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Fun facts

Here are 150 fun facts about animals, space, the human body, history, food and words, each checked against a source you can open yourself. There are weird ones, a few myths put right, and a random picker that turns them into a true or false game.

Sample

True or false poll

True or false?

Sea otters have the densest fur in the world: more than a million hairs in a single square inch at its thickest.

Turn these into a live quiz – everyone answers from their phone, free for 100 players.

All 150 fun facts, with sources

Every fact works as a true or false poll. The sources for each section are listed under it, so you can check any fact before you share it.

Animals

  1. Sea otters have the densest fur in the world: more than a million hairs in a single square inch at its thickest.
  2. Koalas sleep 18 to 22 hours a day to save energy.
  3. An ostrich’s eye is about 2 inches (5 cm) across, the largest eye of any land animal.
  4. Flamingos get their pink color from pigments in the algae and tiny shellfish they eat.
  5. Tardigrades, tiny animals also called water bears, were the first animals shown to survive exposure to open space.
  6. Owls can’t move their eyes, so they turn their heads instead, as far as 270 degrees.
  7. Each wild bottlenose dolphin has its own signature whistle, and it answers when it hears a copy of it, much like a name.
  8. Emperor penguins can dive more than 500 meters below the surface.
  9. Platypus fur glows blue-green under ultraviolet light.
  10. Wood frogs can freeze solid for months in winter, then thaw from the inside out in spring.
  11. Goats have sideways, rectangular pupils. When they lower their heads to graze, their eyes rotate to keep the pupils level with the ground.
  12. Female green turtles usually come back to nest on a beach near where they hatched, decades earlier.
  13. In a 2006 study, an Asian elephant passed the mirror test: it noticed a mark on its own head that it could only see in a mirror.
  14. Crows can recognize individual human faces, and some remember a person who treated them badly for years.
  15. Polar bear fur isn’t really white: each hair is a clear, hollow tube filled with air.
  16. Snow leopards can hiss, growl, moan and yowl, but they can’t roar.
  17. A giant panda spends at least 12 hours a day eating bamboo.
  18. The kiwi is the only bird in the world with nostrils at the tip of its bill.
  19. A giraffe’s neck has seven vertebrae, the same number as yours.
  20. Male seahorses carry the eggs in a pouch and give birth to the babies.
  21. Honeybees do a “waggle dance” to tell other bees which way to fly for food and how far away it is.
  22. Young rats make high-pitched chirps when they’re tickled, calls that scientists have compared to laughter.
  23. Cats can’t taste sweetness: the gene for their sweet taste receptor doesn’t work.
  24. Axolotls can regrow lost legs, and parts of their jaws, tails, spinal cords and skin too.
  25. Only male emperor penguins keep the egg warm, balancing it on their feet through the long incubation.

Sources

  1. Sea otterMonterey Bay Aquarium
  2. KoalaSan Diego Zoo
  3. OstrichSan Diego Zoo
  4. FlamingoSan Diego Zoo
  5. Tiny animals survive exposure to spaceEuropean Space Agency
  6. 13 Fun Facts About OwlsAudubon
  7. Dolphins respond to individual namesUniversity of St Andrews
  8. Emperor penguins diving and travellingAustralian Antarctic Program
  9. We knew platypuses were incredible. Now we know they glow, tooNational Geographic
  10. Biological Miracle (wood frogs)National Park Service
  11. Pupil shape linked to animals’ place in ecological webUC Berkeley
  12. Green TurtleNOAA Fisheries
  13. Self-recognition in an Asian elephantPubMed (PNAS)
  14. The CrowUniversity of Washington
  15. Polar BearSan Diego Zoo
  16. Snow LeopardSan Diego Zoo
  17. Giant PandaSan Diego Zoo
  18. KiwiSan Diego Zoo
  19. GiraffeSan Diego Zoo
  20. A Tribute to DadsNew England Aquarium
  21. Happy National Honey Bee Day!Penn State Center for Pollinator Research
  22. Who’s laughing? Play, tickling and ultrasonic vocalizations in ratsPubMed Central
  23. Pseudogenization of a sweet-receptor gene accounts for cats’ indifference toward sugarPubMed Central (PLoS Genetics)
  24. Limb regeneration in axolotl: is it superhealing?PubMed Central
  25. Emperor penguinAustralian Antarctic Program

