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All the facts

All facts

An octopus has three hearts.

Wombats produce cube-shaped poop.

Sea otters hold hands while they sleep so they don’t drift apart.

Flamingos are pink because of what they eat.

A group of crows is called a murder.

Honey can last for thousands of years.

A shrimp’s heart is in its head.

Koalas have fingerprints almost identical to humans.

Starfish have no brain and no blood.

Hummingbirds are the only birds that can fly backwards.

Elephants are one of the few mammals that cannot jump.

Cats cannot taste sweetness.

Axolotls can regrow limbs, parts of their heart and even parts of their brain.

Tardigrades have survived exposure to outer space.

Owls cannot move their eyes.

Some male penguins give pebbles to females they want to mate with.

A blue whale’s heart weighs about as much as two grown men.

Slugs have four noses.

A day on Venus is longer than a year on Venus.

Astronauts’ footprints on the Moon could last for millions of years.

Sunlight takes about 8 minutes to reach Earth.

Saturn is less dense than water.

Mars has a volcano about two and a half times as tall as Mount Everest.

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is a storm bigger than Earth.

About 1.3 million Earths could fit inside the Sun.

Uranus spins on its side.

Babies are born with more bones than adults.

Your stomach gets a new lining every few days.

Your nose can tell apart a huge range of smells.

Laid end to end, your blood vessels could wrap around the world about twice.

You are slightly taller in the morning than at night.

The smallest bone in your body is in your ear.

The cornea has no blood vessels.

Your body gives off a faint glow you cannot see.

Cleopatra lived closer in time to the Moon landing than to the building of the Great Pyramid.

Oxford University is older than the Aztec Empire.

Woolly mammoths were still alive when the Egyptian pyramids were being built.

Napoleon was not unusually short.

Vikings did not wear horned helmets.

The Great Wall of China is not visible from space with the naked eye.

Ketchup was sold as a medicine in the 1830s.

Botanically, bananas are berries but strawberries are not.

Peanuts are not nuts. They are legumes.

Carrots were purple or yellow before orange ones became common.

Apples float because about a quarter of an apple is air.

A pineapple plant takes about two years to grow a single pineapple.

Chocolate is poisonous to dogs.

Vanilla comes from an orchid.

Cashews grow on the bottom of a fruit called the cashew apple.

Canada has more lakes than the rest of the world combined.

Russia spans 11 time zones.

You can float without trying in the Dead Sea.

Mauna Kea is taller than Everest, measured from its base.

A lightning bolt is hotter than the surface of the Sun.

Most of the ocean floor has never been mapped in high detail.

The Sahara was green a few thousand years ago.

Some living trees are older than the Egyptian pyramids.

Antarctica is the largest desert in the world.

Australia is wider than the Moon.

Old church windows are not thicker at the bottom because glass flows.

Water expands when it freezes.

Diamonds and pencil lead are made of the same element.

Bananas are slightly radioactive.

Atoms are almost entirely empty space.

Sound travels about four times faster in water than in air.

Helium makes your voice sound higher without changing its pitch.

Eiffel Tower grows taller in summer.

The word "set" has one of the most meanings in English.

A word that never existed sat in a major dictionary for years.

"OK" started as a joke abbreviation.

"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" uses every letter of the alphabet.

The Hawaiian alphabet has only 13 letters.

The first recorded computer "bug" was a real moth.

The Apollo guidance computer had about 4 KB of memory.

The QWERTY keyboard layout dates back to the 1870s.

The first website is still online.

"Wi-Fi" doesn’t stand for anything.

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

One species of jellyfish can turn back into a younger form.

Greenland sharks can live for hundreds of years.

The pistol shrimp snaps its claw so fast it makes a bubble almost as hot as the Sun’s surface.

Cats sleep for around 12 to 16 hours a day.

Cats have a built-in reflex that turns them feet-first when they fall.

Adult cats rarely meow at each other. They mostly meow at people.

A cat was buried with a person in Cyprus about 9,500 years ago.

Cats have a third eyelid.

A dog’s nose has hundreds of millions of scent receptors, compared with a few million in ours.

Dogs sweat mostly through their paw pads.

