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Every page on Zap’s Facts, in one place - 814 facts across 16 categories, plus 382 On This Day stories.
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Animals (53)
- A cheetah can go from 0 to 60 mph in 3 seconds.
- A cockroach can live without its head for over a week.
- A hummingbird's heart can beat over 1,200 times a minute.
- A mantis shrimp punches as fast as a speeding bullet.
- A peregrine falcon dives at over 240 miles per hour.
- A pistol shrimp's snap creates a bubble as hot as the surface of the Sun.
- A praying mantis can turn its head all the way around to look at you.
- A tarantula's bite is about as bad as a bee sting.
- An axolotl can regrow its legs - and parts of its brain.
- An octopus carries coconut shells around to use as armor.
- An octopus has three hearts and blue blood.
- Bats are the only mammals that can truly fly.
- Beavers have iron in their teeth - that's why they're orange.
- Capybaras are the world's biggest rodents - and everyone's best friend.
- Chameleons change color to talk - not just to hide.
- Coral isn't a plant or a rock - it's actually an animal.
- Crows remember individual human faces - and hold grudges for years.
- Cuttlefish can change color in a blink - even though they're color-blind.
- Dragonflies catch their prey 95% of the time - the best on Earth.
- Elephants can "hear" through their feet.
- Fireflies "talk" to each other by flashing in patterns.
- Flamingos aren't born pink - and a flock is a "flamboyance."
- Geckos walk on ceilings using a force scientists barely understand.
- Giraffes only sleep about 30 minutes a day.
- Greenland sharks can live for over 400 years.
- Honeybees can do simple math.
- Honeybees talk to each other by dancing.
- Humpback whales sing complex songs - and the songs go viral.
- Komodo dragons have venom - and can swallow a goat whole.
- Leafcutter ants invented farming 60 million years before humans did.
- Male bowerbirds build artistic displays to attract mates.
- Male penguins propose by finding the perfect pebble.
- Naked mole rats almost never get cancer and live 30+ years.
- One kind of jellyfish can basically live forever.
- Owls fly almost completely silently - and have built-in stereo sound.
- Pangolins are the only mammals covered in scales.
- Pufferfish inflate to four times their normal size in seconds.
- Sea otters hold hands while they sleep so they don't drift apart.
- Seahorse dads give birth - sometimes to 2,000 babies at once.
- Sharks have been swimming the oceans longer than trees have existed.
- Sloths are so slow that algae grows on their fur.
- Snakes "smell" with their tongues.
- Some tortoises live for over 180 years.
- Spiders fly through the sky using electricity.
- Tardigrades can survive in the vacuum of space.
- The Arctic tern flies from pole to pole every year.
- The bee hummingbird is so small it gets mistaken for a bee.
- The blue whale is the biggest animal that has ever lived.
- The deep-sea anglerfish male fuses to the female and becomes part of her.
- The Etruscan shrew is the world's smallest mammal - and its heart beats 1,500 times a minute.
- The platypus lays eggs, hunts with electricity, and is mildly venomous.
- Wombats do cube-shaped poop.
- Wood frogs survive being frozen solid for months.
Dinosaurs (50)
- A T. rex skull alone is 5 feet long.
- A T. rex tooth was as long as a banana.
- Allosaurus could open its jaw super-wide, like a snake.
- An asteroid 6 miles wide ended the dinosaur era.
- Ankylosaurus had a tail club that could break a T. rex's leg.
- Archaeopteryx is the most famous "missing link" ever found.
- Argentinosaurus was as long as a basketball court.
- Baby T. rex was probably covered in fluffy feathers.
- Birds are living dinosaurs.
- Brachiosaurus could peek into a fourth-floor window.
- Carnotaurus was a predator with horns on its head.
- Dinosaur fossils have been found on every continent - even Antarctica.
- Dinosaurs ruled Earth for 165 million years.
- Diplodocus had a tail like a giant whip - 80 bones long.
- Dreadnoughtus weighed 65 tons - and its name means "fears nothing."
- Giganotosaurus was bigger than T. rex.
- Iguanodon was one of the very first dinosaurs ever discovered.
- Maiasaura took care of its babies - and that's why it's called "good mother lizard."
- Mamenchisaurus had a neck longer than a school bus.
- Microraptor had four wings - and was iridescent black like a crow.
- Nobody knows for sure what Stegosaurus's plates were for.
- Oviraptor was first thought to be an egg thief - but it was actually a good parent.
- Pachycephalosaurus had an 8-inch-thick skull dome.
- Parasaurolophus could blow its head like a trumpet.
- Patagotitan weighed as much as 14 elephants.
- Plateosaurus was one of the very first big dinosaurs.
- Scientists know exactly what colors Anchiornis had.
- Shantungosaurus was the world's biggest duck-billed dinosaur.
- Sinosauropteryx was the first feathered dinosaur ever found.
- Some dinosaur footprints are big enough to bathe in.
- Some dinosaurs had over 1,000 teeth - all in one mouth.
- Some dinosaurs swallowed rocks on purpose - to grind up food.
- Some of our best dinosaur clues come from fossilized poop.
- Spinosaurus was the only known dinosaur that swam.
- Stegosaurus's spiky tail has a real name - the "thagomizer."
- T. rex had a bite force strong enough to crush a car.
- T. rex's tiny arms could still lift a refrigerator.
- The biggest dinosaur egg ever found is the size of a basketball.
- The biggest dinosaurs had hollow bones - like modern birds.
- The crater from the dinosaur-killing asteroid is still visible today.
- The first dinosaurs were small and ran on two legs.
- The real Velociraptor was about the size of a turkey.
- The real Velociraptor was covered in feathers.
- The Stegosaurus had a brain about the size of a walnut.
- Therizinosaurus had three-foot claws - the longest of any animal ever.
- Triceratops had the biggest head of any land animal ever.
- Utahraptor was as big as a polar bear.
- We have a fossil of two dinosaurs caught fighting to the death.
- We've found maybe 1% of all the dinosaur species that ever existed.
- Yutyrannus was a 30-foot tyrannosaur covered in feathers.
Famous People (50)
- A cartoonist was once fired from a newspaper for "not being creative enough."
- Abraham Lincoln was the tallest U.S. president - and one of the most stubborn.
- Ada Lovelace wrote the world's first computer program in 1843.
- Alan Turing helped crack Nazi codes and probably shortened World War II by 2 years.
- Albert Einstein was offered the presidency of Israel and said no.
- Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.
- Beethoven composed his Ninth Symphony after he had gone completely deaf.
- Captain James Cook mapped more of the Pacific Ocean than anyone in history.
- Charles Darwin spent almost 5 years sailing the world on HMS Beagle.
- Cleopatra spoke at least 9 languages and ruled Egypt for 21 years.
- Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay were the first to stand on top of Mount Everest.
- Ferdinand Magellan's crew was the first to sail all the way around the world.
- Frida Kahlo painted 55 self-portraits - more than any famous artist before her.
- Galileo pointed a telescope at Jupiter and found four moons orbiting it.
- Ibn Battuta traveled 75,000 miles around the medieval world.
- Isaac Newton invented calculus during a plague lockdown when he was 23.
- Jane Goodall discovered that chimpanzees make and use tools.
- Jesse Owens won 4 gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
- Joan of Arc led a French army into battle when she was just 17.
- Julius Caesar gave his name to a calendar, a month, and a salad.
- Katherine Johnson's hand calculations sent the first Americans into orbit.
- Katsushika Hokusai painted The Great Wave when he was 70 years old.
- Leonardo da Vinci filled over 7,000 pages of notebooks - and wrote backwards.
- Mahatma Gandhi walked 240 miles to protest a British salt tax.
- Mansa Musa may have been the richest person who ever lived.
- Marco Polo spent 24 years traveling from Venice to China and back.
- Marie Curie is the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences.
- Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech to 250,000 people.
- Michael Jordan was cut from his high-school varsity basketball team.
- Michael Phelps has won more Olympic medals than any other athlete in history.
- Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling standing up - not lying on his back.
