Earth & Climate Natural Disasters
Sources · Encyclopedia
Encyclopædia Britannica
200 facts cite this source
Technology Computing & AI
Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer program — for a machine that was never built
Human Body & Mind Psychology
The more people who witness an emergency, the less likely any one helps
Religion & Beliefs Major Religions
Devout Jain monks sweep the ground and veil their mouths to spare tiny life
Earth & Climate Natural Disasters
Lake Nyos belched a CO2 cloud that suffocated 1,746 people overnight
Culture & Arts Film & TV
A galloping horse settled a question in 1878 — and helped invent the movies
Language & Communication Media & Communication
The QWERTY keyboard was designed for a machine that no longer exists
Religion & Beliefs Major Religions
Shinto's 'eight million gods' is a number that really means 'countless'
Earth & Climate Natural Disasters
Tambora's 1815 eruption was the largest in recorded history — and cooled the whole planet
Religion & Beliefs Major Religions
The Baha'i faith's holiest place is where its founder was a prisoner
Religion & Beliefs Mythology
The Greek underworld river Lethe made the dead forget their whole lives
Religion & Beliefs Sacred Texts
The Hebrew Bible was copied so carefully that scribes counted every letter
Earth & Climate Natural Disasters
The Tangshan earthquake became one of history's deadliest disasters
Earth & Climate Natural Disasters
Yellowstone is a supervolcano whose last giant eruption ejected 1,000 cubic km of rock
Society & Economy Politics & Law
Iceland's Althing began in 930 - but Tynwald is the oldest still running without a break
Religion & Beliefs Sacred Texts
The Dead Sea Scrolls are about a thousand years older than the next-oldest Hebrew Bibles
Society & Economy Business & Markets
The accounting system behind modern business was first printed in 1494
Society & Economy Politics & Law
Habeas corpus: the writ that forces the state to justify a detention
Human Body & Mind The Senses
Human hearing spans 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz — sorted by a snail-shaped organ
Food & Drink Nutrition
Most animals make their own vitamin C - humans carry a broken copy of the gene
Nature & Animals Microbes
A Dutch cloth merchant was the first to see microbes — through homemade lenses
Earth & Climate Natural Disasters
Each step up the magnitude scale means about 32 times more earthquake energy
Language & Communication Media & Communication
The oldest surviving photograph took hours of sunlight to make
Nature & Animals Birds
The ostrich is the largest bird, lays the largest egg, and outruns a racehorse
Space Stars & Galaxies
Red dwarfs are the most common stars in the Milky Way, about three-quarters of them
Society & Economy Politics & Law
San Marino's constitution dates from 1600 - the oldest still in force
Language & Communication Linguistics
Sign languages aren't English on the hands — they have their own grammar
Religion & Beliefs Major Religions
Sikhism is widely ranked the world's fifth-largest organized religion
Space Stars & Galaxies
The Sun's core is about 15 million degrees Celsius, hot enough to fuse hydrogen into helium
Religion & Beliefs Sacred Texts
A kosher Torah scroll is handwritten by a scribe - all 304,805 letters
Technology Computing & AI
The Turing test asks not whether machines think, but whether they can fool us
Technology The Internet
