Diocletian was the only Roman emperor to abdicate voluntarily.
Cockroaches run at top speed of 1 m/s (3 ft/s).
There are freshwater sharks in Lake Nicaragua, Nicaragua.
DNA analyses proved that Polynesians introduced chickens to South America (Peru) well before Christopher Columbus reached the New World.
Some amphibious animals use their nostrils to smell and not to breathe
The blue whale cannot swallow anything bigger than a grapefruit.
There are no woodpeckers in Australia, New Guinea, New Zealand and Madagascar.
The sound of a “shrimp layer” is the only natural noise that can totally jam a submarine’s sonar, deafening its operators.
Painted swamp turtles can not only freeze and then thaw, but also hold their breath for months as the water above them freezes.
Among all animals, the crocodiles have the highest concentration of acid in their stomach.
The word “Jedi” is derived from Japanese word “jidaigeki”, a genre of historical drama.
The largest shopping mall in the world, the New South China Mall (in Dongguan, China), covers an area twice as big as Vatican City, the world’s smallest country.
On several occasions, pigeons were arrested in India on suspicion of being spies.
An axon (the part of a nerve cell which transmits impulses to other cells) in the giraffe’s body can be up to 5 m (18 ft) long.
The first hybrid car was built one century earlier than you probably think. A first design under the name “System Lohner-Porsche” was patented in 1898.
Ants have the highest brain to body size ratio of any animal.
Theophilus Van Kannel patented the world’s first revolving door in 1888. He had a phobia of opening doors for others, especially for women.
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10 December 1901
The prestigious Nobel Prizes are awarded for the first time. Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, left part of his fortune to fund annual prizes for the most important discoveries, as well as one for an outstanding contribution to peace.
In 2012, the European Union received the Nobel Peace Prize for 60 years of work advancing peace in Europe. The EU decided to dedicate the Nobel Peace Prize money to children who are denied the chance of growing up in peace and to donate double the Nobel award (EUR 930 000), by giving EUR 2 million.
Grey whales travel a distance equal to half the length of the equator every year.
Female badgers can delay the implantation of embryos in their uterus for months in order to time birth for a more favourable season.
Worldwide, Tonga has the highest rate of obesity.
Not content with being a great artist Da Vinci turned his hand at architecture, science, music, maths, engineering, and much more. His discoveries and inventions at the time were unfathomable to his contemporaries.
Many of his inventions were never actually realized, but have been preserved for all time in his surviving journals. However, one of these, a hang glider, was actually practically developed in his time.
Some still seem a little "magical" today. His inventions included flying machines, armored vehicles, concentrated solar power, the adding machine, and a double hull. Most were alien concepts at the time but are common practice today.
Although he is not as accomplished as many other engineers on the list, his ingenuity and creativity rank him as one of the most popular technical and artistic minds.
Cymothoa exigua, or the tongue-eating louse, is a parasite that eats a fish’s tongue and takes its place.
1954 was the year when the most numerous sightings of the Virgin Mary were reported.
The shootout scene of the movie “Heat” is shown to US Marine recruits as an example of how to retreat under enemy fire.
At birth, a kangaroo is only one centimetre long (half an inch).
Eucalyptus oil is highly flammable, which means that gum trees literally explode in bushfires.
Ribbon worms can eat themselves if there is no food.
A tick larva can live more than one year without food (i.e. blood).
Ostriches have the smallest eggs relative to size in the animal kingdom. Although being the largest single cell in nature, an ostrich egg is less than 1.5% of the mother’s weight.
The Philippine tarsier is the mammal with the biggest eyes as a proportion to its body size.
Only flamingos, pigeons and some penguins produce “milk”. Crop milk is a secretion from the lining of the crop of parent birds that is regurgitated to young birds.
The largest rodent to ever exist was Josephoartigasia Monesi. It weighed up to one ton.
The term “mulatto” did not vanish entirely from the US census until 1930.
Several bird species are known to sleep while flying: swifts, albatrosses and great frigate birds to name a few.
All adult amphibious animals are carnivores.
Grinding your teeth is a condition known as bruxism.
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Italian inventor and engineer Guglielmo Marconi sends the first radio signal across the Atlantic Ocean. On 19 January 1903, he sends the first successful transatlantic radio message from US President Theodore Roosevelt to British King Edward VII. Marconi’s technology was praised for saving hundreds of lives on board the Titanic in 1912 after a distress signal sent out by the ship’s radio operator was picked up. The disaster led to changes in the law to improve radio communications and safety at sea.