Greyhounds can run at about 70 km/h (around 45 mph).

The basenji is a dog that doesn’t bark. It yodels.

Dogs aren’t color-blind. They see mostly in blues and yellows.

Dalmatian puppies are born completely white.

The first animal to orbit Earth was a dog called Laika.

Sharks have been around longer than trees.

Sharks don’t have a single bone in their bodies.

Sharks keep growing new teeth throughout their lives.

The biggest fish in the world is a shark that eats tiny plankton.

Some sharks have to keep swimming to breathe.

Emperor penguins can dive more than 500 metres deep.

Emperor penguin dads keep their egg warm on their feet for about two months.

Only one kind of penguin lives naturally north of the equator, and only just.

Penguins can drink seawater.

Owls fly almost silently.

Some owls have one ear higher than the other.

Owls swallow small prey whole and cough up the bones as pellets.

A giraffe has the same number of neck bones as you: seven.

Male seahorses are the ones that get pregnant.

Polar bears have black skin under their white-looking fur.

Bats are the only mammals that can truly fly.

Butterflies taste with their feet.

A mantis shrimp’s punch is fast enough to crack aquarium glass.

Hippos make their own red sunscreen.

Dolphins sleep with half of their brain at a time.

Horses can’t vomit.

The platypus is a mammal that lays eggs.

The Arctic tern flies about 70,000 km every year.

Sea turtles return to the beach where they hatched to lay their eggs.

No two zebras have exactly the same stripes.

A group of flamingos is called a flamboyance.

A cow’s stomach has four compartments.

Sloths can hold their breath for up to 40 minutes.

Mars is red because it’s covered in rust.

Sunsets on Mars are blue.

Mars has two small, potato-shaped moons named Fear and Dread.

A day on Mars is only about 40 minutes longer than a day on Earth.

Saturn’s rings are huge but in many places only about 10 metres thick.

Saturn has more known moons than any other planet: over 270.

Jupiter spins so fast that a day there lasts less than 10 hours.

Jupiter’s moon Ganymede is bigger than the planet Mercury.

Jupiter is more than twice as massive as all the other planets combined.

Neptune has the fastest winds in the solar system.

Neptune was found by maths before anyone saw it.

Neptune completed its first full orbit since its discovery only in 2011.

Venus is the hottest planet, even though Mercury is closer to the Sun.

After the Moon, Venus is the brightest natural object in the night sky.

Mercury and Venus are the only planets with no moons.

On Mercury, temperatures swing from about 430 °C in the day to about minus 180 °C at night.

Uranus was the first planet discovered with a telescope.

Earth isn’t a perfect sphere. It bulges at the equator.

Days on Earth are slowly getting longer.

The Sun makes up more than 99.8% of the mass of the solar system.

The Moon is drifting away from Earth by about 3.8 cm a year.

We always see the same side of the Moon.

Pluto has a giant heart-shaped plain on its surface.

Pluto was a planet for 76 years.

Japan is made up of more than 14,000 islands.

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Japan has more than 100 active volcanoes.

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One of the world’s oldest companies was a Japanese temple builder founded in 578.

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Italy completely surrounds two other countries.

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The Leaning Tower of Pisa started leaning while it was still being built.

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Italy has more UNESCO World Heritage Sites than almost any other country.

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Mexico City is sinking.

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The Aztecs used cacao beans as money.

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Mexico recognizes 68 national languages.

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At Chichén Itzá, a shadow serpent appears on the pyramid at the equinoxes.

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Iceland has no mosquitoes.

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Finland has about three million saunas for around 5.6 million people.

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France is the most visited country in the world.

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Texas was an independent country for almost ten years.

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Texas is bigger than any country in Europe except Russia.

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One Texas ranch is bigger than the state of Rhode Island.

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South Florida is the only place where alligators and crocodiles live side by side.

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Florida has the longest coastline of any of the lower 48 US states.

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Florida’s highest point is lower than any other US state’s.

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Hawaii is the only US state made entirely of islands.

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Measured from its base on the sea floor, Mauna Kea in Hawaii is taller than Mount Everest.

