diff --git a/randfacts/__version__.py b/randfacts/__version__.py index 80d5dab..81e9949 100644 --- a/randfacts/__version__.py +++ b/randfacts/__version__.py @@ -1,7 +1,7 @@ __title__ = "randfacts" __description__ = "Package to generate random facts" __url__ = "https://github.com/TabulateJarl8/randfacts" -__version__ = "0.13.1" +__version__ = "0.14.0" __author__ = "Tabulate" __author_email__ = "tabulatejarl8@gmail.com" __license__ = "MIT" diff --git a/randfacts/safe.txt b/randfacts/safe.txt index 59a7a79..cba800a 100644 --- a/randfacts/safe.txt +++ b/randfacts/safe.txt @@ -633,7 +633,6 @@ In 2013, Yuichiro Miura, an 80-year-old Japanese, became the oldest person to ma Neptune has the strongest winds in the Solar System: 2,100 km/hour (1,304 mph) More than 1,000 white farmers have been killed in South Africa since 1990 There are more skin cancer cases due to indoor tanning than lung cancer cases due to smoking. -Octopuses have 3 hearts. The average woman in the UK owns 19 pairs of shoes, but wears only 7 In Germany, there's no punishment for a prisoner who tries to escape from jail because it is a basic human instinct to be free If you drilled a tunnel straight through the Earth and jumped in, it would take you about 42 minutes to get to the other side. @@ -1301,7 +1300,6 @@ Apple iPad's retina display is actually manufactured by Samsung. Until the early 19th century, Australia was best known as "New Holland". 30,000 websites are hacked every day Italian Traffic Police has two Lamborghini Gallado in service. -9% of the Earth's oxygen is produced by the Amazon rainforest On April 1, 1974, black smoke was seen rising from Mount Edgecumbe, a volcano in Alaska. When a Coast Guard pilot came closer to investigate, he found 70 tires burning and the words "APRIL FOOL" spray painted into the snow Cows emit more methane than the oil industry and are a huge factor in global warming. With over 520 million followers as of 2019, Buddhism is the world's 4th-largest religion. @@ -1671,7 +1669,6 @@ In Czechhoslovakia, there is a church that has a chandelier made of human bones The largest hotel in the world is the MGM Grand, which has 5,034 rooms and is located in Las Vegas, Nevada The fleshy bulbs on each side of your nose are called the Alea (AY-lee) singular Ala (AY-luh) Male koalas mark their territory by rubbing their chests on a tree. Male koalas have a dark scent gland in the middle of their chest -An octopus has three hearts Roses generally need around 6 hours of sunlight to grow properly. Buttermilk does not contain any butter, but is a cultured milk product which is usually made from fat free milk Pineapples were first called "anana", which is Caribbean for "excellent fruit." @@ -3426,7 +3423,6 @@ Some octopuses have been known to eat their arms off when they are exposed to st On average, 749 pounds of paper products is used by an American individual annually The skeleton of a spider is located on the outside of the body. The name for this is exoskelton Incas used to create pots in the shape of peanuts that were highly prized -The letter J does not appear anywhere on the periodic table of the elements Over 200 varieties of watermelons are grown in the U.S The most dangerous job in the United States is that of a fisherman, followed by logging and then an airline pilot The words "abstemioius," and "facetious" both have all the five vowels in them in order @@ -4610,7 +4606,6 @@ The symbol on the "pound" key (#) is called an octothorpe.. Ingrown toenails are hereditary. "Underground" is the only word in the English language that begins and ends with the letters "und" The longest word in the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is: pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. -The longest place-name still in use is: Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiakitnatahu, a New Zealand hill. Alfred Hitchcock didn't have a belly button. It was eliminated when he was sewn up after surgery. Telly Savalas and Louis Armstrong died on their birthdays. Donald Duck's middle name is Fauntleroy. @@ -4710,7 +4705,6 @@ The giant hummingbird of the Andes, about the same length as a cardinal, hums at The bee hummingbird of Cuba, the smallest bird on earth at only 2 inches from bill tip to tail tip, buzzes along at 80 beats per second. Canadians say "sorry" so much that a law was passed in 2009 declaring that an apology can't be used as evidence of admission to guilt. Back when dinosaurs existed, there used to be volcanoes that were erupting on the moon. -The only letter that doesn't appear on the periodic table