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Fun Facts: Ants don't have lungs

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  • Did you know that most orange cats are male, and that blue whales have tongues that weigh as much as elephants? Learn more with our fun facts of the day!

  • A large majority of all orange cats are male! This is because the cat’s color gene is linked to sex. Female cats need two X chromosomes with the orange code while males only need one.

    Receiving two X chromosomes with the orange gene is not common, especially when other colors, such as black, are much more prevalent among cats.

    read more

  • As the largest animals to have ever existed, blue whales can weigh as much as 200 tons. Their tongues alone can weigh as much as an elephant!

    The whale's massive tongue helps the animal to eat massive amounts of krill, about 40 million krill a day. 

    read more

  • Alpine bumblebees are able to fly up to 29,527 feet, higher than the tallest mountain in the world

    Bumblebees, which have a large body size and relatively small wings, were previously expected to struggle flying at high altitudes. However, alpine bumblebees surprisingly proved that they can hover at extreme barometric pressures, according to two researchers from the University of California and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.

    read more

  • Platypuses don’t have nipples. They feed their young by sweating milk! The nursing babies then drink it off the mother’s fur.

    According to the American Museum of Natural History, platypuses are unlike all other mammals when it comes to producing milk for their young.

    read more

  • The typical cumulus cloud spotted on clear, sunny days weighs about 1.1 million pounds

    Cumulus clouds measuring one kilometer by one kilometer weigh about 131,894 gallons, according to the Library of Congress.

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  • Residents in Switzerland are prohibited from owning one guinea pig as the animals are considered very social creatures and need companionship to thrive.

    Switzerland’s Animal Protection Ordinance states that guinea pigs "must be kept in groups of at least two animals."

    read more

  • Fun Factoid graphic.

    Japan is the country with the highest density of vending machines in the world.

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  • The Marathon des Sables, which is about the distance of six regular marathons, is a foot race that takes place over seven days in the Sahara Desert

    The race, known as the Sahara Marathon or Marathon of the Sands, is 160 miles long and takes place in southern Morocco.

    read more

  • Unlike the rest of the solar system, Venus spins clockwise on its axis

    The reason behind the planet’s retrograde, or backward, rotation is not clear. One theory suggests that a giant collision with another large body disturbed Venus’ counterclockwise rotation and caused the planet to spin the other way.

    read more

  • The longest word in the English language has 189,819 letters and takes at least three hours to pronounce. It is the chemical name of the protein titin.

    Titin, which starts with "methionylthreonylthreonylglutaminylarginyltyrosylglutamylsery," is the body’s largest known protein that maintains muscular passive elasticity.

    read more

  • Australia is wider than the moon

    According to NASA, the celestial body is slightly more than one-quarter the size of Earth.

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  • A coin has a 51% chancing of ending on the same side during a coin flip and has a 49% chance of flipping to the opposite side

    According to the American Mathematical Society, neither one side of the coin nor the other is more likely to come up during a coin flip. Instead, the coin will land slightly more often on the same side that it started with.

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  • Because humans and fruit flies are 60% genetically similar, fruit flies were chosen to be the first animals sent into space

    The fruit flies were sent into space in 1947.

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  • About 29,000 man-made objects about four inches or larger orbit the Earth

    Space junk of that size could cause catastrophic damage to a satellite if a collision occurs, according to the European Space Agency.

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  • Pandas can fake pregnancies, a phenomenon scientists have been having difficulty understanding.