Space

  1. About 1.3 million Earths could fit inside the Sun.
  2. The Sun holds 99.8% of all the mass in our solar system.
  3. A sugar cube of neutron star material would weigh about a billion tons on Earth.
  4. Saturn is less dense than water. In a bathtub big enough, it would float.
  5. Saturn’s rings are made of billions of chunks of ice and rock.
  6. The International Space Station circles Earth about every 90 minutes, so its crew sees 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets a day.
  7. On Venus, the Sun rises in the west and sets in the east, because Venus spins backward compared with Earth.
  8. The Moon is slowly drifting away from Earth, about an inch farther each year.
  9. We only ever see one side of the Moon, because it turns once in the time it takes to go around Earth.
  10. One year on Neptune lasts about 165 Earth years.
  11. Halley’s Comet comes back about every 76 years. Its next visit is due in 2061.
  12. Mars has two small moons, called Phobos and Deimos.
  13. Jupiter has the shortest day in the solar system: it spins once in about 10 hours.
  14. As of 2026, NASA’s Voyager 1, launched in 1977, is the farthest human-made object from Earth.
  15. Mercury is the planet closest to the Sun, yet it may have water ice in deep craters at its poles that never see sunlight.
  16. Sunsets on Mars look blue, because fine dust in the air lets blue light through more easily.
  17. Astronauts can grow up to 3% taller during long missions in space, then return to their usual height back on Earth.
  18. The Moon is very slowly shrinking as its insides cool, and that may be setting off moonquakes.
  19. Uranus was the first planet found with a telescope. William Herschel spotted it in 1781.
  20. Pluto has a huge heart-shaped region on its surface, first photographed up close by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft in 2015.

Sources

  1. Sun: FactsNASA
  2. Sun: FactsNASA
  3. Neutron StarsNASA
  4. Saturn: FactsNASA
  5. Saturn: FactsNASA
  6. International Space Station Facts and FiguresNASA
  7. Venus: FactsNASA
  8. Moon FactsNASA
  9. Moon FactsNASA
  10. Neptune: FactsNASA
  11. 1P/HalleyNASA
  12. Mars: FactsNASA
  13. Jupiter FactsNASA
  14. Voyager 1: The Farthest SpacecraftNASA
  15. Mercury: FactsNASA
  16. What Do Sunrises and Sunsets Look Like on Mars?NASA
  17. Spinal Ultrasound InvestigationNASA
  18. Shrinking Moon May Be Generating MoonquakesNASA
  19. Uranus: FactsNASA
  20. Pluto: FactsNASA

Human body

  1. An average heart beats about 100,000 times a day and pumps about 2,000 gallons (7,500 liters) of blood.
  2. The “lub-dub” sound of your heartbeat is the sound of your heart valves closing.
  3. Each heartbeat starts with pacemaker cells in a small area called the sinoatrial (SA) node.
  4. Your left lung is slightly smaller than your right, because your heart takes up room on the left side.
  5. Your lungs hold about 150 million tiny air sacs, called alveoli.
  6. Your nose and mouth warm and moisten the air you breathe before it reaches your lungs.
  7. A red blood cell lives for about 110 to 120 days before your body replaces it.
  8. Your liver can grow back. A small piece of it can grow to full size, which is how living people can donate part of theirs.
  9. Your brain has roughly 86 billion nerve cells, called neurons.
  10. Your inner ear helps you keep your balance, not just hear: part of it, the vestibular system, senses gravity and movement.
  11. At birth, you have about 10,000 taste buds.
  12. Much of what we call taste is really smell. Without smell, most foods taste bland.
  13. The cochlea, the hearing organ deep in your inner ear, is shaped like a snail shell and filled with fluid.
  14. About 1 in 12 men has some kind of color vision deficiency, often called color blindness.
  15. Your fingerprints are fully formed months before you’re born, and even identical twins have different ones.
  16. You have more than 600 muscles in your body.
  17. Almost every cell in your body holds 23 pairs of chromosomes, 46 in all.
  18. All people are about 99.9% the same in their DNA.
  19. By one 2016 estimate, an adult carries about as many bacteria as human cells: around 38 trillion bacteria and 30 trillion of their own cells.
  20. Teens need more sleep than adults: 8 to 10 hours a day, compared with 7 to 9.