is J. One habit of intelligent humans is being easily annoyed by people around them, but saying nothing in order to avoid a meaningless argument. If a Polar Bear and a Grizzly Bear mate, their offspring is called a "Pizzy Bear". In 2006, a Coca-Cola employee offered to sell Coca-Cola secrets to Pepsi. Pepsi responded by notifying Coca-Cola. @@ -4897,7 +4891,6 @@ A woodpecker's tongue actually wraps all the way around its brain, protecting it Elephants suck on their trunks for comfort. Anteaters have no teeth. Nine-banded armadillos always have quadruplets, and they're always identical. -Wombat poop is cube-shaped. Hippos and horses are actually distant relatives. All clownfish are born male. In the UK, The Queen legally owns all unmarked swans. @@ -5081,7 +5074,6 @@ Sally Ride was the first American woman to fly in space, on June 18, 1983. Even in an airplane, a trip to Pluto would take about 800 years. Ham the Astrochimp was the first hominid in space, launched on Jan. 31, 1961. It takes eight minutes and 19 seconds for light to travel from the sun to Earth. -The footprints on the moon will be there for 100 million years. A neutron star can spin 600 times in one second. Jupiter is the fastest spinning planet in the solar system (it only takes about 10 hours to complete a full rotation on its axis). Sound does not carry in space. @@ -5606,7 +5598,6 @@ If you were to take a taxicab from New York City to Los Angeles, it would cost y In New York State, it is illegal to but any alcohol on Sundays before noon. There were 240 pedestrian fatalities in New York City in 1994. Columbia University is the second largest landowner in New York City, after the Catholic Church. -Montpelier, Vermont is the only state capital without a McDonalds. Maine is the only state that has borders with only one other state. The first McDonald's restaurant in Canada was in Richmond, British Columbia. In 1984, a Canadian farmer began renting advertising space on his cows. @@ -5784,7 +5775,6 @@ A Brewery in Canada Makes Beer Using Water from 20,000-Year-Old Icebergs The Slinky Was Created by Accident At Any Given Moment, There Are Approximately 2,000 Thunderstorms Happening on Earth Michelangelo Hated Painting the Sistine Chapel and Wrote a Poem About It -A Million Earths Would Fit Inside the Sun The Letter Z Was Removed from the Alphabet for 200 Years The National Hot Dog and Sausage Council Ruled that Hot Dogs Aren't Sandwiches A Coffee Taster Had His Tongue Insured for £10 Million @@ -5830,7 +5820,6 @@ Hawaiian Pizza is Canadian David Hasselhoff's Divorce Settlement Included Ownership of the Nickname "The Hoff" The World's Longest Fingernails Are More Than Two Feet Long Neanderthals Mass Produced Tools in a "Flintstone Factory" 60,000 Years Ago -A Shrimp's Heart Is in Its Head Three Presidents Have Died on July 4th Scientists Believe They've Found Fossils from the Day the Asteroid Killed the Dinosaurs Barry Manilow Wrote the State Farm and Band-Aid Jingles @@ -5934,7 +5923,6 @@ There's a Flower Shop in the White House The Pittsburgh Pirates Considered Building Their Stadium Over a River The First 3D Film Was Shown in 1922 Ostriches Can Outrun Horses -It's Impossible to Hum While Holding Your Nose Robert Downey, Jr. Used to Be Mr. Peanut's Voice Theres Is a Global Drone Racing League for Elite Drone Pilots Canada Has a Completely Indoor Town @@ -6519,3 +6507,216 @@ Brown is the most common eye color. You will get cell phone service on the top of Mount Everest. You can buy a square watermelon in Japan. Newborn babies are colorblind. +Three presidents, all Founding Fathers-John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Monroe-died on July 4. Presidents Adams and Jefferson also died the same year, 1826; President Monroe died in 1831. Coincidence? You decide. +The Barbie doll's full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts, from Willows, Wisconsin. Her birthday is March 9, 1959, when she was first displayed at the New York Toy Fair. +There actually aren't "57 varieties" of Heinz ketchup, and never were. Company founder H.J. Heinz thought his product should have a number, and he liked 57. Hint: Hit the glass bottle on the "57," not the bottom, to get the ketchup to flow. +One of President John Tyler's grandsons is still alive today-and he was born in 1790. How is this possible? President Tyler, the 10th US president, was 63 when his son Lyon Tyler was born in 1853; Lyon's son was born when he was 75. President Tyler's living grandson, Harrison Tyler is 92. Lyon's other son Lyon Jr. passed away in 2020 at the age of 95. The