In 1980, Namco released PAC-MAN, the most popular video game (or arcade game) of all time. The original name was going to be PUCK MAN, but executives saw the potential for vandals to scratch out part of the P in the games marquee and labeling.
We share 98.4% of our DNA with a chimp - and 70% with a slug.
97.2% of the Earth's water is salt water.
It takes the Earth exactly 365.242199 days to orbit the Sun - and that is why every four years we need a leap year.
The biggest known star has a diameter of 1800 million miles, making it 2000 times bigger than the Sun.
If emissions of carbon dioxide were halted today, it would take more than a century for the atmospheric level of carbon dioxide to approach its pre-industrial level.
More types of fish swim in Brazil's Amazon River than in the entire Atlantic Ocean.
The E. Coli bacterium propels itself with a 'motor' only one-millionth of an inch in diameter, a thousand times smaller than the tiniest motors built to date by man. The rotation of the bacterial motor comes from a current of protons. The efficiency of the motor approaches 100 per cent.
The 'Red Planet' isn't really red at all, NASA photographs indicate that it is more of a tan or butterscotch color.
The largest living thing on the face of the Earth is a mushroom underground in Oregon, it measures three and a half miles in diameter.
The deepest lake in the world is in the former USSR and it is Lake Baikal. It has a length of 400 miles, a width of roughly 30, but its depth is just over a mile: 5,371 feet down. It is deep enough, so is speculated, that all five of the next largest lakes: The Great Lakes could be emptied into it.
Sound travels 15 times faster through steel than through the air.
The increased electricity used by modern appliances is causing a shift in the Earth's magnetic field. By the year 2327, the North Pole will be located in mid-Kansas, while the South Pole will be just off the coast of East Africa.
The largest pearl ever found was 620 carats.
It takes eight and a half minutes for light to get from the sun to earth.
The the oldest living thing on earth is 12,000 years old. It is the flowering shrubs called creosote bushes in the Mojave Desert.
Time slows down near a black hole; inside it stops completely.
Quicksand is formed when sand, clay, and water are mixed in just the right way, with a surface that seems solid until you step on it, and it suddenly becomes liquid
Honey is the only food that does not spoil. Honey found in the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs has been tasted by archaeologists and found edible.
In one year, the average tree gives off enough oxygen to allow four people to breathe for a year. You breathe 6 liters of air per minute.
Our Galaxy's oldest stars are Red Dwarfs, which are also the smallest and most abundant, numbering 70% of the Galaxy's Stars.
If you take one pound of cobwebs and spread them out in one straight line, it will go around the earth 2 times.
If you attempted to count to stars in a galaxy at a rate of one every second it would take around 3,000 years to count them all.
At a jet plane's speed of 1,000 km (620mi) per hour, the length of the plane becomes one atom shorter than its original length.
Earth's atmosphere is, proportionally, thinner than the skin of an apple.
The distance from the surface of Earth to the center is about 3,963 miles.
The fastest moon in our solar system circles Jupiter once every seven hours - traveling at 70,400 miles per hour.
About 400 billion gallons of water is used every day.
The largest pumpkin weighed 377 pounds.
To an observer standing on Pluto, the sun would appear no brighter than Venus appears in our evening sky.
A bean’s cell contains more DNA than a human cell does.
The planet Saturn has a density lower than water. If there was a bathtub large enough to hold it, Saturn would float.
The Volcano Olympus Mons on Mars rises 16 miles (26 kilometers) into the Martian sky. Its base would almost cover the entire stae of Arizona.
Blood is 6 times thicker than water.
In the Durango desert, in Mexico, there's a creepy spot called the "Zone of Silence." You can't pick up clear TV or radio signals. And locals say fireballs sometimes appear in the sky.
Seventy percent of all water used by humans worldwide is for irrigation.
The Leaning Tower of Pisa is predicted to topple over between 2010 and 2020.
Every human spent about half an hour as a single cell.
4,800 years ago the ancient Egyptians worked out that there were 365 days in a year.
A bucket filled with earth would weigh about 5 time more than the same bucket filled with the substance of the sun. However, the force of gravity is so much greater on the sun that the man weighing 150 pounds on our planet would weigh 2 tons on the sun.
Uranus' orbital axis is tilted at 90 degrees.
The tip of a 1/3 inch long hour-hand on a wristwatch travels at 0.00000275 mph
Orchids are the largest family of flowering plants with approximately 35,000 species.
It takes a plastic container 50000 years to start decomposing.
In deep space most lubricants will disappear.
If everyone in the U.S. recycled their Sunday newspaper, it would save 500,000 trees every week.
Traveling at the speed of 186,000 miles per second, light takes 6 hours to travel from Pluto to the earth.
There are parts of Europe, especially in southern France where it has Rained red Rain. Known as "Blood Rains," such showers were for years thought to herald the apocalypse. Some scientists believe that they are caused by a reddish dust that is blown all the way from the Sahara Desert Others believe that the red color comes from microorganisms in the water.
A downburst is a downward blowing wind that sometimes comes blasting out of a thunderstorm. The damage looks like tornado damage, since the wind can be as strong as an F2 tornado, but debris is blown straight away from a point on the ground. It's not lofted into the air and transported downwind.
There are 3 golf balls sitting on the moon.
A chip of silicon a quarter-inch square has the capacity of the original 1949 ENIAC computer, which occupied a city block.
Broccoli is a vegetable with a nervous system. Primitive though it may be, it CAN feel pain.
The Hubble telescope is so powerful that it is like pointing a beam of light at a dime that is two hundred miles away.
In the Bay of Fundy, located between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia in Canada, the Tide sometimes rises 10 feet in one hour and attains heights as great as 60 feet from the beginning of the Tide to the end.
