Facts About The World That Will Surprise Even The Most Intelligent People

Feb 28th, 2018
Name Team

Worldly facts that are sure to make even the most intelligent and knowledgeable person wide-eyed and surprised – and here they are!

1 Strawberries and raspberries aren't really berries in the botanical sense.

They are derived from a single flower with more than one ovary, making them an aggregate fruit. True berries are simple fruits stemming from one flower with one ovary and typically have several seeds. Tomatoes fall into this group, as do pomegranates, kiwis and—believe it or not—bananas. (Their seeds are so tiny it's easy to forget they're there.)

2 The average chocolate bar contains eight insect pieces

According to ABC News, the average chocolate bar contains eight insect parts. Anything less than 60 insect pieces per 100 grams of chocolate (two chocolate bars' worth) is deemed safe for consumption by the Food and Drug Administration.

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3 There are more stars in the sky than grains of sand in the world

There are 10 times more stars in the night sky than grains of sand in the world's deserts and beaches, scientists say.

Astronomers have worked out that there are 70 thousand million million million - or seven followed by 22 zeros - stars visible from the Earth through telescopes. The total is said to be the most accurate estimate yet of the number of stars.

4 Mosquitoes have killed more humans than all wars in history

Humans murder around 475,000 other people each year. Snakes kill around 50,000, while dogs (mainly from rabies transmission) claim another 25,000 lives. Some of the most feared animals (sharks, wolves) kill fewer than 10.

The diseases that mosquitos carry and transmit to people they bite, on the other hand, kill 725,000.

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5 You’re twice as likely to get killed by a vending machine than a shark

"Vending machines kill, sharks don't," according to a July 4, 2003, Reuters headline. Not only are vending machines more deadly, there are over 1,700 reported injuries from vending machines each year but fewer than 25 shark attacks per year in the United States.

6 For every human on earth, there is 1.6 million ants

"If we were to weigh all the ants in the world, they would weigh as much as all of the people," said wildlife presenter Chris Packham recently in BBC Four's The Wonder Of Animals: Ants. But is this statement true?

This claim was originally made by Harvard University professor Edward O Wilson, and the German biologist Bert Hoelldobler, in their 1994 book Journey To The Ants.

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7 In an average lifetime, a person will walk the equivalent of 5 times around the equator

The average moderately active person takes around 7,500 step/day. If you maintain that daily average and live until 80 years of age, you’ll have walked about 216,262,500 steps in your lifetime.

Doing the math, the average person with the average stride living until 80 will walk a distance of around 110,000 miles.

Which is the equivalent of walking about 5 times around the Earth, right on the equator?

So, How far does the average human walk in a lifetime?

About 5 times around the Earth on the equator.

8 Speaking of dolphins, they can actually call each other by name

Scientists have found further evidence that dolphins call each other by "name". Research has revealed that the marine mammals use a unique whistle to identify each other. A team from the University of St Andrews in Scotland found that when the animals hear their own call played back to them, they respond. The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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9 Due to gravity, the theoretical maximum height of a tree is 130 meters

"As trees grow taller, increasing leaf water stress due to gravity and path length resistance may ultimately limit leaf expansion and photosynthesis for further height growth," the biologists wrote in a 2004 article in the journal Nature. This limit lies at or just above 400 feet.

10 99% of the earth’s gold is located in its core

Billions of years ago, 99% of all of the Earth’s gold has sunk to the center of the planet. The amount of gold in the Earth’s core can cover the surface of the planet in a layer of gold 1.5 feet (0.4572 meters) thick.

Over the course of 30 million to 40 million years planetesimals smaller than Earth crashed together forming the planet that’s here today. The estimate of the amount of gold contained within the earth derives from the comparison of the crust composition of meteorites with similar makeups to that of the planetesimals that formed the Earth originally. It’s suggested that gold, platinum, and nickel are a result of the Earth pulling them into its iron-rich cure when its surface was a large ocean of molten magma.

It’s calculated that there are 1.6 quadrillion tons of gold in Earth’s core and about 9.6 quadrillion tons of platinum

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11 Large parts of Canada have less gravity than the rest of Earth. The phenomenon was discovered in the 1960s

Although it’s not a major change, in certain parts of Canada a person weighing 150 pounds (68 kilograms) can find themselves to be 1/10th of an ounce lighter. One explanation could be that mantle rocks underneath the surface area are slowly flowing downward. Mark Tamisiea, a geophysicist in Liverpool, England compares the phenomenon to being on a raft in the rapids:

“If the water was flowing downward in a sinkhole, [the raft] would be pulled down as well.”

The study supports an alternative theory that suggests Ice Age glaciers pressed down on the area’s crust more than 20,000 years ago, creating an effect similar to a person sitting on an viscous water-bed.

The mass of the ice made the mantle rocks ooze slowly sideways. Then the ice began to melt so quickly that the crust hasn’t yet fully returned to it’s previous state.

Tamisiea and other geophysicist agree that the rebound indeed accounts for about half of the gravity loss.

12 Honey is the only food that does not spoil

Honey has a lot of pretty incredible properties. It's been used and investigated for medicinal properties for a long time, especially as a treatment for open wounds. Herodotus reported that the Babylonians buried their dead in honey, and Alexander the Great may have been embalmed in a coffin full of honey.

The oldest honey ever found was unearthed in Georgia, and dates back over 5,000 years. So, if you found yourself in possession of some 5,000-year-old honey, could you eat it? Well. . .

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13 The Hawaiian alphabet only has twelve letters (A, E, I, O, U, H, K, L, M, N, P, and W)

The Hawaiian alphabet is an alphabet used to write Hawaiian. It was adapted from the English alphabet in the early 19th century by American missionaries to print a bible in the Hawaiian language.

In 1822, a writing system based on one similar to the new New Zealand Grammar was developed and printed by American Protestant missionary Elisha Loomis.[1] The original alphabet included five vowels and twelve consonants:

A, B, D, E, H, I, K, L, M, N, O, P, R, T, U, V, and W

and seven diphthongs: AE, AI, AO, AU, EI, EU, OU

14 If you make ice cubes with tap water, they will be white.

If you use boiled water, they will be transparent.

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15 It takes so little electricity to charge your phone that if you calculated the yearly cost of it, it would be less than $1

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