It’s impossible to know everything about everything – it just can’t happen. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not worth trying, right? Know as much as you can, and you’re armed for as many situations as possible. You never know what life is going to throw your way!
So, here are a few little-known facts that should be better known.
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Scientists in Russia managed to make a 32,000-year-old plant bloom.
They found seeds contained in ancient squirrel burrows that had been buried under the permafrost for millennia, and radiocarbon dating confirmed that they were about 32,000 years old.
Three of the immature seeds found in the ancient squirrel stash were found to contain viable embryos, which the scientists grew in vitro. They matured, flowered, and grew new seeds of their own, too.
Fireflies are the most efficient source of light in the world.
Fireflies – or lightning bugs, if you prefer – create light using a chemical reaction between luciferin and the enzyme luciferase. In that chemical reaction, 100% of the energy gets emitted as light – no heat is given off.
By comparison, an old incandescent light bulb only emits about 10% of its energy as light – the rest is heat.
This isn’t a tree root – it’s a moment frozen in time.
This is what you might be able to dig out of the beach if you ever see one get struck by lightning. Fulgurite like this is created when the incredibly high temperature of a lightning bolt makes the grains of sand fuse together.
Note, however, that fulgurite tends to be quite fragile, so handle with care.
Remora fish come with their own suction cups.
Their heads have ridges on them that allow them to stick to things, which in the wild allows them to stick to larger fish like sharks and dolphins to catch a faster ride covering large distances.
Scientists have also developed a suction cup based off the remora that is reportedly 3.5 times stronger than existing silicon suction cups.
This is actually a high-end encryption system.
Cloudflare uses about 100 lava lamps , arranged on a wall and with a camera pointing at them, to encrypt about 10% of the entire internet. It’s pretty clever: The lava lamps are endless generators of randomness, which is key to effective encryption.
The wall is right in Cloudflare’s lobby, too. If someone steps in front of the camera, it only adds to the degree of randomness, helping even further with the encryption rather than hindering it.
This is what an artichoke looks like if you don’t pick it.
Even if you forget about your artichoke plant and have to do something else for dip, you end up with a beautiful purple flower.
So even if it doesn’t end up on your table, it can still go on your table, you know?
Although this resembles a tarantula with wings, it’s not even remotely dangerous.
Which is not to say that you’d be greatly comforted to find one in your bed, of course. However, the Antharea polyphemus moth seen here is quite harmless.
You can propel a leaf across a body of water with only a bit of ink.
It’s all about surface tension. The ink’s lower surface tension compared to the water’s pulls the leaf along like a little boat. Check it out! Some rainy day science for the kids.
Ranchers in Botswana paint eyes on their cows’ rear ends to prevent lion attacks.
Lion attacks have been devastating to ranchers’ livestock in Botswana, but of course hunting lions is illegal there, not to mention how unconscionable it is to kill such majestic beasts. So, researchers came up with another way after seeing a lion give up on attacking an impala after it turned to face the lion.
Early results showed that, indeed, the painted-on eyes did show some promise toward preventing lion attacks.
The Mars rover Curiosity recorded a solar eclipse.
The moon blocks out the sun almost completely during an eclipse here on Earth because the sun is 400 times larger than the moon, but also about 400 times farther from the Earth. Because of this coincidental congruity, the sun and the moon appear to be roughly the same size.
Mars’ moon Phobos is much smaller, and so it doesn’t completely block out the sun during an eclipse there.
To learn posture, Chinese soldiers reinforce their positioning with pins.
As in, they get stuck in a very tender spot if their posture isn’t exactly right.
I have to think that a sharp jab in the throat from a pin would work quite effectively as a reminder to keep your head up.
Your belly button is incredibly dirty.
Everyone’s is! Scientists are constantly finding new bacteria in people’s belly buttons. In one man, they found a bacteria that had previously only been found in Japanese soil. He’d never been to Japan.
This little featherless penguin went through quite the journey.
Initially born without any feathers in an aquarium in China , he was immediately shunned and abandoned by his parents. Once the keepers at the aquarium noticed what was happening, they took him in and discovered he had a digestive issue that was preventing feather growth.
After hand feeding him for weeks, he got his feathers back and was reintroduced to his family, who welcomed him with open arms!
When you unintentionally buy an island to impress your girlfriend.
