Potato crisps cause more weight gain than any other food.
Antarctica is the coldest, windiest, highest and driest continent on Earth.
More people died in Auschwitz than the British and American losses of World War Two combined.
Babies have three times as many taste buds as adults.
Operation “Codenames”
Your brain keeps developing until your late forties.
California contains the highest point (Mount Whitney, 14,505 feet) and the lowest point (Death Valley, 282 feet below sea level) in the contiguous United States.
In 1944, a crossword puzzle featured D-Day operation “codenames” sending MI5 into a panic thinking their invasion plans had been discovered.
A chimpanzee called Washoe was the first non-human to learn American Sign Language. She also passed this on to other chimpanzees.
In London, it is illegal to die in the Houses of Parliament.
How on Earth?
Humans and dogs first became best friends 30,000 years ago.
Earth could fit inside the Sun 1.3 million times.
Einstein was a slow learner as a child and spoke very slowly. He also had a rebellious attitude towards authority, leading one headmaster to expel him and another to say he would never amount to much.
Elvis Presley failed a school music class.
Ancient Egyptians worshipped over 1,400 different gods and goddesses.
Francisco’s Fortunes
The French government gives medals to citizens who have “successfully raised several children with dignity”.
Fortune cookies are not a traditional Chinese custom. They were invented in early 1900 in San Francisco.
There’s a pig weighing over 70 stone (the same as a polar bear) on a farm in Southern China!
The highest racehorse speed ever recorded was 43.97 mph.
A rabbi invented speed dating in 1999.
Such Striking Numbers…
Our life expectancy has increased more in the last 50 years than in the previous 200,000 years of human existence.
In an average lifetime, human skin completely replaces itself 900 times.
Lightning strikes kill about 24,000 people every year.
With 800 languages, New York is the most linguistically diverse city in the world.
During pregnancy, if the mother suffers organ damage, her baby sends stem cells to repair the damaged organ.
Exercise can Save Your Life
Exercise, like walking, can reduce breast cancer risk by 25%.
Nigeria has more English speakers than the UK.
Benjamin Franklin never patented any of his inventions. He reasoned that “we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously”.
Famous left-handed people include Napoleon, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Einstein, Newton, Bill Gates, Oprah, Obama and Jimi Hendrix.
Lego produces 306 million rubber tyres a year – more than any other company.
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