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Hawaii’s Big Island is still growing.

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Alaska has more coastline than all the other US states combined.

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The United States bought Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million.

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Wyoming let women vote 50 years before the rest of the US.

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The hottest air temperature ever officially recorded on Earth was in Death Valley, California.

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Lightning strikes somewhere on Earth about 44 times every second.

Not a single bridge crosses the Amazon River.

Most of the world’s fresh water is frozen.

Tiny ocean plants make about half of the oxygen we breathe.

The Pacific Ocean is bigger than all of Earth’s land put together.

The deepest part of the ocean is deeper than Mount Everest is tall.

Yellowstone National Park sits on top of a supervolcano.

An avocado is technically a berry.

Fortune cookies aren’t from China.

Most "wasabi" outside Japan is actually horseradish.

Birds can’t feel the heat of chilli peppers.

Strawberries aren’t berries, and their seeds are on the outside.

Many Europeans once believed tomatoes were poisonous.

The ice pop was invented by accident by an 11-year-old.

An Italian bank accepts wheels of Parmesan cheese as security for loans.

Your heart beats about 100,000 times a day.

Head hair grows about 1 cm a month.

Fingernails grow faster than toenails.

You blink around 15 to 20 times a minute.

Your brain uses about 20% of your body’s energy.

The Eiffel Tower was only meant to stand for 20 years.

The first recorded Olympic Games were held in 776 BC.

Vikings reached North America about 500 years before Columbus.

The Statue of Liberty used to be a shiny copper-brown.

The Great Pyramid was the tallest human-made structure for about 3,800 years.

The Mona Lisa was stolen in 1911 and missing for two years.

Helium was discovered on the Sun before it was found on Earth.

Hot air balloons float because hot air is lighter than cold air.

Ordinary glass is made mostly from sand.

Rainbows are really full circles.

Snowflakes almost always have six sides.

Light could travel around the Earth about 7.5 times in one second.

The word "robot" comes from a 1920 Czech play.

"Quarantine" comes from the Italian for "forty days".

The word "nice" used to mean foolish.

The word "ketchup" probably comes from a Chinese fish sauce.

The first text message, sent in 1992, said "Merry Christmas".

Email is older than the World Wide Web by about 20 years.

The first webcam was pointed at a coffee pot.

The first YouTube video was 19 seconds long and filmed at a zoo.

Many people thought Gmail was an April Fools’ joke.

Every dog’s nose print is unique, like a fingerprint.

Dogs can hear much higher sounds than people.

Puppies are born blind and deaf.

Chocolate is poisonous to dogs.

Cats purr when they are hurt or stressed, not only when they are happy.

A cat’s whiskers help it judge whether it can fit through a gap.

Most cats have five toes on each front paw but only four on each back paw.

Cats walk like camels and giraffes, moving both legs on one side first.

Cats have no proper collarbone, so they can squeeze through tight spaces.

In ancient Egypt, families shaved their eyebrows to mourn a pet cat.

A slow blink from a cat is a friendly signal.

Cats have around 200 million scent receptors. People have about 5 million.

Cats can swivel their ears independently, using about 30 muscles in each ear.

Shark skin is covered in tiny teeth-like scales.

Sharks have no swim bladder. An oily liver keeps them afloat.

A hammerhead’s wide head gives it a wider view and a better electric sense.

Unprovoked shark bites on people are rare: usually fewer than 100 a year worldwide.

A year on Mars lasts 687 Earth days.

Mars has a canyon system that would stretch across the United States.

The air on Mars is about 100 times thinner than Earth’s.

You would weigh only about 38% as much on Mars.

Mars has ice caps at both poles.

Dust storms on Mars can cover the whole planet.

A small helicopter made the first powered flight on another planet, on Mars in 2021.

Mars is the only planet known to be inhabited entirely by robots.

Twelve people have walked on the Moon, all between 1969 and 1972.

The Moon has earthquakes, called moonquakes.

The Moon’s gravity causes most of the ocean tides.

The Moon probably formed when a planet-sized object hit the early Earth.

There are golf balls on the Moon.

Gravity on the Moon is about one sixth of Earth’s.