12 December 1901
Haiti became the first independent “black” state in the New World in 1804.
The partridge often sleeps lying on the ground with its legs in the air.
The holes in pen caps are there to save people from choking to death.
Alvinella pompejana, the Pompeii worm, is a species of deep-sea worm that can survive in temperatures as high as 80 °C (176 °F).
In case you wondered, Easter Island figures (called moai) do have bodies. The tallest moai erected measured almost 10 m (33 ft) high and weighed 82 tonnes (90.4 tons).
The spacecraft Voyager was initially named Mariner Jupiter/Saturn.
Leeches have 32 brains.
Reindeer have 1,500 hairs per cm2 (over 10,000 per sq in). These insulate very efficiently and help them survive extremely low temperatures.
Theoretically, a female mosquito can produce about 150 million eggs in a single year.
The fox has the largest habitat among all carnivorous mammals on land.
The male platypus’s venom can kill a dog. Luckily, the platypus is not an aggressive animal and uses the venomous spurs exclusively for self-defence.
Walt Disney was the first to use the marketing approach called “synergy”.
There are still isolated tribes in the Andaman archipelago (between India and Malaysia) that cannot make fire.
The word “Vodka” derives from the Slavic word “voda”, meaning “water”.
10 kg (22.5 pounds) of eggplant contain the nicotine equivalent to one cigarette.
Slinky, the toy that can travel down a flight of steps end-over-end, was invented in 1943.
A flatworm called planarian can fully regenerate from a 1/279 piece of its body over the course of several weeks.
Young ostriches grow at a rate of 1 cm (half an inch) per day.
In Australia, bees kill more people than snakes do.
There are almost 2,000 species of fleas.
Less than 25% of all snake species are venomous.
The giant panda is the only bear that does not hibernate.
Some animals, such as alligators and platypuses, use their tails to store fat.
If a kangaroo is chased by a dog close to a lake or river, it may jump into the water for safety. If followed there, the kangaroo will typically try to drown the dog.
Chicken tikka masala was not invented in India. The dish originated in Glasgow, Scotland.
The Goliath Frog – the largest one on Earth – is mute.
Cymothoa exigua, or the tongue-eating louse, is a parasite that eats a fish’s tongue and takes its place.
If the temperature is too low, snakes cannot digest food.
Asphalt was first used as a road building material in Babylon, around 620 BCE, during the reign of King Nabopolassar.
The Makonde tribe in Mozambique is a matrilineal society. Children and inheritances belong to women, and a husband moves into his wife’s village.
About 1% of all insects are ants.
On the island of La Gomera (one of the Canary Islands, Spain), the traditional whistling language “silbo gomero” is taught at school.
A queen termite is 100 times larger than other termites.
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Austrian doctor Karl Landsteiner discovers the common blood groups, key to major medical advances such as safe blood transfusions and the identification of bloodstains in the field of forensic medicine. His own blood group was O.
1901
Every year, more than 70,000 whales die in the oceans from natural causes.
Kangaroos are capable of living for several months without drinking a drop of water. Should they desperately need some, kangaroos dig “wells” over 1 m (4 ft) deep.
If one eye of a baby monkey is covered with a bandage for the first two months after birth, this eye could stay blind forever.
There are no reptiles in Antarctica.
On the island of La Gomera (one of the Canary Islands, Spain), the traditional whistling language “silbo gomero” is taught at school.
The Japanese macaques, aka “snow monkeys”, are the most northern-living primates. They are sometimes observed rolling snowballs for fun.
A report from 2015 found traces of human DNA in hot dogs samples of several major US brands.
Bootlace worms are one of the longest animals, with specimens up to 55 m (180 ft) long. In the same time, they are among the simplest organisms with a separate mouth and anus.
Elephants give birth after about two years of pregnancy.
Francium was discovered in 1939. It was the last chemical element to be found in nature.
Initially, battle tanks were categorised into “male” and “female” tanks based on their main armament. Male tanks were equipped with cannons, while females had heavy machine guns.
Dolphins are the mammals with the most teeth. The long-snouted spinner dolphin has up to 252 teeth.
The melody of the national anthem of the United Kingdom, “God Save the Queen”, is also used for the national anthem of Liechtenstein, “Oben am jungen Rhein” ("Up above the Young Rhine").
White candy cotton is 100% sugar.
