Fun Facts – 14 October 2015

• Cleopatra lived closer in time to the Moon landing than to the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
• A mantis shrimp can swing its claw so fast it boils the water around it and creates a flash of light.
• When we breath through our nose, we always inhale more air from one nostril than with the other one — and this changes every 15 minutes.
• The woolly mammoth was still around when the pyramids were being built.
• Written language was invented independently by the Egyptians, Sumerians, Chinese, and Mayans.
• It can take a photon 40,000 years to travel from the core of the sun to the surface, but only 8 minutes to travel the rest of the way to earth.
• Water bears, or Tardigrades, are typically 0.5 mm in length and can survive virtually anything. Even the vacuum of space.
• The critically endangered Kakapo bird has a strong, pleasant, musty odour which allows predators to easily locate it. Hence, it is critically endangered.
• In 1903 the Wright Brothers flew for the first time. 66 years later, man landed on the Moon in 1969.
• Basically anything that melts can be made into glass. You just have to cool off a molten material before its molecules have time to realign into what they were before being melted.

Courtesy of businessinsider.com.au