The "dark side of the Moon" is not actually dark.

Temperatures on the Moon swing by nearly 300°C between day and night.

Japan has more than four million vending machines.

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Mount Fuji is an active volcano. It last erupted in 1707.

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One of the world’s oldest hotels is in Japan and opened in the year 705.

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Japan publishes official forecasts for when cherry blossoms will open.

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Japanese trains are so punctual that average delays are measured in seconds.

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Wild monkeys in Japan bathe in hot springs.

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Greater Tokyo is the most populous metropolitan area in the world.

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Japan has about 1,500 earthquakes a year, most of them minor.

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Japan has had hundreds of Kit Kat flavors, including green tea and wasabi.

Six different flags have flown over Texas.

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The Texas State Capitol is taller than the US Capitol.

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Dr Pepper was invented in Waco, Texas, in the 1880s.

Austin’s Congress Avenue Bridge is home to the largest urban bat colony in North America.

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Texas runs most of its own electricity grid, separate from the rest of the US.

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$The State Fair of Texas is greeted by a cowboy statue about 17 meters tall.$ Countries and states

The first word spoken from the Moon was "Houston".

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Texas has more farms and ranches than any other US state.

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Hawaii is one of the most isolated island groups on Earth.

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Hawaii’s state fish is the humuhumunukunukuāpuaʻa.

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Hawaii does not use daylight saving time.

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Hawaii has the only royal palace in the United States.

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Hawaii became the 50th US state in 1959.

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Hawaii is one of the few US states where coffee is grown commercially.

Hawaii has a green sand beach.

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Mauna Loa is the largest active volcano on Earth by volume.

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The summit of Mauna Kea hosts some of the world’s largest telescopes.

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Modern surfing comes from Hawaii.

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Emperor penguins are the tallest penguins, standing about 1.1 meters tall.

A penguin’s black and white coloring is camouflage.

Penguins cannot fly, but their wings work as flippers underwater.

Emperor penguins huddle in groups of thousands to survive the cold.

The smallest penguin is about 30 centimeters tall.

Penguins have very densely packed feathers to keep them warm and waterproof.

Giant penguins as tall as a person once lived.

Owls can turn their heads about 270 degrees.

Owl eyes are tube-shaped, not round.

Burrowing owls live underground.

A group of owls is called a parliament.

Snowy owls hunt in daylight.

The Eurasian eagle-owl has a wingspan of up to about 1.9 meters.

There are hundreds of recognized dog breeds.

The Chihuahua is often called the smallest dog breed.

Great Danes are among the tallest dogs in the world.

A dog’s wet nose helps it smell.

Dogs have whiskers that sense air movement.

Puppies have 28 baby teeth and adult dogs have 42.

A dog’s normal body temperature is higher than ours.

Which way a dog wags its tail may mean something.

Bloodhounds are such good trackers that their trails have been used as evidence in court.

A border collie named Chaser learned the names of more than 1,000 toys.

Sled dogs carried medicine across Alaska in 1925 to stop a diphtheria outbreak.

A dog in Japan waited for his owner at a train station for nearly 10 years.

Dogs dream.

Some dogs hunt by sight, others by smell.

Newfoundland dogs have webbed feet and are famous water rescuers.

Dogs pant to cool down.

Small dog breeds usually live longer than big ones.

Dogs can read human facial expressions.

Pet cats descend from the African wildcat.

Cats spend a lot of their waking time grooming.

A cat’s tongue is covered in tiny hooks.

Kneading is a habit cats keep from kittenhood.

Cats need about one sixth of the light we need to see.

Cats can hear sounds far higher than people can.

Cats can jump several times their own height.

Most orange cats are male.

Almost all calico and tortoiseshell cats are female.

Cats can taste ATP, a chemical in meat that people cannot taste.

Cats sweat through their paws.

A French cat named Félicette went to space in 1963.

The Maine Coon is one of the largest domestic cat breeds.

Cats’ whiskers are as wide as their bodies.

Cats sailed on ships for centuries to catch rats.

Mars is about half as wide as Earth.

Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun.

Mars is named after the Roman god of war.

Mars has seasons, like Earth.

