“Megatall” Buildings and Remarkable Albatrosses – in this month’s Do You Know? feature, we take a look at the wonderful albatross, cats – large and small, and the tale of Rudolf Diesel!
The Albatross
Albatrosses can stay in the air for 13 months without landing. This amazing bird is also capable of travelling more than 10,000 miles in a single journey and circumnavigating the globe in 46 days.
About 90% of Australians live on the coast.
The Australian Alps, located near the capital city of Canberra, receive more snow than the Swiss Alps in the winter months.
Australia’s home to the world’s longest fence (the Dingo Fence), it has more kangaroos than people, and features the largest sand island.
Tasmania has the cleanest air in the world.
Albatross
The Great Barrier Reef
The Great Barrier Reef – pictured above from the International Space Station – is the largest ecosystem in the world, made up of nearly 3,000 individual reefs and can be seen from space.
A steady stream of minor accomplishments makes you more satisfied with your life than a few major ones.
Measuring 828 metres (2,717 ft), Burj Khalifa in Dubai has been the tallest building since 2010. It has now received the classification of “megatall”.
The weight of concrete used to build the Burj Khalifa is equivalent to the weight of 100,000 elephants and can be seen from 59 miles away!
Israel is so small, you can run across it in two hours and along its length in nine days.
Great Barrier Reef
Burj Khalifa
Chimpanzees share 99% of their DNA with humans, while mice are 98% genetically similar to humans.
Some cats have survived falls from over 32 stories (105 meters) onto concrete, due largely to their “righting” reflex.
Every dog’s mitochondrial DNA is 99.9% the same as a grey wolf.
The roar of a lion can be heard up to 5 miles away.
The highest racehorse speed ever recorded was 43.97 mph.
A Bolt Of Lightning
Every year, around 1,000 letters arrive in Jerusalem, Israel, addressed to God.
A bolt of lightning is five times hotter than the surface of the sun.
There are more lifeforms living on your skin than there are people on the planet.
In an average lifetime, human skin completely replaces itself 900 times.
The average human will yawn around 250,000 times over the course of his life.
Rudolf Diesel
The average person produces about 25,000 quarts of saliva in a lifetime, enough to fill two swimming pools.
Traffic in central London moves at the same speed as horse-drawn carriages a century ago.
In 1891, London built a structure designed to surpass the Eiffel Tower in height. It was unsteady, never completed and ultimately demolished in 1907.
Rudolf Diesel, who invented the diesel engine, committed suicide in 1913 because he didn’t think his invention would be successful.
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.”
Rudolf Diesel
We hope you enjoyed reading “Megatall” Buildings and Remarkable Albatrosses”. Click here to read more of our articles about strange facts.