    Phantom pregnancy occurs in 10 to 20% of pandas, according to the director of a China research and conservation center.

    read more

  • There is a special jail in Canada that holds polar bears that are considered dangergous until they can be relocated

    Before the Polar Bear Holding Facility was created in the small town of Churchill, Canada, in the1980s, dangerous polar bears were shot instead.

    read more

  • People actually sigh 12 times an hour, a vital and life-sustaining reflex that helps keep lungs functioning

    Air sacs in our lungs would slowly collapse if we didn’t sigh every five minutes, according to UCLA and Stanford researchers.

    read more

  • Nearly a century ago, parents living in London apartments used to suspend wire cages outside their windows to

    According to Rare Historical Photos, "baby cages" were popularized in London partly due to an 1884 book that stated fresh air was required to renew and purify blood, suggesting that exposure to cold temperatures allowed babies to build an immune system.

    read more

  • Play-Doh was originally used to clean soot that furnaces often left on walls in the 1930s

    The now-famous kids’ toy used to be an off-white dough people would roll across their walls.

    read more

  • There are over 1,000 varieties of bananas but we only eat one of them.

    The most commonly eaten variety in the U.S. is the Cavendish banana, partly due to its long shelf life, lack of seeds and lower production costs.

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  • Female giraffes give birth while standing up, causing its newborns to enter the world with a nose dive

    This birthing method actually helps snap the female giraffe's umbilical cord. It also stimulates the newborn's first breath and even prevents damage to their necks.

    read more

  • In 18th century Europe, pineapples were so rare and exotic that they were reserved for royalty. Sometimes, people would rent them out for special occasions.

    At dinner parties, attendees would not eat the fruit but admire it.

    read more

  • A blood cell makes a loop within the body every minute

    At this speed, blood can travel about three feet per second, according to the Albert Vein Institute.

    read more

  • There are no stop signs in Paris. Instead, drivers give the vehicle on the right priority.

    The French capital removed its stop signs to make police intervention "from secondary ways" smoother and avoid penalizing residents, according to the country's police prefecture. However, other cities in France still use them.

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  • China cuts down 20 million 20-year-old trees every year to produce 80 billion disposable chopsticks per year

    A forestry expert estimated the burden of producing disposable chopsticks in 2013, according to the South China Morning Post.

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  • China owns nearly all of the world’s giant pandas and rent each one out for $1 million per year

    While $1 million is a hefty price, some zoos are far from going bankrupt over the pandas, according to Business Insider. Scotland's Edinburgh Zoo saw a 51% increase in attendance due to their pandas in 2012. The National Zoo in Washington, D.C., also saw its food and merchandise sales double following the arrival of its two pandas in 2001.

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  • Contrary to their male counterparts, female productivity levels in the office increase when the office temperature is higher

    While men and women have different productivity levels depending on office thermostat settings, the relationship between temperature and female work performance was more pronounced, according to a USC study.

    read more

  • Snails and slugs have a flexible band of thousands of microscopic teeth

    While a slug's jaw cuts off larger pieces of food, its flexible band of teeth scrapes up the food particles.

    read more

  • To burn one calorie, you’d have to click a computer mouse 10 million times

    It may take a total of 11.5 days of clicking to burn one calorie, according to Wired.

    read more

  • Canada’s Hudson Bay area is exhibiting signs of less gravity than other regions

    The Laurentide Ice Sheet, which once covered much of Canada, caused a large indentation near the Hudson Bay. One theory suggests that the Hudson Bay's lack of mass has affected its gravity.

    read more

  • Left-handed people may have shorter life expectancies because everything is designed for right-handed people

    Right-handed people tend to live longer than left-handed people by nine years, according to a 1991 study.

    read more

  • A NASA spacesuit cost about $20 million 50 years ago

    NASA is in the process of developing its next generation of spacesuits, which will cost over $1 billion.

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  • Dinosaurs used to experience 23-hour days

    The length of an Earth day has been gradually increasing over the planet's 4.5-billion-year history. This is due to the Moon's influence in slowing down Earth's rotation, according to Dr. Rosemary Mardling, a mathematical scientist at Monash University.

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  • There are more than 7,500 known cultivated varieties of apples

    From Honeycrisp to Granny Smith, there are 7,500 known varieties of apples in the world.

    read more

  • Atlanta has 71 variations of the word

    The word peachtree was deeply rooted in the Georgia city due to an indigenous Muscogee settlement that translated into "Standing Peach Tree."

    read more

  • Airplanes fly slower today than they did in the past

    In the late 20th century, airlines began reducing cruising speeds in order to save on fuel costs, which spiked dramatically following the 1970s oil crisis.

