The Best Interesting Random Facts
Tornadoes have been reported in every state in America, and have occurred in every season! But most tornadoes occur from April to June, and especially strike in the southern states. In recent years, Oklahoma has had the most tornadoes in terms of area: about eight tornadoes for every 10,000 square miles. Mississippi has had the […]
To many people, Iceland is a strange and eerie place. It sits in the North Atlantic on top of a range of ancient volcanoes that rise from the ocean floor. It also has, from time to time, strange and mysterious pools of death. An animal walking across a pasture will suddenly fall over and die. […]
Far in the northwest portion of Alaska, there is an amazing valley. It is the valley of the Kobuk River. Here, 40 miles above the Arctic Circle, there are sand dunes, some of which are 100 feet high! The Kobuk River Valley looks like the Sahara Desert, with great stretches of endless sand. There is […]
In cold weather, low temperatures cause the body to lose heat. But the wind also takes heat from the body, so a temperature reading doesn’t always tell us how cold it really feels. The wind chill factor was devised by weathermen to show how the temperature and the wind combine to produce the feeling of […]
The Dead Sea, on the border between Israel and Jordan, is really a lake, fed from the north by the Jordan River. Although the Jordan pours 4,740,000 tons of fresh water into the Dead Sea each day, that fresh water evaporates very quickly because of the extreme heat in this part of the world. The […]
The huge stone slab at Mystery Hill in New Hampshire has long been a puzzle. Who put it there? Why? And what was it used for? The slab seems to be the top of a stone table, which may have been the scene of animal or human sacrifice. The grooves along the edge of the […]
Near Hillsboro, Ohio, is a large mound of earth that stretches a distance of a quarter of a mile. It seems to be just another of the burial mounds built in the Midwest by the Indians who lived in the area long before the white man came. It isn’t. There is something very special about […]
No. Dark, dirty snow absorbs the heat rays of the sun more quickly than clean, white snow, which reflects these rays back into the air. So dirty snow melts faster than clean snow. Actually, clean snow isn’t white at all. The tiny flakes are frozen, colorless ice crystals which reflect the light and make the […]
For people who live north of the equator, the shortest day of the year falls around Dec. 22. This day is called the winter solstice. (The longest day of the year is called the summer solstice, and falls around June 21.) But the winter solstice falls at the beginning of winter, not in the colder […]
The Bible tells of two sacred trees in the Garden of Eden, the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge. Adam and Eve were permitted to eat the fruit from any tree in the Garden of Eden except the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, since God did not want them to have the […]
The Amazon Rain Forest is the Biggest Forest in the World. And because plants and trees supply our atmosphere with the oxygen all animals need to stay alive, this huge forest is very important to all of us. The Amazon rain forest supplies one-fifth of the world’s oxygen. It is often called the “Lungs of […]
Since there are five oceans and many more seas in the world than seven, you may have wondered what people mean when they say the “seven seas.” Don’t go looking on a map for the seven seas, because you’ll never find them. “Seven seas” is just an expression meaning all the oceans and seas of […]
The word “laser” is an acronym, a word formed from the first letters of a series of words. “Laser” actually stands for “light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation.” Invented in the 1950s, the laser is the most powerful source of energy man has discovered. To create a laser beam, light is focused on a […]
We call our moon “the moon” because it’s the only moon that earth has. But some of the other planets have moons too. And all of the planets that do have moons have more than one! Mars and Neptune each have two moons, Uranus has five moons, and Saturn has ten. Jupiter, the largest planet, […]
Anyone who has been to the Grand Canyon in Arizona would have trouble believing that the awesome gorge isn’t the deepest on earth. True, the Grand Canyon is the largest canyon in the world, over 215 miles long and more than 12 miles across at some points, but the Grand Canyon is “only” about 7,000 […]
When you put salt on ice or snow, it begins to melt. This is because the salt lowers the freezing point of water. The more salt added, the more it melts. As the salt dissolves, it creates heat, melting more water and dissolving more salt. That’s why towns plow roads to clear them of snow […]
Earthquakes with a Richter scale reading of more than 5.5 have caused great loss of life and property, and quakes with a 7.0 reading almost always cause massive destruction. A number of quakes that took place during this century have measured over 8.0 on the Richter scale. The two most powerful measured 8.9 on the […]
It might sound strange to say that rain keeps the earth dry, but that’s exactly what it does. The process that results in rain gathers moisture from the air and concentrates it in clouds, which later deposit the water in the form of rain. If this moisture didn’t condense to form rain, then the atmosphere […]