Experiments conducted in Germany and at the University of Southampton in England show that even mild and incidental noises cause the pupils of the eyes to dilate. It is believed that this is why surgeons, watchmakers, and others who perform delicate manual operations are so bothered by noise. The sounds cause their pupils to change focus and blur their vision.
Sound at the right vibration can bore holes through a solid object.
Tomatoes and cucumbers are fruits.
The clock at the National Bureau of Standards in Washington, D.C., will gain or lose only one second in 300 years because it uses cesium atoms which beat 300 billion times a second.
Traveling at the speed of light it would take a spaceship just 1.2822 seconds to reach the Moon.
Only one satellite has been ever been destroyed by a meteor: the European Space Agency's Olympus in 1993.
By 2150 there will be 10 billion humans. In 2000 there were 6 billion.
The soft plastic headphones used on airplanes create a warm, moist environment in the ear canal that is ideal for breeding bacteria. Wearing headphones for just an hour will increase the bacteria in your ear by 700 times.
One tree can filter up to 27 kg of pollutants from the air each year.
A "fulgerite" is fossilized lightning. It forms when a powerful lightning bolt melts the soil into a glass-like state.
When a pickle is plugged into an electric current it turns yellow, and gives off a horrendous smell.
Compact discs read from the inside to the outside edge, the reverse of how a record works.
A car traveling at a constant speed of 60 miles per hour would take over 48 million years to reach the nearest star, Proxima Centauri. This is about 685,000 average human lifetimes.
In St. John, New Brunswick, there is a Waterfall that flows upward. The Reversing Falls of St. John are located on a gorge that leads into the Bay of Fundy. At low tide the Water from the gorge comes cascading down on its way to the bay, At high tide. however, which in this part of the world is excessive, the bay's Water level rises 5 feet higher than that of the river itself. This causes a "bore," or rushing tide, to flow back into the river, and thus it pushes the Water back up the Falls.
A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continually from the bottom of the glass to the top. This is because the carbonation in the drink gets pockets of air stuck in the wrinkles of the raisin, which is light enough to be raised by this air. When it reaches the surface of the champagne, the bubbles pop, and the raisin sinks back to the bottom, starting the cycle over.
A dripping water tap wastes an average of 40 kilowatt hours of electricity per month. This is the equivalent of running a color television 8 hours a day for about 31 days.
An iceberg contains more heat than a match.
The speed of light is a mind boggling 670,610,000 miles per hour.
The Andes Mountain range in South America is 4,525 miles long and ranks, as the world’s longest.
There are five tillion trillion atoms in one pound of iron.
Sterling silver is not pure silver. Because pure silver is too soft to be used in most tableware it is mixed with copper in the proportion of 92.5 percent silver to 7.5 percent copper.
The densest substance on Earth is the metal "osmium."
A cumulonimbus cloud can be enormous: six miles across and eleven miles high, and twice as high as Mount Everest.
Portland cement is used for underwater work. It hardens because of a chemical reaction it has with the water, not because the water mixed with it evaporates. The amount of water that reacts with the cement is crucial for this process, and the physical structure of this cement enables it to control exactly how much water gets into the reaction. So it doesn't matter at all how much water surrounds the cement as long as it has enough to set.
60-65 million years ago dolphins and humans shared a common ancestor - the Mesonychid.
Trees get about 90% of their nutrition from the atmosphere (carbon dioxide, etc), and only about 10% from the soil.
Vineger was the strongest acid known in the ancient times.
Oak trees do not produce acorns until they are fifty years of age or older.
All known vitamins are found in eggs except vitamin C.
A cosmic year is the amount of time it takes the sun to revolve around the center of the Milky Way, about 225 million years.
Microbial life can survive on the cooling rods of a nuclear reactor.
In Winter the Antarctic Ice covers 10% of our planet.
The telegraph plant is capable of rapid movement - even in the absence of wind
The Telegraph plant is a tropical plant usually found in Asia - but also in the South Pacific. The plant has the amazing ability to shake its leaves (which rotate on their axis and jerk up and down). There are a few other plants with rapid movement abilities (such as the venus fly trap) but this is the most bizarre and least known. It should be noted that when we refer to “rapid” in relation to plants - it is not super fast - but it is definitely visible with the naked eye.
Ingredients in pineapples might cause an abortion if eaten during pregnancy.
Every day is about 55 billionths of a second longer than the day before it
The averaged size tree can provide enough wood to make 170,000 pencils.
The Earth is, in fact, not really round. It is called an oblate spheroid meaning it’s slightly flattened on the top and bottom poles.
Bacteria, the tiniest free-living cells, are so small that a single drop of liquid contains as many as 50 million of them.
You are more likely to be struck by lightning that to be eaten by a shark. You are more likely to be infected by flesh-eating bacteria than you are to be struck by lightning.
The liquid inside young coconuts can be used as substitute for blood plasma.
A neutron star is 15 miles across and weighs more than the Sun.
A ball of glass will bounce higher than a ball of rubber. A ball of solid steel will bounce higher than one made entirely of glass.
The temperature on the surface of Mercury exceeds 430 degrees C during the day, and, at night, plummets to minus 180 degrees centigrade
Salt is one of the few spices that is all taste, and no smell.
A scientist at Michigan State University has calculated that the production of a single hen egg requires about 120 gallons of water, a loaf of bread requires 300 gallons, and a pound of beef, 3,500.