Tyler family still maintains the President's home, Sherwood Forest Plantation in Virginia. +The tallest man ever recorded was American giant Robert Wadlow (1918–1940), who stood 8 feet 11 inches. Wadlow's size was the result of abnormally enlarged pituitary gland. +The tallest living man is 37-year-old Sultan Kosen, from Turkey, who is 8 feet, 2.8 inches, who set the record in 2009. His growth is also due to a pituitary issue. +The oldest person ever to have lived (whose age could be authenticated), a French woman named Jeanne Louise Calment, was 122 years old when she died in 1997. +Sliced bread was first manufactured by machine and sold in the 1920s by the Chillicothe Baking Company in Missouri. It was the greatest thing since...unsliced bread? +The Earl of Sandwich, John Montagu, who lived in the 1700s, reportedly invented the sandwich so he wouldn't have to leave his gambling table to eat. +The first college football game was played on November 6, 1869, between Rutgers and Princeton (then known as the College of New Jersey) in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Rutgers won. +Experiments in universities have actually been carried out to figure out how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, both with machine and human lickers (because this is important scientific knowledge!). The results ranged from 252 to 411. +The Four Corners is the only spot in the US where you can stand in four states at once: Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico. +Canada is south of Detroit . +The original name for the search engine Google was Backrub. It was renamed Google after the googol, which is the number one followed by 100 zeros. +The oldest-known living land animal is a tortoise named Jonathan, who is 187 years old. He was born in 1832 and has lived on the island of St. Helena in the Atlantic Ocean since 1882. +Bats are the only mammal that can actually fly. +Wombats are the only animal whose poop is cube-shaped. This is due to how its intestines form the feces. The animals then stack the cubes to mark their territory. +The most common wild bird in the world isn't the sparrow or blue jay-it's the red-billed quelea, which live in Africa and have an estimated population of 1.5 billion. +The heart of the blue whale, the largest animal on earth, is five feet long and weighs 400 pounds. The whale in total weighs 40,000 pounds. +For comparison, an elephant's heart weighs around 30 pounds. And a human heart? A mere 10 ounces. +Elephants can't jump. +Cows don't actually have four stomachs; they have one stomach with four compartments. +The platypus doesn't have a stomach at all: Their esophagus goes straight to their intestines. +This is one animal myth that's true: Eating parts of a pufferfish can kill you because, in a defense mechanism to ward off predators, it contains a deadly chemical called tetrodotoxin. There's enough in one pufferfish to kill 30 people-and there's no antidote. Still, pufferfish, called fugu, is a highly-prized delicacy in Japan, but can only be prepared by well-trained chefs. +Polar bears have black skin. And actually, their fur isn't white-it's see-through, so it appears white as it reflects light. +Tigers' skin is actually striped, just like their fur. Also, no two fur patterns are alike. +Flamingoes are only pink because of chemicals called carotenoids in the algae and fish they eat; their feathers are grayish white when they're born. +Mosquitoes are the deadliest animal in the world: They kill more people than any other creature, due to the diseases they carry. +What do Miss Piggy and Yoda have in common? They were both voiced by the same person, puppeteer Frank Oz. +Psycho was the first movie to show a toilet flushing. +One of the most famous movie lines in history was never said. We often quote, "Play it again, Sam," from Casablanca; but the real line is, "Play it, Sam. Play 'As Time Goes By.'" +The green code in The Matrix was actually created from symbols in the code designer's wife's sushi cookbook. +The wedding of Princess Diana and Prince Charles was watched by 750 million people worldwide in 1981; sadly, 2.5 billion watched her funeral in 1997. +With 3.572 billion viewers, half the world's population watched the 2018 FIFA World Cup of soccer (or football, as many international fans call it), which is held every four years. That number is on par with the 2016 Summer Olympics; but only a quarter of the world watched the less-popular Winter Olympics in 2018. +There are no muscles in your fingers: Their function is controlled by muscles in your palms and arms. +The