Useless trivia and facts

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Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.

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The U.S. Air Force introduced Bob Ross to painting.

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A cloud weighs around a million tonnes. A cloud typically has a volume of around 1km3 and a density of around 1.003kg per m3 – that's a density that’s around 0.4 per cent lower than the air surrounding it (this is how they are able to float).

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Giraffes are 30 times more likely to get hit by lightning than people. True, there are only five well-documented fatal lightning strikes on giraffes between 1996 and 2010. But due to the population of the species being just 140,000 during this time, it makes for about 0.003 lightning deaths per thousand giraffes each year. This is 30 times the equivalent fatality rate for humans.

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Identical twins don’t have the same fingerprints. You can’t blame your crimes on your twin, after all. This is because environmental factors during development in the womb (umbilical cord length, position in the womb, and the rate of finger growth) affect your fingerprint.

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Earth’s rotation is changing speed. It's actually slowing. This means that, on average, the length of a day increases by around 1.8 seconds per century. 600 million years ago a day lasted just 21 hours.

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Earlobes have no biological purpose. While they are rich in nerve endings and may play a role in social bonding, many scientists argue that earlobes don’t have any true biological purpose.

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Your brain is constantly eating itself. This process is called phagocytosis, where cells envelop and consume smaller cells or molecules to remove them from the system. Don’t worry! Phagocytosis isn't harmful, but actually helps preserve your grey matter.

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The largest piece of fossilised dinosaur poo discovered is over 30cm long and over two litres in volume. Believed to be a Tyrannosaurus rex turd, the fossilised dung (also named a 'coprolite') is helping scientists better understand what the dinosaur ate.

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Mars isn’t actually round. Unlike any other rocky planet in the Solar System, Mars is actually shaped like a rugby ball, but with different sizes along all three axes.