Facts About Moon - strangefacts

• Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon with his left foot first 

• Buzz Aldrin was the first man to pee his pants on the moon 

• The first men to walk on the Moon reported seeing a UFO. NASA officials told Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to keep quiet about it

• Due to gravitational effects, you weigh slightly less when the moon is directly overhead  

• Footprints of astronauts who landed on the moon should last at least 10 million years since the moon has no atmosphere

• If someone was to fly once around the surface of the moon, it would be equal to a round trip from New York to London

• Astronaut Buzz Aldrin's mother's maiden name was "Moon." Buzz was the second man to step onto the Moon in 1969 

• The moon does not give off light of its own. It is the Sun that gives light to the Moon. The Moon reflects the Sun’s light 

• The last words spoken from the moon were from Eugene Cernan, Commander of the Apollo 17 Mission on 11 December 1972. "As we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came, and, God willing, we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind."  

• The final resting place for Dr. Eugene Shoemaker was the Moon. His ashes were placed on board the Lunar Prospector spacecraft before it was launched on January 6, 1998. NASA crashed the probe into a crater on the moon in an attempt to learn if there is water on the moon

Facts About Water - strangefacts

• The human brain is 80% water

• The odds are 1 out of 230,000,000 (.000000435%) that you're allergic to water

• An average human drinks about 16,000 gallons of water in a lifetime

• The human body is comprised of 80% water

• The daily heat output of the human body is enough to boil eight gallons of freezing water

• About 30% of Canadians rely on getting their water from the ground for their domestic use  

• During the Gold Rush in 1849, some people paid as much as $100 for a simple glass of water   

• In Australia, the average person uses 876 gallons of water daily

• In Switzerland the average person uses only 77 gallons of water per person daily

•  Most of the world's people must walk at least 3 hours to fetch water

•  Senegalese women spend an average of 17.5 hours a week just collecting water

• In 1832 the Scottish surgeon Neil Arnott devised water beds as a way of improving patients' comfort

Facts About Sun - strangefacts

• Only 55% of all Americans know that the sun is a star

• The Sun is made out of 92% hydrogen, 7% helium and the rest is other low number gasses

• The Sun rotates once every 27 days and the Sun formed over four and a half billion years ago

• The temperature at the core, or very middle, of the Sun, is about 27 million° Fahrenheit and the Sun’s diameter is about 870,000 miles wide

• The Sun is 109 times wider than Earth, and is 333,000 times heavier and over one million Earths could fit inside the Sun

• Astronomers once believed a planet named Vulcan existed between Mercury and the Sun

• If you were standing on Mercury, the Sun would appear 2.5 times larger than it appears from Earth 

• Some people start to sneeze if they are exposed to sunlight or have a light shined into their eye

• 90% of people with visual impairments can see the sun, which makes them able to see 93 million miles away

• A Chinese Scientist discovered that the Earth is round during the Han Dynasty by measuring the sun and moon's path in the sky

• Human skin produces Vitamin D when exposed to sunlight, specifically ultraviolet B radiation  

• Every day the Sun rises in the east, moves through the southern part of the sky and sets in the west

• The largest known star is the monster VY Canis Majoris. This star is thought to be 1,800 times the size of the Sun; it would engulf the orbit of Saturn

Facts About Smoking - strangefacts

• It is possible to go blind from smoking too heavily

• The odds are 3 out of 4 (75%) that you forbid smoking in your home

• The average person who stops smoking requires one hour less sleep a night

• The music hall entertainer Nosmo King derived his stage name from a 'No Smoking' sign

• Marijuana increases heart rate by 20–100 percent shortly after smoking; this effect can last up to 3 hours

• The first American advertisement for tobacco was published in 1789. It showed a picture of an Indian smoking a long clay pipe

• One million Americans, about 3,000 each day, take up smoking each year. Most of them are children

• The British Medical Journal has estimated that smoking one cigarette takes 11 minutes off the average person's life

• 5% of the $40,700,000,000 received by states from the lawsuit against the tobacco companies has actually been spent on fighting smoking

• Three years after a person quits smoking, there chance of having a heart attack is the same as someone who has never smoked before

• The town of Timnath, Colorado, has banned smoking in bars and restaurants. Timnath, Colorado (population 223) has no bars or restaurants

Facts About Global Warming - strangefacts

• The warmest year on record was 2005. If things keep going like this, your children and grandchildren will inherit a world with a far less hospitable climate.

• In the past 100 years, sea level has already risen between 5 and 9 inches and it is still going up. You may think that’s not a lot, but it is. Even a few feet of rise would put many US coastal cities and a large portion of Florida underwater.

• There were 27 named storms in 2005, a higher number of severe storms and hurricanes than ever before in a single year. The high storm volume may be connected to warmer temperatures in the Atlantic.

• Within the last decade, there were outbreaks of both malaria and dengue fever in the US. Other tropical diseases will undoubtedly spread north as the temperature rises.

• Heat waves are gaining in intensity and frequency. Europe’s 2003 heat wave caused an estimated 35,000 deaths. If you have older relatives, especially if they live alone, increases in heat waves could pose a deadly risk.

• Global warming causes crop failures, especially in the tropics, where temperatures are already on the edge of what is tolerable for many food crops. These failures could lead to famines if warming continues.

• That’s really scary when you consider that automobiles are one of the major sources of global carbon emissions.

• There is a broad scientific consensus that humans are causing global warming by burning fossil fuels when we drive, fly, and use electricity.

• Your use of fossil fuels is actually changing the composition of the atmosphere. The US and China are the two biggest emitters of carbon dioxide worldwide.

Facts About Blue Whale - strangefacts

• The blue whale's heart only beats nine times a minute

• A baby blue whale drinks approximately 130 gallons of milk each day

• The blue whale can whistle up to 188 decibels; they are the loudest animals on Earth 

• A blue whale's tongue weighs more than a whole elephant, and is large enough for fifty people to stand on it

• The blue whale, the largest animal on our planet ever (exceeding the size of the greatest dinosaurs) still lives in the ocean; it's heart is the size of a Volkswagen  

• The Blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) is a marine mammal belonging to the suborder of baleen whales (called Mysticeti).  
• At over 33 metres (108 ft) in length and 180 metric tons (200 short tons) or more in weight, it is the largest animal ever known to have existed.
•  For over 40 years, they were hunted almost to extinction by whalers until protected by the international community in 1966.
• A 2002 report estimated there were 5,000 to 12,000 blue whales worldwide, located in at least five groups.

Indus Blind Dolphins - strangefacts

• Blind Dolphins are found only in the Indus region and the Ganges, in south Asia. Unlike other dolphins, blind dolphins are found in rivers and not the sea.

• These river dolphins are the only species in the world to have eyes without lenses! Instead, they have sound imaging skills called echolocation, which is a very sophisticated sonar system that helps them swim through the muddy rivers.

• They swim on one side underwater, and keep close to the bottom of the riverbed, which helps them navigate and find food.

• There are fewer than 4,000 to 6,000 blind river dolphins left and the number is fast decreasing.

• The Indus Dolphins have a long beak, a small low hump, and wide flippers. An adult can weigh 150-200 pounds (70- 90 kilograms).

• The Indus and the Ganges dolphins can also survive in waters only three feet deep! Although they are slow swimmers, they can move in rapid spurts when they need to.

• They breathe through their blowholes with a loud sound that sounds like a sneeze, and can be heard from quite far away.

• The blind dolphins are an endangered species. That means, they will all die out unless we protect them. The dolphins are threatened by chemical and other pollution, dam building, accidental entanglement in fishing nets, and by humans hunting them for their meat as well as their oil, which people think has medicinal value.