hardest working muscle in your body is your heart: It pumps more than 2,000 gallons of blood a day and beats more than 2.5 billion times in a 70-year life span. +It's impossible to hum while holding your nose . +Skin is the body's largest organ. +The earth's circumference is 24,900 miles. +All of an adult human's blood vessels, if laid out end to end, would be about 100,000 miles, so they could encircle the earth four times. +According to recent research, the human nose can distinguish at least a trillion different odors. +The longest fingernails ever were over 28 feet in total. American Lee Redmond started growing them in 1979 and set the record in 2008. Sadly, she lost her nails in a car crash in 2009. +The origin of the word "sinister" reflects a historical bias against left-handed people. It comes from the Latin word for "left," which was also seen to be unlucky or evil. +There is not one letter "q" in any US state name, the only letter in the alphabet to be missing. "J" and "z" are only represented once each, in New Jersey and Arizona. +The word "strengths" is the longest word in the English language with only one vowel. +Cartoonist Mort Walker, creator of Beetle Bailey, came up with names for the things we often see in comics and cartoons: "briffit" is the dust cloud a character makes when he runs away quickly; "plewds" are the beads of sweat when a character is under duress; and "grawlix" are symbols such as "#@*%" that stand in for curse words. +A mash-up of two words to make a new word (such as breakfast and lunch into brunch, or motel from motor and hotel) is called a portmanteau. In case you're wondering, the word "portmanteau" itself is not a portmanteau; it's a compound word that refers to a duel-sided suitcase. +The dog ate John Steinbeck's homework-literally. The author's pup chewed up an early version of Of Mice and Men. "I was pretty mad, but the poor fellow may have been acting critically," he wrote. +Among lost works, this story might be even worse: Ernest Hemingway's first wife, Hadley, left a suitcase full of the author's writing on a train. When she went back to get it, it was gone. "I had never seen anyone hurt by a thing other than death or unbearable suffering except Hadley when she told me about the things being gone," Hemingway wrote in A Moveable Feast. +The original title of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice was First Impressions. +Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein when she 18, during a ghost story competition while staying in Switzerland with writers Percy Shelley (her lover) and Lord Byron. +German chocolate cake doesn't come from Germany. It was named for a person, Sam German, who created a type of baking chocolate for Baker's in 1852. +Hawaiian pizza was created in Ontario, Canada, by Greek immigrant Sam Panopoulos in 1962. +Almost all commercially grown artichokes, 99.9 percent, come from California. One town in particular, Castroville, is nicknamed "the Artichoke Capital of the World." +The different colors of Froot Loops cereal all taste the same-they're not individual flavors. +What's inside a Kit Kat? Broken Kit Kats that are damaged during production-they get ground up and go between the wafers inside, along with cocoa and sugar. That's a way to not let anything go to waste! +Pound cake got its name because the original recipe required a pound each of butter, flour, sugar and eggs. That's a lot of cake-but it was meant to last for a long time. +The difference between jam and jelly is that jam is made with mashed up fruit while jelly is made with fruit juice. +Preserves are like jam but made with more whole fruit. Marmalade is preserves made from citrus fruit. +Flamin' Hot Cheetos were developed by a janitor at Frito-Lay, Richard Montanez, who got the idea after putting chili powder on some reject Cheetos and then pitched it to the CEO. He's now a successful executive and motivational speaker, and a movie is in the works about his life. +Coca-Cola actually sells soup in a can. Bistrone is a nourishing meal on the go, available in two flavors in Japan. +The biggest pizza ever created was 13,580 square feet, made in Rome, Italy, in 2012. The pizza was gluten-free and named "Ottavia" after a roman emperor. +The tallest building in the world is the Burg Khalifa in Dubai, standing at over 2,700 feet. +The tallest building in the US is One World Trade Center in New York, which comes in at number six on the worldwide list. It stands at exactly 1,776 feet as a nod to the date of the Declaration of Independence. +The Empire State Building