Sources

  1. Heart AnatomyThe Texas Heart Institute
  2. How the Heart BeatsNIH (NHLBI)
  3. How the Heart BeatsNIH (NHLBI)
  4. How the Lungs WorkNIH (NHLBI)
  5. How the Lungs WorkNIH (NHLBI)
  6. How the Lungs WorkNIH (NHLBI)
  7. HemolysisMedlinePlus (NIH)
  8. Living Liver Donation & TransplantCleveland Clinic
  9. How the brain powers communication between neuronsNIH
  10. Balance DisordersNIH (NIDCD)
  11. Taste DisordersNIH (NIDCD)
  12. Taste DisordersNIH (NIDCD)
  13. How Do We Hear?NIH (NIDCD)
  14. Color BlindnessNational Eye Institute
  15. Are fingerprints determined by genetics?MedlinePlus Genetics
  16. Muscles of the BodyCleveland Clinic
  17. How many chromosomes do people have?MedlinePlus Genetics
  18. Genetics vs. Genomics Fact SheetNational Human Genome Research Institute
  19. Revised estimates for the number of human and bacteria cells in the bodyPubMed Central (PLoS Biology)
  20. How Much Sleep Is Enough?NIH (NHLBI)

History

  1. In 1843, Ada Lovelace published the first step-by-step set of operations for a computing machine, which is why she is often called the first computer programmer.
  2. The oldest surviving photograph taken with a camera was made in 1827, and it needed several days of sunlight to appear.
  3. In 1991, computer scientists at the University of Cambridge pointed a camera at their shared coffee pot so they could see it from their desks.
  4. The Wright brothers’ first powered flight, on December 17, 1903, covered about 120 feet (37 meters).
  5. When it was finished in 1886, the Statue of Liberty was a coppery brown, like a penny. It took about 30 years to turn green.
  6. A flute carved from a vulture’s wing bone, found in a German cave in 2008, is about 40,000 years old.
  7. Louis Braille was 15 when he had his raised-dot reading system ready, built on a cell of six dots.
  8. The microwave oven began with a melted chocolate bar: engineer Percy Spencer noticed it melting in his pocket while he stood near radar equipment.
  9. The first product scanned with a barcode at a checkout was a 10-pack of Wrigley’s chewing gum, in Troy, Ohio, on June 26, 1974.
  10. The address of the first website, info.cern.ch, still works today.
  11. Erno Rubik made the first Rubik’s Cube in 1974 and called it the Magic Cube.
  12. Velcro was inspired by burdock burrs. An engineer found them stuck to his dog’s fur, and under a microscope he saw they were covered in tiny hooks.
  13. The world’s first Ferris wheel was built for the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago.
  14. When it was finished, the Great Pyramid of Giza stood about 481 feet (147 meters) tall and was built from roughly two and a half million stone blocks.
  15. Penicillin was found by accident. In 1928, Alexander Fleming saw that some mold on an uncovered dish was wiping out the bacteria around it.
  16. In 1999, a Japanese phone company released a set of 176 emoji for phones and pagers. The Museum of Modern Art in New York now has the set in its collection.
  17. The world’s first traffic light was gas-powered. It was installed near the Houses of Parliament in London in December 1868.
  18. The Statue of Liberty’s copper skin is only about as thick as two pennies placed together.
  19. The Hubble Space Telescope was carried into orbit by the space shuttle Discovery in 1990.
  20. Carving Mount Rushmore took 14 years, from 1927 to 1941, and nearly 400 people worked on it.

