- 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.
- The word “robot” comes from the Czech word “robota,” meaning “forced labor” or “drudgery.”
- High-heeled shoes were originally worn by 10th-century Persian cavalry riders to help keep their feet secure in stirrups.
- In the vacuum of space, two clean, uncoated pieces of the same metal can bond together instantly—a phenomenon known as cold welding.
- Cashews grow from the bottom of a fruit called the cashew apple, and their shells contain toxic compounds related to poison ivy.
- Saturn is the only planet in the Solar System with an average density lower than water. If there were an ocean large enough, it would float.
- Goats have rectangular pupils, giving them an exceptionally wide field of vision.
- A photon takes tens of thousands—possibly hundreds of thousands—of years to travel from the Sun’s core to its surface, but only about eight minutes to travel from the Sun to Earth.
Facts by Sean McVeigh, factologist.