A green flash is sometimes seen just as the sun sets or rises. This occurs because green light is bent most strongly by the atmosphere. So the green is seen before other colors at sunrise, and after the other colors have vanished at sunset.
Up to 15,000 dust mites can live and thrive in just one gram of dust.
A single cup of coffee contains over 1000 chemical substances.
A dog was killed by a meteor at Nakhla, Egypt, in 1911. The unlucky canine is the only creature known to have been killed by a meteor.
Bamboo trees fall under the group of woody perennial evergreen plants. Interestingly, giant bamboo species form the largest members of the grass family. Bamboo is the fastest growing woody plant in the world. Some species of bamboo achieve a growth rate of an astonishing 3-4 feet per day
Micro-organisms have been brought back to life after being frozen in permafrost for three million years.
Our oldest radio broadcasts of the 1930s have already traveled past 100,000 stars.
There are more insects in just one square mile of fertile soil than there are human beings on the entire planet
A bolt of lightning can strike the earth with a force as great as 100 million volts.
Footprints of astronauts who landed on the moon should last at least 10 million years since the moon has no atmosphere.
Every drop of seawater contains approximately 1 billion gold atoms.
The total combined weight of the worlds ant population is heavier than the weight of the human population.
Humans have 46 chromosomes, peas have 14 and crayfish have 200
The first man-made item to exceed the speed of sound is the bull whip our leather whip. When the whip is snapped, the knotted end makes a "crack" or popping noise. It is actually causing a mini sonic boom as it exceeds the speed of sound.
At over 2000 kilometers long The Great Barrier Reef is the largest living structure on Earth
A quarter of the world's plants are threatened with extinction by the year 2010.
Mosquitoes have been found to prefer biting people with smelly feet.
At present even the most powerful PCs cannot process as many instructions as the .1gm of a goldfish brain.
America produces 215 million tons of solid garbage every year.
The Earth gets heavier each day by tons, as meteoric dust settles on it
There are 62,000 miles of blood vessels in the human body - laid end to end they would circle the earth 2.5 times
The Universe contains over 100 billion galaxies.
Butterflies taste with their hind feet and their taste sensation works on touch - this allows them to determine whether a leaf is edible
The research spacecraft Helios B came within a record 27 million miles of the Sun.
Three hundred and fourteen acres of trees are used to make the newsprint for the average Sunday edition of the New York Times. There are nearly 63,000 trees in the 314 acres.
Just about 3 people are born every second, and about 1.3333 people die every second. The result is about a 2 and 2/3 net increase of people every second. Almost 10 people more live on this Earth now, than before you finished reading this.
A human heart beats 100,000 times a day.
A "lost world" exists in the Indonesian jungle that is home to dozens of hitherto unknown animal and plant species.
From the smallest microprocessor to the biggest mainframe, the average American depends on over 264 computers per day.
A thimbleful of a neutron star would weigh over 100 million tons
There's enough energy in ten minutes of one hurricane to match the nuclear stockpiles of the world.
Although rainforests only cover 7% of the Earth's surface, at least 40% of all animal and plant species live in them.
The temperature at the centre of the Earth is estimated to be 5500 degrees Celsius.
About 500 meteorites hit the Earth each year. The largest known meteorite was found at Grootfontein in Namibia, southwest Africa, in 1920. It is 9 feet (2.75m) long and 8 feet (2.43m) wide.
The oceans contain enough salt to cover all the continents to a depth of nearly 500 feet
A cockroach can live for nine days without its head.
Variations in color in pearls are still a mystery, but some experts believe that high water temperatures contribute a golden cast to some pearls.
The Himalayan gogi berry contains, weight for weight, more iron than steak, more beta carotene than carrots, more vitamin C than oranges.
Recycling all of your home's waste newsprint, cardboard, glass, and metal can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 850 pounds a year.
A day on the planet Mercury is twice as long as its year. Mercury rotates very slowly but revolves around the sun in slightly less than 88 days.
We can produce laser light a million times brighter than sunshine
To escape the Earth's gravity a rocket need to travel at 7 miles a second.
65 million years ago the impact of an asteroid is estimated to have had the power of 10 million H-Bombs.
Windows 2000 contained 29 million lines of code.
The deepest part of any ocean in the world is the Mariana trench in the Pacific with a depth of 35,797 feet.
The International Space Station orbits at 248 miles above the Earth.
Volcanoes on Io eject material at speeds of 2000 mph
Jupiter's moon, Europa, is completely covered in ice.
The interstellar gas cloud Sagittarius B contains a billion, billion, billion liters of alcohol
If the world were tilted one degree more either way, the planet would not be habitable because the area around the equator would be too hot and the poles would be too cold.
Scientists have determined that fungi are more closely related to human beings and animals than to other plants.
Annually, enough energy is saved by recycling steel to supply Los Angeles with electricity for almost 10 years.
Enough energy is saved by recycling one aluminum can to run a TV set for three hours or to light one 100 watt bulb for 20 hours.
Wounds infested with maggots heal quickly and without spread of gangrene or other infection.
For every 10 successful attempts to climb Mount Everest there is one fatality.
According to experts, large caves tend to "breathe"; they inhale and exhale great quantities of air when the barometric pressure on the surface changes, and air rushes in or out seeking equilibrium.
A typical hurricane produces the energy equivalent to 8,000 one megaton bombs
The Himalayas cover one-tenth of the Earth's surface.
The fastest spacecraft can go 40,000 mph
Plant seeds that have been stored for more than 200 years can be coaxed into new life.