Mars is very cold: around minus 60°C on average.

Mars once had rivers and lakes.

The first successful landing on Mars was in 1976.

A NASA rover has been collecting rock samples on Mars to bring back to Earth.

Pieces of Mars have landed on Earth.

Mars comes closest to Earth about every 26 months.

The daytime sky on Mars is a butterscotch color.

Mars has a huge volcanic region called Tharsis.

You could jump almost three times as high on Mars.

Sunlight on Mars is less than half as strong as on Earth.

Mars has one of the biggest impact craters in the solar system.

Scientists have detected puzzling traces of methane on Mars.

Mars lost its global magnetic field long ago.

The name Texas comes from a Caddo word meaning "friends".

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"Remember the Alamo" was a battle cry of the Texas Revolution.

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Texas has the second-largest population of any US state.

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Three of the ten largest US cities are in Texas.

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The bluebonnet is the state flower of Texas.

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Big Bend National Park has some of the darkest night skies in the US.

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A single oil well in Texas launched the modern oil age in 1901.

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The nine-banded armadillo is the official small mammal of Texas.

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Chili is the official state dish of Texas.

The mockingbird is the state bird of Texas.

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The pecan is the state tree of Texas.

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NASA’s astronaut training center is in Houston.

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Texas has 254 counties, more than any other state.

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$Tex-Mex is a cuisine born in Texas.$ Food

Padre Island is the longest barrier island in the world.

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The highest point in Texas is Guadalupe Peak.

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Texas is the largest state in the contiguous United States.

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There are more than 500 species of shark.

One of the smallest sharks is about 20 centimeters long.

Some sharks glow in the dark.

Great white sharks can grow to about 6 meters long.

Sharks have an excellent sense of smell.

Sharks can feel vibrations in the water.

Some sharks lay eggs in leathery cases called mermaid’s purses.

Sand tiger shark embryos eat their siblings before birth.

Flipping some sharks upside down makes them go still.

The shortfin mako is the fastest shark.

Bull sharks can live in fresh water.

A shark’s skeleton is made of cartilage, the same material as your nose and ears.

The extinct megalodon was one of the largest predators ever.

Each whale shark has a unique pattern of spots.

Tiger sharks are known to eat almost anything.

Many shark species are threatened with extinction.

Nurse sharks suck in their prey like a vacuum.

The goblin shark can shoot its jaws forward to grab prey.

Japan’s name means "origin of the sun".

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Most people in Japan live on four main islands.

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Japan has the oldest continuous hereditary monarchy in the world.

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Japan has one of the highest life expectancies in the world.

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The Japanese yen is one of the world’s most traded currencies.

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Sushi began as a way to preserve fish in fermented rice.

Japan has thousands of hot spring resorts.

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The capsule hotel was invented in Japan.

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The Tokyo Skytree is the tallest tower in the world.

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Sumo is Japan’s national sport.

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Bowing in Japan has different depths for different situations.

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Japan’s manga industry sells hundreds of millions of copies a year.

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Some Tokyo stations have staff who help push passengers onto crowded trains.

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Tipping is not customary in Japan.

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The Shiba Inu is Japan’s oldest and smallest native dog breed.

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About two thirds of Japan is covered in forest.

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Washington, D.C.’s famous cherry trees were a gift from Tokyo.

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Hawaii has eight main islands.

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"Aloha" means much more than hello.

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Hawaii is the only US state with two official languages.

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Hawaii was once the world’s biggest pineapple producer.

Kīlauea is one of the most active volcanoes on Earth.

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The attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 brought the US into World War II.

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Barack Obama was born in Honolulu.

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Thousands of humpback whales visit Hawaii every winter.

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Hawaii’s state bird is a goose, the nēnē.

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It snows in Hawaii.

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Kauaʻi’s Mount Waiʻaleʻale is one of the wettest places on Earth.

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Hawaii celebrates Lei Day every May 1.

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The first Hawaiians arrived by canoe, navigating by the stars.

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A traditional Hawaiian canoe sailed around the world without modern instruments.

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Hawaii has no native land snakes.

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Visitors climb Haleakalā on Maui to watch the sunrise above the clouds.

