We bring you more amazingly ridiculous facts this month. From sleepy koalas, short-lived taste buds and bony babies, it’s all here!
The Animal Kingdom
A snail can sleep for up to three years at a time.
Koalas sleep up to 22 hours a day.
A newborn kangaroo is the size of a jellybean.
Crocodiles can’t stick their tongues out.
Ostriches can run faster than horses.
A blue whale’s tongue can weigh as much as an elephant.
A group of ferrets is called a business.
Dolphins have been seen giving each other gifts of seaweed.
Bats are the only mammals that can fly, ie that have wings. Colugos are referred to as “flying lemurs”, but they glide – up to 150 metres between trees thanks to a large membrane of skin, called a patagium, that stretches from their wrists to ankles and to the tips of their fingers and toes.
Hippos produce a natural sunscreen that looks like red sweat.
Nature and Geography
The Amazon River once flowed in the opposite direction.
Mount Kilimanjaro has glaciers and a rainforest.
Alaska is the westernmost and easternmost US state.
The Atacama Desert in Chile is one of the driest places on earth.
The Grand Canyon could fit the entire Empire State Building inside it.
The Great Wall of China is not visible from space with the naked eye.
Iceland doesn’t have mosquitoes.
You can find sand dunes in Antarctica.
The Sahara gets larger every year.
The UK has more tornadoes per square mile than the US (but they’re tiny).
Science and the Human Body
You have more bacteria in your body than human cells.
Blood travels about 12,000 miles each day in your body.
Some people have a gene that makes coriander taste like soap.
You can’t tickle yourself – your brain cancels the sensation.
Human bones are stronger than concrete.
Your taste buds live for only about 10 days.
You burn more calories sleeping than watching TV.
Your stomach acid can dissolve razor blades.
Your skin is your largest organ.
Babies are born with more bones than adults..
History
The first alarm clock could only ring at 4 o’clock in the morning.
George Washington grew hemp in his garden.
The ancient city of Babylon had walls so thick that chariots could race along the top of them.
The Black Death in the 14th century killed about one-third of Europe’s population.
The U.S. bought Alaska from Russia in 1867 for just $7.2 million.
London’s Tower Bridge once had its own secret underground pub for workers.
In the Victorian era, it was fashionable to take portraits with deceased relatives (a practice called “memento mori”).
The first woman to win a Nobel Prize was Marie Curie in 1903.
Leonardo da Vinci sketched designs for flying machines 400 years before the invention of aircraft.
Winston Churchill won a Nobel Prize for literature, not for politics.
We hope you enjoyed reading “Some Amazingly Ridiculous Facts“. Click here for more of our articles about strange facts.