Nature

JAMIE FRATER JANUARY 3, 2009

Nature is full of wonder and mystery – and, fortunately for us, bizarre facts! This is our first bizarre facts list of 2009 and will definitely not be the last of one of our most popular topics! I hope you enjoy the facts, and if you have any more of your own to add, please feel free to do so in the comments!

Miracle Mice

Weird Fact: A mouse can fit through a hole the size of a ballpoint pen

During the summer months, mice will generally live outside and remain contended there. But as soon as the weather begins to cool, they seek the warmth of our homes. Because of their soft skulls and gnawing ability, a hole the size of a ballpoint pen (6mm – 1/4 inch) is large enough for them to enter en masse. Once inside, they will constantly gnaw at virtually anything – including concrete, lead, and plastic. This is to keep their ever-growing teeth at a convenient length. Contrary to popular belief, mice don’t generally like cheese – but will eat it on occasion. Mice can jump up to 46cm (18 inches), swim, and travel vertically or upside-down. To mouse proof your house, check all small openings with a ballpoint pen – if it fits the hole, it will let mice in.

Square Eyes

Weird Fact: Unlike most creatures, goats have rectangular pupils

We all imagine pupils to be round – as they are the type we see most often (on humans) – but goats (and most other animals with hooves) have horizontal slits which are nearly rectangular when dilated. This gives goats vision covering 320 – 340 degrees; this means they can see virtually all around them without having to move (humans have vision covering 160 – 210 degrees). Consequently, animals with rectangular eyes can see better at night due to having larger pupils that can be closed more tightly during the day to restrict light. Interestingly, octopuses also have rectangular pupils.