- Mozart was composing music at age 5 and performing for royalty by age 6.
- Muhammad Ali won the world heavyweight boxing title 3 separate times.
- Neil Armstrong was the first human to walk on the Moon.
- Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison - and came out to become South Africa's president.
- Nikola Tesla's AC electricity is what powers nearly every home in the world.
- Pablo Picasso created more than 50,000 artworks in his lifetime.
- Pelé scored over 1,000 goals and won 3 World Cups.
- Queen Elizabeth I ruled England for 44 years and never married.
- Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole 34 days before anyone else.
- Sacagawea guided Lewis and Clark across North America with a baby on her back.
- Serena Williams won 23 Grand Slam singles titles - more than anyone in the Open Era.
- Simone Biles has 5 gymnastics moves named after her - because nobody else could do them.
- Stephen Hawking studied black holes for 55 years using only his mind.
- Usain Bolt is the fastest human ever timed - running 100m in 9.58 seconds.
- Vincent van Gogh sold only one painting while he was alive.
- Wayne Gretzky holds 61 NHL records - including ones nobody is expected to ever beat.
- William Shakespeare invented around 1,700 English words we still use today.
- Winston Churchill won the Nobel Prize - for writing, not for being prime minister.
- Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space at age 27.
Food (50)
- A champagne bottle holds about three times the pressure of a car tyre.
- A pineapple takes about two years to grow.
- A pomegranate can have over a thousand seeds.
- Apples float because they are 25% air.
- Around the world, people drink milk from many different animals.
- Astronauts on the space station drink their own recycled sweat.
- Avocados are berries with the world's biggest seed.
- Bananas are berries, but strawberries are not.
- Bubble gum is pink because that is all the inventor had left.
- Bubble tea was invented in Taiwan in the 1980s.
- Chocolate is poisonous to dogs.
- Coffee was discovered by a goat herder, according to legend.
- Cotton candy was invented by a dentist.
- Cranberries bounce when they are ripe.
- Croissants are originally from Austria, not France.
- Curry travelled around the world and changed in every country.
- Durian smells so bad it is banned on Singapore buses.
- Falling coconuts hurt more people than sharks every year.
- Fortune cookies were invented in America, not China.
- French fries are probably Belgian.
- Gummy bears were invented in Germany in the 1920s.
- Honey is one of the very few foods that almost never spoils.
- Kiwifruit used to be called Chinese gooseberries.
- Lemons sink in water, but limes float.
- Lollipops may be named after a famous racehorse.
- Mangoes are the most eaten fruit on Earth.
- Marshmallows were originally made from a real plant.
- Milton Hershey gave his chocolate fortune to an orphanage.
- Modern pizza was invented in Naples, Italy.
- Most orange juice is artificially flavored to taste the same all year.
- People have been drinking lemonade for at least a thousand years.
- People have been making ice cream for over 2,500 years.
- Pretzels are shaped like a monk's praying arms.
- Red Bull is based on a Thai energy drink for truck drivers.
- Root beer was originally made from the bark of a tree.
- Sliced bread was invented in 1928.
- Tea is the most popular drink in the world after water.
- The Aztecs used chocolate beans as money.
- The Coca-Cola formula is locked in a bank vault.
- The first chocolate bar was made in England in 1847.
- The hot dog was originally a sausage from Germany.
- The sandwich is named after an actual earl.
- The TV dinner was invented because of leftover turkey.
- The world's oldest cookbook is about 4,000 years old.
- The world's oldest soda brand started fizzing in 1783.
- There is a McDonald's in over 100 countries.
- Tomatoes are technically a fruit, but legally a vegetable.
- Watermelon is 92% water.
- White Castle was the world's first fast food chain.
- White chocolate is not actually chocolate.
Geography & Earth (52)
- 75% of the world's volcanoes sit in the Pacific Ring of Fire.
- A brand-new island called Surtsey appeared in 1963.
- All of Hawaii's islands were built by a single hotspot of volcanoes.
- Angel Falls is so tall the water turns to mist before hitting the ground.
- Antarctica is the largest desert on Earth.
- Bhutan was the first country to be officially carbon-negative.
- Canada has the longest coastline of any country - by a lot.
- Death Valley recorded the hottest air temperature ever measured on Earth.
- Denali rises higher above its base than Everest does.
- Iceland heats most of its homes using volcanoes.
- K2 is shorter than Everest but far more dangerous to climb.
- Lake Baikal holds more fresh water than all the Great Lakes combined.
- Lake Superior holds enough water to cover both Americas a foot deep.
- Lesotho is the only country entirely above 1,000 metres.
- Liechtenstein is one of only two doubly landlocked countries.
- Mammoth Cave is the longest cave system on Earth.
- Measured from its base, Mauna Kea is taller than Everest.
- Monaco is so small it has more millionaires than nearly anywhere else.
- Mount Fuji is an almost perfectly symmetrical volcano.
- Mount Kilimanjaro is actually three volcanoes stuck together.
- Mount Olympus in Greece has 52 separate peaks.
- Nauru is so small you can drive around the entire country in 30 minutes.
- New Zealand has caves with ceilings that glow like the night sky.
- Papua New Guinea has over 800 different languages.
- Parts of the Atacama desert have never been rained on in recorded history.
- Pompeii was buried so fast that bread is still in the ovens.
- Russia spans 11 time zones.
- Some of Earth's most dangerous floods happen in deserts.
- Some sand dunes hum and boom when they slide.
- Sweden has more islands than any other country.
- The Amazon carries one-fifth of all river water on Earth.
- The Andes are the longest mountain range on land.
- The Appalachian Mountains are older than bones, trees, and Saturn's rings.
- The Aral Sea was once the fourth-largest lake - now it's mostly gone.
- The Caspian Sea is the largest lake on Earth.
- The Dead Sea is so salty you can float and read a book.
- The deepest cave on Earth plunges over 2.2 km below the surface.
- The Empty Quarter of Arabia is the largest sand sea on Earth.
- The Gobi desert can drop to minus 40°C in winter.
- The Grand Canyon was carved by a river - over six million years.
- The Himalayas are still being pushed taller right now.
- The Matterhorn has four faces pointing at the four compass points.
- The Mississippi River sometimes flows backwards.
- The Namib is the oldest desert on Earth.
- The Nile is the longest river in the world.
- The Sahara desert is bigger than the United States.
- The Sahara Desert was green and full of lakes 6,000 years ago.
- The Yangtze used to have its own species of freshwater dolphin.
- Vatican City is the smallest country in the world.
- Vietnam's Son Doong cave is big enough to fit a city block.
- When Krakatoa erupted in 1883 it made the loudest sound in modern history.
- Yellowstone sits on top of a sleeping supervolcano.
History (50)
- 5,000 English archers defeated a French army four times their size in 1415.
- A 2,000-year-old Greek shipwreck held the world's first computer.
- A document signed in 1215 still shapes laws around the world today.
- A French teenager led an army to victory when she was just 17.
- A Roman city was buried in volcanic ash and stayed perfectly preserved for 1,700 years.
- A single battle in 1066 changed the English language forever.
- A storm helped defeat the most powerful navy in the world in 1588.
- A surprise attack at dawn pulled the U.S. into World War II.
- An Englishman dangled off a cliff to copy a code that unlocked ancient Mesopotamia.
- Ancient Egyptians used honey as a bandage.
- Armies used horse cavalry in battle for over 3,000 years before tanks took over.
- Athletes in the ancient Olympics competed completely naked.
- Cleopatra lived closer in time to us than to the building of the pyramids.
- D-Day was the largest seaborne invasion in history.
- French revolutionaries tried to rewrite the calendar with 10-day weeks.
- Genghis Khan built the largest connected empire in human history.
- Gunpowder was invented by Chinese alchemists trying to make a potion for eternal life.
- Julius Caesar protected his messages by shifting every letter three places.
- Marco Polo spent 24 years traveling from Italy to China and back.
- Medieval knights' armor wasn't as heavy as you might think.
- Medieval trebuchets could fling 300-pound stones the length of a football field.
