Fact-based Weird Facts
A Jiffy Is a Real Unit of Time
The word you use for hurry up is also a genuine technical term, and depending on who is using it, a jiffy lasts anything from a fiftieth of a second to a few trillionths of one.
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Fact-based Weird Facts
Cows Have Best Friends
Cows build preferred relationships, groom the herd-mates who groomed them, and calves raised with a companion do better at learning.
Fact-based Weird Facts
Butterflies Taste With Their Feet
A butterfly landing on a leaf is not resting — it is drumming the surface with its front legs to find out what the leaf is, because it has taste receptors in its feet.
Fact-based Cosmic Questions
Why Is the Last Stair Always the One That Gets You?
Stumbles on stairs cluster at the first and last few steps, and the reason has more to do with what your body expects than with your legs.
Fact-based Weird Facts
The Eiffel Tower Is Taller in Summer
Iron expands when it warms, so the tower grows by 12 to 15 centimetres between a cold winter day and a hot summer one, and its top leans away from the sun while it does it.
Fact-based Cosmic Questions
Does Time Move Slower in a Waiting Room?
The clock ticks at the usual speed, but psychologists explain why waiting and boredom make every minute feel stretched.
Fact-based Weird Facts
The Real Nemo's Dad Would Have Become His Mom
Every clownfish starts adult life as a male, and when the female who rules an anemone disappears, her partner turns into a female and takes her place, so in a real reef Marlin would have become Nemo's mum.
Fact-based Weird Facts
That Fresh Rain Smell? You're Actually Sniffing Bacteria
The earthy smell of rain has a name, petrichor, and a key ingredient is geosmin, made by soil bacteria, which the human nose can detect at about one hundred parts per trillion.
Fact-based Weird Facts
T-Rex Never Met a Stegosaurus — They Missed Each Other by 80 Million Years
Stegosaurus lived around 150 million years ago, T. rex about 68 to 66 million years ago. We are closer in time to T. rex than it was to Stegosaurus.
Fact-based Weird Facts
Sharks Are Older Than Trees
Shark-like scales go back about 450 million years. The oldest known forest grew about 385 million years ago.