These five lakes contain enough water to cover the entire lower 48 United States in 9.5 feet of water. They are the largest group of freshwater lakes in the world by total area.

Some snakes can see heat in total darkness using special holes on their faces called pit organs.

Pit vipers, pythons, and boas have these holes between their eyes and nostrils. The organs detect infrared radiation from warm animals. This creates a heat map in the snake's brain...

Human bones start losing density at a rate of about 1% every year once a person reaches age 30.

The body constantly breaks down old bone and builds new bone. After age 30, the body cannot build new bone fast enough to replace what is lost.

The universe is about 13.8 billion years old.

Scientists calculate this age by measuring the oldest light in space and tracking how fast galaxies move apart. They can use this movement to trace everything back to the start of...

The first flight across the United States took 49 days and involved 75 landings, many of which were crashes.

Pilot Calbraith Perry Rodgers flew from New York to California in 1911. He crashed so often that almost every part of the airplane was replaced before he finished the trip.