Sources

  1. Ada LovelaceComputer History Museum
  2. The Niépce HeliographUniversity of Texas at Austin, Harry Ransom Center
  3. Trojan Room Coffee Pot BiographyUniversity of Cambridge
  4. 1903 - The First FlightNational Park Service
  5. Frequently Asked Questions (Statue of Liberty)National Park Service
  6. Bone Flute Is Oldest Instrument, Study SaysNational Geographic
  7. Braille Invents His CodeAmerican Foundation for the Blind
  8. Percy SpencerLemelson-MIT
  9. GS1 US Celebrates 50-Year Barcode ScanniversaryGS1 US
  10. info.cern.ch: home of the first websiteCERN
  11. Rubik’s CubeThe Strong National Museum of Play
  12. How Did a Walk in the Woods Lead to the Invention of Velcro Fasteners?National Inventors Hall of Fame
  13. The First Ferris WheelChicago History Museum
  14. Standing Tall: Egypt’s Great PyramidsNational Geographic
  15. Alexander Fleming (1881–1955): Discoverer of penicillinPubMed Central
  16. Shigetaka Kurita. Emoji. 1998–1999The Museum of Modern Art
  17. Traffic light with pedestrian crossing and stand, circa 1952London Transport Museum
  18. Statue Statistics (Statue of Liberty)National Park Service
  19. About HubbleNASA
  20. Carving History (Mount Rushmore)National Park Service

Food

  1. Bees dry honey by fanning it with their wings, then seal each cell with wax. Sealed honey stays good for a very long time.
  2. After a pineapple plant gives its first fruit, it takes about 18 months to grow the next one.
  3. Fresh cranberries bounce. Each one has four small pockets of air, which also make them float when bogs are flooded at harvest.
  4. Cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, collard greens and kohlrabi are all one plant species.
  5. An ear of corn almost always has an even number of rows of kernels.
  6. Natural vanilla comes from the seed pods of an orchid. Those pods are the “vanilla beans.”
  7. Coffee beans aren’t beans: they’re the seeds inside the fruit of the coffee tree, called coffee cherries.
  8. Green bell peppers are the least ripe. Left on the plant, they usually turn yellow, orange, red or purple and get sweeter.
  9. The Maya and the Aztecs valued cacao beans, the seeds chocolate is made from, so highly that they used them in place of money.
  10. Nutmeg and mace come from the same fruit: nutmeg is the seed, and mace is the lacy covering around it.
  11. Cinnamon is tree bark: it comes from the inner bark of several kinds of Cinnamomum trees.
  12. Quinoa isn’t a grain. It’s a seed, and its closest plant relatives include beets and spinach.
  13. The almond you eat is a seed from inside a fruit called a drupe, the same kind of fruit as a peach.
  14. Eggplants, tomatoes, potatoes and peppers all belong to the same plant family, the nightshades.
  15. Less than 1% of the vanilla flavor sold today comes from real vanilla orchids. Most of it is made in a lab.

