The Fact Ledger

Cows have best friends and feel much calmer when they are hanging out together.

Cows form very close bonds with specific members of their herd. When a cow is near her best friend, her heart rate drops and she feels less stressed.

You cannot see the Great Wall of China from space with just your eyes.

The wall is very thin and made of materials that match the colors of the mountains around it. From hundreds of miles up, it blends right into the landscape like a piece of thread o...

The very first computer mouse was a blocky wooden box made from a piece of a Douglas fir tree.

Inventor Douglas Engelbart built it in 1964 using a hand-carved wooden shell and two metal wheels. It got its name because the wire coming out of the back looked like a mouse's tai...

A flea can jump over 150 times its own body length thanks to a built-in 'super-spring' in its legs.

Fleas use a special protein called resilin that acts like a powerful rubber band. They squash this protein down to store energy and then snap it open to launch themselves into the...

Canada is home to over 60% of all the lakes on Earth.

Giant sheets of ice once covered the land and carved deep holes into the ground. When the ice melted, these holes filled with water to create millions of lakes.

Your nose can recognize more than 1 trillion different smells.

Scientists used to think we could only smell 10,000 scents, but new tests show our noses are much more powerful. We have hundreds of tiny sensors that work together to identify alm...

A single day on Venus lasts longer than its entire year.

Venus spins so slowly that it finishes a full trip around the Sun before it even finishes one rotation. It takes about 243 Earth days to spin once, but only 225 Earth days to orbit...

A newborn giant panda is so tiny that it is about 900 times smaller than its mother.

When a panda cub is born, it weighs only about as much as a stick of butter. These tiny babies are born pink, blind, and hairless, so they need their moms to cuddle and protect the...

Some bamboo plants can grow nearly 3 feet (91 cm) in just one day.

This means bamboo can grow about 1.5 inches every single hour. It grows so fast because it expands from every joint at the same time, much like a telescoping antenna stretching out...

Napoleon Bonaparte was actually taller than the average man of his time.

People thought he was short because of a mix-up between French and British measuring systems. He also chose giant soldiers as his bodyguards, which made him look small when they st...

The 'Freshman 15' is a myth because most college students only gain about 2 or 3 pounds during their first year.

While many people think college students gain 15 pounds from cafeteria food and stress, it is usually much less. In fact, one out of every four students actually loses weight becau...

Male seahorses are the ones that get pregnant and can give birth to 2,000 babies at once.

The mom seahorse puts her eggs into a special pouch on the dad's belly. He keeps them safe and feeds them through his own body until they are ready to swim out. It is like the dad...

Glass is not a liquid or a solid — it is a 'frozen' liquid that stays still forever.

Many people think old windows are thicker at the bottom because the glass melted downward over time. In reality, glass is so stiff that it would take trillions of years to move eve...

A cockroach can live for over a week without its head.

Cockroaches don't breathe through their mouths. Instead, they use tiny holes all over their bodies to pull in air. They only die because they can't drink water without a head, so t...

A blue whale's tongue is so heavy that it weighs as much as a whole elephant.

When a blue whale eats, it gulps a huge mouthful of water and tiny shrimp. Its massive tongue acts like a giant pump to push all that water out so it can swallow the food. It is th...

Iceland is home to the oldest parliament in the world, which started way back in the year 930.

It began as a giant outdoor meeting where people gathered to settle arguments and create rules for everyone to follow. This happened hundreds of years before most countries even th...

The Dead Sea is the lowest place on Earth's land, and it is shrinking by about 3 feet every single year.

This giant salt lake is so low that its shores are 1,411 feet below the level of the ocean. Because it is in a super hot desert with no way for water to flow out, the water evapora...

Your ears never stop growing and get bigger by about 0.22 millimeters every single year.

While your bones stop growing after your teenage years, the cartilage in your ears keeps expanding. Over time, gravity pulls on your ears and the skin loses its snap, making them s...

A shrimp's heart is located inside its head.

Shrimp don't have a chest like humans do, so their heart, stomach, and brain are all tucked away in their head. This keeps their most important organs safe under one thick, protect...

A single red blood cell takes only 60 seconds to travel through your entire body.

Your heart pumps blood through a massive network of tubes that is 60,000 miles long. In just one minute, a tiny blood cell visits your lungs for oxygen, drops it off at your toes o...

Venus is the only planet in our solar system that spins backward.

While most planets spin counter-clockwise, Venus turns clockwise. It spins so slowly that one single day on Venus actually lasts longer than a whole Venusian year! Scientists think...

Apples are 25% air, which is why they float perfectly in water.

One-quarter of an apple's volume is actually just air trapped inside its flesh. These tiny air pockets act like millions of microscopic life jackets that keep the fruit bobbing on...

Octopuses have three hearts and blue blood.

Two hearts pump blood to the gills, while the third heart sends it to the rest of the body. Their blood is blue because it uses copper instead of iron to carry oxygen. This special...

