Did you know?

8 September 2026

1. 01

   Mercury's single day, from sunrise to sunrise, lasts about 176 Earth days — longer than its 88-day year.

2. 02

   Neptune takes about 165 Earth years to complete a single orbit around the Sun.

3. 03

   Astronaut footprints left on the Moon during the Apollo missions could last millions of years, since there is no wind or water to erode them.

4. 04

   Saturn's moon Titan has lakes and rivers made of liquid methane and ethane instead of water.

5. 05

   Uranus rotates almost completely on its side, with an axis tilted about 98 degrees, likely from an ancient collision.

6. 06

   Mars is home to Olympus Mons, the tallest volcano in the solar system, standing about 22 kilometers high.

7. 07

   Flamingos are born gray; their feathers turn pink from pigments in the shrimp and algae they eat.

8. 08

   Axolotls can regrow entire limbs, along with parts of their heart, spinal cord and brain.

9. 09

   Mantis shrimp have up to 16 types of color-receptive cones in their eyes, compared with just 3 in humans.

10. 10

    The jellyfish species Turritopsis dohrnii can revert its cells to an earlier stage of life, effectively resetting its own aging.

11. 11

    A shrimp's heart is located in its head, just behind its brain.

12. 12

    Glass is a rigid amorphous solid, not a slow-moving liquid, despite a persistent popular myth.

13. 13

    Diamonds can be manufactured by subjecting pure carbon, even from everyday sources, to extreme heat and pressure.

14. 14

    Breathing helium raises the pitch of your voice because sound travels roughly three times faster through helium than through normal air.

15. 15

    Antarctica is technically the world's largest desert, since deserts are defined by low precipitation rather than temperature.

16. 16

    A river in the Peruvian Amazon, heated by geothermal energy, can reach temperatures close to boiling.

17. 17

    The Amazon rainforest releases so much moisture into the air that it generates much of its own rainfall.

18. 18

    A single fungus growing underground in Oregon is considered the largest known living organism, spanning several square kilometers.

19. 19

    The human nose can distinguish over a trillion different scents, far more than once believed.

20. 20

    Pound for pound, human bone is about as strong as steel, but far lighter.

21. 21

    Human babies are born with about 300 bones, many of which fuse together into the 206 bones of an adult skeleton.

22. 22

    Human hair is one of the fastest-growing tissues in the body, second only to bone marrow.

23. 23

    The first recorded computer "bug" was an actual moth, found trapped in a Harvard Mark II computer in 1947.

24. 24

    The QWERTY keyboard layout was arranged partly to slow typists down and prevent early mechanical typewriters from jamming.

25. 25

    Fiber-optic cables carry data as pulses of light, allowing signals to travel thousands of kilometers with little loss.

26. 26

    The world's first webcam was built at Cambridge University in 1991 just to monitor a coffee pot.