Sand Tiger Sharks gulp air at the surface, hold it in and ‘fart’ it out to regulate their buoyancy.
Banana plants appear to gradually ‘move’ because they are replaced by new sprouts along a single, long underground root each year.
“OK” is most commonly thought to originate from an 1830’s US fad for incorrect spelling. In this case “All Correct” became “Oll Korrect”.
King Louis XIV of France is reputed to have spent £3 million on buttons.
During the evolution of rugby, goals were hard to score. If you ran over the line you were allowed a free ‘try’ at a goal, hence the name.
A word with another word added in the middle is called a tmesis. Eg. “abso-bloody-lutely”. It is also the only word starting with ‘tm’.
Video format VHS (Video Home System) uses “Vertical Helical Scanning” to read the tape, also known as VHS.
The smallest insect in the world, the Tanzanian parasitic wasp, is smaller than the eye on a housefly.
While asleep, an average person will eat 70 insects and 10 spiders in their lifetime.
Mercury’s chemical symbol Hg comes from the Latinised Greek word “Hydrargyrum” meaning “watery silver”.
The centre of the sun is at 15,000,000 degrees Celsius and is 160 times more dense than water.
SOS by ABBA was a hit recording with a palindromic title and artist (it reads the same backwards)
The Eiffel Tower is painted roughly once every 7 years. 3 slightly different colours are used, darker at the top and lighter at the bottom.
The sportscar maker TVR is named after its creator TreVoR Wilkinson. Started in 1947 and initially called Trevcar, it became TVR in 1954.
Kevlar is expensive because it’s difficult to deal with the concentrated sulphuric acid needed during its production.
The range of a car alarm key-fob can be improved by holding it against your head before pressing the button.
In English, all of the days of the week used to be named after ‘planets’. Now we only have Saturday(Saturn), Sunday(Sun) and Monday(Moon).
Cashew nuts come from highly poisonous seed pods that dangle from cashew apples. They’re expensive as they need careful processing.
The maximum recommended time for storing tyres is 7 years.
Mankind has so far left 170,000kg of earth objects on the moon. We have brought only 382kg of the moon back to earth.
Whales sleep with only one half of their brain at a time. The other half is alert and wakes them up when they need to take a breath.
Many chocolate bars are cut to length with high pressure water jets at 35,000psi, that’s enough to strip the bark off a tree 40 feet away.
Inhaling xenon gas (which is heavier than air) has the opposite effect to helium (which is lighter than air). It makes your voice deeper.
The green parts of a potato contain a potent poison, solanine. Eating just 1.5kg of potato sprouts (or ‘eyes’) will kill the average human.
The collapsible top hat was invented by Frenchman Antoine Gibus in 1823 to save space in busy opera cloakrooms.
IKEA is named after its founder Ingvar Kamprad and the farm and villiage where he grew up, Elmtaryd and Agunnaryd, spelling I K E A.
The song “You are my sunshine” was written by the Govenor of Louisiana, Jimmie Davis. It is also one of Louisianna’s state songs.
The ‘crack’ of a whip is due to a small sonic boom produced when the end of the whip goes faster than the speed of sound.
The most abundant metal in the earth’s crust is aluminium.
During WW2, the pulse jet engine from the V1 ‘flying bomb’ was tested in a prototype ‘boat bomb’ called the Tornado.
Pigs don’t sweat as they don’t have sweat glands.
The word ‘bible’ comes from the ancient Greek ‘biblia’ which means ‘books’.
Flat panes of glass are made by floating molten glass on liquid mercury. This creates a perfectly flat surface and is called ‘float glass’.
Trousers originated from single ‘hoses’ of material on each leg. They were later joined to make a pair, hence ‘pair of trousers’.
Hardwood comes from equatorial regions where the constant climate allows slow-growing trees to grow without ‘soft’ summer growth rings.
Subliminal messages on tv and in other media are illegal under British law.
The heat of chilli peppers is measured on the Scoville scale. It ranges from 0 to 16,000,000 for pure capsaicin (the substance in chillis).
Chocolate is toxic. 1kg of chocolate kills 7kg of ‘animal’. By this ratio, humans can die after 9kg. Birds die after 56 chocolate chips.
Dock leaves don’t have any effect on nettle stings. It is thought they were used as a diversion to get children to stop crying.
Turbo chargers are powered by a fan spinning in the engine’s exhaust. Super chargers are powered by gears connected directly to the gearbox.
Dopey was the only one of Disney’s Seven Dwarves without a beard.
Natural gas from the north sea drilling platforms travels along pipes to the mainland at nearly 2000 miles per hour.
A woodpecker’s tongue wraps around, behind its brain and attaches to the front of its skull.
Owl’s eyeballs are actually tube-shaped and cant be moved. That’s why they have to turn their heads to look around.
The Eurotunnel from England to France finally made a profit in 2009. After 22 years, shareholders got a dividend of 4p per share.
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Over 50% of cans in the UK are recycled.
Over 50% of cans in the UK are recycled.
July and August are named after the Roman Emperors Julius and Augustus Caesar and replaced the months Quintilis and Sextilis.
In the Olympic Games of 1904, Cuban postman Felix Carbajal ran the marathon, stopped to steal apples, had a sleep and still finished 4th.
The Bugatti Veyron at full speed averages 2.46mpg and empties its 22 gallon tank in just 12 minutes.
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You don’t dream when you snore.
You don’t dream when you snore.
Beer bottle tops have 21 crimps around their edge.
Your eyes won’t pop out if you sneeze with them open. There is nothing behind the eye to do the pushing.
The NASA machine that recycles urine costs £250,000,000.
The New York subway is the most extensive underground railway in the world with 842 miles of track.
Identical twins have different fingerprints.
Liquidise a sea sponge and it will regenerate into a complete sponge again. Blend 4 sponges and it will reform into the original 4 sponges.
There is more vitamin C in an onion than there is in a orange.
Barbie’s measurements if she were life size: 39-23-33.
The formal definition of a ‘jiffy’ is the time taken for light to travel 1cm in a vacuum, roughly 0.000,000,000,033,300 seconds.
You cannot see any man made object from the moon. Definitely not the Great Wall of China.
There are over 40,000 muscles in an elephants trunk.
The world record for reciting PI from memory is held by 59 year old Akira Haraguchi from Japan at 83,431 decimal places.
Drinking 10 litres of water over a short period can result in death. This is due to diluting salts in the blood to dangerous levels.
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Aircraft cabin lights are dimmed for takeoff and landind to partially acclimatise passengers eyes to darkness in case there is a crash.
All grape juice is clear. Red wine comes from also including the black grape skins. Rose wine has skins added at the beginning only.
CDs degrade if you leave them in the light.
Water sprayed in the air at -30 degrees celcius will fall as ice particles.
More people are killed anually by donkeys than by plane accidents.
During your lifetime, your eyes are closed for 5 years due to blinking.
“Kilo” means 1000 but a kilobyte is actually 1024. A megabyte is 1,048,576 bytes, not 1,000,000.
The electron is the smallest object filmed in motion. Quick light flashes were used to capture electrons riding a wave of light.
Puffed rice is made just like popcorn, except dried rice needs water adding to the kernal, usually by steam. It’s then heated in an oven.
Lobsters are cooked alive as dead shellfish contain bacteria that multiply rapidly. Cooking live reduces the risk of food poisoning.
The size of you head has no effect on your IQ.
The oldest space junk orbiting the earth is the Vanguard 1 satellite, launched in 1958.