Sources

  1. How does honey last forever?Washington State University
  2. PineapplePenn State PlantVillage
  3. Cranberries Can Bounce, Float And Pollinate ThemselvesTexas A&M University
  4. Brassica oleraceaPlant Atlas (University of South Florida)
  5. Ear Size Determination in CornPurdue University
  6. VanillaUniversity of Florida IFAS
  7. What is coffee?National Coffee Association
  8. What is the Difference Between Green, Red, and Yellow Bell Peppers?Mississippi State University Extension
  9. Chocolate: Its OriginsNatural History Museum of Utah
  10. Holiday SpicesUniversity of Missouri
  11. From bark to baking: Cinnamon’s journey to your tableUniversity of Illinois Extension
  12. Five things everyone should know about quinoaUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison
  13. AlmondsHarvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
  14. EggplantUniversity of Florida IFAS
  15. VanillaUniversity of Florida IFAS

Words and language

  1. The dot over a lowercase i has a name: it’s called a tittle.
  2. One name for the # symbol is the octothorpe. Researchers at Bell Telephone Laboratories coined it in the 1960s.
  3. The word robot comes from a 1921 Czech play by Karel Čapek. It’s based on robota, Czech for forced labor.
  4. Quarantine comes from the Italian for a period of forty days, the usual length a ship was kept apart.
  5. In Middle English, nice meant foolish. It comes from the Latin nescius, meaning ignorant.
  6. OK was first recorded in 1839, as a joke abbreviation of “oll korrect,” a misspelling of “all correct.”
  7. Muscle comes from the Latin musculus, meaning little mouse.
  8. The name of the & sign comes from “and per se and,” meaning “& by itself means and.”
  9. Clue comes from clew, a ball of thread, after the Greek story of Theseus, who used one to find his way out of a labyrinth.
  10. Disaster comes from Italian words meaning “bad star.”
  11. Window comes from the Old Norse vindauga, “wind eye,” from a time when windows had no glass.
  12. Emoji comes from Japanese: e means picture and moji means writing.
  13. Denim is named after Nîmes, a city in France: the cloth was first called serge de Nîmes.
  14. Shampoo comes from a Hindi word meaning to press or knead.
  15. Trivia comes from the Latin trivium, meaning crossroads.

Sources

  1. tittleAmerican Heritage Dictionary
  2. octothorpeAmerican Heritage Dictionary
  3. robotAmerican Heritage Dictionary
  4. quarantineAmerican Heritage Dictionary
  5. niceAmerican Heritage Dictionary
  6. OKAmerican Heritage Dictionary
  7. muscleAmerican Heritage Dictionary
  8. ampersandAmerican Heritage Dictionary
  9. clueAmerican Heritage Dictionary
  10. disasterAmerican Heritage Dictionary
  11. windowAmerican Heritage Dictionary
  12. emojiAmerican Heritage Dictionary
  13. denimAmerican Heritage Dictionary
  14. shampooAmerican Heritage Dictionary
  15. triviaAmerican Heritage Dictionary

Weird but true

  1. Wombats leave cube-shaped droppings.
  2. Sharks are older than trees. Shark fossils go back about 450 million years, at least 90 million years before the first trees.
  3. Greenland sharks are thought to live up to 400 years, making them the longest-lived animals with a backbone known.
  4. Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela gets more lightning than anywhere else on Earth: about 233 flashes per square kilometer a year, in a 2016 NASA study.
  5. A small, fluffy cumulus cloud weighs about 550 tons, roughly as much as a hundred elephants.
  6. A lightning flash heats the air around it to about 50,000°F (28,000°C), much hotter than the surface of the Sun.
  7. Thunder can only be heard up to about 10 miles from a lightning strike.
  8. Antarctica counts as a desert, because it gets very little rain or snow.
  9. Bubble wrap was first meant to be a textured wallpaper.
  10. Before rubber erasers, people rubbed out pencil marks with pieces of bread.
  11. One kind of jellyfish can turn itself back into a young polyp after it grows old or gets hurt, then grow up all over again.
  12. Bananas are very slightly radioactive, because they contain a natural form of potassium called potassium-40.
  13. Falling raindrops aren’t shaped like teardrops. Air pushes up on them, and bigger drops flatten out on the bottom.
  14. Between about 14,800 and 5,500 years ago, the Sahara was green, with plants, lakes and rivers.
  15. Some icebergs look blue or green, because dense ice soaks up red and yellow light.
  16. The human body gives off a faint glow of light, about 1,000 times too weak for our eyes to see.
  17. About 97% of all the water on Earth is in the ocean.
  18. Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, has rain, rivers, lakes and seas, but they’re made of liquid methane and ethane, not water.
  19. The point on Earth farthest from its center is the top of Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador, not Mount Everest, because Earth bulges at the equator.
  20. Very large hailstones can fall at more than 100 mph.

