– It takes 8 minutes 17 seconds for light to travel from the Sun’s surface to the Earth.
– 10 percent of all human beings ever born are alive at this very moment.
– The Earth spins at 1,000 mph but it travels through space at an incredible 67,000 mph.
– Every year, over one million earthquakes shake the Earth.
– When Krakatoa erupted in 1883, its force was so great it could be heard 4,800 kilometers away in Australia.
– Every second around 100 lightning bolts strike the Earth.
– Every year lightning kills 1000 people.
– In October 1999 an Iceberg the size of London broke free from the Antarctic ice shelf .
– If you could drive your car straight up you would arrive in space in just over an hour.
– Human tapeworms can grow up to 22.9m.
– The Earth is 4.56 billion years old…the same age as the Moon and the Sun.
– The dinosaurs became extinct before the Rockies or the Alps were formed.
– Female black widow spiders eat their males after mating.
– When a flea jumps, the rate of acceleration is 20 times that of the space shuttle during launch.
– If our Sun were just inch in diameter, the nearest star would be 445 miles away.
– Astronauts cannot belch – there is no gravity to separate liquid from gas in their stomachs.
– The air at the summit of Mount Everest, 29,029 feet is only a third as thick as the air at sea level.
– One million, million, million, million, millionth of a second after the Big Bang the Universe was the size of a …pea.
– DNA was first discovered in 1869 by Swiss Friedrich Mieschler.