Menéndez et al., Scientific Reports — The Global Flood Protection Benefits of Mangroves

43 facts cite this source

Food & Drink Agriculture

Almonds, peaches and apricots are close cousins - and some kernels carry cyanide

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Food & Drink Agriculture

Apples don't grow true from seed — every variety is a graft of one original tree

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Human Body & Mind Medicine & Disease

Barney Clark received the first permanent artificial heart

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Food & Drink Agriculture

Carrots were purple, yellow and white long before they were orange

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Human Body & Mind Genetics

Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned from an adult cell, was born

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Human Body & Mind Genetics

Everyone alive today shares one female ancestor from Africa

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Human Body & Mind Medicine & Disease

Florence Nightingale, founder of modern nursing, is born

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Food & Drink Food History

Honey never spoils - jars from ancient Egyptian tombs are still edible

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Culture & Arts Film & TV

Marilyn Monroe was found dead at 36

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Food & Drink Nutrition

MSG is the same glutamate that's naturally in tomatoes, cheese and breast milk

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Nature & Animals Plants & Fungi

Most land plants are wired into a fungal "wood wide web"

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History Modern

Napoleon Bonaparte dies in exile on Saint Helena

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Human Body & Mind Psychology

The placebo effect is real brain chemistry, not just imagination

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Human Body & Mind Medicine & Disease

Surgeons performed the world's first human heart transplant

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Nature & Animals Evolution

The Great Dying killed nine in ten species

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Earth & Climate Natural Disasters

The Halifax Explosion devastated a Canadian harbor

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Religion & Beliefs Ancient Beliefs

The Maya Long Count calendar's start date

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Science The Scientific Method

The Royal Society published the first scientific journal

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Society & Economy Crime

The Tokyo subway sarin attack struck the morning rush hour

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Human Body & Mind Medicine & Disease

The world's first 'test-tube baby' was born

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Language & Communication Languages

Two deaf communities spontaneously invented brand-new sign languages from scratch

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Food & Drink Cuisine

Umami, the fifth basic taste, was pinned down in 1908 from a bowl of kelp broth

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Food & Drink Agriculture

Vanilla is the second-priciest spice because every flower is pollinated by hand

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Human Body & Mind Anatomy

Your body makes about 2 million new red blood cells every second

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Human Body & Mind Anatomy

Your stomach lining replaces itself every few days

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Human Body & Mind Anatomy

You were born with more bones than you have now

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Food & Drink Beverages

Why a single gene variant makes alcohol flush hundreds of millions red

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Food & Drink Agriculture

Almost every banana you eat is a clone of the same plant

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Food & Drink Beverages

Champagne is bottled at car-tyre pressure - and the bubbles are a second fermentation

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Food & Drink Nutrition

Dietary fibre is the part of food your body is built not to digest

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Human Body & Mind Medicine & Disease

A fever is your brain turning up the thermostat

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Food & Drink Nutrition

Most animals make their own vitamin C - humans carry a broken copy of the gene

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Nature & Animals Marine Life

The "immortal jellyfish" can rewind its own life cycle

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Food & Drink Nutrition

Adding iodine to salt may be the cheapest brain-saving measure in history

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Food & Drink Cuisine

The Maillard reaction is the chemistry behind almost every "cooked" flavour

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Earth & Climate Ecosystems

Mangroves quietly prevent $65 billion in flood damage every year

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Human Body & Mind Neuroscience

Nerve signals race through you at highway speeds

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Food & Drink Nutrition

Of the 20 amino acids that build you, nine must come from food

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Food & Drink Agriculture

Three out of four leading food crops depend on pollinators

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Language & Communication Etymology

"Quarantine" literally means "forty days"

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Human Body & Mind The Senses

Color vision rides on about 6 million cones — night vision on 120 million rods

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Human Body & Mind Anatomy

Your largest organ is the one you can see

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Food & Drink Cuisine

Chili peppers feel "hot" because capsaicin hijacks a heat-and-pain sensor

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