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01
Octopuses have three hearts. Two keep the gills functioning, and one keeps the rest of the body going. When they swim, the main heart actually stops beating.
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02
Bananas are radioactive. They contain potassion-40, a naturally occurring isotope. You'd need to eat millions for it to affect you, though.
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03
Crows can recognize human faces and hold grudges; they even teacher their offspring who to distrust.
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04
Space smells like seared steak according to astronauts. This is due to high-energy vibrations of atoms during re-entry into the airlock.
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05
A teaspoon of a neutron star would weigh about a billion tons on Earth.
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06
The Sun makes up 99.8% of the solar system's mass. All of the planets, moons, and asteroids combined are basically like cosmic crumbs.
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07
The roar of the T-Rex in Jurassic Park was made by blending sounds of a baby elephant, a lion, and an alligator.
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08
The lightsaber sound was created by combining the hum of an old projector motor with the buzz from a TV set.
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09
Zero was invented independently in multiple civilizations: the Mayans, Babylonians, and Indians all used their own versions of it.
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10
If you shuffle a deck of cards, chances are that order has never existed before in all of history. There are 8.06x10^67 possible arrangements.
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11
Saturn could float in water! It's less dense that water (about 0.7 g/cm^3). You'd just need a bathtub about 120,000 km wide.
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12
The coldest place in the universe is not space itself, but a lab in Finland. Scientists there reached 100 pico-Kelvin (0.0000000001 K).
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13
The human body glows in the dark. Bioluminescence from metabolism emits light about 1,000 times to faint for our eyes to see.
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14
Your DNA could stretch from Earth to the Sun and back about 600 times if you uncoiled the DNA in your cells end to end.
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15
Tron (1982) was disqualified from the Oscars for Best Visual Effects because the Academy considered "using computers to make images cheating." Oh, boy.
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16
All the atoms in your body are billions of years old. Most of the carbon, oxygen, and iron in you were forged in ancient supernovas.
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17
The guy who designed the green code in The Matrix revealed it was made from scanned Japanese sushi cookbooks.
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18
The number e (2.71828...) shows up everywhere: in population growth, compound interest, radioactive decay, and even in the shape of raindrops.
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19
Your brain has no pain receptors. That's why some brain surgeries can be done while the patient is awake and chatting.
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20
Black holes aren't technically "black." Hawking radiation means they emit faint light.