395 facts
Before this, people only consumed chocolate as a liquid drink. Fry mixed melted cocoa butter with cocoa powder and sugar to create a paste that could be molded into a solid shape.
He rode in an electric car through Hartford, Connecticut, on August 22, 1902. This event helped people see cars as a real way to travel instead of just a dangerous hobby.
Each berry contains four small air chambers. These chambers make the fruit light enough to float and springy enough to bounce when they hit a hard surface.
He gave a two-hour speech in the cold without a coat or hat. He became ill shortly after and was the first president to die while in office.
This state is called the triple point. It happens when the conditions are exactly right for water to be a solid, a liquid, and a gas all at once.
A wombat's pouch opens toward its rear instead of its head. This prevents the pouch from filling with soil as the mother tunnels underground.
Gravity on Earth constantly pushes down on the human spine. In space, this pressure disappears, allowing the discs between the backbones to expand and stretch out.
The other seven planets are named after ancient deities like Mars, the god of war. Earth's name comes from Old English and Germanic words that mean 'the ground.'
The planet's soil contains a lot of iron. When this iron mixed with small amounts of water and oxygen long ago, it turned into iron oxide. This is the same chemical process that ma...
It is made of billions of tiny animals called coral polyps. These animals build hard skeletons that join together to form a massive underwater system over 2,300 kilometers long.
Ancient Sumerians wrote the 'Hymn to Ninkasi' to honor their goddess of brewing. The poem contains specific steps for turning barley bread into an alcoholic drink. Modern brewers h...
A central brain handles big decisions and memory. Each arm has its own mini-brain that lets it move, touch, and taste things on its own. This allows the arms to hunt or explore wit...
Before this, the Oscars were private dinner parties. NBC paid $100,000 to broadcast the 25th ceremony so fans could see movie stars live for the first time.
Margaret Herrick worked for the Academy and saw the gold trophy in 1931. She said the figure reminded her of her Uncle Oscar. People in Hollywood liked the name and started using i...
She won the Best Supporting Actress award for her role in the 1973 movie Paper Moon. She competed against adult actors instead of receiving a special award just for children.
He broke a world record that had lasted for 19 years. To earn this title, he had to beat some of the best players in the world and reach a high skill score.
This puzzle is called the Knight's Tour. There are trillions of different paths a knight can take to complete this challenge on a standard 64-square board.
In chess, the King is never captured or killed. The game ends immediately when the King has no way to escape an attack. This makes him helpless rather than dead.
Garry Kasparov lost the six-game match against the IBM supercomputer. This was the first time a machine beat a reigning world champion under tournament conditions.
This bird weighs between 1.6 and 1.9 grams, while a U.S. penny weighs 2.5 grams. It is the smallest bird in the world and lives only in Cuba.
About 90% of Libya lies within the Sahara Desert, characterized by vast stretches of sand and rock. This extreme aridity limits habitation mostly to coastal areas near the Mediterr...
The tree's sap is highly toxic and mixes with falling raindrops. This liquid causes severe chemical burns when it touches people.
A Japanese noblewoman named Murasaki Shikibu wrote 'The Tale of Genji' around the year 1008. It was the first book to focus on the long-term life and feelings of a single character...
Most nuts grow inside a fruit. The cashew is a seed that hangs in a hard shell from the bottom of a fleshy, pear-shaped fruit. This shell contains a toxic oil, so cashews are alway...
This unique sound tells the rest of the herd to run away immediately. It is different from the sounds they use for other dangers like bees or lions.
This nation is located entirely inside South Africa and sits high up in the mountains. Its lowest point is higher than the lowest point of any other country in the world.
Before this, most phones used physical buttons or plastic pens to work. The iPhone let people use their fingers to zoom and swipe directly on the glass.
Saturn is made mostly of light gases like hydrogen and helium. It is less dense than water, which means it weighs less than the same amount of water would.
The body contains a massive network of tubes called arteries, veins, and capillaries. Most of this length comes from capillaries, which are tiny vessels that reach every cell.
These sounds reach 188 decibels. Because sound travels better in water than in air, other whales can hear these calls from 1,000 miles away.
In 1915, the famous actor entered a competition to see who could best mimic his movie character. The judges did not recognize him and awarded him third place. They thought other pe...
Kangaroos are marsupials with very short pregnancies. The tiny baby is born before it is fully formed and must crawl into its mother's pouch to finish growing.
This cave is deeper than seven Eiffel Towers stacked on top of each other. It takes professional explorers over a week to travel to the bottom and back to the surface.
Germany printed too much paper money to pay off debts after World War I. This caused the value of the currency to drop so fast that prices doubled every few days.
People with this fear worry they will choke or be unable to swallow. The sticky texture of the peanut butter triggers a physical panic response.
They use a system of tubes filled with seawater to move and stay alive. This water carries nutrients and oxygen to their cells instead of blood.
Special sensors on their feet detect chemicals in plants. This helps a mother butterfly find the right leaf to lay her eggs on so her caterpillars have the correct food to eat.
They eat eucalyptus leaves which are poisonous and have very few calories. Their bodies use most of their energy just to digest this tough food and remove the toxins.
His farm manager convinced him to build the facility at his Mount Vernon estate after his presidency. It produced 11,000 gallons of whiskey in a single year.
This type of sentence is called a pangram. People use it to test fonts, keyboards, and printers because it shows all 26 letters in a short space.
In early video games, characters always jumped the same height. Super Mario Bros. changed this by checking if the player was still pressing the button 60 times every second.
He arrived as the producers were leaving and convinced them to let him try out. He spoke in a friendly, high-pitched voice until the camera ran out of film.
Mario starts each game as Small Mario. He only becomes Super Mario after eating a mushroom that makes him grow twice his original size.
In his first game, Donkey Kong, Mario worked on a construction site made of steel beams. He changed jobs to a plumber two years later when his next game took place in underground s...
In 1981, a man named Mario Segale confronted Nintendo staff about late payments. The team decided to use his name for the main character in the game Donkey Kong.
The freezing temperatures and lack of food make it impossible for ants to live there. They cannot keep their bodies warm enough to move or find food in the ice.
The throat has one main path for both air and food. A small flap called the epiglottis acts like a trapdoor. It shuts your windpipe when you swallow so food does not enter your lun...
Tiny fungi connect tree roots together to form a massive web. Older trees use this system to send sugar to younger saplings and alert neighbors about pests.
Pistachios grow inside a fleshy fruit called a drupe. This makes them relatives of peaches, cherries, and mangoes. The part people eat is the seed found inside the fruit's hard pit...
In 1874, art critics hated Monet's blurry painting of a sunrise because it looked unfinished. One critic used the word 'Impression' to insult the work. Monet and his friends liked...