- Navajo Code Talkers built the only WWII code that was never broken.
- On Christmas Eve 1914, enemy soldiers in WWI stopped fighting and sang carols together.
- One broken stone slab let us read ancient Egyptian after 1,400 years of silence.
- One inventor in the 1450s made books 1,000 times cheaper.
- Oxford University is older than the Aztec Empire.
- Penicillin - the first true antibiotic - was discovered by total accident.
- Roman concrete actually gets stronger every time it gets wet.
- Romans built a 73-mile wall across Britain to keep out tribes from the north.
- Spartan boys started warrior training at age seven.
- The Berlin Wall came down after one accidental announcement on TV.
- The Black Death killed roughly one third of everyone in Europe.
- The Cold War lasted 45 years without the two superpowers ever fighting each other directly.
- The earliest known photograph took eight hours to expose.
- The Eiffel Tower was only supposed to stand for 20 years.
- The first long-distance Morse code message ever sent was: "What hath God wrought?"
- The German Enigma machine had 159 quintillion possible settings.
- The Great Pyramid was the tallest building on Earth for 3,800 years.
- The Hundred Years' War actually lasted 116 years.
- The Industrial Revolution changed daily life more in 150 years than the previous 5,000.
- The Library of Alexandria once held nearly every book in the world.
- The oldest known writing was pressed into clay with a reed over 5,000 years ago.
- The Titanic took less than three hours to sink after hitting an iceberg.
- The Trojan Horse may have actually been an early type of siege weapon.
- The University of Bologna has been teaching students since 1088.
- There is a 600-year-old book that nobody on Earth can read.
- Vikings reached North America 500 years before Columbus.
- Women had to fight for over 70 years to get the right to vote.
- WWI soldiers dug trench networks that stretched 475 miles across Europe.
- WWII codebreakers used early computers to crack secret messages.
Human Body (50)
- "Touch" is actually four senses combined.
- A baby's brain has more neurons than an adult's.
- A baby's heart beats almost twice as fast as an adult's.
- Adults have 206 bones - but babies have over 300.
- All your cells came from a single cell that kept splitting.
- Blue eyes don't actually contain any blue pigment.
- Bones are alive - they're constantly remodeling themselves.
- Cancer is what happens when cells stop knowing when to stop dividing.
- Every one of your cells has hundreds of tiny power plants.
- Humans actually glow in the dark - too faintly for us to see.
- Memory isn't one thing - your brain has several different memory systems.
- Most of your body gets replaced over many years.
- Most of your brain cells stay with you for life.
- Muscle memory is real - but it's actually in your brain.
- No two people have the same fingerprints - not even identical twins.
- Nobody can actually multitask - the brain just switches really fast.
- Pain isn't a sense - it's a decision your brain makes.
- Red blood cells have no nucleus - they're essentially empty oxygen buckets.
- Some people see colors when they hear music.
- Stem cells can become almost any other kind of cell.
- The longest cell in your body stretches from your spine to your toe.
- The longest hair ever recorded was over 18 feet long.
- The oldest person in verified history lived to 122.
- The smallest bone in your body is the size of a grain of rice.
- The strongest muscle for its size is in your jaw.
- The tallest person ever was almost 9 feet tall.
- We dream most vividly during REM sleep - when our eyes move under our eyelids.
- White blood cells are your immune army.
- You blink 15-20 times every minute - totally automatically.
- You have a sixth sense - it tells you where your body is.
- You have three completely different kinds of muscle.
- You hear with tiny hair cells deep in your ear.
- You see color using just three types of cells.
- Your "funny bone" isn't actually a bone.
- Your body makes about 4 million new cells every single second.
- Your bones are constantly making fresh blood.
- Your brain feels no pain - but it's what makes everything else hurt.
- Your brain has about 86 billion neurons.
- Your brain has two halves that don't fully agree on everything.
- Your brain runs almost entirely on sugar.
- Your brain runs on tiny electrical signals.
- Your brain uses 20% of your body's energy - even when you're resting.
- Your deepest sleep makes you almost impossible to wake up.
- Your heart beats about 100,000 times every day.
- Your nose can remember about 50,000 different smells.
- Your skin is the largest organ in your body.
- Your smallest blood vessels are narrower than a hair.
- Your thigh bone is so strong it's harder than concrete.
- Your tongue can taste five things - not four.
- Your tongue is made of eight muscles working together.
Inventions & Tech (50)
- A boiling kettle inspired the engine that powered the Industrial Revolution.
- A computer beat a top Go player using moves no human had ever tried.
- A pulley can let you lift things four times your own weight.
- A robot called Atlas can do backflips and dance.
- A sewing machine can stitch in minutes what would take a human hours.
- Air conditioning was invented to dry out a printing factory.
- Before anesthesia, surgeons were judged on how fast they could cut.
- Before refrigerators, people kept food cold with giant blocks of ice.
- Bubble wrap was first sold as wallpaper.
- Chatbots learn to write by reading huge piles of human writing.
- Computer chips have doubled in power roughly every two years for 60 years.
- Eyeglasses were invented in Italy more than 700 years ago.
- In 1997 a computer beat the world chess champion for the first time.
- Insulin turned a deadly disease into one you can live with.
- mRNA vaccines work by sending your cells a recipe.
- Nobody knows who invented Bitcoin.
- People have been making soap for at least 4,500 years.
- Post-it Notes were a glue that didn't work.
- Robots have been driving around Mars for over 25 years.
- Scientists learned to edit DNA by copying bacteria.
- The first bicycle had no pedals.
- The first computer "bug" was a real moth.
- The first computer mouse was a small wooden block.
- The first general-purpose computer was as big as a small house.
- The first human heart transplant happened in 1967.
- The first mass-produced toothbrushes were made with pig hair.
- The first modern car had only three wheels.
- The first real industrial robot started work in 1961.
- The first real video game was about two spaceships fighting in space.
- The first telephone call was a request for help.
- The internet started as a military project called ARPANET.
- The microwave oven was invented after a chocolate bar melted in someone's pocket.
- The most important medicine of the 20th century was discovered by a messy scientist.
- The oldest wheel ever found is more than 5,000 years old.
- The QWERTY keyboard was designed to stop typewriters from jamming.
- The recipe for Coca-Cola is locked in a vault.
- The Roomba was designed by ex-military robot engineers.
- The save icon on your apps is a tiny picture of a floppy disk.
- The twisted ladder shape of DNA was figured out in 1953.
- The word "robot" comes from a Czech word for forced labor.
- The World Wide Web is not the same thing as the internet.
- The world's first vaccine was made from cow blisters.
- The zipper took 30 years to become useful.
- There are probably more than 50 electric motors in your home.
- There are taxis in some cities that drive themselves.
- Thomas Edison did not invent the light bulb alone.
- USB plugs feel like they have to be flipped three times to fit.
- Velcro was invented after a dog walk.
- WD-40 is named after 40 failed attempts.
- X-rays were discovered completely by accident.
Myths & Monsters (54)
- A Cyclops was a one-eyed giant who lived in a cave and ate sheep.
- A lake in Vermont has its own monster legend called Champ.
- A mysterious "beast" terrorized a French region for three years in the 1760s.
- A Norse dragon named Fafnir hoarded so much gold he could not stop guarding it.
- According to legend, Saint George killed a dragon to save a princess.
- Almost every culture in the world has its own dragon legends.
- Ancient Egyptians believed the afterlife was a long, dangerous journey.
- Anubis was the jackal-headed Egyptian god who guided souls to the afterlife.
- Atlas was forced to hold up the sky on his shoulders forever.
- Bearded dragons are real lizards that puff out a spiky "beard" when scared.
- Bigfoot is a giant hairy creature said to live in the forests of North America.
- Cats were so sacred in ancient Egypt that killing one could be punished by death.
- Chinese dragons bring rain and good luck instead of fire and danger.
- Egyptian hieroglyphics use over 700 different pictures to spell words.
- Egyptian mummies took 70 days to make and had their brains pulled out through their noses.
- European dragons are giant flying lizards who breathe fire and hoard gold.