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Poke is a Hawaiian dish.

Hawaii eats more Spam per person than any other US state.

The Moon is the fifth-largest moon in the solar system.

The Moon is about 384,400 kilometers away.

Moonlight takes about 1.3 seconds to reach Earth.

The Moon has almost no atmosphere.

There is water ice on the Moon.

The Moon goes through its phases every 29.5 days.

The word "month" comes from the Moon.

During a total lunar eclipse, the Moon turns red.

The dark patches on the Moon are ancient lava plains.

Astronauts drove cars on the Moon.

China made the first landing on the Moon’s far side in 2019.

Apollo astronauts brought back 382 kilograms of Moon rock.

A supermoon looks bigger because the Moon is closer.

NASA plans to send astronauts back to the Moon under the Artemis program.

The Moon "rang like a bell" when a rocket stage hit it.

There are about 18 species of penguin.

King penguins are the second-largest penguins.

Adélie penguins are named after a French explorer’s wife.

Chinstrap penguins are named for the thin black line under their chin.

Macaroni penguins are named after an 18th-century fashion.

African penguins bray like donkeys.

You can watch wild penguins on a beach near Cape Town.

Penguins replace all their feathers at once every year.

Many penguins live mainly on krill, fish and squid.

Penguins leap out of the water as they swim.

Penguins slide on their bellies to travel over ice.

Leopard seals are a major predator of penguins.

Penguin parents find their chicks among thousands by sound.

Penguins sneeze out salt.

The African penguin is critically endangered.

The yellow-eyed penguin of New Zealand is one of the rarest penguins.

World Penguin Day is celebrated on 25 April.

There are more than 200 species of owl.

The elf owl is one of the smallest owls in the world.

Blakiston’s fish owl is one of the largest owls and catches fish.

A barn owl’s heart-shaped face works like a satellite dish.

The barn owl is one of the most widespread birds in the world.

Owls can swivel one toe backward.

Owls are far-sighted.

An owl’s "ears" on top of its head are just feathers.

In ancient Greece, the little owl was a symbol of wisdom and of the goddess Athena.

Harry Potter’s owl Hedwig is a snowy owl.

Not all owls are nocturnal.

The classic "hoot" is mostly a territorial call.

Many owls are camouflaged to look like tree bark.

Small birds gang up on owls in daylight.

Owl eggs are almost always white.

Owl chicks hatch days apart.

Snowy owls can eat over 1,000 lemmings a year.

The northern spotted owl became a symbol of US forest protection.

Barn owls can catch mice in complete darkness.

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest.

Jupiter has no solid surface.

Jupiter has around 95 known moons.

Galileo discovered Jupiter’s four biggest moons in 1610.

Jupiter’s moon Io is the most volcanic place in the solar system.

Jupiter’s moon Europa probably hides an ocean under its ice.

Jupiter has faint rings.

A year on Jupiter lasts about 12 Earth years.

Jupiter has the strongest magnetic field of any planet.

Jupiter has auroras bigger than Earth.

A comet smashed into Jupiter in 1994.

Jupiter’s gravity may protect Earth from some comets.

Jupiter is often the fourth-brightest object in the night sky.

Jupiter is named after the king of the Roman gods.

Jupiter’s stripes are bands of clouds moving in opposite directions.

Jupiter’s top clouds are made of ammonia ice.

The Great Red Spot is shrinking.

Ganymede is the only moon known to have its own magnetic field.

Callisto is one of the most heavily cratered objects in the solar system.

Jupiter gives off more heat than it receives from the Sun.

Europe’s JUICE mission is heading to Jupiter’s icy moons.

Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest.

Saturn’s rings are made mostly of chunks of ice.

Saturn’s main rings would stretch most of the way from Earth to the Moon.

Saturn’s rings seem to disappear every 13 to 16 years.

Galileo thought Saturn had "ears".

Saturn’s moon Titan has a thicker atmosphere than Earth.

Titan has lakes and seas of liquid methane.

A probe landed on Titan in 2005.

There is a giant hexagon-shaped storm at Saturn’s north pole.

A day on Saturn lasts about 10.5 hours.