Blind Horses

Weird Fact: Horses can’t see directly in front of themselves

A horse has considerably wide vision (and the largest eyes of any land mammal) – being able to see a total field of up to 350 degrees. Horses have two blind spots – the first is directly in front of them and the other is directly behind their head. As far as seeing details, horses are red color blind and have vision of 20/33 (compared to a perfect human vision of 20/20)

Sick Rats

Weird Fact: Rats can’t vomit

Rats can’t vomit or burp because of a limiting wall between their two stomachs and their inability to control the diaphragm muscles needed for the action. Neither rabbits nor guinea pigs can vomit either. This makes rats particularly susceptible to poisoning (hence its popularity in controlling rat infestations). Because of this inability, rats will nibble at food to see if it makes them feel sick (they can’t vomit, but they can feel like they sure as hell want to!) If they don’t feel nausea they will scoff the lot.

Gorilla Gorilla Gorilla

Weird Fact: The scientific name for a gorilla is “Gorilla Gorilla Gorilla”

First off, let us just be clear: this is the scientific name for a particular type of Gorilla – the Western Lowland Gorilla (this is the type you are most likely to see in a zoo – and the most common). For some reason the poor gorillas got stuck with the weird names – if you aren’t a Gorilla gorilla gorilla, you are a Gorilla gorilla diehli, Gorilla beringei beringei, Gorilla beringei graueri. The Bwindi Gorilla (a type of Gorilla beringei) has not yet been given a trinomen – for the sake of fun and to be a little different, I propose it be named Gorilla beringei ChuckNorris. If you didn’t understand this item, don’t worry – I didn’t either!

Killer Swans

Weird Fact: A swan can break a man’s arm

Next time you are feeding the beautiful swans and want to give one a nice pat on the back – don’t do it! Swans are very protective of their young and will use their incredibly powerful wings to fend off dogs (and sometimes humans). They have a wing span of around 2.75 meters (9 feet). In 2001, a young man in Ireland had his leg broken by a swan when he was trying to provoke it. The following year another person had their arm broken.

Fragile Spider

Weird Fact: If you drop a tarantula it will shatter

First of all, unless you are allergic to tarantula venom, they are harmless to humans (though they pack a painful bite). Some tarantulas can also shoot the “hairs” off their legs which can pierce human skin and cause great discomfort. Now – back to the weird fact. Tarantulas have an exoskeleton (that means its skeleton is on the outside) like crayfish and crabs. They shed their exoskeleton regularly – normally by lying on their back. (When they are shedding their skeleton, it is a good idea to keep right away from them as they will attack due to their vulnerable state.) Because the exoskeleton is very fragile, if a tarantula is dropped from a low height, it will shatter and die.

Scary Spice

Weird Fact: Nutmeg is poisonous

Nutmeg is a hallucinigenic drug which is regularly used to flavor such lovely things as custard tarts and fruit cakes. It is also a poison which will kill you while you suffer a variety of extremely revolting (and one or two not-so-revolting) side-effects on the way. Ingesting 2 grams of nutmeg will give you similar feelings to having taken amphetamines (the not-so-revolting side-effect) but will also cause nausea, fever, and headaches. Ingesting 7.5 grams will cause convulsions, and eating 10 grams will cause hallucinations. Eating a whole nutmeg can lead to “nutmeg psychosis” which includes feelings of impending doom, confusion, and agitation. There have been two recorded cases of death by nutmeg (one in 1908 and one in 2001).

Shaking Leaves

Weird Fact: The telegraph plant is capable of rapid movement – even in the absence of wind

The Telegraph plant is a tropical plant usually found in Asia – but also in the South Pacific. The plant has the amazing ability to shake its leaves (which rotate on their axis and jerk up and down). There are a few other plants with rapid movement abilities (such as the venus fly trap) but this is the most bizarre and least known. It should be noted that when we refer to “rapid” in relation to plants – it is not super fast – but it is definitely visible with the naked eye. I have linked to a real-time clip of the plant in action above (apologies for the music – this is not my own clip or it would be far more awesome).

Burning Issue

Weird Fact: The Bombardier beetle shoots boiling liquid as a defense mechanism

The incredibly complex bombardier beetle has an amazing and unique ability: when threatened it shoots boiling hot chemicals from its abdomen up to 70 times rapidly. The liquid is a combination of hydrogen peroxide and hydrogenous which join together inside the beetle causing a chemical reaction. The liquid is fatal to small insects and creatures and can be very painful to humans. You can watch the incredible reaction in the clip above.