Fact-based Weird Facts
A Day on Venus Lasts Longer Than Its Year
Venus needs about 243 Earth days to turn once and only 225 to circle the Sun, yet the gap between two sunrises there is just 117 days.
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Fact-based How It Started
The Tiny Pocket on Your Jeans Was Made for a Watch
That little pocket tucked inside the front pocket of your jeans is older than phones, earbuds and even wristwatches: it was made to carry a pocket watch.
Fact-based Cosmic Questions
Why Is the Way Back Always Shorter?
The journey home takes exactly as long as the journey out, and it is over noticeably sooner, which is a strange thing for an hour to do.
Fact-based Weird Facts
A Day Was Half an Hour Shorter When Dinosaurs Were Alive
A 70-million-year-old fossil shell shows that a day then lasted about 23 and a half hours, and a year held 372 of them.
Fiction Tiny Stories
The Bus Driver Who Waited for the Runner
The 7:42 leaves at 7:42, except on the four mornings a week when it leaves at 7:43, for reasons the timetable does not record.
Fiction Tiny Stories
The Tortoise Who Outlasted Three Sofas
He arrived in 1974 as a present for a nine-year-old boy, and has since watched the living room around him be redecorated four times without appearing to notice.
Fiction Tiny Stories
The Village Clock That Is Four Minutes Fast
It has been four minutes fast since 1971, and the village has twice voted, decisively, to leave it exactly as it is.
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.
Fiction Useless Inventions
The Indoor Sundial
A properly engineered brass sundial for the living room, sold with its own small torch, because a sundial indoors has to get its sunlight from somewhere.
Fiction Useless Inventions
The Almost-Done Progress Bar
A polished brass desk object with one glowing bar that has sat at 97 percent since the day it was made, connected to nothing and finishing nothing.