in New York was the tallest building in the world from 1931 until 1971, and was the first building of over 100 floors. +Contrary to popular belief, it's really, really hard to see the Great Wall of China from space, particularly with the naked eye. +The first footprints on the moon will remain there for a million years. +Days on Venus are longer than years. Due to its slow axis rotation, it takes 243 Earth days to spin once; but it only takes 225 Earth days to go around the sun. +Humans could never "land" on Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus or Neptune because they are made of gas and have no solid surface. +But you could ice skate on one of Jupiter's moons, Europa, which is covered in ice. An Axel jump would take you 22 feet in the air! +Our modern interpretation of Santa Claus with a red outfit and white beard is due in large part to holiday Coca-Cola ads that began in 1931. +Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Albert, wasn't the first to introduce Christmas trees to Britain from his native Germany-Queen Charlotte did that in the late 1700s. But, Victoria and Albert are credited with popularizing the custom in the mid-1800s. +Buckingham Palace in London, England, has 775 rooms, including 78 bathrooms. +The White House in Washington, DC, has 132 rooms, including 35 bathrooms. +It takes 570 gallons to paint the exterior of the White House. +The teddy bear is named after President Theodore Roosevelt. After he refused to shoot a captured black bear on a hunt, a stuffed-animal maker decided to create a bear and name it after the president. +Lincoln Logs were created by John Lloyd Wright, son of famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright, in the 1920s. They were named after Abraham Lincoln, who grew up in a log cabin. +Play-Doh started out as a wallpaper cleaner before the head of the struggling company realized the non-toxic material made a good modeling clay for children and rebranded it. +In the 1940s, a retired schoolteacher came up with Candyland to entertain children who were hospitalized from polio. Because its color system required no reading, young kids could easily play. +People started wearing pajamas, originally spelled "pyjamas," instead of nightgowns so they'd be prepared to run outside in public during World War I air raids in England. +At Medieval Times dinner attractions, you eat with your hands because people didn't use utensils in the middle ages. +Freelancers originally referred to self-employed, sword-wielding mercenaries: literally "free lancers." +We shake hands to show we're unarmed. +Although no longer connected to the beer company, Guinness World Records was founded by the managing director of Guinness Brewery in the 1950s. . +Michelin stars are highly coveted by elite and upscale restaurants the world over-but they're actually given out by the Michelin tire company, the same one whose mascot is the marshmallow-like Michelin Man. If you want to get fancy, pronounce it in the original French, "mich-LEH." +More people visit France than any other country (Spain is second; the US third). +You can still stay at the world's oldest hotel, Nisiyama Onsen Keiunkan in Japan, which was founded in 705 AD. +The longest place name in the word, at 85 letters, is "Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu," New Zealand. Locals just call it Taumata Hill. +The coldest temperature ever recorded occurred in Antarctica, -144 Fahrenheit, as reported by researchers in a scientific journal in 2018. +The hottest temperature ever recorded occurred in Furnace Creek, Death Valley, California, at 134 degrees Fahrenheit on July 10, 1913. +Japan records the most earthquakes of any country in the world; but the most earthquakes actually occurs in Indonesia. +Each year 16 million thunderstorms happen around the world, and at any given moment, there are about 2,000 thunderstorms in progress. +Sweden has 267,570 islands, the most of any country in the world. +Australia contains a number of pink lakes, but the most stunning is the Pepto Bismol-colored Lake Hillier. The color may be the result of certain algae. +At over 29,000 feet tall, Mt. Everest is the highest point on Earth, but it doesn't compare to the deepest point on Earth, the Mariana Trench, which is over 36,000 feet deep-nearly seven miles-in the Pacific Ocean. +This isn't exactly a "fun" fact, but there are over 200 dead bodies of climbers on Mt. Everest because it's so difficult to bring them down. +Only two people have ever swum the entire length of the 2,350-mile Mississippi River: Slovenian