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  • UPS drivers will make a left turn only 10% of the time

    Because motorists spend a lot of time and gas waiting for left turn signals, UPS drivers usually make only right turns. This strategy also helps curtail accidents at traffic lights.

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  • An average household has 300,000 items

    While American kids make up 3.7% of the world’s children, they have almost half of all toys and children’s books, according to the Los Angeles Times.

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  • A soccer field of forest was lost every second in 2017

    A forest area equivalent to the size of Italy was lost that year due to deforestation.

    read more

  • 44 AM is most common time to wake up at night

    A study into 3,000 sleep-deprived Brits revealed that people were most likely to wake up at 3:44 a.m.

    read more

  • Flamingos can drink water near boiling point

    Flamingos typically live near lakes with extremely high salt concentrations, so they often resort to boiling geysers for fresh water.

    read more

  • All the Nutella sold in one year could spread over 1,000 football fields

    One jar of Nutella is sold every 2.5 seconds across the globe.

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  • A pencil could potentially draw a 35-mile-long line

    That is enough to write 45,000-50,000 words or the entirety of "The Great Gatsby."

    read more

  • Astronauts can vote from space

    The first people to vote from space were two Russian cosmonauts in 1996. NASA astronaut David Wolf became the first American to vote from orbit the following year.

    read more

  • The word "hello" was previously used to attract attention, such as, "Hello, what do you think you're doing?"

    The word "hello" was previously used to attract attention, such as, "Hello, what do you think you're doing?"

    read more

  • The Harvard University Library once contained a book bound in human skin but officially removed it in 2024 due to the book’s unethical origins

    The original owner of the book, a doctor, sourced the binding from a deceased female patient at a hospital where he worked. According to him, "a book about the human soul deserved to have a human covering."

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  • If the Earth were the size of a grain of sand, the Sun would be the size of a tennis ball

    It would require 1.3 million Earths to fill the volume of the sun.

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  • If a car could drive upward, it would take an hour for the vehicle to reach space

    The distance between sea level and the edge of space is 62 miles.

    read more

  • Humans were able to place a man on the Moon before putting wheels on luggage

    Wheels were added to suitcases in 1970, one year after Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon.

    read more

  • The current U.S. flag was designed by a high school student for a class project - he originally received a

    His teacher later bumped his grade to an A after the U.S. Congress accepted it as America’s national flag.

    read more

  • The average person will spend about a total of 6 months waiting at red lights

    People will waste sixth months of their lives waiting for traffic lights to turn green.

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  • Humans are about 1-2 cm taller in the morning after getting out of bed

    Humans will start the day just slightly taller.

    read more

  • Before the invention of the eraser, writers used to correct their graphite mistakes with wet bread

    Writers used to use wet bread as erasers until the modern rubber tools were invented around 1770.

    read more

  • Beer wasn’t classified as alcohol in Russia until 2013!

    Many Russians considered beer a soft drink until a decade ago.

    read more

  • Wombat feces are surprisingly cube-shaped, allowing the fecal matter to not roll away when the mammals mark their territory

    The Australian marsupials are the only animals known to produce cube-shaped feces.

    read more

  • A person typically produces enough saliva in their lifetime to fill two swimming pools!

    Salivary gland production varies between two to six cups per day.

    read more

  • The world’s deepest Postbox is in Susami Bay, Japan, where people can dive 10 meters underwater to send messages

    The underwater mailbox was proposed to attract more tourists and divers to Susami Bay.

    read more

  • Cheese is considered one, if not, the most shoplifted food worldwide, with nearly 4% of total cheese inventory stolen each year

    The addictive quality and small packaging of cheese makes the dairy product highly targeted among shoplifters.

    read more

  • Singapore, one of the cleanest countries in the world, made chewing gum illegal in 1992

    The 1992 law helps prevent people from spitting gum on the ground.

    read more

  • A jellyfish species, the Turritopsis dohrnii, has been deemed biologically immortal, due to its ability to reset its developmental stage after reaching maturity

    The "immortal jellyfish" can also hit the reset button when it becomes injured or threatened.

    read more

  • The world’s largest cave, Son Doong in Vietnam, has its very own ecosystem, complete with a river, forest, sunlight and climate. It’s so big that it can fit an entire NYC city block inside!

