T
Short talks by people who are great at explaining things. Filter by topic, lose an afternoon.
★Your nose can remember 50,000 different scents.★A group of jellyfish is called a smack.★The average person spends six months of their life waiting for red lights to turn green.★The first item ever sold on eBay was a broken laser pointer.★Pteronophobia is the fear of being tickled by feathers.★Sea cucumbers breathe through their butts.★Dragonflies have been around for about 300 million years.★7% of American adults believe that chocolate milk comes from brown cows.★A day on Mercury lasts 59 Earth days.★Bees can recognize individual human faces.★A lion's roar can be heard from up to 5 miles away.★A bolt of lightning is five times hotter than the surface of the sun.★The average person walks the equivalent of three times around the world in a lifetime.★The microwave oven was invented by accident when a researcher noticed a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.★A crocodile can't stick its tongue out.★Pineapples take about two years to grow.★The French language has 13 different words for 'kiss'.★Barbie's full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts.★A cloud can weigh more than a million pounds.★Humans are the only animals that blush.★Google processes more than 8.5 billion searches every single day.★There are more than 1,000 chemicals in a cup of coffee.★Polar bears have black skin under their white fur.★A group of owls is called a parliament.★Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.★Wombat poop is cube-shaped.★A group of porcupines is called a prickle.★Your tongue print is as unique as your fingerprint.★Bubble wrap was originally invented as wallpaper.★A mosquito has 47 teeth.★Voice actors for Mickey and Minnie Mouse got married in real life.★Starfish can regenerate their lost limbs.★The Statue of Liberty was originally intended to be a lighthouse.★29th May is officially Put a Pillow on Your Fridge Day.★A group of frogs is called an army.★Koalas have fingerprints nearly identical to humans.★There are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on every beach on Earth.★A newborn panda is smaller than a mouse.★Avocados are toxic to most animals except humans.★There are more possible iterations of a game of chess than atoms in the observable universe.★Hot water freezes faster than cold water. This is called the Mpemba effect.★Goldfish can recognize human faces.★A group of ferrets is called a business.★Sea otters hold hands while sleeping so they don't drift apart.★The smell of freshly cut grass is actually a plant distress signal.★Pigs can't look up at the sky without rolling over.★The Great Wall of China is not visible from space with the naked eye.★Antarctica is the only continent without native reptiles or snakes.★Dolphins sleep with one eye open.★The Dutch were once the tallest people in the world.★Scotland's national animal is the unicorn.★In Switzerland it is illegal to own just one guinea pig.★The shortest war in history lasted 38 to 45 minutes between Britain and Zanzibar.★The first oranges weren't orange, they were green.★A 'moment' was medieval unit of time equal to 90 seconds.★There is a village in Norway called 'Hell' that freezes over every winter.★Bananas are berries, but strawberries are not.★Your stomach gets a new lining every 3 to 4 days, otherwise it would digest itself.★If you lift a kangaroo's tail off the ground it can't hop.★A jiffy is an actual unit of time: 1/100th of a second.★Sloths can hold their breath longer than dolphins can.★A shrimp's heart is located in its head.★Chewing gum while you chop onions helps keep you from crying.★So far, two diseases have successfully been eradicated: smallpox and rinderpest.★Horses physically cannot vomit.★It is physically impossible to hum while holding your nose.★Ostriches can run faster than horses.★The world's oldest known recipe is for beer.★The 'new car smell' is made of dozens of chemicals off-gassing from the interior.★Banging your head against a wall for one hour burns 150 calories.★The smell of rain has a name: petrichor.★Octopuses have three hearts and blue blood.★We have mapped more of Mars than of our own ocean floor.★There are only two countries in the world whose names start with 'The': The Gambia and The Bahamas.★A 'jiffy' is one trillionth of a second in physics.★The longest hiccuping spree lasted 68 years.★The fear of long words is ironically called hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia.★Humans share 60% of their DNA with bananas.★Most 'silver' spoons are actually made of stainless steel.★More than half of all people alive today have never made a phone call.★A hippo's sweat is pink.★It takes about eight minutes for sunlight to reach Earth.★Ketchup was once sold as medicine in the 1830s.★The Eiffel Tower can grow up to 6 inches taller during summer.★Ancient Egyptians slept on stone pillows.★A snail can have up to 25,000 teeth on its tongue.★A rhinoceros' horn is made of keratin, the same stuff as hair.★There's a species of jellyfish that is immortal.★Nintendo was founded in 1889 as a playing card company.★A group of pandas is called an embarrassment.★Dolphins have names for each other.★Cats can't taste sweetness.★The Hawaiian alphabet has only 13 letters.★The human brain uses about 20% of the body's total energy.★Rats laugh when tickled.★The Mona Lisa has no eyebrows or eyelashes.★Elephants are the only mammals that can't jump.★Sharks existed on Earth before trees did.★Pigeons can recognize themselves in a mirror.★A snail can sleep for three years straight.★Cherophobia is an irrational fear of fun or happiness.★The longest recorded flight of a chicken lasted 13 seconds.★Saturn would float if you could find an ocean big enough.★Crows can recognize human faces and hold grudges for years.★Cleopatra lived closer in time to the Moon landing than to the building of the Great Pyramid.★The moon has moonquakes.★Honey never spoils. Archaeologists found 3000-year-old honey in Egyptian tombs that was still edible.★Cotton candy was co-invented by a dentist.★Vincent van Gogh only sold one painting during his lifetime.★Cows have best friends and get stressed when separated.★The dot over the letter 'i' is called a tittle.★The oldest 'your mom' joke was discovered on a 3,500 year old Babylonian tablet.★Butterflies taste with their feet.★Sloths only poop about once a week.★A blue whale's tongue can weigh as much as an elephant.★Bananas are curved because they grow towards the sun.★Hippos can't actually swim, they walk along the riverbed.★Snakes can help predict earthquakes.★The first computer mouse was made of wood.★An octopus has nine brains.★A flock of crows is known as a murder.★You can hear a blue whale's heartbeat from more than two miles away.★A group of crows mobbing a predator is literally called a 'murder patrol'.★A day on Jupiter lasts only about 10 hours.★The shortest commercial flight in the world lasts just 57 seconds.★A newborn kangaroo is about the size of a jellybean.★Humans blink about 15 to 20 times per minute.★Octopuses can taste with their arms.★A day on Venus is longer than a year on Venus.★The inventor of the Pringles can is buried in one.★Cashews grow on the outside of a fruit, not inside a shell.★A group of flamingos is called a 'flamboyance'.★A hummingbird's heart can beat up to 1,260 times per minute.★A blue whale's heart is roughly the size of a small car.★Cows have regional accents, they moo differently in different areas.★Peanuts aren't nuts, they are legumes.