- Hercules had to complete twelve nearly impossible tasks.
- Icarus flew too close to the sun and his wax wings melted.
- King Tut's tomb was found stuffed with over 5,000 treasures.
- Komodo dragons are real lizards that can grow over 10 feet long.
- Loki was a shapeshifting trickster who could turn into almost any animal.
- Many old "mermaid" sightings were probably sea cows called manatees.
- Medusa had living snakes for hair and a stone-turning stare.
- Mongolians tell stories of a giant worm that shoots venom out of its body.
- Mountain climbers have reported seeing huge footprints high in the Himalayas.
- Odin had two ravens who flew around the world and reported the news.
- Pandora opened a forbidden box and let every trouble loose in the world.
- People have claimed to see the Loch Ness Monster since at least the year 565.
- Poseidon ruled the seas with a three-pronged spear called a trident.
- The ancient Egyptians believed the sun god Ra sailed across the sky in a boat.
- The Aztecs worshipped a giant feathered serpent god named Quetzalcoatl.
- The Chupacabra is a Latin American cryptid said to attack farm animals at night.
- The dragon Smaug from The Hobbit was inspired by ancient Norse myths.
- The Egyptian Book of the Dead was a magic spellbook for the afterlife.
- The Egyptian goddess Isis put her husband Osiris back together piece by piece.
- The goddess Athena was born fully grown from Zeus's head.
- The Great Sphinx of Giza has guarded the pyramids for over 4,500 years.
- The Greeks won the Trojan War by hiding inside a giant wooden horse.
- The Jersey Devil is a winged creature said to live in the New Jersey Pine Barrens.
- The legend of the Kraken was probably inspired by real giant squids.
- The Midgard Serpent was so huge it wrapped all the way around the world.
- The Minotaur was a bull-headed monster trapped inside a maze.
- The Mothman is a winged creature said to have been seen in West Virginia in 1966.
- The Norse gods chained up a giant wolf named Fenrir with a magic ribbon.
- The Sirens of Greek myth sang so beautifully that sailors crashed their ships.
- The Valkyries were flying warrior women who chose who lived and died in battle.
- The Vikings believed a giant tree connected nine different worlds.
- The Vikings believed a rainbow bridge connected Earth to the home of the gods.
- The Vikings believed the world would end in a giant battle called Ragnarök.
- Thor's hammer Mjölnir always flew back to his hand like a boomerang.
- Vikings believed brave warriors went to a great hall called Valhalla.
- Wales has a red dragon on its national flag.
- Werewolf legends say people turn into wolves under the light of a full moon.
- Zeus was the king of the Greek gods and the boss of the sky.
Ocean (50)
- 3 in 4 deep-sea animals make their own light.
- A blue whale's heart is the size of a small car.
- A dead whale on the seafloor feeds a whole ecosystem for decades.
- A hammerhead shark sees in nearly 360 degrees.
- A mantis shrimp's eyes have 12 colour receptors - but see colour worse than us.
- A narwhal's "horn" is actually a giant tooth - with 10 million nerve endings.
- A starfish with 21 arms can destroy entire reefs.
- A tsunami can cross the entire Pacific in less than a day.
- Beluga whales can mimic human speech.
- Bull sharks can swim hundreds of miles up rivers.
- Clownfish are all born male - and the boss becomes female.
- Clownfish live inside the stinging arms of anemones - on purpose.
- Deep-sea vents host whole ecosystems with no sunlight.
- Giant isopods are deep-sea cousins of pill bugs - and can live 5 years without food.
- Giant tube worms live without a mouth, gut, or stomach.
- Half the oxygen you breathe comes from the ocean.
- Killer whales are the biggest members of the dolphin family.
- Lionfish look beautiful - and have 18 venomous spines hidden in their feathers.
- Megalodon had teeth the size of dinner plates.
- Moray eels have a second set of jaws - hidden in their throat.
- Most of Earth's volcanoes are hidden under the ocean.
- Nudibranchs are tiny rainbow sea slugs that steal weapons from their food.
- Sea cucumbers throw their own guts at predators.
- Sea turtles return to the exact beach they hatched on - using Earth's magnetic field.
- Shark skin is made of millions of tiny teeth.
- Sharks see electricity through pores on their faces.
- Some deep-sea water is 400°C - without boiling.
- Some fish run "cleaning stations" - and even sharks visit politely.
- Some sharks have to keep swimming - or they can't breathe.
- That white sand beach? A parrotfish probably pooped it.
- The deepest known fish lives 8 kilometers down.
- The frilled shark looks like a living prehistoric snake.
- The goblin shark's jaws shoot out of its head when it eats.
- The longest mountain range on Earth is underwater.
- The Mariana Trench is deeper than Mount Everest is tall.
- The Moon pulls the ocean toward it - which is what causes tides.
- The ocean covers 71% of Earth's surface.
- The ocean is salty because rivers keep washing salt into it.
- The sperm whale has the biggest brain of any animal that ever lived.
- The stonefish is the most venomous fish in the world.
- The vampire squid turns itself inside out to scare off predators.
- The whale shark is the biggest fish in the ocean - and it only eats plankton.
- There's a small shark that bites round chunks out of whales.
- There's an octopus that "flies" through deep water with ear-like flaps.
- Tiger sharks have eaten license plates, tires, and a chicken coop.
- We have better maps of Mars than of our own ocean floor.
- We've explored less than 5% of the world's oceans.
- Whales evolved from four-legged mammals that walked on land.
- Whales sleep with half their brain awake at a time.
- Yeti crabs farm bacteria on their own fuzzy arms.
Plants & Nature (50)
- A big tree can make enough oxygen for two people to breathe.
- A bristlecone pine has been alive for almost 5,000 years.
- A forest of 47,000 aspen trees is actually one giant organism.
- A fungus called Cordyceps turns ants into zombies before killing them.
- A hibiscus flower opens at dawn - and is dead by sunset.
- A plant called Genlisea hunts microbes with underground corkscrew traps.
- A single fungus in Oregon covers an area bigger than 1,600 football fields.
- A single mushroom can fire off a trillion microscopic spores.
- A Venus flytrap can actually count to five.
- A Venus flytrap snaps shut in less than a tenth of a second.
- Bee orchids trick male bees into trying to marry them.
- Bonsai trees can be hundreds of years old and still fit on a table.
- Butterworts catch bugs with leaves that feel like greasy butter.
- Carnivorous plants eat insects to steal their nitrogen.
- Carnivorous plants evolved to eat bugs because their soil is rubbish.
- Coast redwoods are the tallest trees on Earth.
- Edelweiss grows so high in the Alps that the air is thin and freezing.
- General Sherman is the single biggest tree alive.
- Giant sequoias are the biggest trees on Earth by volume.
- In 1637, a single tulip bulb cost more than a house in Holland.
- Koalas only eat eucalyptus leaves - which are mildly poisonous to everything else.
- Leafcutter ants have been farming fungus for over 50 million years.
- Lotus leaves are so waterproof that mud literally slides off them.
- Mangrove trees grow with their feet in salty seawater.
- Most of a mushroom lives underground as a giant web of threads.
- Mushrooms appearing in a perfect circle aren't magic - they're a "fairy ring."
- Mushrooms aren't plants - they belong to their own kingdom.
- Orchids are the largest plant family on Earth - with over 28,000 species.
- Pitcher plants are slippery cups full of digestive soup.
- Roses have been around for at least 35 million years.
- Some carnivorous plants have been caught eating frogs, lizards and small birds.
- Some flowers actually heat themselves up like tiny biological radiators.
- Some flowers smell like rotting meat on purpose - to trick flies into pollinating them.
- Some mushrooms glow in the dark with their own green light.
- Some olive trees are still producing fruit after 2,000 years.
- Sundews catch insects with glittering drops of glue.
- The bladderwort has the fastest trap of any plant - under a millisecond.
- The blue streaks in blue cheese are deliberate veins of fungus.
- The cobra lily confuses prey with see-through "windows" in its hood.
- The titan arum is called the "corpse flower" because it smells like rotting meat.