    Birds, monkeys and even snakes have been spotted inside the Vietnamese cave.

    read more

  • In one lifetime, the average person will eat the weight equivalent of 6 elephants

    An average person in the Western world eats about 70,000 pounds of food in a lifetime.

    read more

  • The Eiffel Tower was originally intended to be a temporary exhibit until it became so popular that it was no longer in danger of demolition

    The Eiffel Tower was scheduled to be demolished after 20 years.

    read more

  • The average lightning bolt runs at temperatures five times hotter than the surface of the sun!

    Lightning also moves about 30,000 times faster than a bullet.

    read more

  • The world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, is more than twice the height of NYC’s Empire State Building

    Dubai's Burj Khalifa set the record as the world's tallest building in 2010, when it first opened.

    read more

  • Humans blink about 15-20 times per minute. If you live to be 80 years old, you will have spent about 5 years of your life with your eyes closed due to blinking.

    People would spend five years of their entire life with their eyes closed solely from blinking.

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  • The Antarctic ice sheet is so massive that if it were to melt completely, global sea levels would rise by about 58 meters (190 feet).

    Antarctic glaciers contain so much water that they would raise sea levels by 190 feet if they ever completely melted.

    read more

  • It takes about 1,800 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef, which equals 10 full bathtubs to create one quarter-pound burger. This includes water used for drinking, feed, and processing.

    A quarter-pound burger requires the equivalent of about 10 bathtubs of water to be created.

    read more

  • Mount Everest grows approximately 0.16 inches (4 millimeters) per year due to tectonic activity. Over a human lifetime, this growth can be quite noticeable, adding about 10 inches (25 centimeters) in 60 years.

    Mount Everest could grow 10 inches in the span of a human lifetime.

    read more

  •  While estimates vary, it's generally accepted that there are around 3 trillion trees on Earth, whereas there are estimated to be around 100 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

    There are more trees on Earth than there are stars in the Milky Way.

    read more

  • To produce one pound of honey, a colony of honeybees must fly approximately 55,000 miles and visit around 2 million flowers.

    Honeybees must visit 2 million flowers to create one pound of honey.

    read more

  • The Great Wall of China is over 13,000 miles (21,000 kilometers) long. If laid end to end, it would stretch more than halfway around the Earth.

    The length of the Great Wall of China equates to more than half the Earth's circumference.

    read more

  • The global population reached 1 billion in 1804. It took 123 years to reach 2 billion (in 1927) and only 12 years to go from 7 billion to 8 billion (2022).

    While it took over a century for the human population to go from 1 to 2 billion people, it took just over a decade for 7 billion to go to 8 billion.

    read more

  • Due to thermal expansion, the height of the Eiffel Tower can vary by up to 15 centimeters (6 inches) depending on the temperature. In hot weather, the iron structure expands, and in cold weather, it contracts.

    The Eiffel Tower can stretch an extra six inches depending on the temperature.

    read more

  •  Venus rotates very slowly on its axis, taking about 243 Earth days to complete one rotation. However, its orbit around the Sun only takes about 225 Earth days, making a day (rotation) longer than a year (orbit).

    On Venus, a day shockingly lasts longer than a year.

    read more

  • Every day, about 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created globally. That's equivalent to 250,000 Libraries of Congress.

    Data equivalent to a quarter-million Libraries of Congress are created every day.

    read more

  • The total length of a human's blood vessels could circle the Earth at least twice.

    The total length of a human's blood vessels could circle the Earth at least twice.

    read more

  • If all the blood vessels in the human body were laid end to end, they would measure approximately 60,000 miles, enough to circle the Earth more than twice.