In the 1960s, during the Cold War, the USA and the Soviet Union tried to create nuclear-powered bombers. Both research programs were scrapped before an operational aircraft could be constructed.
The Japanese company Yamaha has developed a robot capable of riding a motorbike.
The hagfish is the only living animal to have a skull but no vertebral column.
The video game Tetris was first released in the Soviet Union in 1984. It appeared in the West a year later.
Tarantulas mothers kill 99% of their babies.
A bird’s beak grows constantly, just like human nails. Natural wear and tear however keeps the beak’s size more or less constant.
Adult mayflies live only a few hours. They do not sleep at all until they die.
The Nile catfish swims upside down.
Lobsters can grow new eyeballs.
75% of children eat the ears of chocolate bunnies first.
100,000 tons of chewing gum are produced each year.
Termite mounds in Australia are the tallest non-man-made constructions.
A Eucalyptus tree can grow as much as 10 metres in a year. As of early 2018, the tallest measured specimen is 100 m (327 ft) tall.
Whales have eardrums larger in diameter than their throats.
Astronauts use diapers during take-off and landing and while on spacewalks.
There are no ants in Iceland, Greenland and Antarctica
Native tribes in Central America invented wheeled toys thousands of years ago. By the time America was colonised, however, they had not yet found a practical use for the wheel.
A tiger’s tongue is covered with many sharp rear-facing projections called papillae. They are designed to strip the skin, feathers, fur and meat right off prey.
In a freezer, a cup of hot water without a lid sometimes freezes faster than an identical cup of cold water. This is referred to as the Mpemba effect, named after Erasto Mpemba, a 13-year old Tanzanian student who discovered it while making ice cream.
Good news for the vegans: the Irish beer brand Guinness will no longer contain traces of fish bladder, previously an ingredient used during its filtration process.
The budget of the movie “Titanic” (1997) was in fact larger than the cost of building the actual ship.
Pseudis paradoxa, aka the paradoxical frog or shrinking frog, as a tadpole measures up to 25 cm (10 in). In the process of becoming an adult frog, it shrinks in size by three to four times.
First and foremost the great Archimedes. Universally recognized as the greatest of all classical engineers, he has influenced the fields of mathematics, physics, engineering, and astronomy for millennia.
Little is known about the details of his life, but his discoveries and inventions are still well-known to this day. From his screw pump to compound pulley systems and defensive mechanisms for his home island of Syracuse, Archimedes is truly one of the greatest engineers.
Young rhinos can regrow a horn.
The only indigenous primates that live in Canada are humans.
Normally, dolphins do not drink seawater. Like many sea mammals, they only obtain fresh water from their food.
Owls cannot move or roll their eyes.
14% of the world population do not have the wrist muscle called “Palmaris longus”.
Some desert snails can survive more than five years without water and food, at temperatures of up to 50 °C (122 °F).
The coconut crab literally climbs trees to pick up coconuts. It has also been observed attacking nesting birds.
In 2008, a Canadian man replaced his fake eye with a bionic camera.
In 2015, Bugatti (a car brand presently owned by Volkswagen) released a model that changes its colour.
In 1943, Project Habakkuk was discussed in detail by the UK military. In short, they planned to construct an aircraft carrier out of pykrete (a mixture of wood pulp and ice, named after Geoffrey Pyke) for use against Nazi U-boats in the mid-Atlantic.
Miniature elephants used to live around the Mediterranean Sea. The discovery of their fossilised skulls in antiquity may have given birth to the myths of the cyclops.
Nile crocodiles have a brain that continues growing all their life.
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the largest kite which has ever flown has a total lifting area of 950 m² (10,225 sq ft). It represents a huge Kuwait flag and flew for the first time in 2005.
In the United States of America, zebras hurt more zookeepers than tigers do.
Soldiers and workers termites can be either male or female whereas soldier and worker bees and ants are almost always exclusively female.
The female hyena has a pseudo-penis, which is larger than the penis of the male hyena. A pseudo-penis is an animal body structure that, while superficially appearing to be a penis, is derived from a different developmental path.
-40 degrees Fahrenheit and -40 degrees Celsius is exactly the same temperature.
Alligators change up to 3,000 teeth in their lifetime.
As of today, there are around 15,000 nuclear warheads worldwide, owned by the USA, Russia, France, China, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea.
Male mosquitos have large, feather-like antennas and can be visually distinguished from females.
Eyebrows have on average 550 hairs.
Ostriches need to raise their head in order to swallow when eating and drinking.