Funfacts

Bananas release 1 particle of antimatter per hour due to its naturally occurring potassium content.

The average human will take about 600 million breaths in their lifetime.

Kate Winslet holds the world record for breath holding on a movie set. On the set of Avatar 2, she held her breath for 7m 15s.

US astronauts get a standard salary of $152,258 per year. They don’t get overtime for extended stays, but do get the IRS $5 per day expenses for incidentals such as travel.

Squirrel bones glow bright pink under UV light. Even better, entire flying squirrels glow pink. Photo credit: Lee H Rentz

According to the University of Michigan, drinking a Coke will take 12 minutes off your life. Here’s how other foods fare… 🌭 Hot dog - 36 mins 🥪 B’fast sandwich, 13 mins 🍳 Eggs – 13 mins 🥤 Coke – 12 mins 🍔 Cheeseburger – 9 mins 🥓 Bacon – 6 mins

💩 The average amount of poop you leave behind in a pool when you swim is 0.14 grams (0.005 oz). Every 915 swimmers leave the equivalent of one actual poop.

The first ever personal mobile phone call was on April 3rd 1973. It was between its inventor, Motorola's Martin Copper and his competitor and engineering nemesis at AT&T, Joel Engel.

Nobody really knows why some convertible sportscars are called “spiders”. It may be because of an Italian mishearing of James Dean’s “Porsche Speedster”. It may also come from sporty horse carriages that have thin, spider-like wheels.

Major League Baseball #MLB introduced the “pitch clock” in 2023 to speed up game play. By cutting out delaying tactics, the average game was 24 minutes shorter. Over the entire MLB season, 40 fewer *days* of baseball were played.

Fans dancing at Taylor Swift’s 2023 concert at LA’s SoFi stadium generated a “Swift quake” of 0.851 magnitude. Scientists noted that Metallica concerts produce the lowest seismic activity.

The world’s most expensive cow (as of March 2024) was sold in Brazil. The purebred Nelore cow sold for for US$4.3m

Ketchup is a shear-thinning non-Newtonian fluid. Unlike “ooblek”, ketchup decreases its viscosity if you apply force. Smacking or shaking the bottle causes the ketchup molecules to shear, slip over each-other and flow out faster. The effect is temporarily. 🍅

To prepare for the D-Day landings in WW2, the US Military Intelligence Division needed accurate maps of France, so they reproduced the 1939 Michelin restaurant guide to France. This special edition was printed in Washington D.C. and distributed it to troops.

According to the US Postal Service, the most popular city name in the US is Franklin. The second place spot is shared between Clinton, Madison, and Washington.

The ‘mare’ from the term nightmare relates to a mythological demon or goblin that sits or dances on a victim’s chest as they sleep. It has no connection to the modern word for a female horse.

Michael J Fox from Back to the Future was also the voice of Stuart Little.

The MGM lion roar is actually a tiger. It was recorded as a sound effect for the movie Poltergeist and reused by the studio.

If you melt 79% gold and 21% aluminium, it turns the gold purple. If you add gallium to gold, it turns blue.

The oversized label on Angostura Bitters was originally a mistake. The brothers who owned the brand entered a drinks competition. One brother ordered the bottle, the other ordered the label but got the size wrong. They have used it ever since.