    In 2010, the longest traffic jam in history occurred in China, lasting 12 days.

    read more

  • Around the world, there are about 8.6 million lightning strikes every day. Around the world, there are about 8.6 million lightning strikes every day. That's over 100 strikes per second!

    There are over 100 strikes per second around the world.

    read more

  • Did you know that most orange cats are male, and that blue whales have tongues that weigh as much as elephants? Learn more with our fun facts of the day!

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  • Fun Facts: 80% of all orange cats are male
  • A large majority of all orange cats are male! This is because the cat’s color gene is linked to sex. Female cats need two X chromosomes with the orange code while males only need one.

  • As the largest animals to have ever existed, blue whales can weigh as much as 200 tons. Their tongues alone can weigh as much as an elephant!

  • Alpine bumblebees are able to fly up to 29,527 feet, higher than the tallest mountain in the world

  • Platypuses don’t have nipples. They feed their young by sweating milk! The nursing babies then drink it off the mother’s fur.

  • The typical cumulus cloud spotted on clear, sunny days weighs about 1.1 million pounds

  • Residents in Switzerland are prohibited from owning one guinea pig as the animals are considered very social creatures and need companionship to thrive.

  • Fun Factoid graphic.

  • The Marathon des Sables, which is about the distance of six regular marathons, is a foot race that takes place over seven days in the Sahara Desert

  • Unlike the rest of the solar system, Venus spins clockwise on its axis

  • The longest word in the English language has 189,819 letters and takes at least three hours to pronounce. It is the chemical name of the protein titin.

  • Australia is wider than the moon

  • A coin has a 51% chancing of ending on the same side during a coin flip and has a 49% chance of flipping to the opposite side

  • Because humans and fruit flies are 60% genetically similar, fruit flies were chosen to be the first animals sent into space

  • About 29,000 man-made objects about four inches or larger orbit the Earth

  • Pandas can fake pregnancies, a phenomenon scientists have been having difficulty understanding.

  • There is a special jail in Canada that holds polar bears that are considered dangergous until they can be relocated

  • People actually sigh 12 times an hour, a vital and life-sustaining reflex that helps keep lungs functioning

  • Nearly a century ago, parents living in London apartments used to suspend wire cages outside their windows to

  • Play-Doh was originally used to clean soot that furnaces often left on walls in the 1930s

  • There are over 1,000 varieties of bananas but we only eat one of them.

  • Female giraffes give birth while standing up, causing its newborns to enter the world with a nose dive

  • In 18th century Europe, pineapples were so rare and exotic that they were reserved for royalty. Sometimes, people would rent them out for special occasions.

  • A blood cell makes a loop within the body every minute

  • There are no stop signs in Paris. Instead, drivers give the vehicle on the right priority.

  • China cuts down 20 million 20-year-old trees every year to produce 80 billion disposable chopsticks per year

  • China owns nearly all of the world’s giant pandas and rent each one out for $1 million per year

  • Contrary to their male counterparts, female productivity levels in the office increase when the office temperature is higher

  • Snails and slugs have a flexible band of thousands of microscopic teeth

  • To burn one calorie, you’d have to click a computer mouse 10 million times

  • Canada’s Hudson Bay area is exhibiting signs of less gravity than other regions

  • Left-handed people may have shorter life expectancies because everything is designed for right-handed people

  • A NASA spacesuit cost about $20 million 50 years ago

  • Dinosaurs used to experience 23-hour days

  • There are more than 7,500 known cultivated varieties of apples

  • Atlanta has 71 variations of the word

  • Airplanes fly slower today than they did in the past

  • UPS drivers will make a left turn only 10% of the time

  • An average household has 300,000 items

  • A soccer field of forest was lost every second in 2017

  • 44 AM is most common time to wake up at night

  • Flamingos can drink water near boiling point

  • All the Nutella sold in one year could spread over 1,000 football fields

  • A pencil could potentially draw a 35-mile-long line

  • Astronauts can vote from space

  • The word "hello" was previously used to attract attention, such as, "Hello, what do you think you're doing?"