long-distance swimmer Martin Strel in 2002 and American former Navy SEAL Chris Ring in 2015. Strel swam for 68 days in a row; Ring took one day off a week, taking 181 days. +Visitors are not allowed to scatter loved ones' ashes at Disney World or Disneyland. This is apparently a problem, particularly around the Haunted Mansion attraction. +The man who designed the Pringles can, Fred Bauer, is buried in one-or at least some of his ashes are. +There's a world record for the holder of the most world records: Ashrita Furman, who's set more than 600 records and currently holds more than 200. His records have ranged from fastest mile on a pogo stick, longest time to hula hoop underwater and greatest distance traveled on a bicycle balancing a milk bottle on the head. +The sun makes up more than 99% of the mass in our solar system. +Lined up, all of the planets in the solar system could fit between the Earth and the moon. +The Great Wall of China is not actually visible from space. +One million Earths could fit inside the sun. +It rains diamonds on both Jupiter and Saturn. On these planets, lightning turns methane in the atmosphere into carbon, which hardens into bits of graphite and diamond as it falls to the ground. +Outer space is completely silent. +It takes about ten minutes for light to travel from the sun to the Earth. +The largest known volcano in the solar system is Olympus Mons, located on Mars. It's roughly triple the height of Mt. Everest. +On Mars, sunsets appear blue due to the way light is captured in the atmosphere. +Because there is no atmosphere, wind, or water to erode them, astronaut footprints on the moon will likely remain there for hundreds of millions of years. +One spacesuit for a NASA astronaut costs $12 million to make. +Uranus is the only planet to spin on its side. +The diameter of Pluto is smaller than the horizontal length of the United States. +The Kármán line, the invisible boundary that officially separates Earth from outer space, is located 62 miles above sea level. So you're only about 62 miles from space right now! +It's impossible to burp in space. The lack of gravity in space prevents air in your stomach from separating and rising up from food you've eaten. +Saturn is the lightest planet, and it's also the only planet that would float in water. +Saudi Arabia is the largest country in the world without a single permanent river. +Haiti is the only country that recognizes voodoo as a religion. +Over 800 languages are spoken in Papua New Guinea. +Cyprus is the only country without its own national anthem. In 1966 it decided to adopt the Greek national anthem as its own. (The Greek national anthem also contains 158 verses.) +Although soccer is very popular in Greenland, they can't join FIFA because their harsh weather conditions make it impossible to grow a grass field, one of the requirements for membership. +Uzbekistan and Liechtenstein are the only countries that are doubly landlocked. +The Canary Islands, an island nation off the northwest coast of Africa, got its name from "canis" the Latin word for dog. Early sailors landed on the island, found it overrun with wild dogs, and gave it its name. The bird species canary actually got its name from the islands, not the other way around. +Chile didn't legalize divorce until 2004, making it the last country in the Western Hemisphere to do so. +Japan is made up of 6,852 islands. +Istanbul, in Turkey, is the only city to be located on two continents. The western half is located in Europe, and the eastern half is located in Asia. The two halves are separated by the Bosporus Strait. +A town in Wales is famous for having the longest name of any place in an English-speaking country. Its full name is: Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, although it is usually abbreviated to Llanfair. +Amman, the capital of Jordan, used to be called Philadelphia when it was taken over by ancient Greeks. +New Zealand was the first modern country to grant women the right to vote, which it did in 1893. +The Louvre in Paris, France, is the world's most-visited museum. Roughly ten million people visit it each year. +Ethiopia follows a calendar, the Coptic Orthodox Church's, that is seven years behind the rest of the world. They celebrated the new millennium in 2007. +Over 40 buildings in New York City are so large that they have their own zip codes. +The shortest river in the world is located in Montana. It's called the Roe River and only flows for 200 feet. +Hawaii is the only state to commercially grow coffee. +Hawaii is also home to the only royal palace in