The Best Interesting Random Facts
The praying mantis got its name from its appearance. It is a long, slender, green and brown insect which stands with its front legs held folded up high in front of its body. This stance, however, is not spiritual; it is purely practical. The mantis’ front legs are spiked, and they are kept folded so […]
The word throne is simply a euphemism for toilet, and we have plenty of them for subjects that are considered unmentionable. There are many more names for the toilet, such as: hopper, Johnny, janey, loo, potty, or privy. This particular euphemism, throne, is said to have come from none other than King Louis XIV, who […]
Kangaroo rats are small rodents that live in North America, and their name comes from the way they hop like a kangaroo, although they are not related. There are currently 19 kangaroo rat species and they have highly developed hind legs, live in deep burrows to protect them from the desert heat, and do not […]
The albumen, or white, of an egg is 88 percent water and 12 percent a mixture of about a dozen different proteins. But most (54 percent) of the protein is ovalbumin, each of whose huge molecules contains more than three thousand atoms, including only six atoms of sulfur. Nevertheless, that tiny amount of sulfur can […]
Trout and Salmon are so closely related that some fishermen and scientists have trouble classifying the individual species. Techincally, Trout is a species of freshwater and saltwater fish. Salmon belong to some of the same family as trout but, unlike most trout, most salmon species spend almost all their lives in salt water. Both Trout […]
Although Peacocks are not migratory, peafowl of both sexes can indeed fly. They fly pretty high, actually, and will usually roost in the tops of trees at night for protection in the wild. It would be difficult for them to fly far, though, as their tails would produce too much of a drag for longer […]
Photography Most people keep photos as a reminder of special people and moments. Unfortunately, photos can also remind us of all our bad hair days and fashion blunders. Say Cheese. People have known how to project images using a pinhole camera for thousands of years, they were using them in China 2,500 years ago. But […]
The weight of an object is really a measure of the force of gravity exerted on it by the earth. So bodies such as the earth and the moon don’t really “weigh” anything. But the earth and the moon do have mass, which is a measure of how much matter these bodies are composed of. […]
Dingoes are wild dogs native to Australia the size of English setters, and hunt wallabies, sheep, rabbits, and anything else they can catch and drag away. In 1998 a dingo was accused of dragging a baby a few feet toward the bush before being chased away by the infant’s parents. In a celebrated murder case […]
You’ve probably put pepper on your food thousands of times. But did you ever realize that it comes from a fruit? Black pepper comes from a shrub that grows in Southeast Asia and Indonesia. The shrub is a climbing plant that climbs up tree trunks the same way that ivy does. Workers pick the small […]
Spam isn’t that bad, there’s nothing strange in the meat even though it’s cheap. It’s pork shoulder that’s been chopped, spiced, and formed into loaves. Every meat packer runs into the problem that some parts of an animal are more popular than others. For the George A. Hormel Company in 1937, the unwanted part was […]
Bear cubs and humans cubs are built in kind of the same way: they’re sturdy, fairly well balanced, and capable of walking upright. In addition, they both put their heels down first when they walk. So for trainers at the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, where bears have been performing since the turn […]
Hippos eat mostly grass, and are classified as herbivores. A hippo’s specialized eyes and nose, located on the top of its head, help it stay almost entirely submerged for large portions of the day. Young hippos actually have a specialized tongue that lets them dive down and nurse while under water. That said, during the […]
Toadstools that force their way up through asphalt are probably ink-cap mushrooms (Coprinus) growing on buried plant debris. They are pushing upwards because their stalks function as vertical hydraulic jacks. The upward pressure comes from the turgor pressure of the individual cells making up the wall of the hollow stalk of the mushroom. Each individual […]
Naturally, how long it takes depends on how fast you can count. But if you can count from 1 to 100 in one minute, and you keep counting every minute, without stopping, for eight hours every day (taking time off to eat, sleep, and go to school), you would reach 1 million in 20 days, […]