  • The Harvard University Library once contained a book bound in human skin but officially removed it in 2024 due to the book’s unethical origins

  • If the Earth were the size of a grain of sand, the Sun would be the size of a tennis ball

  • If a car could drive upward, it would take an hour for the vehicle to reach space

  • Humans were able to place a man on the Moon before putting wheels on luggage

  • The current U.S. flag was designed by a high school student for a class project - he originally received a

  • The average person will spend about a total of 6 months waiting at red lights

  • Humans are about 1-2 cm taller in the morning after getting out of bed

  • Before the invention of the eraser, writers used to correct their graphite mistakes with wet bread

  • Beer wasn’t classified as alcohol in Russia until 2013!

  • Wombat feces are surprisingly cube-shaped, allowing the fecal matter to not roll away when the mammals mark their territory

  • A person typically produces enough saliva in their lifetime to fill two swimming pools!

  • The world’s deepest Postbox is in Susami Bay, Japan, where people can dive 10 meters underwater to send messages

  • Cheese is considered one, if not, the most shoplifted food worldwide, with nearly 4% of total cheese inventory stolen each year

  • Singapore, one of the cleanest countries in the world, made chewing gum illegal in 1992

  • A jellyfish species, the Turritopsis dohrnii, has been deemed biologically immortal, due to its ability to reset its developmental stage after reaching maturity

  • The world’s largest cave, Son Doong in Vietnam, has its very own ecosystem, complete with a river, forest, sunlight and climate. It’s so big that it can fit an entire NYC city block inside!

  • In one lifetime, the average person will eat the weight equivalent of 6 elephants

  • The Eiffel Tower was originally intended to be a temporary exhibit until it became so popular that it was no longer in danger of demolition

  • The average lightning bolt runs at temperatures five times hotter than the surface of the sun!

  • The world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, is more than twice the height of NYC’s Empire State Building

  • Humans blink about 15-20 times per minute. If you live to be 80 years old, you will have spent about 5 years of your life with your eyes closed due to blinking.

  • The Antarctic ice sheet is so massive that if it were to melt completely, global sea levels would rise by about 58 meters (190 feet).

  • It takes about 1,800 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef, which equals 10 full bathtubs to create one quarter-pound burger. This includes water used for drinking, feed, and processing.

  • Mount Everest grows approximately 0.16 inches (4 millimeters) per year due to tectonic activity. Over a human lifetime, this growth can be quite noticeable, adding about 10 inches (25 centimeters) in 60 years.

  •  While estimates vary, it's generally accepted that there are around 3 trillion trees on Earth, whereas there are estimated to be around 100 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

  • To produce one pound of honey, a colony of honeybees must fly approximately 55,000 miles and visit around 2 million flowers.

  • The Great Wall of China is over 13,000 miles (21,000 kilometers) long. If laid end to end, it would stretch more than halfway around the Earth.

  • The global population reached 1 billion in 1804. It took 123 years to reach 2 billion (in 1927) and only 12 years to go from 7 billion to 8 billion (2022).

  • Due to thermal expansion, the height of the Eiffel Tower can vary by up to 15 centimeters (6 inches) depending on the temperature. In hot weather, the iron structure expands, and in cold weather, it contracts.

  •  Venus rotates very slowly on its axis, taking about 243 Earth days to complete one rotation. However, its orbit around the Sun only takes about 225 Earth days, making a day (rotation) longer than a year (orbit).

  • Every day, about 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created globally. That's equivalent to 250,000 Libraries of Congress.

  • The total length of a human's blood vessels could circle the Earth at least twice.

  • If all the blood vessels in the human body were laid end to end, they would measure approximately 60,000 miles, enough to circle the Earth more than twice.

  • Around the world, there are about 8.6 million lightning strikes every day. Around the world, there are about 8.6 million lightning strikes every day. That's over 100 strikes per second!

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