- The world's biggest flower can be wider than a car tyre - and smells like rotting meat.
- The world's first antibiotic came from a fuzzy mould growing on a forgotten dish.
- Tree rings can tell you what the weather was like 1,000 years ago.
- Trees can send messages to each other through underground fungus networks.
- Trees pull carbon dioxide straight out of the sky.
- Tropical pitcher plants collect their own drinking water from rainfall.
- Truly black flowers don't actually exist anywhere in nature.
- White truffles can cost more than gold by weight.
- Yeast is a tiny single-celled fungus that bakes your bread.
- Young sunflowers swivel to follow the sun across the sky.
Record-Breakers (50)
- A cave in Mexico holds crystals as long as buses.
- A man in London once lived in a house only 3 feet wide.
- A nanoscale Stonehenge was carved with a beam of charged atoms.
- A pine tree in California has been alive for almost 5,000 years.
- Scientists built an engine made from a single atom.
- The biggest crowd ever gathered held more people than most countries.
- The biggest dam in the world made Earth spin slightly slower.
- The biggest gold nugget ever found weighed more than a kid.
- The biggest meteorite ever found weighs as much as 10 elephants.
- The biggest pumpkin ever grown weighed more than a small car.
- The box jellyfish has the most painful sting in the ocean.
- The deadliest animal on Earth is a tiny buzzing insect.
- The deadliest avalanche in history wiped out a town in three minutes.
- The deadliest event in Earth's history was an asteroid the size of a city.
- The deadliest plant in the world is grown on farms around the world.
- The deadliest spider can bite through a fingernail.
- The deadliest tsunami in modern history crossed an entire ocean.
- The deadliest volcanic eruption made a 'year without summer.'
- The fastest boat ever flew across the water at 317 mph.
- The fastest human swimmer averages over 5 mph.
- The fastest plane ever built could outrun a missile.
- The fastest production motorcycle has a helicopter engine.
- The fastest skateboarder ever hit 91 mph going downhill.
- The fastest skier on Earth has hit 158.8 mph.
- The fastest train in regular service floats above the track.
- The fastest typists can hit more than 200 words per minute.
- The golden poison frog is small enough to sit on a coin.
- The largest pizza ever made was wider than a soccer field.
- The largest shopping mall has its own ski slope and aquarium.
- The longest bridge in the world is over 100 miles long.
- The most venomous snake hides in cracks in the Australian outback.
- The oldest beer recipe is a song sung to a Sumerian goddess.
- The oldest hotel in the world has been open for 1,300 years.
- The oldest known land animal alive today is a 193-year-old tortoise.
- The oldest known love poem was written more than 4,000 years ago.
- The oldest known story painted on a cave wall is over 51,000 years old.
- The oldest musical instrument is a 60,000-year-old bone flute.
- The oldest restaurant in the world has been serving food since 1725.
- The oldest wooden building in the world has stood for 1,400 years.
- The oldest writing in the world is over 5,000 years old.
- The smallest book ever printed is tinier than a grain of salt.
- The smallest chess set in the world fits on a fingernail.
- The smallest computer is smaller than a grain of rice.
- The smallest country in the world is smaller than many city parks.
- The smallest dog ever weighed about as much as a stick of butter.
- The smallest mechanical watch has 98 tiny parts inside.
- The tallest building on Earth is more than half a mile high.
- The world record for solving a Rubik's cube is under three seconds.
- The world's fastest cup stackers move so fast it looks like a video glitch.
- There is a working screwdriver smaller than a sesame seed.
Science (51)
- 97% of Earth's water is in the oceans.
- A brainless yellow slime can solve mazes.
- A laser is just incredibly focused, perfectly synchronized light.
- All life on Earth is built from carbon.
- All the ants on Earth weigh about the same as all the humans.
- All the continents used to be one giant supercontinent.
- Bananas are slightly radioactive - but totally safe to eat.
- Diamond and pencil lead are the exact same element.
- DNA is the instruction manual for building you.
- Earth is 4.5 billion years old.
- Earth's atmosphere has five distinct layers.
- Earth's days are slowly getting longer.
- Earth's inner core is as hot as the surface of the Sun.
- Earth's magnetic field flips upside down every few hundred thousand years.
- Electricity and magnetism are two sides of the same force.
- Every cell in your body runs on a tiny molecule called ATP.
- Every living thing alive today evolved from earlier forms over billions of years.
- Eyes have independently evolved at least 50 different times.
- For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction.
- Friction always creates heat.
- Glass isn't quite a normal solid.
- Gravity is the weakest force in the universe.
- Heat and temperature aren't the same thing.
- Helium doesn't actually change your voice - it changes how fast sound travels through it.
- Hot water can freeze faster than cold water - and nobody knows exactly why.
- Humans and bananas share many of the same basic genes.
- Life on Earth has nearly been wiped out five different times.
- Light is both a particle AND a wave.
- Light is the fastest thing in the universe.
- Lightning strikes the Earth about 40 times every second.
- Metals conduct electricity because their electrons are free to roam.
- Mount Everest grows about 4 mm taller every year.
- Only about 21% of the air is oxygen.
- Plants make food out of sunlight and air.
- Some bacteria thrive where almost nothing else can survive.
- Sound can't travel through empty space.
- Table salt is made of two poisonous elements.
- The continents drift across Earth's surface - about an inch a year.
- The Moon pulls our oceans toward it twice a day.
- The Moon used to be much closer to Earth - and is slowly drifting away.
- The most common element in the universe is hydrogen.
- The periodic table has 118 known elements.
- The pH scale runs from 0 to 14 - and most of your favorite drinks are pretty acidic.
- The world's largest single living organism is a forest of aspen trees.
- Two particles can be linked across any distance.
- Viruses aren't quite alive - and aren't quite not.
- Water is weird - it gets bigger when it freezes.
- We can now edit DNA like a word processor.
- You have more bacterial cells in your body than human cells.
- You're about 60% water.
- Your blood contains enough iron to make a small key.
Space (54)
- A black hole has only three properties - mass, spin, and charge.
- A day on Venus is longer than its whole year.
- A dead star can spin 700 times a second.
- A modern spacesuit costs over $12 million.
- A stray dog named Laika was the first creature to orbit Earth.
- A teaspoon of neutron star would weigh a billion tons.
- Andromeda will collide with the Milky Way in 4 billion years.
- Astronauts can vote in elections from space.
- Astronauts grow up to 2 inches taller in space.
- Betelgeuse - the bright red star in Orion - is about to explode.
- Black holes slowly evaporate over trillions of years.
- Diamond rain falls on Neptune and Uranus.
- Earth is the only place in the universe where we know life exists.
- Falling into a black hole would stretch you like spaghetti.
- Jupiter could fit 1,300 Earths inside it.
- Jupiter has a storm bigger than Earth that has lasted 400 years.
- Jupiter has more than 95 known moons.
- Mars has a volcano three times taller than Mount Everest.
- Mercury swings from 800°F by day to -290°F by night.
- Moon dust smells like gunpowder.
- Most black holes form when massive stars die.
- Most stars come in pairs - or even bigger groups.
- Neptune's winds are faster than the speed of sound.
- Past a black hole's "event horizon," even light can't escape.
- Pluto isn't a planet anymore - and a lot of people are still mad about it.
- Saturn's rings are made almost entirely of ice.
- Saturn's rings are surprisingly young - the dinosaurs missed them.
- Sirius is the brightest star in our night sky.
- Some black holes have masses of billions of suns.
- Space is completely silent.
- Stars are born inside giant clouds of gas called nebulae.
- The biggest known star would swallow our entire inner solar system.
- The closest star to us (besides the Sun) is 4.2 light-years away.
- The coldest known place in the universe is a star's dying breath.
- The first photo of a black hole was taken in 2019.
- The James Webb Telescope can see back almost to the Big Bang.
- The James Webb Telescope has spotted galaxies from 13.5 billion years ago.
- The Parker Solar Probe is the fastest object humans have ever made.
- The rocket that took astronauts to the Moon was 36 stories tall.