the United States ever used by a monarch. It's called the Iolani Palace, and it was used by the royal family of Hawaii until they were overthrown in 1893. +Nebraska is the only state that is triply landlocked: it is three states from the ocean on every side. +Alaska has a longer coastline than the coastline of all other 49 states combined. +There are roughly 200 chickens for every person in Delaware. +Alaska, the biggest state, is 429 times larger than Rhode Island, the smallest state. However, Rhode Island has a higher population. +California is home to the tallest living object in the world. It's a redwood tree named Hyperion that is 379.7 feet high. +The Florida Everglades is the only place on Earth where alligators and crocodiles live together in the wild. +Texas is larger than any European country, excluding Russia. +The first-ever Ferris wheel was built in Chicago, IL for the 1893 World's Fair. +About 80% of the land in Nevada is owned by the federal government. +Montpelier, Vermont is the only state capital without a McDonald's. +Neither kangaroos nor emus can walk backward. Both animals are included on Australia's official crest to represent continuous progress. +The bite of a grizzly bear is strong enough to crush a bowling ball. +Bats give birth while hanging upside down, and they catch their newborn with their wings as it drops. +Octopi have three hearts. +Dolphins have names for each other and are the only species other than humans known to do this. +Elephants are unable to jump. +Under their white fur, polar bears have black skin to help absorb heat from the sun. +Cats don't have sweet taste buds and therefore can't taste sugar. +Wombat poop is cubed-shaped. +Sloths can swim about three to four times faster than they can move on land. +A flock of hummingbirds can be referred to as a hover, a glittering, a bouquet, a tune, or a shimmer. +Only female mosquitoes bite humans. Male mosquitoes drink flower nectar. +Baby T-rexes were covered with feathers, which they may have kept as adults. +The largest animal to ever have existed is the blue whale. It can grow up to 98 feet (30 meters) and weigh 200 tons. +Camels store fatty tissue, not water, in their humps. Storing fat in one area helps keep them cooler than if it was distributed across the rest of their body like fat is in most other animals. +A shrimp's heart is located inside its head. +Anteaters eat roughly 35,000 ants a day. +Koala fingerprints look extremely similar to human fingerprints. +Male platypuses have spurs on their back feet that can release venom, making them one of the few poisonous mammals. +It's a common tradition in Japan to eat KFC on Christmas. In order to ensure they get their fried chicken, over three million people a year preorder their Christmas meal, sometimes months in advance. +UPS delivers about 20 billion cards and gifts during the holiday season. +Americans eat roughly 150 million hot dogs every 4th of July. +During the holiday season, some people in Wales celebrate Mari Lwyd. This tradition involves a group of people caroling with a real horse skull, and it's thought to come from ancient Celtic celebrations. +The most covered Christmas song is Silent Night. Since it was written in 1818, there have been over 26,000 versions of it. +In Thailand, during the Buddhist New Year celebration of Songkran, passerby are sprayed with water from giant statues of Buddha. +The first Thanksgiving likely didn't include turkey, and other staples like cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes weren't on the menu either. The pilgrims and Wampanoag Native Americans likely dined on foods such as seal, deer, eel, squash, berries, and cornmeal. +Real Christmas trees are actually better for the environment than fake ones. This is both due to the toxic materials needed to make fake trees, and the fact that Christmas tree farms serve as a habitat for wildlife. +Since "Hanukkah" is a Hebrew word translated to English, there is no official correct spelling of it. Some spelling variants include Chanukkah, Chanukah, Hannuka, and Hannukah. +Since 1945, all British tanks have included equipment to make tea. +Ancient Romans used human urine as mouthwash. The ammonia in urine is an effective natural cleaning agent. +The world's shortest war, the Anglo-Zambian War, lasted less than 45 minutes. It was fought between the United Kingdom and the Zanzibar Sultanate in 1896 and was won by the British. +Tug of war was an Olympic sport between 1900 and 1920. +Ronald Reagan, in addition to being the US president and a film star, was also a lifeguard when