Sources

  1. Studying Wombats’ Cubic PoopGeorgia Tech
  2. Did You Know... (sharks)Oregon State University
  3. Did You Know... (sharks)Oregon State University
  4. Earth’s New Lightning Capital RevealedNASA
  5. Your Cloud Questions AnsweredUCAR Center for Science Education
  6. Severe Weather 101: Lightning BasicsNOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory
  7. Understanding Lightning: ThunderNational Weather Service
  8. What Is Antarctica?NASA Space Place
  9. Pop Sensation! Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day Has Stevens ConnectionStevens Institute of Technology
  10. April 15th is Eraser Day!University of Iowa Libraries
  11. Like ‘Deadpool,’ This Jellyfish Has Amazing SuperpowersNational Geographic
  12. 5 Radioactive Products We Use Every DayU.S. Department of Energy
  13. Are raindrops really shaped like teardrops?NASA Global Precipitation Measurement
  14. Study Supplies Insight into Behavior of African MonsoonWoods Hole Oceanographic Institution
  15. What color is an iceberg?NOAA
  16. Imaging of ultraweak spontaneous photon emission from human body displaying diurnal rhythmPubMed Central (PLoS ONE)
  17. How much water is in the ocean?NOAA
  18. TitanNASA
  19. What is the highest point on Earth as measured from Earth’s center?NOAA
  20. Severe Weather 101: Hail BasicsNOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory

Myth or fact?

  1. Myth: Lightning never strikes the same place twice. Fact: It often does, especially tall, pointed, isolated things. The Empire State Building is hit about 23 times a year on average.
  2. Myth: Bats are blind. Fact: Bats can see, and some larger fruit bats see about three times better than people. Many bats also use echolocation.
  3. Myth: Mount Everest is the tallest mountain from bottom to top. Fact: Everest is the highest above sea level, but measured from its base on the ocean floor, Mauna Kea in Hawaii is taller.
  4. Myth: We only use 10% of our brains. Fact: Scientists think we use our whole brain every day; the 10% idea is a myth.
  5. Myth: Vikings wore horned helmets. Fact: They didn’t. The horns were invented by a costume designer for the first production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle in 1876.
  6. Myth: Ostriches bury their heads in the sand. Fact: They don’t. A threatened ostrich that can’t run lies flat with its head and neck on the ground, which can look like its head is buried.
  7. Myth: Different parts of your tongue taste different things: sweet at the tip, bitter at the back. Fact: Taste buds for all five tastes are found all over the tongue.
  8. Myth: Cracking your knuckles causes arthritis. Fact: Studies comparing knuckle-crackers with non-crackers found it probably doesn’t raise the risk of arthritis.
  9. Myth: Old church windows are thicker at the bottom because glass slowly flows downward. Fact: Glass doesn’t flow at room temperature. The thicker bottoms come from how the glass was made.
  10. Myth: Toilets flush the other way round south of the equator. Fact: Earth’s spin is far too weak to steer the water in a toilet. The shape of the bowl decides which way it swirls.
  11. Myth: If you touch a baby bird, its parents will abandon it. Fact: They won’t. If a nestling falls out unhurt, you can put it back in the nest.
  12. Myth: Chameleons change color mainly to blend in with their background. Fact: Their brightest color changes aren’t for camouflage: chameleons use them to send signals to other chameleons.
  13. Myth: Daddy longlegs are the most venomous spiders in the world. Fact: They’re not. The name covers three different animals, and two of them have no venom at all.
  14. Myth: The blood in your veins is blue. Fact: Blood is always red. Blood in your veins is a darker red, because it carries less oxygen.
  15. Myth: Eating lots of carrots gives you better-than-normal night vision. Fact: Carrots are rich in vitamin A, which normal vision needs, but they only help your eyesight if you lack vitamin A. The night-vision story was spread in Britain during World War II.

