facts

Before there were bicycles, there were velocipedes. Primitive, pedal-less, and un-steerable wooden precursors to bikes emerged at the end of the 18th century, but in 1818, a guy named Baron von Drais earned a patent for a device with a padded saddle and a steerable front wheel. The patent was...

About 100 million bicycles are manufactured worldwide each year.

The master of suspense, who terrified audiences with movies like Psycho and The Birds, considered himself an ovophobe—someone frightened of eggs. Alfred Hitchcock explained to an interviewer in 1963: "I'm frightened of eggs, worse than frightened; they revolt me. That white round thing without...

Those who think everything on the planet has already been discovered might just not be looking close enough. A tiny chameleon discovered in northern Madagascar and measuring just 28.9 millimeters is believed to be the smallest reptile on Earth. The itty bitty chameleon was recently discovered...

Whether you’re a professional photographer or not, you’ll probably be impressed by the photo-related feat accomplished by a team at Australia’s Griffith University in 2012. Using an electrical field to suspend a charged atom in a vacuum chamber, the team shot a laser beam at the atom and took a...

It is true that everybody thinks their Italian grandma—or nonna—is best cook around. So it was a genius idea when Joe Scaravella decided to gather up as many nonnas as he could to work in his restaurant in Staten Island. Enoteca Maria combines the skill of these delightful, talented grandmothers...

In the 1870s, the city of Liège, Belgium, attempted to employ 37 felines as mail carriers, according to the BBC. Messages were tucked into waterproof bags that the kitties would carry around their necks. However, while one cat apparently made it to its destination in under five hours, the other...

Today, bacteria and fungi eat away at fallen trees, but that wasn't always the case. Bacteria had to evolve to eat wood, so hundreds of millions of years go, trees would fall at death, leaving large piles of dead wood. Forest fires of unimaginable proportions would burn the massive mounds of...

Trees are young'ns compared to the geezer sharks that rule the sea. Sharks have existed for around 400 million years, while trees became their own official species only 350 million years ago. Other notable animals that outlive our leafy ancestors are the horseshoe crab as well as the jellyfish.

The human brain is capable of amazing things, but in order to do those things, it needs to block out distractions through a process called unconscious selective attention. The nose is one of those distractions. In his landmark 1960s study, Ulric Neisser discovered this phenomenon after he asked...

And that's because they're a choking hazard without them. "In addition to help prevent the pen from leaking, all of our BIC caps comply with international safety standards that attempt to minimize the risk of children accidentally inhaling pen caps. Some of these vented caps … have a little hole...

In 2013, Animal Planet aired Mermaids: The New Evidence, a documentary—or rather, a mockumentary—that “proved” the half-human-half-fish beings exist. And while the program was fake, plenty of the 3.6 million viewers that watched believed that the fictional claims were real. In fact, so many...

1. You can hear over 180 different languages and dialects in Toronto, as more than a third of the people who live there speak a language other than English and French. You can see the multicultural nature of the city in areas like Little Italy, Little Portugal, and Chinatown, which often have...

First written in 1838, the Constitution of the state of Florida guarantees the right to privacy, the freedom of speech, and the right of pregnant pigs to be free from cages. Unlike many crazy or outdated laws, this amendment is recent (passed in 2002) and comes from a well-meaning place: the...

Tornadoes can develop over water just as well as they can over land. When they do, they're called "waterspouts," and they suck up large amounts of lake or sea water—as well as whatever's swimming in that water. If the waterspout travels on to the land and the winds decrease, there's nowhere for...

Hummingbirds are known for being itty-bitty creatures, but Bee Hummingbirds are the teeniest versions of these shockingly tiny flyers. They're actually the smallest bird in the world. They are so minuscule that they are sometimes mistaken for insects (which explains their name), according to the...

Chimpanzees and gorillas have human-like fingerprints and so do koalas. In fact, koala prints are very similar to human fingerprints, even to expert crime scene investigators. As of yet, no koalas have framed humans for their crimes, but now we know it's not impossible…

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...

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...

The pharaohs of ancient Egypt were believed to be literally divine. The word pharaoh itself means "great house," as in the house of God. In fact, King Pepi II, who supposedly ruled for 90 years, thought so highly of himself that when he was bothered by insects, he would command that one of his...