20 Mind-Blowing Facts You Won’t Believe Are Real

Are you ready to learn some of the most interesting, strange, and unbelievable facts about the world?

This list of amazing facts about science, history, animals, and more covers everything from space storms to square-shaped wombat poop in two sentences or less.

These are the kinds of facts that stay with you, and yes, they’re all true.

20 Mind-Blowing Facts

1. Sharks are older than trees.
   Sharks have existed for over 400 million years, while trees evolved around 350 million years ago.
2. Octopuses have three hearts.
   Two pump blood to the gills, and one pumps it to the rest of the body—but that third heart stops when they swim.
3. Bananas are technically berries, but strawberries are not.
   Botanically, berries must come from a single ovary and have seeds inside the flesh—making bananas fit the bill.
4. Cleopatra lived closer in time to the Moon landing than to the building of the Great Pyramid.
   The pyramids were built around 2560 BCE; Cleopatra lived around 30 BCE—nearly 2,000 years before 1969.
5. Water can boil and freeze at the same time.
   It’s called the “triple point,” a precise temperature and pressure where all three phases coexist.
6. A day on Venus is longer than its year.
   Venus takes 243 Earth days to rotate once, but only 225 Earth days to orbit the sun.
7. Your stomach gets a new lining every 3–4 days.
   If it didn’t, the strong digestive acids would digest your stomach itself.
8. Wombat poop is cube-shaped.
   This unique shape prevents it from rolling away and is used to mark territory.
9. Sloths can hold their breath longer than dolphins.
   Sloths slow their heart rate and can hold their breath for up to 40 minutes, while dolphins average about 10.
10. There’s a planet where it rains molten glass—sideways.
    HD 189733b is a gas giant with winds over 5,000 mph and silicate rain.
11. Some turtles can breathe through their butts.
    Certain species perform cloacal respiration—absorbing oxygen through their rear ends when underwater.
12. The Eiffel Tower can grow over 6 inches taller in summer.
    Heat causes the metal to expand, making it measurably taller on hot days.
13. Space smells like seared steak.
    Astronauts returning from spacewalks describe the odor on their suits as metallic and meaty.
14. Honey never spoils.
    Archaeologists have found pots of edible honey in ancient Egyptian tombs over 3,000 years old.
15. You can fit all the planets in the solar system between Earth and the Moon.
    Their combined diameters (about 238,855 miles) just fit into that average distance.
16. A teaspoon of neutron star weighs about 6 billion tons.
    That’s more mass than Mount Everest, packed into a space the size of a sugar cube.
17. Humans share about 60% of their DNA with bananas.
    We share fundamental biological building blocks with all living organisms.
18. There are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on all Earth’s beaches.
    NASA estimates around 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (1 septillion) stars.
19. The shortest war in history lasted 38–45 minutes.
    It was between the British Empire and the Sultanate of Zanzibar on August 27, 1896.
20. Some jellyfish are biologically immortal.
    Turritopsis dohrnii can revert to its polyp stage and start its life cycle anew under stress.