Cobwebs are made by spiders. The word “cob” is derived from the Middle English word for spider, coppe, and cobweb is often used to refer to any spiderweb. The dusty strings that do not look like the circular Halloween spiderwebs, which are made by only some species, are instead probably an accumulation of abandoned draglines. […]
The rhubarb is a plant that was known to the ancient Greeks, and it was they who named it. The general theory explaining its source is that the plant was native to the regions along the river Volga, then known as the Rha. This, of course, was territory foreign to the Greeks, and was therefore […]
Many experts in the scientific community disagree on whether the second biggest animal is the white rhinoceros or the hippopotamus. Since the debate rages on, we’ll throw in our two cents. On average, the rhinoceros measures taller than the hippo, making it the second largest land animal by height. However, on average, the hippopotamus weighs […]
The llama is the animal which defends itself by spitting. Llamas spit bad-smelling saliva through their teeth when they are angry or annoyed, and also to protect themselves. They are said to have great accuracy in spitting. The camel, which belongs to the same family as the llama, also possesses this trait. Both camels and […]
Lobsters have blood that is colorless unless exposed to oxygen, when it develops a bluish tint. Lobsters are mostly gray, green, or brown when alive, but never red. Boiling them breaks down the pigments that color their shells. The most durable heat-resistant pigments are the carotin-based reds, and they are last to break down during […]
Checkers is one of the oldest games in the world, with a variation played in the days of the early Egyptian pharaohs in about 1600 B.C. The game was mentioned in the works of Homer and Plato, too. About 800 years ago, checkers was adapted to the 64-square chessboard, and by the 16th century, it […]
Marsupials are a family of mammals with a distinctive pouch called the marsupium, which females use to carry their young. The only native North American marsupial is the opossum, and the only other marsupial that doesn’t live in Australia is the shrew opossum from South America. All others live in Australia and the surrounding islands. […]
Hippos spend the day in the water to keep their body temperature down, and to keep their skin from drying out. Each night, under the cover of darkness, hippos wade out of their pools and march as far as six miles in search of food. Hippos spend four to five hours grazing and can consume […]
Scientists in Kyoto, Japan, clocked the growth of a group of bamboo plants and watched as one of them set a world record. This plant grew 48 inches in 24 hours, two inches an hour. If you had been there, you could have watched it growing. In China, people used to listen to the bamboo […]
Legend has it that whenever the French-speaking Mary, Queen of Scots, wasn’t feeling well, she would insist on a medicinal concoction made with boiled oranges. The orders the kitchen received were that Marie was malade, which is French for “sick,” leading to “Marie malade,” or marmalade. This, of course, is untrue. Marmalade is from the […]
The Bald Eagle, also known by its scientific name Haliaeetus leucocephalus, is a bird of prey native to North America. Bald eagles have white head feathers that contrast with their brown-and-gray body feathers. The word bald actually comes from the Old English root bhel, meaning “gleaming,” or “white,” and this is where they got their […]
There are four basic “ingredients” that go into the “recipe” for making soil: tiny pieces of rock, decayed plants and animals, water, and air. When small pieces of rock break off larger ones, they form the basis of all soil. This breaking can occur in several ways: through the action of glaciers pushing rocks along […]
Although the smallest snakes are no larger than worms, they are all predators. Small snakes eat insects. Larger snakes eat rats or squirrels or rabbits. The huge pythons and anacondas can swallow a deer. Some snakes use poison called venom to catch animals. They deliver their poison with a bite. Others are constrictors, which means […]
According to legend, after Marie Antoinette’s beheading on 16 October 1793, the executioner lifted her severed head and slapped her face, which blushed a bright red. However, this is probably unlikely, considering how much blushing is dependent on blood moving through veins. In fact, witnesses to other beheadings described the victim’s face as immediately drained […]
An equestrian statue is a statue of a horse-mounted rider, and the term comes from the Latin word “eques”, meaning “knight” and a derivative of “equus”, which means “horse”. Statues of horse and rider are exclusively of monarchs or great warriors and are usually found in places of honor. The tradition is that if the […]