That’s what happened to Richard Branson . He was only pretending to buy the land in the British Virgin Islands, offering $100,000 on a $6 million listing. The owner actually spoke with him though, and they settled on $180,000. Oh, and that girl he was trying to impress? He’d go on to marry her there 11 years later!
Toronto is littered with fake houses.
Inside these fake houses, however, are transformers. Not the robot kind, but the power kind, converting high voltage electricity to a voltage that’s low enough to be sent across the city.
Called “residential substations,” they’re designed to blend in seamlessly with the neighborhood around them.
Horses hide pain incredibly well.
Almost too well , in fact. Due to them being prey animals, they’ve essentially trained themselves to never show weakness so as to not be picked off by predators. Of course, this becomes an issue for those who own horses, as by the time you realize something’s wrong, it could be too late.
Apparently the same goes for many domesticated bird species such as budgies, cockatiels, and parrots.
Your betta fish is smarter than you think.
Betta fish are incredibly intelligent . They can learn tricks, albeit simple ones, like dogs, but most impressively, they actually remember who their owners are and are able to recognize them. Most fish species don’t even come close to this level of intelligence.
When you get a sunburn, it’s your skin protecting itself.
During the sunburn process , your skin cells flag down white blood cells telling them “hey, I’m being hurt right now, and might in turn become cancerous, so just kill me while we’re ahead,” and the white blood cell obliges. Of course, sunburns are still damaging, but it’s good to know they’re trying to look out for you as best as they can.
Making a fishy friend.
A Japanese diver named Hiroyuki Arakawa has a job where, every year, he dives down to clean an underwater Shinto shrine He’s been doing so for 25 years. Over time, he’s made friends with one of the fish, an Asian sheepshead wrasse named Yokiro. Yokiro comes to greet him during his dives now, and hangs out with him while he cleans!
Did you know that human hair can absorb and hold 3-9 times its own weight in oil?
And due to this, human hair from wig makers and salons are being crafted into oil-absorbing booms for oil spills. This even applies to pet hair, meaning pet groomers could get in on it, too!
Human milk isn’t necessarily for feeding your baby.
In fact, human milk has properties and components that are entirely indigestible by babies. That doesn’t make it bad, though. Those exact components are instead used to feed vital bacteria within the baby’s stomach. Proper feeding of microbes in a baby’s stomach is important for digestive growth and development!
A sperm whale could kill a human using only their voice.
The sperm whale’s call is not just dangerous, but potentially deadly . They can vocalize at about 230 decibels, and for comparison, a jet engine that’s 100 feet away from you runs at about 140 decibels. By making a sound that loud, a sperm whale could paralyze or kill a human by essentially vibrating them to death.
An unconventional growing method, to say the least.
Studies have shown that tomato plants fertilized with human urine not only produce up to four times more fruit, but the fruit it produces is higher in beta-carotene and protein. Here’s hoping this…doesn’t catch on, despite the benefits.
This lake in northern Quebec was created by a meteorite strike about 1.4 million years ago.
Pingualuit Crater is more than two miles in diameter and is almost 900 feet deep.
Because it’s cut off from any outside water supply other than precipitation, it has a unique sediment profile, extending well past the last Ice Age, unlike all the land around it.
We almost didn’t make it.
Humans nearly went extinct 72,000 years ago after being brought down to only 40 “breeding pairs.” The cause of this was likely due to the eruption of Toba, a massive volcano in what is now known as Indonesia.
Science writer Sam Kean wrote that the effects of the eruption, “dimmed the sun for six years, disrupted seasonal rains, choked off streams and scattered whole cubic miles of hot ash across acres and acres of plants.”
Edinburgh Castle is built on top of an extinct volcano…you read that right.
The last time it was active was 350 million years ago. Castle Rock rises 430 feet above sea level with an eastward slope that makes it the perfect place to defend from attacks.
Not only are there 7500 different varieties of apples, but some of them are gorgeous!
This is called a pink pearl apple , available on the west coast of the U.S. in late summer. Visually stunning, they’re also said to smell like grapefruit and taste like raspberry!
From a tool to an aesthetic choice, this is a shishi-odoshi.
Shishi-odoshi , also known as a “deer scare,” are those water-powered bamboo poles that, upon filling with enough water, fall against a rock to make a “dook” sound before rising back up. They were originally created to scare both deer and boar away from eating nearby plants, but have now become an aesthetic feature in gardens for their look and the sound they make.
