Useless trivia and facts

lis

The world’s oldest dog lived to 29.5 years old. While the median age a dog reaches tends to be about 10-15 years, one Australian cattle dog, ‘Bluey’, survived to the ripe old age of 29.5.

lis

The world’s oldest cat lived to 38 years and three days old. Creme Puff was the oldest cat to ever live.

lis

The Sun makes a sound but we can't hear it. In the form of pressure waves, the Sun does make a sound. The wavelength of the pressure waves from the Sun is measured in hundreds of miles, however, meaning they are far beyond the range of human hearing.

lis

Mount Everest isn't the tallest mountain on Earth. Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa in Hawaii, the twin volcanoes, are taller than Mount Everest as 4.2km of their height is submerged underwater. The twin volcanoes measure a staggering 10.2km in total, compared to Everest’s paltry 8.8km.

lis

Our solar system has a wall. The heliopause – the region of space in which solar wind isn’t hot enough to push back the wind of particles coming from distant stars – is often considered the “boundary wall” of the Solar System and interstellar space.

lis

Octopuses don’t actually have tentacles. They have eight limbs, but they're arms (for most species). Technically, when talking about cephalopods (octopuses, squids etc), sciencotists define tentacles as limbs with suckers at their end. Octopus arms have suckers down most of their length.

lis

Most maps of the world are wrong. On most maps, the Mercator projection – first developed in 1569 – is still used. This method is wildly inaccurate and makes Alaska appear as large as Brazil and Greenland 14 times larger than it actually is. For a map to be completely accurate, it would need to be life-size and round, not flat.

lis

NASA genuinely faked part of the Moon landing. While Neil Armstrong's first steps on the lunar surface were categorically not faked, the astronaut quarantine protocol when the astronauts arrived back on Earth was largely just one big show.

lis

Comets smell like rotten eggs. A comet smells like rotten eggs, urine, burning matches, and… almonds. Traces of hydrogen sulphide, ammonia, sulphur dioxide, and hydrogen cyanide were all found in the makeup of the comet 67P/Churyumove-Gerasimenko. Promotional postcards were even commissioned in 2016 carrying the pungent scent of a comet.

lis

Earth’s poles are moving. This magnetic reversal of the North and South Pole has happened 171 times in the past 71 million years. We’re overdue a flip. It could come soon, as the North Pole is moving at around 55 kilometres per year, an increase over the 15km per year up until 1990.