30 Random Facts!

Hey y’all, today’s is a long one, so let’s hop into it. 30 random facts, here we go!

1. A cloud weighs around a million tonnes. A cloud typically has a volume of around 1km³ and a density of around 1.003kg per m³ – that’s a density that’s around 0.4 per cent lower than the air surrounding it.
2. Giraffes are 30 times more likely to get hit by lightning than people. True, there are only five well-documented fatal lightning strikes on giraffes between 1996 and 2010. However, due to the population of the species being only 140,000 during this time, it results in approximately 0.003 lightning deaths per thousand giraffes each year. This is 30 times the equivalent fatality rate for humans.
3. Identical twins don’t have the same fingerprints. You can’t blame your crimes on your twin, after all. This is because environmental factors during development in the womb (umbilical cord length, position in the womb, and the rate of finger growth) affect your fingerprint.
4. Earth’s rotation is changing speed. It’s actually slowing. This means that, on average, the length of a day increases by around 1.8 seconds per century. 600 million years ago, a day lasted just 21 hours.
5. Earlobes have no biological purpose. While they are rich in nerve endings and may play a role in social bonding, many scientists argue that earlobes don’t have any true biological purpose.
6. Your brain is constantly eating itself. This process is called phagocytosis, where cells envelop and consume smaller cells or molecules to remove them from the system. Don’t worry! Phagocytosis isn’t harmful, but actually helps preserve your grey matter.
7. The largest piece of fossilised dinosaur poo discovered is over 30cm long and over two litres in volume. Believed to be a Tyrannosaurus rex turd, the fossilized dung (also known as a ‘coprolite’) is helping scientists better understand what the dinosaur ate.
8. Mars isn’t actually round. Unlike any other rocky planet in the Solar System, Mars is actually shaped like a rugby ball, but with different sizes along all three axes.
9. There’s no such thing as zero-calorie foods. Even low-calorie foods, such as celery and watercress, contain more energy than the body needs to process them.
10. The Universe’s average colour is called ‘Cosmic latte’. In a 2002 study, astronomers found that the light coming from galaxies averaged into a beige colour that’s close to white.
11. Animals can experience time differently from humans. To smaller animals, the world around them moves more slowly compared to humans. Salamanders and lizards, for example, experience time more slowly than cats and dogs. This is because the perception of time depends on how quickly the brain can process incoming information.
12. Water might not be wet. This is because most scientists define wetness as a liquid’s ability to maintain contact with a solid surface, meaning that water itself is not wet, but can make other objects wet.
13. Most people stroke cats the wrong way. Research shows they often just tolerate it for the food and attention. The safest spots? Under the chin, cheeks, and base of the ears. The worst? Their belly and the base of their tail – touch there and you’re more likely to annoy them than bond with them.
14. A chicken once lived for 18 months without a head. Mike the chicken’s incredible feat was recorded back in the 1940s in the USA. He survived as his jugular vein and most of his brainstem were left mostly intact, ensuring just enough brain function remained for survival. In the majority of cases, a headless chicken dies in a matter of minutes.
15. The raw ingredients of a human body would cost over £116,000. But if you’re prepared to do the refining yourself, a body could cost a lot less – under £100 in fact.
16. All the world’s bacteria stacked on top of each other would stretch for 10 billion light-years. Together, Earth’s 0.001mm-long microbes could wrap around the Milky Way over 20,000 times.
17. Wearing a tie can reduce blood flow to the brain by 7.5 per cent. A 2018 study found that wearing a necktie can reduce blood flow to the brain by up to 7.5 percent, which can cause dizziness, nausea, and headaches. They can also increase pressure in your eyes if they are too tight and are prone to carrying germs.
18. The fear of long words is called Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia. The 36-letter word was first used by the Roman poet Horace in the first century BCE to criticise those writers with an unreasonable penchant for long words. It was American poet Aimee Nezheukumatathil, possibly afraid of their own surname, who coined the term as we know it in 2000.
19. The world’s oldest dog lived to 29.5 years old. While the median age a dog reaches tends to be about 10-15 years, one Australian cattle dog, ‘Bluey’, survived to the ripe old age of 29.5.
20. The world’s oldest cat lived to 38 years and three days old. Creme Puff was the oldest cat to ever live.
21. The Sun makes a sound, but we can’t hear it. In the form of pressure waves, the Sun does make a sound. The wavelength of the pressure waves from the Sun is measured in hundreds of miles, which means they are far beyond the range of human hearing.
22. Mount Everest isn’t the tallest mountain on Earth. Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa in Hawaii, the twin volcanoes, are taller than Mount Everest, as 4.2km of their height is submerged underwater. The twin volcanoes measure a staggering 10.2km in total, compared to Everest’s paltry 8.8km.
23. Our solar system has a wall. The heliopause – the region of space in which solar wind isn’t hot enough to push back the wind of particles coming from distant stars – is often considered the “boundary wall” of the Solar System and interstellar space.
24. Octopuses don’t actually have tentacles. They have eight limbs, but they’re arms (for most species). Technically, when talking about cephalopods (octopuses, squids, etc), scientists define tentacles as limbs with suckers at their end. Octopus arms have suckers down most of their length.
25. Most maps of the world are wrong. On most maps, the Mercator projection – first developed in 1569 – remains in use. This method is wildly inaccurate and makes Alaska appear as large as Brazil and Greenland, 14 times larger than it actually is. For a map to be completely accurate, it would need to be life-size and round, not flat.
26. NASA genuinely faked part of the Moon landing. While Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the lunar surface were categorically not faked, the astronaut quarantine protocol when the astronauts arrived back on Earth was largely just one big show.
27. Comets smell like rotten eggs. A comet smells like rotten eggs, urine, burning matches, and… almonds. Traces of hydrogen sulphide, ammonia, sulphur dioxide, and hydrogen cyanide were all found in the makeup of the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Promotional postcards were even commissioned in 2016, carrying the pungent scent of a comet.
28. Earth’s poles are moving. This magnetic reversal of the North and South Poles has happened 171 times in the past 71 million years. We’re overdue for a flip. It could arrive soon, as the North Pole is moving at around 55 kilometres per year, an increase from the 15 kilometres per year observed up until 1990.
29. You can actually die laughing. And a number of people have, typically due to intense laughter, causing a heart attack or suffocation. Comedy shows should come with a warning.
30. Chainsaws were first invented for childbirth. It was developed in Scotland in the late 18th Century to help aid and speed up the process of symphysiotomy (widening the pubic cartilage) and removal of disease-laden bone during childbirth. It wasn’t until the start of the 20th Century that we started using chainsaws for woodchopping.