A year on Saturn lasts about 29 Earth years.

Winds on Saturn can reach about 1,800 km/h.

Saturn is made mostly of hydrogen and helium.

Saturn’s moon Iapetus is two-toned.

Saturn is named after the Roman god of farming and wealth.

Saturn was the farthest planet known in ancient times.

Saturn’s rings may be young, in planetary terms.

Saturn’s rings are slowly raining onto the planet.

Small "shepherd moons" keep some of Saturn’s rings in shape.

Saturn has giant storms that circle the whole planet.

NASA plans to fly a drone on Titan.

Saturn’s moon Hyperion looks like a giant sponge.

Neptune is the eighth and farthest planet from the Sun.

A year on Neptune lasts about 165 Earth years.

A day on Neptune lasts about 16 hours.

Neptune is an "ice giant".

Methane helps make Neptune blue.

Neptune is about four times as wide as Earth.

Neptune was first seen through a telescope in 1846.

Neptune had a storm as big as Earth, the Great Dark Spot.

Neptune’s largest moon, Triton, orbits backward.

Triton has geysers of nitrogen.

Triton is one of the coldest places measured in the solar system.

Triton is slowly spiraling toward Neptune.

Neptune has 16 known moons.

Neptune has dark, faint rings.

Neptune’s outer ring has clumps named Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.

Neptune gives off more than twice the heat it gets from the Sun.

Neptune has seasons that last about 40 years each.

Neptune is named after the Roman god of the sea.

Neptune became the farthest planet again in 2006.

Pluto is sometimes closer to the Sun than Neptune.

It may rain diamonds inside Neptune.

Gravity at Neptune’s cloud tops is a little stronger than Earth’s.

Sunlight takes about four hours to reach Neptune.

Neptune has its own Trojan asteroids.

Neptune’s moon Nereid has one of the most stretched-out orbits of any moon.

Venus is the second planet from the Sun.

Venus spins backward.

The air pressure on Venus is about 90 times Earth’s.

Venus is covered in clouds of sulfuric acid.

Venus’s atmosphere is about 96% carbon dioxide.

The surface of Venus is about 465°C.

The first photos from another planet’s surface came from Venus.

No lander has survived on Venus for more than about two hours.

Venus sometimes crosses in front of the Sun.

Venus is named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty.

Venus has more volcanoes than any other planet.

Venus’s surface was mapped by radar.

Venus’s clouds race around the planet in about four days.

A year on Venus lasts about 225 Earth days.

Venus comes closer to Earth than any other planet.

Venus has phases like the Moon.

Almost every feature on Venus is named after a woman.

Scientists have debated for decades whether Venus has lightning.

A 2020 study sparked debate about possible life in Venus’s clouds.

New missions to Venus are planned.

On Venus, the time from one sunrise to the next is about 117 Earth days.

You cannot see Venus’s surface with a normal telescope.

Venus has strange flat volcanoes called pancake domes.

Much of Venus’s surface may be relatively young.

The Sun is about 4.6 billion years old.

In about 5 billion years the Sun will swell into a red giant.

The Sun’s core is about 15 million °C.

The Sun’s surface is about 5,500 °C.

The Sun’s outer atmosphere is hotter than its surface.

The Sun is made mostly of hydrogen and helium.

The Sun turns about 4 million tonnes of matter into energy every second.

Energy made in the Sun’s core can take thousands of years to reach the surface.

Sunspots are cooler, darker patches on the Sun.

The Sun has an activity cycle of about 11 years.

The northern and southern lights are caused by the Sun.

A solar storm in 1859 made telegraph lines spark.

The Sun spins faster at its equator than near its poles.

The Sun is about 400 times wider than the Moon and about 400 times farther away.

Never look straight at the Sun, even during an eclipse.

The Sun orbits the center of the Milky Way.

Almost all life on Earth depends on energy from the Sun.

Your skin makes vitamin D using sunlight.

Solar flares release enormous energy in minutes.

The Latin word for the Sun is "sol".

The average distance from Earth to the Sun is about 150 million kilometers.

Earth is closest to the Sun in early January.

Sunlight contains every color of the rainbow.