he was younger and saved multiple people from drowning. +The oldest known advertisement is over 5,000 years old. It advertises the sale of a slave named Shem in ancient Egypt. +Winston Churchill smoked an average of 10 cigars a day. +The first face to appear on the US $1 bill wasn't George Washington. It was Salmon P. Chase, the Secretary of Treasury and designer of banknotes when the first $1 bill was released in 1862. +Ancient Egyptians invented many items we still use today, such as pens, keys, locks, and toothpaste. +In medieval Europe, animals were often taken to court and tried for various crimes such as eating part of the harvest, damaging property, or injuring or killing people. If found guilty, the animal could be exiled or even sentenced to death. +The youngest soldier in the Civil War was a nine-year-old boy from Mississippi. The oldest soldier was an 80-year-old man from Iowa. +Charles de Gaulle, the former president of France, is in the Guinness Book of World Records for having survived the most assassination attempts in the world. He survived over 30 of them before dying naturally at age 79. +Incans, who ruled in South America from the 13th century to 1572, were able to perform successful skull surgeries. Over 100 Incan skulls have been discovered with holes drilled into them, and archaeologists estimate the survival rate for this surgery was around 80% (compared to about 50% in America during the Civil War). +In the 19th century, golf balls were made of a leather pouch stuffed with feathers and were often called "feathery" balls. +Humans have more than five senses. In fact, we have nearly 20, including pain, hunger, thirst, and balance. +The only letter that doesn't appear in the Periodic Table of Elements is J. +Laid end to end, an adult's blood vessels could circle the Earth at the equator four times. +Babies don't shed tears until they're between two weeks and several months old, as their tear ducts haven't fully developed yet. +There are 18 volcanoes in the United States with the potential to erupt again. +Scientists don't know why we yawn, but it may be a way to help regulate body temperature or even cool down the brain. +Although oxygen is colorless as a gas, when it's a liquid or solid it has a pale blue color. +If you pour a handful of salt into a full glass of water, the water level will actually go down slightly (about 2%). This happens due to solvent molecules becoming more ordered in the presence of the dissolved salt, which reduces the space the solution takes up. +Earth is not a perfect sphere. The poles are slightly flattened out, and the equator bulges due to the planet's rotation. +Although clouds look light and fluffy, they can weigh over one million pounds. +Hot water actually freezes faster than cold water due to something called the Mpemba effect. +About ⅕ of the world's oxygen is produced by the Amazon rainforest. +You have roughly the same number of bacteria cells in your body as you do human cells. +About two thousand rainstorms occur on Earth every minute. +In the Brothers Grimm version of Cinderella, in order to get their feet to fit inside the glass slipper, one of Cinderella's stepsisters cuts off her own heel, and another cuts off her big toe. +Samuel L. Jackson was a cheerleader in college. +In 2014, a group of researchers in England determined that the song "Wannabe" by The Spice Girls was the catchiest song ever written. People could identify it in about 2.3 seconds, well below the average of 5 seconds it took to recognize other songs. +The same woman, E.G. Daily, was the voice of both Tommy Pickles in Rugrats and Buttercup in The Powerpuff Girls. +None of the four members of The Beatles could read or write music. +Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling created the game of Quidditch after a fight with her then-boyfriend. She said her frustration from the fight caused her to come up with the idea of the violent game. +In 2016, Mozart sold more CDs than any other artist, beating artists such as Beyonce, Adele, and Justin Bieber. +During World War II, actress Audrey Hepburn delivered messages for resistance fighters in the Netherlands. +Barack Obama, Martin Luther King Jr, and Hillary Clinton are all Grammy winners in the Spoken Word category. +In 1944, Disney's Snow White became the first film to release a soundtrack. +In Game of Thrones, the cloaks that members of the Night Watch wear were created by shaving down and dying rugs bought from IKEA. +The first TV commercial aired on July 1, 1941. It was an ad for Bulova watches. \ No newline at end of file