Sources

  1. Lightning MythsNational Weather Service
  2. Bat Myth BustersNational Park Service
  3. Highest, Tallest, and Closest to the StarsNASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
  4. Do we only use 10 percent of our brain?MIT McGovern Institute
  5. The Vikings: Yale historian looks at the myths vs. the historyYale University, Department of History
  6. OstrichSan Diego Zoo
  7. The Myth of Tongue and TasteHarvard Health Publishing
  8. Does cracking knuckles cause arthritis?Harvard Health Publishing
  9. UCLA researchers find out why high-performance glass flows, and how fastUCLA
  10. Flushing Toilets South of the EquatorUniversity of Illinois, Department of Physics
  11. What To Do If You Found a Healthy Baby BirdTufts University, Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine
  12. Chameleons’ Craziest Color Changes Aren’t for CamouflageNational Geographic
  13. Are daddy longlegs really the most venomous spiders in the world?UC Riverside, Department of Entomology
  14. VeinsCleveland Clinic
  15. Vegetable Myths, Legends and Outright LiesCornell University

How to run a true or false round with a group

Read a fact out as a statement and ask everyone: true or false? The picker does this for you. Some facts come up as written and some come up with one detail changed, so the room can’t just say true every time.

  • In a room. Ask people to stand for true and sit for false. Reveal the answer and read the real fact. Anyone who gets one wrong sits out, and the last person standing wins.
  • On a video call. Ask everyone to type T or F in the chat and send on the count of three. Then share the answer and the source on screen.
  • In class. Use one section at a time, such as Space or the Human body, as a lesson starter. Ask students how they would check the fact, then open the source together.

How we checked these facts

Fun fact lists online are full of myths, so every fact here comes from a page we read ourselves: NASA, NOAA, the National Institutes of Health, national parks, universities, museums, zoos and standard dictionaries. We wrote each fact to match what its source says, and linked the source under its section.

We left out records that change every year, unless the fact gives the year. The Myth or fact? section takes a few well-known myths and puts them right, with sources too.

Run it as a live poll or quiz

In RiLiFi, a true or false fact is a poll with two answers. Everyone votes from their phone, and the bar chart shows how the room split before you reveal the answer.

For points and a leaderboard, put the facts in a quiz with True and False as the two options. Faster right answers earn a speed bonus.

FAQ

Questions about these fun facts

Are these fun facts true?
Yes. Every fact was checked against a reliable source, such as NASA, NOAA, the National Institutes of Health, a university, a museum or a zoo, and each section lists its sources so you can check them yourself.
What are some interesting facts to start with?
On Venus, the Sun rises in the west. Sea otters have the densest fur in the world. Sharks are older than trees. The Weird but true section has more like these.
How do I play true or false with these facts?
Use the picker. It shows each fact as a statement, sometimes as written and sometimes with one detail changed. Ask the group to vote, then press again to reveal the answer and the source.
Are these facts good for class?
Yes. They are written for ages 13 and up, and each one links to a source students can read. A section such as Space or the Human body makes a quick lesson starter.
Where can I find fun facts about animals?
The Animals section has facts from koalas that sleep up to 22 hours a day to owls that turn their heads 270 degrees. Pick Animals in the picker to play only those.
Can I run a true or false poll live?
Yes. In RiLiFi, make a poll with True and False as the answers, or a quiz if you want points and a leaderboard. People join from their phones with a PIN or QR code. The free plan covers 100 people per session.