Italy is shaped like a boot.

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Italy became a single country only in 1861.

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Italy became a republic in 1946.

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The Vatican City, inside Rome, is the smallest country in the world.

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San Marino claims to be the oldest surviving republic in the world.

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Mount Etna in Sicily is one of the most active volcanoes on Earth.

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Mount Vesuvius buried Pompeii in the year 79.

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Venice is built on more than 100 small islands.

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There are no cars in central Venice.

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Modern pizza comes from Naples.

There are hundreds of pasta shapes.

Espresso was developed in Italy.

Italy is one of the world’s largest wine producers.

The Colosseum could hold around 50,000 spectators.

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People throw thousands of euros a day into the Trevi Fountain.

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The Renaissance began in Italy.

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The Mona Lisa was painted in Italy but hangs in Paris.

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Ferrari, Lamborghini and Maserati are all Italian.

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The University of Bologna is the oldest university in continuous operation.

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Standard Italian is based on the dialect of Florence.

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The piano was invented in Italy.

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Gelato has less air than American ice cream.

Rome is nicknamed the Eternal City.

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Italy’s one-euro coin shows Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man.

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The Dolomites are a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

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Tiramisu means "pick me up" in Italian.

Mexico has 31 states plus Mexico City.

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Mexico has the most Spanish speakers of any country.

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Mexico City sits about 2,240 meters above sea level.

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Mexico City was built on a lake.

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Day of the Dead is celebrated on 1 and 2 November.

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Chocolate was first made in Mesoamerica.

Corn was domesticated in Mexico.

Chili peppers were domesticated in Mexico.

A volcano appeared in a Mexican farmer’s cornfield in 1943.

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The asteroid that ended the age of dinosaurs hit Mexico.

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The Yucatán Peninsula has thousands of cenotes.

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Teotihuacan’s Pyramid of the Sun is one of the largest pyramids in the world.

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Millions of monarch butterflies spend the winter in Mexico.

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Wild axolotls live only in the Xochimilco area of Mexico City.

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Mexico has more UNESCO World Heritage Sites than any other country in the Americas.

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Mexico celebrates independence on 16 September, not 5 May.

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A Mexican inventor created an early color television system.

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Mariachi music is on UNESCO’s list of Intangible Cultural Heritage.

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Real tequila can only be made in Mexico.

Mexico is one of the world’s most biodiverse countries.

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The largest pyramid in the world by volume is in Mexico.

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Frida Kahlo’s Blue House is a museum in Mexico City.

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Mexico’s Copper Canyon is larger than the Grand Canyon.

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Florida is nicknamed the Sunshine State.

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Florida grows most of the oranges for US orange juice.

The Everglades is a slow-moving river of grass.

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Everglades National Park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

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Manatees gather in Florida’s warm springs in winter.

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Every crewed US launch to the Moon left from Florida.

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St. Augustine is the oldest continuously inhabited European-founded city in the US.

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Florida’s name comes from Spanish.

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A highway of bridges links the Florida Keys.

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Key West is the southernmost city in the contiguous US.

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Florida has more lightning than almost anywhere else in the US.

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Florida is hit by more hurricanes than any other US state.

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Florida has hundreds of freshwater springs.

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Walt Disney World is about the size of San Francisco.

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Gatorade was invented at the University of Florida.

The Florida panther is one of the most endangered mammals in the US.

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Florida’s capital is Tallahassee, not Miami or Orlando.

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Florida has the third-largest population of any US state.

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Florida has the only living coral barrier reef in the continental US.

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Florida has more sinkholes than any other US state.

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The mockingbird is Florida’s state bird.

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Miami Beach has one of the largest collections of Art Deco buildings in the world.

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A huge fort stands on a remote island off Florida.

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The sabal palm is Florida’s state tree.

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Part of Florida is in a different time zone.

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The Cuban sandwich has deep roots in Tampa and Miami.

Florida has no state income tax.

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Earth lights up the Moon’s dark side.

Rodeo is the official state sport of Texas.

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Venus may once have had water on its surface.

Vanilla comes from Mexico.

Rockhopper penguins hop from rock to rock.