The flashes of colored light you see when you rub your eyes are called “phosphenes.”

Christian nurses were not allowed to nurse Jewish babies.

This was declared by King Henry III in 1235. If these wet nurses were to do so, it was believed that it could weaken the faith of the infants as they grow up.

Iceland does not have a railway system.

The largest known prime number has 24,862,048 digits.


If you want to know what that number is, just raise 2 to the 82,589,933th power and subtract 1.

The tooth of an elephant weighs around 9 pounds.

The tongue is the only muscle in one’s body that is attached from one end.

Sumo wrestlers often make babies cry for good luck.

The Bagheera kiplingi spider was discovered in the 1800s and is the only species of spider that has been classified as vegetarian.

A woman once found her lost wedding ring growing on a carrot in her garden.

In 1995, a Swedish woman lost her wedding ring while preparing a Christmas eve dinner. 12 years later, the ring re-emergers in her garden wrapped around a carrot.

The Amazon Cicada can urinate at almost 10 feet per second.

From August 1940 onwards all fire trucks in Germany were painted in dark green. Although this rule was ended in 1945 and new rules in both East and West Germany required newly acquired fire trucks to be painted in red, green wartime fire trucks remained a common sight in the 1950s and early 1960s. Some wartime fire trucks made it into the 1970s despite being hopelessly obsolete by then.

Blue lights for emergency vehicles were made mandatory in Germany in 1938 (at that time they didn't blink or rotate). Blue was chosen because blue light scatters more than lights in different colors and thus is less easy to spot from the air (and only from lower altitudes) - it was already planned with wartime blackouts in mind.

Dogs can learn commands better with hand signals.

This spring/early summer the US will experience an unusual occurrence of cicadas.



The 13 year brood and the 17 year brood will be coming to the surface at the same time.


The last time this happened was in 1803.


Yeah, it's gonna suck

Only 3 mammals experience menopause.