As a big star runs out of fuel to burn, it begins to shrink. And as it shrinks, all its atoms are crushed together into a smaller and smaller area. Then, even the particles that make up the atoms are squashed together too. The result is a small, very heavy ball of atoms called a […]
Our sun is over 2.5 million miles around at its equator. If an airplane could stand the heat and fly close to its surface, it would take six months of flying day and night to travel around the sun. In fact, 109 earths could fit along the diameter of the sun. Our sun is really […]
People nine miles away from the explosion heard nothing at all. No noise. Not a whisper. Yet 200 miles away, the sound of the explosion of the volcano we call Mount Saint Helens was so loud it was almost deafening. Mysteriously, when the volcano exploded, it created a ring of silence 200 miles wide. Within […]
The Aleutian Islands are said to have the worst weather in the world. They are far to the north and lie in the Bering Sea between Alaska and Russia. They are not so far north as to be in the Arctic. There are colder places, like the Antarctic, which holds the record for both one-time […]
In the rain forests of Sumatra, an Indonesian island, grows a very strange plant called the rafflesia. This plant has no stem and no leaves, but consists of just a single flower. And that flower is the biggest in the world, often measuring over three feet across. A full-grown rafflesia weighs 15 pounds, and can […]
Snow is actually water vapor that has frozen in the clouds into shimmering six-sided ice crystals. These ice crystals appear white instead of colorless, as does water, because all the sides of the little ice crystals that make up a snowflake reflect light. The amazing thing is that although billions of snowflakes fall in a […]
Tidal waves have nothing to do with the tides, which are caused by the gravity of the moon and the sun. A better term for a tidal wave is a seismic sea wave, or a tsunami, a word which comes from Japan, where tidal waves are common. Tsunamis are caused by earthquakes under or near […]
Our earth is composed of three main types of rocks, each having been formed in its own special way. The first type, igneus rock, was formed when hot (2,000°F.), melted rock material, magma, deep inside the earth rose to the surface during earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, or other movements of the earth’s crust. This magma cooled […]
The earth is 24,902 miles around at its widest point. The furthest apart any two points on earth can be is no more than half of that, 12,451 miles. There are no two cities on earth that are exactly that far apart, but some come close. The distance between Wellington, New Zealand, and Paris, France, […]
Some plants depend on animals such as birds or insects to carry their seeds away to start new plants; others just drop their seeds onto the ground about them, and new plants soon sprout, or are carried to other locations by the wind. But a number of plants, like the squirting cucumber, have a strange […]
Just as your parents today might put a fence around your property to keep out unwanted guests or animals, Emperor Shih Huang Ti built a wall to keep out China’s enemies in 221 B.C. But his wall, the longest in the world, was 1500 miles long, or about the distance from New York City to […]
Not only does the light from the stars appear to twinkle or jump about, it also appears to change color. When the light from the stars is traveling through space, there is no twinkling or changing of color. It is the earth’s atmosphere that makes the stars twinkle and change color. This is brought about […]
The krubi, a plant found in the jungles of Indonesia, is remarkable for two reasons. First, it’s the fastest-growing plant on earth; and second, it forms the biggest group of flowers in the plant kingdom. The krubi looks something like an overgrown tulip, with a long spike growing upward out of its center. But the […]
No one can be certain, because no one can see the entire universe. But so far, the farthest star from earth that scientists have found is about ten billion light-years away. Since one light-year is equal to six trillion miles, then the farthest star from earth that we know about is around 60,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles away! […]
Jet streams are high-speed winds that circle the southern and Northern hemispheres. In order to find them, you have to climb to at least 10,000 feet or, perhaps, even 40,000 feet. Jet Streams occur at the tropopause and are caused by a combination of atmospheric heating and the earth’s rotation on its own axis. They […]
Every year plants make and store ten times the energy people use. That’s why many scientists are looking at plants as a possible solution to the world’s energy problems. Energy from plants is available to us in some ways that most of us already know about, such as wood for heating our homes and corn […]
An oasis is a green, fertile area surrounded by desert. Some oases are supplied with water by underground springs. Others receive their water from streams that bring rainwater down from nearby mountains. An oasis usually has palm trees and tropical fruits and vegetables. Some small oases are used as resting points for travelers crossing the […]
The smells in flowers come from special oils that are produced in the petals as the plant grows. When this oil evaporates, which it does very easily, it gives off a fragrance which we can smell. Various combinations of chemicals in the oils of different flowers result in a variety of fragrances. Some are pleasant, […]