- The Space Station orbits Earth every 90 minutes.
- The Sun is a "yellow dwarf" - and that's actually a compliment.
- The Sun is halfway through its life.
- The Sun loses 4 million tons of itself every second.
- The Sun makes up 99.8% of all the mass in our solar system.
- The universe started 13.8 billion years ago - in an instant.
- There are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on Earth.
- There are probably more planets in our galaxy than stars.
- There's a giant black hole at the center of our galaxy.
- Time literally slows down near a black hole.
- Twelve people have walked on the Moon - all between 1969 and 1972.
- Uranus rotates sideways - basically rolling around the Sun.
- Venus is hotter than Mercury - even though it's farther from the Sun.
- Voyager 1 is the farthest human-made object in space.
- We sent music for aliens to find - on a golden record glued to a spacecraft.
Vehicles (50)
- A Boeing 747 has about six million parts.
- A car airbag inflates faster than you can blink.
- A car called ThrustSSC broke the sound barrier in 1997.
- A CubeSat is a satellite small enough to fit in your hand.
- A helicopter is the only aircraft that can fly sideways, backwards, and hover in place.
- A hovercraft drives on a cushion of air, not water.
- A modern aircraft carrier is basically a floating city with a runway on top.
- A plane's "black box" is actually bright orange.
- Beijing's subway is the longest in the world - over 500 miles of track.
- Concorde flew passengers faster than a rifle bullet.
- Electric cars are actually older than gasoline cars.
- Intercontinental missiles are some of the fastest vehicles ever built.
- Japan's bullet trains have never had a passenger fatality from a crash.
- Maglev trains float above their tracks with no wheels at all.
- Most airliners are painted white for a sneaky reason.
- Rockets have multiple stages because lugging empty fuel tanks to space is wasteful.
- Russia's Soyuz is the most-flown rocket family in history.
- San Francisco's cable cars are pulled by a moving rope under the street.
- Self-driving cars see the world by firing millions of laser pulses every second.
- Solid-fuel rockets can't be turned off once you light them.
- Some lighthouses can be seen from over 30 miles away at sea.
- Some nuclear submarines can stay underwater for months without surfacing.
- SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket lands itself back on a tiny boat after every launch.
- The biggest container ships carry over 24,000 metal boxes at once.
- The Bugatti Chiron Super Sport can hit 304 miles per hour.
- The Eurostar travels under the sea between Britain and France.
- The first liquid-fueled rocket only flew 41 feet high.
- The first passenger steam train traveled at the breakneck speed of 15 mph.
- The first passengers in a hot air balloon were a duck, a rooster, and a sheep.
- The first powered airplane flight lasted just 12 seconds.
- The first real car was built in 1885 and had only three wheels.
- The first satellite was a beach-ball-sized metal sphere that beeped.
- The Ford Model T put America on wheels by costing less than a horse.
- The Hindenburg disaster ended the age of giant flying airships.
- The largest military drones can stay airborne for over 30 hours straight.
- The largest ship ever built was so big it couldn't fit through the English Channel.
- The London Underground was the world's first subway - and it ran on steam.
- The longest limousine ever built was over 100 feet long.
- The Mayflower was originally a wine cargo ship - not a passenger vessel.
- The Orient Express was a luxury hotel on wheels that crossed Europe.
- The Panama Canal lifts giant ships 85 feet uphill on its journey across.
- The Pony Express was killed off by the telegraph after just 18 months.
- The Saturn V rocket was taller than the Statue of Liberty.
- The Space Shuttle was the first reusable spaceship - and it flew for 30 years.
- The SR-71 Blackbird could outrun a missile at 85,000 feet.
- The Suez Canal saves ships from a 5,000-mile detour around Africa.
- The three-point seatbelt is one of the most life-saving inventions ever made.
- The Trans-Siberian Railway is the longest train line in the world.
- The Volkswagen Beetle was made for 65 years almost unchanged.
- Viking longships could cross oceans and sail up shallow rivers.
Weather (50)
- 90% of an iceberg is hidden underwater.
- A blizzard isn't just a snowstorm - it has to meet three specific tests.
- A bolt of lightning is five times hotter than the surface of the Sun.
- A derecho is a hurricane-force windstorm with no rotation.
- A haboob is a giant wall of dust that can swallow whole cities.
- A huge area of the planet has ground that hasn't thawed in centuries.
- A microburst is a column of wind that crashes straight down from a thunderstorm.
- A rainbow happens when sunlight bends inside raindrops.
- A single cloud can weigh over a million pounds.
- An avalanche can hit 60 miles per hour in seconds.
- An igloo can be 60°F warmer inside than outside.
- Antarctica contains 60% of the planet's fresh water.
- Autumn leaves were always those colors - they were just hidden.
- Ball lightning is real - and scientists still aren't sure what it is.
- Benjamin Franklin really did fly a kite in a thunderstorm.
- Billions of birds migrate every year.
- Earth has gone through several ice ages - and we're technically in one right now.
- Florida is the lightning capital of the United States.
- Fog is just a cloud touching the ground.
- Frostbite freezes your skin solid - and can happen in minutes.
- Glaciers are basically slow rivers of ice.
- Hail, sleet, and snow are all frozen water - but completely different.
- Hailstones can be the size of baseballs.
- Hibernation is way more extreme than just sleeping.
- How much daylight you get depends on where you are on Earth.
- Hurricanes, typhoons, and cyclones are all the same storm - just in different places.
- Monsoons bring half a year's worth of rain in a few months.
- Most lightning never reaches the ground.
- Most people who get struck by lightning survive.
- Near the equator, there's no real winter or summer.
- On the equinoxes, day and night are nearly equal everywhere on Earth.
- Sandstorms can carry dust across entire oceans.
- Snow is technically clear - it just looks white.
- Snowflakes always have six sides - and no two are exactly alike.
- Solstices are the longest and shortest days of the year.
- Some people feel sad every winter - and there's a real reason.
- The Empire State Building gets struck by lightning about 25 times a year.
- The middle of a hurricane is eerily calm.
- The northern lights are caused by solar wind hitting Earth's atmosphere.
- The Southern Hemisphere has opposite seasons from the Northern.
- The temperature range on Earth spans over 260°F.
- The United States gets more tornadoes than the rest of the world combined.
- The wettest and driest places on Earth are both extreme.
- There's lightning that shoots upward into space - and it's red.
- Tornadoes can form over water - they're called waterspouts.
- Tornadoes can have winds over 300 miles per hour.
- Volcanoes can make their own lightning.
- We have seasons because Earth is tilted - not because we get closer to the Sun.
- When lightning strikes sand, it can fuse it into glass.
- Wind makes cold air feel much colder than it actually is.
