Superman didn't always fly.
The original comic book Superman could leap tall buildings in a single bound. But then he had to come right back down to Earth—because he didn't fly. It wasn't until the 1940s, when animators for a new animated series decided it would be too difficult to routinely draw him bending his knees, that it was decided that Superman could take off into the air. Readers got to see smooth animation, and a superhero gained a new power.Space smells like seared steak.
When you see footage of astronauts floating peacefully in space, do you ever wonder, What do space smells like? Well, according to some former astronauts, space does have a distinct odor that hangs around post-spacewalk. They've described it as "hot metal" or "searing steak."
The unicorn is the national animal of Scotland.
While Scotland proudly boasts the Loch Ness Monster, one of the world's most famous fabled creatures, the country opted to make another mythical beast its national animal: the unicorn. Although this might seem like an odd choice, Visit Scotland explains that unicorns played an integral role in the country's history. Back in the 12th century, William I used the "proud beast" in the Scottish royal coat of arms.
The total weight of ants on earth once equaled the total weight of people.
Entomologists have estimated that there are at least one million trillion insects and only one percent of that number is ants, according to the BBC. And if you took all those ants (about ten thousand trillion) and put them on one side of a giant scale, you could almost put all of the people in the world onto the other and balance things out. Unfortunately, as humans have become heavier, this probably wouldn't hold up today—but it once did. Francis Ratnieks, professor of Apiculture at the University of Sussex, told the BBC this might have held true around 2,000 years ago.
"E" is the most common letter and appears in 11 percent of all english words.
Try writing out a few sentences—anything at all. Now take a minute to look at how frequently each letter in the alphabet appears. Chances are you'll see a lot of the letter "e." That's because the commonly used vowel appears in around 11 percent of all words in the English language, according to Oxford Dictionaries. The next most popular letter was "a," which appears in around 8.5 percent of all words. The least common letter is "q," which appears in just 0.2 percent of words.
Some people have an extra bone in their knee (and it's getting more common).
If you were under the impression that the human body had finished evolving, think again. It turns out that some people have a bone in their knee called a fabella. And while this particular little bone with an unknown purpose was once fading away, over the last century and a half, it's gotten more common. Back in 1875, nearly 18 percent of people examined had a fabella. That number dropped to 11 percent by 1918. However, by 2018, 39 percent of individuals had this mysterious bone.
Pringles aren't actually potato chips.
The next time you see a can of Pringles, take a closer look—you won't see the word "chip" anywhere on the packaging. That's because Pringles aren't made of thinly-sliced potatoes, but instead dehydrated potato flakes pressed into their signature parabolic shape. That's what makes them less greasy. But when other potato chip manufacturers complained, the Food and Drug Administration ruled that Pringles couldn't be marketed as chips. The company eventually settled on "potato crisp."
Water makes different pouring sounds depending on its temperature.
If you listen very closely, hot water and cold water sound slightly different when being poured. The heat changes the thickness, or viscosity, of the water, which changes the pitch of the sound it makes when it's poured. What we feel as heat comes from the molecules of the water moving faster. Cold water is thicker and therefore makes a slightly higher-pitched sound.
Dogs actually understand some English.
Some owners of disobedient dogs may have trouble believing this, but dogs can learn to recognize a vocabulary of about 165 words. Unsurprisingly, dogs respond best to short words, as well as words with hard consonants like "t" or "r," which may explain why they can hear "treat" from three rooms away.
If you want to try to expand your dog's vocabulary, be consistent—for example, always call a meal "dinner" instead of breakfast, lunch, or supper. And don't believe the myth: Old dogs can learn words just as well as young dogs.
Humans are just one of the estimated 8.7 million species on Earth.
Human beings may dominate the planet with our sprawling cities and far-reaching technology, but we are, in fact, just one species among some 8.7 million that live together on planet Earth. One 2011 study published in the journal PLoS Biology estimated that "the various forms of life on the planet included 7.8 million species of animals, 298,000 species of plants, 611,000 species of mushrooms, mold and other fungi, 36,400 species of protozoa, and 27,500 species of algae or chromists." And it's worth noting that the researchers did not venture to put an estimate on the number of bacteria.
