Did you know?

31 August 2026

1. 01

   Axolotls can regrow an entire lost limb, including bone, muscle and nerves, without scarring, and can do it many times over.

2. 02

   Giraffes have blood pressure roughly twice as high as humans, which their hearts need to pump blood all the way up their long necks to the brain.

3. 03

   Sea otters use rocks as tools to crack open shellfish, and many keep a favourite rock tucked in a loose pouch of skin under their arm.

4. 04

   An electric eel can produce shocks of up to about 600 volts, more than five times a standard home electrical socket, to stun prey and predators.

5. 05

   A cockroach can survive for about a week without its head, since it breathes through small holes along its body rather than through its mouth.

6. 06

   A single day on Mercury, from sunrise to sunrise, lasts about 176 Earth days, which is longer than Mercury's own 88-day year.

7. 07

   The Andromeda Galaxy is drifting toward the Milky Way and is expected to merge with it in about 4 billion years.

8. 08

   Because the Moon has no wind or atmosphere to erode them, footprints left by Apollo astronauts could remain visible for millions of years.

9. 09

   Sunsets on Mars appear blue to cameras, because fine dust in the Martian atmosphere scatters blue light differently than Earth's air does.

10. 10

    One year on Neptune lasts about 165 Earth years, so the planet has completed only one full orbit of the Sun since it was discovered in 1846.

11. 11

    Astronauts have reported that the residue left on their suits after a spacewalk carries a distinct smell, often described as seared steak or hot metal.

12. 12

    Light travels fast enough to circle the entire Earth about seven and a half times in a single second.

13. 13

    Most natural diamonds form more than 100 kilometres below Earth's surface, where intense heat and pressure compress carbon into crystals.

14. 14

    Absolute zero, about -273.15 degrees Celsius, is the coldest temperature theoretically possible, the point where atomic motion nearly stops.

15. 15

    A rainbow is actually a full circle of light, though from the ground we usually see only the arc that rises above the horizon.

16. 16

    Sound cannot travel through the vacuum of space, because it needs a medium such as air or water to carry its vibrations.

17. 17

    No bridge crosses the main stem of the Amazon River anywhere along its length, largely because its banks are sparsely populated and shift with the seasons.

18. 18

    The Dead Sea is roughly ten times saltier than the ocean, which is why swimmers float on its surface so easily.

19. 19

    Antarctica, not the Sahara, is technically the world's largest desert, since a desert is defined by how little precipitation it receives, not by heat.

20. 20

    More of the Moon's surface has been mapped in fine detail than the floor of Earth's own oceans.

21. 21

    Dust blown from the Sahara Desert crosses the Atlantic Ocean and helps fertilise the soil of the Amazon rainforest thousands of kilometres away.

22. 22

    The vast majority of international internet traffic travels through undersea fibre-optic cables laid along the ocean floor, not through satellites.

23. 23

    The QWERTY keyboard layout was designed in the 1870s partly to slow typists down and reduce jamming in early mechanical typewriters.

24. 24

    The oldest surviving photograph, taken in 1826 or 1827, needed an exposure time of about eight hours to capture the image.

25. 25

    A human baby is born with about 300 bones, many of which gradually fuse together to leave an adult with 206 bones.

26. 26

    Human taste buds renew themselves roughly every one to two weeks throughout a person's life.

27. 27

    An adult human body is roughly 60 percent water, while the brain and heart are each about 73 percent water.

28. 28

    Human skin replaces its outer layer roughly once a month, meaning most of the skin covering an adult's body today did not exist a few weeks ago.