On This Day
- Jan 1 1892 Ellis Island
- Jan 2 1920 Isaac Asimov
- Jan 3 1892 J.R.R. Tolkien
- Jan 4 1809 Louis Braille
- Jan 5 1933 The Golden Gate Bridge
- Jan 6 1912 New Mexico
- Jan 7 1610 Jupiter's Moons
- Jan 8 1935 Elvis Presley
- Jan 9 2007 The iPhone
- Jan 10 1920 The League of Nations
- Jan 11 1922 Insulin
- Jan 12 1876 Jack London
- Jan 13 1888 National Geographic Society
- Jan 14 1690 The Clarinet
- Jan 15 2001 Wikipedia
- Jan 16 1969 Soyuz 4 and 5
- Jan 17 1706 Benjamin Franklin
- Jan 18 1882 A.A. Milne
- Jan 19 1809 Edgar Allan Poe
- Jan 20 1930 Buzz Aldrin
- Jan 21 1954 USS Nautilus
- Jan 22 1967 The Super Bowl
- Jan 23 1960 The Trieste
- Jan 24 1848 Gold
- Jan 25 1924 The Winter Olympics
- Jan 26 1788 Sydney
- Jan 27 1756 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
- Jan 28 1958 The LEGO Brick
- Jan 29 1936 The Baseball Hall of Fame
- Jan 30 1882 Franklin D. Roosevelt
- Jan 31 1961 Ham the Chimpanzee
- Feb 1 1790 The U.S. Supreme Court
- Feb 2 1882 James Joyce
- Feb 3 1959 The Day the Music Died
- Feb 4 1913 Rosa Parks
- Feb 5 1895 Babe Ruth
- Feb 6 1935 Monopoly
- Feb 7 1812 Charles Dickens
- Feb 8 1834 Dmitri Mendeleev
- Feb 9 1870 The U.S. Weather Bureau
- Feb 9 1986 Halley's Comet
- Feb 11 1990 Nelson Mandela
- Feb 12 1809 Charles Darwin
- Feb 13 1741 The American Magazine
- Feb 14 1859 Oregon
- Feb 15 1564 Galileo Galilei
- Feb 16 1923 King Tut's Tomb
- Feb 17 1972 The Volkswagen Beetle
- Feb 18 1930 Pluto
- Feb 19 1473 Nicolaus Copernicus
- Feb 20 1962 John Glenn
- Feb 21 1878 The First Phone Book
- Feb 22 1732 George Washington
- Feb 23 1954 The Polio Vaccine
- Feb 24 1955 Steve Jobs
- Feb 25 1928 Charles Jenkins
- Feb 26 1919 Grand Canyon National Park
- Feb 27 1807 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- Feb 28 1953 The DNA Double Helix
- Feb 29 1692 The Salem Witch Trials
- Mar 1 1872 Yellowstone
- Mar 2 1904 Dr. Seuss
- Mar 3 1847 Alexander Graham Bell
- Mar 4 1791 Vermont
- Mar 5 1770 The Boston Massacre
- Mar 6 1475 Michelangelo
- Mar 7 1876 The Telephone
- Mar 8 1911 International Women's Day
- Mar 9 1959 Barbie
- Mar 10 1862 Paper Money
- Mar 11 1942 Penicillin
- Mar 12 1912 The Girl Scouts
- Mar 12 1989 The World Wide Web (proposal)
- Mar 13 1781 Uranus
- Mar 14 1879 Albert Einstein
- Mar 14 2018 Stephen Hawking
- Mar 15 1820 Maine
- Mar 16 1926 The Liquid-Fueled Rocket
- Mar 17 461 Saint Patrick
- Mar 18 1965 Alexei Leonov
- Mar 19 1776 Mission San Juan Capistrano
- Mar 20 1852 Uncle Tom's Cabin
- Mar 21 2006 Twitter
- Mar 22 1960 The Laser
- Mar 23 1836 The Coin Press
- Mar 24 1874 Harry Houdini
- Mar 25 421 Venice
- Mar 26 1953 Salk Polio Vaccine
- Mar 27 1845 Wilhelm Röntgen
- Mar 28 1797 The Washing Machine
- Mar 29 1886 Coca-Cola
- Mar 30 1867 Alaska
- Mar 31 1889 The Eiffel Tower
- Apr 1 1700 April Fools' Day
- Apr 2 1513 Florida
- Apr 3 1860 The Pony Express
- Apr 4 1949 NATO
- Apr 5 1614 Pocahontas
- Apr 6 1896 The Modern Olympics
- Apr 7 1948 The World Health Organization
- Apr 8 1974 Hank Aaron
- Apr 9 1833 The First Public Library
- Apr 10 1849 The Safety Pin
- Apr 11 1970 Apollo 13
- Apr 12 1955 The Polio Vaccine
- Apr 12 1961 Yuri Gagarin
- Apr 12 1981 Space Shuttle Columbia
- Apr 13 1743 Thomas Jefferson
- Apr 14 1828 Webster's Dictionary
- Apr 15 1452 Leonardo da Vinci
- Apr 15 1912 The Titanic
- Apr 15 1947 Jackie Robinson
- Apr 16 1178 A Total Solar Eclipse
- Apr 17 1964 The Ford Mustang
- Apr 18 1775 Paul Revere
- Apr 19 1775 Lexington and Concord
- Apr 19 1971 Salyut 1
- Apr 20 1902 Marie Curie
- Apr 21 -753 Rome
- Apr 22 1970 Earth Day
- Apr 23 1564 William Shakespeare
- Apr 24 1800 The Library of Congress
- Apr 24 1990 The Hubble Space Telescope
- Apr 25 1953 The DNA Paper
- Apr 26 1785 John James Audubon
- Apr 27 1521 Ferdinand Magellan
- Apr 28 1789 The Mutiny on the Bounty
- Apr 29 1913 The Zipper
- Apr 30 1803 The Louisiana Purchase
- May 1 1931 The Empire State Building
- May 2 1519 Leonardo da Vinci
- May 3 1481 Machu Picchu
- May 4 1977 Star Wars
- May 5 1961 Alan Shepard
- May 6 1954 Roger Bannister
- May 7 1824 Beethoven's Ninth Symphony
- May 8 1945 VE Day
- May 9 1926 Richard Byrd
- May 10 1869 The Transcontinental Railroad
- May 11 1997 Deep Blue
- May 12 1820 Florence Nightingale
- May 13 1607 Jamestown
- May 14 1796 Edward Jenner
- May 15 1940 Nylon stockings
- May 16 1929 The Academy Awards
- May 17 1954 Brown v. Board of Education
- May 18 1980 Mount St. Helens
- May 20 1927 Charles Lindbergh
- May 20 1932 Amelia Earhart
- May 21 1927 Spirit of St. Louis
- May 22 1859 Arthur Conan Doyle
- May 24 1883 The Brooklyn Bridge
- May 25 1977 Star Wars (film)
- May 26 1897 Dracula
- May 27 1937 The Golden Gate Bridge
- May 28 1934 The Dionne Quintuplets
- May 29 1953 Mount Everest
- May 30 1431 Joan of Arc
- May 31 1889 The Johnstown Flood
- Jun 1 1792 Kentucky
- Jun 2 1953 Queen Elizabeth II
- Jun 3 1965 Ed White
- Jun 4 1942 The Battle of Midway
- Jun 5 1783 The Montgolfier Brothers
- Jun 6 1944 D-Day
- Jun 7 1769 Daniel Boone
- Jun 8 1869 The Vacuum Cleaner
- Jun 8 1924 George Mallory
- Jun 9 1934 Donald Duck
- Jun 10 1943 The Ballpoint Pen
- Jun 11 1910 Jacques Cousteau
- Jun 12 1942 Anne Frank
- Jun 13 1983 Pioneer 10
- Jun 14 1777 The Stars and Stripes
- Jun 15 1215 The Magna Carta
- Jun 16 1963 Valentina Tereshkova
- Jun 17 1885 The Statue of Liberty
- Jun 18 1983 Sally Ride
- Jun 19 1846 Baseball
- Jun 19 1903 Lou Gehrig
- Jun 20 1782 The Great Seal
- Jun 21 2020 The Summer Solstice
- Jun 22 1949 Meryl Streep
- Jun 23 1912 Alan Turing
- Jun 24 1947 Flying Saucers
- Jun 25 1947 The Diary of a Young Girl
- Jun 26 1997 Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
- Jun 27 1880 Helen Keller
- Jun 28 1491 Henry VIII
- Jun 29 2007 The first iPhone
- Jun 30 1908 The Tunguska Event
- Jul 1 1867 Canada
- Jul 2 1937 Amelia Earhart
- Jul 3 1996 Dolly the Sheep
- Jul 4 1054 The Crab Nebula Supernova
- Jul 4 1776 The Declaration of Independence
- Jul 4 1997 Mars Pathfinder
- Jul 5 1946 The Bikini
- Jul 6 1907 Frida Kahlo
- Jul 7 1940 Ringo Starr
- Jul 8 1889 The Wall Street Journal
- Jul 9 1816 Argentina
- Jul 10 1856 Nikola Tesla
- Jul 11 1979 Skylab
- Jul 12 1997 Malala Yousafzai
- Jul 13 1985 Live Aid
- Jul 14 1789 The Bastille
- Jul 15 1606 Rembrandt
- Jul 16 1969 Apollo 11
- Jul 17 1955 Disneyland
- Jul 18 1918 Nelson Mandela
- Jul 19 1848 The Seneca Falls Convention
- Jul 20 1969 Apollo 11
- Jul 20 1976 Viking 1
- Jul 21 1899 Ernest Hemingway
- Jul 22 1933 Wiley Post
- Jul 23 1904 The Ice Cream Cone
- Jul 24 1911 Machu Picchu (rediscovery)
- Jul 25 1978 Louise Brown
- Jul 26 1788 New York
- Jul 27 1940 Bugs Bunny
- Jul 28 1853 The Potato Chip
- Jul 28 1933 The Singing Telegram
- Jul 29 1958 NASA
- Jul 30 1863 Henry Ford
- Jul 31 1965 J.K. Rowling
- Aug 1 1981 MTV
- Aug 2 1776 The Declaration of Independence (signing)
- Aug 3 1492 Christopher Columbus
- Aug 4 1901 Louis Armstrong
- Aug 5 1930 Neil Armstrong
- Aug 6 1991 The World Wide Web
- Aug 7 1782 The Purple Heart
- Aug 8 1974 Philippe Petit
- Aug 9 1965 Singapore
- Aug 10 1846 The Smithsonian Institution
- Aug 11 1877 Mars's Moons
- Aug 12 1981 The IBM Personal Computer
- Aug 13 1899 Alfred Hitchcock
- Aug 14 1947 Pakistan
- Aug 15 1947 India
- Aug 16 1960 Cyprus
- Aug 17 1786 Davy Crockett
- Aug 18 1587 Virginia Dare
- Aug 19 1871 Orville Wright
- Aug 20 1977 Voyager 2
- Aug 21 1959 Hawaii
- Aug 22 1864 The Red Cross
- Aug 23 1978 Kobe Bryant
- Aug 24 79 Mount Vesuvius
- Aug 25 1825 Uruguay
- Aug 26 1920 The 19th Amendment
- Aug 27 1883 Krakatoa
- Aug 28 1963 Martin Luther King Jr.