The ancient Maya people worshipped turkeys as gods and treated them like royalty.

While we think of turkeys as a holiday dinner, the Maya believed they were magical messengers from the spirit world. They even gave turkeys special roles in religious ceremonies to...

The word 'alphabet' comes from just the first two letters of the Greek alphabet: alpha and beta.

It is like calling your ABCs the 'AB.' Many languages name their writing systems after the very first letters you learn. The Greeks did this over 2,500 years ago, and we still use...

The letter J is the only letter in the alphabet that never appears on the periodic table of elements.

There are 118 elements on the periodic table, and not a single one uses the letter J in its symbol. Most elements get their names from Greek or Latin words, and those ancient langu...

A group of flamingos is called a flamboyance.

These birds are famous for their bright pink feathers and love of hanging out in huge crowds. The name comes from a word that means flame because a big group looks like a flickerin...

Astronaut footprints on the Moon will stay there for millions of years because there is no wind to blow them away.

Since the Moon has no air or water, there is no wind to move dust and no rain to wash things away. The footprints just sit there in the silence, looking exactly like they did when...

The Resurrection Plant can survive for years without a single drop of water and 'come back to life' in just a few hours.

When it gets dry, this desert plant curls into a tight brown ball and waits. As soon as it touches water, it unfolds and turns green again! It uses a special type of sugar to keep...

The Queen of the Andes plant waits 100 years to bloom just once, and then it dies immediately.

This giant plant grows a massive flower tower that can reach 30 feet tall, which is as high as a three-story building! It produces up to 30,000 flowers at once to make sure its see...

Venus flytraps can actually count to make sure they aren't wasting energy on a false alarm.

The plant waits for two touches on its tiny hairs before snapping shut. It even waits for five touches before it starts digesting its meal to make sure it caught something worth ea...

The world's largest flower can grow as wide as a hula hoop and smells like rotting meat.

This giant flower is called the Rafflesia. It has no leaves, stems, or roots and lives like a parasite inside grapevines until it's ready to pop out and bloom. It smells so bad tha...

The world's smallest flowering plant is so tiny that a whole bunch of them could fit on the head of a pin.

This plant is called Wolffia and it is about the size of a single grain of salt. It has no roots or leaves and just looks like a tiny green speck floating on the water.

The 'Shameplant' instantly folds its leaves and hides when you touch it.

This plant, also called the Mimosa pudica, acts like it is shy or scared. It uses a super-fast water trick to collapse its leaves so it looks wilted and unappetizing to hungry anim...

The Welwitschia plant grows only two leaves in its entire life, even though it can live for over 1,500 years.

These two leaves never stop growing from the base of the plant. Over hundreds of years, the desert wind shreds them into long strips, making the plant look like a giant pile of tan...

Strawberries are not actually berries, but bananas, watermelons, and pumpkins are!

To be a berry, a fruit must have its seeds on the inside and come from one single flower. Strawberries have their seeds on the outside, while bananas and melons fit the rules perfe...

Ancient Romans used pee as mouthwash and toothpaste to get a bright white smile.

When urine sits for a long time, it turns into ammonia, which is a powerful cleaner. This chemical was great at scrubbing away stains and killing germs on teeth. It was so popular...

It literally rains diamonds on Saturn and Jupiter.

Huge lightning storms on these planets turn gas into soot. As the soot falls, the heavy air squeezes it so hard that it turns into solid, sparkling diamonds. Some of these space di...

Some snails can sleep for three years straight to survive without water.

When it gets too dry, snails hide in their shells and seal the door with a special slime. This slows down their bodies so much that they don't need food or water for years. They on...

Russia is so big that its land covers more space than the entire surface of the dwarf planet Pluto.

Pluto might be a world in space, but it is surprisingly tiny. If you could unwrap Pluto like a piece of paper, it would be smaller than the country of Russia. In fact, Russia has a...

Humans are the only animals on Earth with a chin.

A real chin is a piece of bone that pokes out from your lower jaw. While monkeys and apes have jaws that slope backward, only humans have this little bump that sticks forward. It h...

Archaeologists found 3,000-year-old honey in ancient Egyptian tombs that is still perfectly safe to eat today.

Honey is a super-food that never goes bad because it has very little water and is naturally acidic. Bacteria cannot grow in it because the honey actually sucks the moisture out of...

The shortest war in history lasted only 38 minutes.

In 1896, the British Navy and the island of Zanzibar fought a war that was over before a lunch break. The British had way more firepower, and the Sultan of Zanzibar surrendered alm...

There are more trees on Earth than stars in our entire galaxy.

Earth has about 3 trillion trees, while the Milky Way galaxy only has up to 400 billion stars. This means there are about eight trees for every single star in the sky! It is amazin...

Wombats are the only animals in the world that poop in the shape of perfect cubes.

Wombats use their square droppings like little bricks to mark their territory. Because the poop is shaped like a cube, it stays put on rocks and logs without rolling away. This hel...