1.Our oldest radio broadcasts of the 1930s have already traveled past 100,000 stars
2. Microbial life can survive on the cooling rods of a nuclear reactor.
3. October 12th, 1999 was declared “The Day of Six Billion” based on United Nations projections.
4. 10 percent of all human beings ever born are alive at this very moment.
5. The Earth spins at 1,000 mph but it travels through space at an incredible 67,000 mph.
6. Every year over one million earthquakes shake the Earth.
7. When Krakatoa erupted in 1883, its force was so great it could be heard 4,800 kilometers away in Australia.
8. The largest ever hailstone weighed over 1kg and fell in Bangladesh in 1986.
9. Every second around 100 lightning bolts strike the Earth.
10. Every year lightning kills 1000 people.
11. In October 1999 an Iceberg the size of London broke free from the Antarctic ice shelf .
12. If you could drive your car straight up you would arrive in space in just over an hour.
13. Human tapeworms can grow up to 22.9m.
14. The Earth is 4.56 billion years old…the same age as the Moon and the Sun.
15. The dinosaurs became extinct before the Rockies or the Alps were formed.
16. Female black widow spiders eat their males after mating.
17. When a flea jumps, the rate of acceleration is 20 times that of the space shuttle during launch.
19. If our Sun were just inch in diameter, the nearest star would be 445 miles away.
20. The Australian billygoat plum contains 100 times more vitamin C than an orange.
21. Astronauts cannot belch – there is no gravity to separate liquid from gas in their stomachs.
22. The air at the summit of Mount Everest, 29,029 feet is only a third as thick as the air at sea level.
23. One million, million, million, million, millionth of a second after the Big Bang the Universe was the size of a …pea.
24. DNA was first discovered in 1869 by Swiss Friedrich Mieschler.
25. The molecular structure of DNA was first determined by Watson and Crick in 1953.
26. The first synthetic human chromosome was constructed by US scientists in 1997.
27. The thermometer was invented in 1607 by Galileo.
28. Englishman Roger Bacon invented the magnifying glass in 1250.
29. Alfred Nobel invented dynamite in 1866.
30. Wilhelm Rontgen won the first Nobel Prize for physics for discovering X-rays in 1895.
31. The tallest tree ever was an Australian eucalyptus – In 1872 it was measured at 435 feet tall.
32. Christian Barnard performed the first heart transplant in 1967 – the patient lived for 18 days.
33. The wingspan of a Boeing 747 is longer than the Wright brother’s first flight.
34. An electric eel can produce a shock of up to 650 volts.
35. ‘Wireless’ communications took a giant leap forward in 1962 with the launch of Telstar, the first satellite capable of relaying telephone and satellite TV signals.
36. The earliest wine makers lived in Egypt around 2300 BC.
37. The Ebola virus kills 4 out of every 5 humans it infects.
38. In 5 billion years the Sun will run out of fuel and turn into a Red Giant.
39. Giraffes often sleep for only 20 minutes in any 24 hours. They may sleep up to 2 hours (in spurts – not all at once), but this is rare. They never lie down.
40. A pig’s orgasm lasts for 30 minutes.
41. Without its lining of mucus your stomach would digest itself.
42. Humans have 46 chromosomes, peas have 14 and crayfish have 200.
43. There are 60,000 miles of blood vessels in the human body.
44. An individual blood cell takes about 60 seconds to make a complete circuit of the body.
45. Utopia ia a large, smooth lying area of Mars.
46. On the day that Alexander Graham Bell was buried the entire US telephone system was shut down for 1 minute in tribute.
47. The low frequency call of the humpback whale is the loudest noise made by a living creature.
48. The call of the humpback whale is louder than Concorde and can be heard from 500 miles away.
49. A quarter of the world’s plants are threatened with extinction by the year 2010.
50. Each person sheds 40lbs of skin in his or her lifetime.
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