- Aug 29 1958 Michael Jackson
- Aug 30 1797 Mary Shelley
- Aug 31 1870 Maria Montessori
- Sep 1 1985 The Titanic wreck
- Sep 2 1969 The First US ATM
- Sep 3 1967 Sweden's Dagen H
- Sep 4 1972 Mark Spitz
- Sep 5 1977 Voyager 1
- Sep 6 1522 The Victoria
- Sep 7 1533 Queen Elizabeth I
- Sep 8 1966 Star Trek
- Sep 9 1850 California
- Sep 9 1947 The First Computer Bug
- Sep 10 2008 The Large Hadron Collider
- Sep 11 1922 Frederick Banting
- Sep 12 1940 The Lascaux Cave Paintings
- Sep 13 1916 Roald Dahl
- Sep 13 1970 The New York City Marathon
- Sep 14 1814 The Star-Spangled Banner
- Sep 15 1890 Agatha Christie
- Sep 16 1620 The Mayflower
- Sep 17 1787 The U.S. Constitution
- Sep 18 1851 The New York Times
- Sep 19 1982 The First Emoticon
- Sep 20 1519 Ferdinand Magellan's voyage
- Sep 21 1937 The Hobbit
- Sep 22 1791 Michael Faraday
- Sep 23 1846 Neptune
- Sep 24 1936 Jim Henson
- Sep 25 1513 Vasco Núñez de Balboa
- Sep 26 1998 Google
- Sep 27 1825 The Stockton and Darlington Railway
- Sep 28 1928 Penicillin
- Sep 29 1988 The first transatlantic fiber-optic cable
- Sep 30 1960 The Flintstones
- Oct 1 1971 Walt Disney World
- Oct 2 1950 Peanuts (comic strip)
- Oct 3 1990 Germany (reunification)
- Oct 4 1957 Sputnik 1
- Oct 5 1957 American Bandstand
- Oct 6 1927 The Jazz Singer
- Oct 7 1959 The Far Side of the Moon
- Oct 8 1871 The Great Chicago Fire
- Oct 9 1962 Uganda
- Oct 10 1903 The First World Series
- Oct 11 1884 Eleanor Roosevelt
- Oct 12 1492 Christopher Columbus's voyage
- Oct 13 1792 The White House
- Oct 14 1947 Chuck Yeager
- Oct 15 1783 Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier
- Oct 16 1923 The Walt Disney Company
- Oct 17 1933 Albert Einstein (arrival)
- Oct 18 1867 Alaska Day
- Oct 19 1781 The Battle of Yorktown
- Oct 20 1973 The Sydney Opera House
- Oct 21 1879 The Light Bulb
- Oct 22 1797 André-Jacques Garnerin
- Oct 23 1956 Mole Day
- Oct 24 1901 Annie Edson Taylor
- Oct 25 1881 Pablo Picasso
- Oct 26 1825 The Erie Canal
- Oct 27 1904 The New York City Subway
- Oct 28 1886 The Statue of Liberty (dedication)
- Oct 29 1969 The First Internet Message
- Oct 30 1938 The War of the Worlds broadcast
- Oct 31 1941 Mount Rushmore
- Nov 2 1936 The BBC
- Nov 3 1957 Laika the Space Dog
- Nov 4 1922 King Tut's Tomb (discovery)
- Nov 5 1605 The Gunpowder Plot
- Nov 6 1869 College Football
- Nov 7 1867 Marie Curie
- Nov 8 1895 X-Rays
- Nov 9 1934 Carl Sagan
- Nov 9 1989 The Berlin Wall
- Nov 10 1969 Sesame Street
- Nov 11 1918 Armistice Day
- Nov 12 1799 The Leonid Meteor Storm
- Nov 13 1850 Robert Louis Stevenson
- Nov 14 1851 Moby-Dick
- Nov 14 1969 Apollo 12
- Nov 15 1971 The Intel 4004
- Nov 16 1945 UNESCO
- Nov 17 1869 The Suez Canal
- Nov 18 1928 Mickey Mouse
- Nov 19 1863 The Gettysburg Address
- Nov 20 1998 The International Space Station
- Nov 21 1783 The First Untethered Balloon Flight
- Nov 22 1963 Doctor Who
- Nov 23 1924 Edwin Hubble
- Nov 24 1859 On the Origin of Species
- Nov 25 1952 The Mousetrap
- Nov 26 1922 Charles Schulz
- Nov 27 1701 Anders Celsius
- Nov 28 1520 Magellan in the Pacific
- Nov 29 1832 Louisa May Alcott
- Nov 30 1835 Mark Twain
- Dec 1 1955 Rosa Parks (bus protest)
- Dec 2 1971 Mars 3
- Dec 3 1967 The First Heart Transplant
- Dec 4 1993 Space Shuttle Endeavour
- Dec 5 1901 Walt Disney
- Dec 6 1917 Finland
- Dec 7 1787 Delaware
- Dec 8 1886 Diego Rivera
- Dec 9 1968 The Computer Mouse
- Dec 10 1901 The Nobel Prizes
- Dec 11 1946 UNICEF
- Dec 12 1901 Marconi's Radio Signal
- Dec 13 1577 Francis Drake
- Dec 14 1911 Roald Amundsen
- Dec 15 1832 Gustave Eiffel
- Dec 16 1770 Ludwig van Beethoven
- Dec 17 1903 The Wright Brothers
- Dec 18 1946 Steven Spielberg
- Dec 19 1972 Apollo 17
- Dec 20 1880 Broadway's Electric Lights
- Dec 21 1968 Apollo 8
- Dec 22 1938 The Coelacanth
- Dec 23 1947 The Transistor
- Dec 24 1968 The Earthrise Photo
- Dec 25 1642 Isaac Newton
- Dec 26 1898 Radium
- Dec 27 1822 Louis Pasteur
- Dec 28 1895 The First Movie Screening
- Dec 29 1845 Texas
- Dec 30 1865 Rudyard Kipling
- Dec 31 1879 Thomas Edison's Light Bulb