David Fickes - Really Interesting Stuff for Kids: 1,500 Fascinating and Educational Facts

Really Interesting Stuff for Kids

1,500 Fascinating and Educational Facts

David Fickes

Really Interesting Stuff for Kids Copyright 2019 by David Fickes. All Rights Reserved.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
Printed in the United States of America
First Printing: 2019

Introduction

By nature, I tend to collect trivia without trying. Until relatively recently, I had never sought out trivia; however, after creating a holiday trivia presentation for a community party and then showing it at one of our fitness studios spinning classes, I found myself creating weekly trivia. The cycling clients enjoyed the diversion of answering questions while they exercised, so I continued.

With this book, I have taken all the accumulated trivia from my other books and selected the content I think is most entertaining and educational for kids. Since I didnt see any reason to state the content differently for a younger audience, the only difference is the trivia selection. To be both entertaining and educational for kids, the facts are heavy on animals, geography, history, and science and nature.

This is book 3 of my Really Interesting Stuff series; I hope you enjoy it, and if you do, look for other books in the series.

Contents

Facts 1-300

1) Based on oxygen usage, the jellyfish is the most efficient swimmer of any animal. Jellyfish use 48% less oxygen than any other known animal; they never stop moving.

2) Damascus, Syria is widely regarded as the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world; it has been inhabited for at least 11,000 years.

3) $1 million in $100 bills weighs about 20.4 pounds.

4) You would get vitamin A poisoning and could die if you ate a polar bears liver. Polar bears have 50-60 times the normal human levels of vitamin A in their liver, and it is about three times the tolerable level that a human can intake.

5) Moscow, Russia has the worlds busiest McDonalds restaurant.

6) The chameleon has the longest tongue relative to its size of any animal.

7) Cats cant taste sweet. They dont have taste receptors for sweet; this applies to all cats domestic and wild.

8) Walnuts, almonds, pecans, and cashews arent technically nuts; they are drupes which also include peaches, plums and cherries. Drupes are a type of fruit where an outer fleshy part surrounds a shell or pit with a seed inside. For some drupes, you eat the fleshy part, and for some, you eat the seed inside.

9) For a few seconds, a horse can generate about 15 hp; for sustained output over hours, a horse can generate about 1 hp.

10) Mount Chimborazo, Ecuador is closer to the Moon than any other place on Earth. It is 20,548 feet elevation but very close to the equator, so the bulge in the Earth makes it 1.5 miles closer to the Moon than Mount Everest.

11) The jawbone is the hardest bone in the human body.

12) When a woodpeckers beak hits a tree, it experiences 1,000 times the force of gravity.

13) Oklahoma City and Indianapolis are the only two state capitals that include the name of the state.

14) Wi-Fi doesnt stand for anything. It doesnt mean wireless fidelity or anything else; it is just a branding name picked by a company hired for the purpose.

15) Humans have about 5 million olfactory receptors in the nose; dogs have about 220 million.

16) If the Moon didnt exist, a day on Earth would be 6-8 hours long.

17) Sheep grazed in New Yorks Central Park until 1934, they were moved during the Great Depression for fear they would be eaten.

18) Abraham Lincolns first choice to lead the Union army was Robert E. Lee.

19) Pure water isnt a good conductor of electricity; the impurities in water make it a good conductor.

20) The Bluetooth wireless technology is named after King Harald Bluetooth Gormsson who ruled Denmark in the 10th century.

21) Deion Sanders is the only person to ever play in the Super Bowl and World Series.

22) The Ruppells Griffon vulture is the highest-flying bird species ever recorded. They have been spotted at 37,000 feet and have special hemoglobin which makes their oxygen intake more effective.

23) In the Grimms fairy tale, the Pied Piper of Hamelin is described as pied because he wears a two-colored coat; pied is thought to come from magpie birds which are black and white.

24) While floating in lunar orbit, astronaut Al Worden became the most isolated human ever; he was 2,235 miles from the nearest human while in the Apollo 15 command module.

25) Catfish have more taste buds than any other animal. They have over 100,000 taste buds both in their mouth and all over their body; humans have about 10,000.

26) Pikes Peak in Colorado was the inspiration for the song America the Beautiful.

27) The hippopotamus produces its own sunscreen. It produces a mucus like secretion that keeps them cool and acts as a powerful sunscreen.

28) Alaska receives the least sunshine of any state.

29) Texas and Oklahoma share the longest border of any two states at 700 miles.

30) Saturn is the only planet in our solar system less dense than water.

31) The longest table tennis rally (single point) at an international competition lasted for 2 hours and 12 minutes with an estimated 12,000 hits. It was the opening point of a 1936 world championship match; game time limits were later put in place.

32) The adult human body has about 100,000 miles of blood vessels.

33) Cleopatra was born 2,500 years after the Great Pyramid of Giza was built; she was closer to our current time than she was to the pyramids.

34) California is the only state that is at least partially north of the southernmost part of Canada and at least partially south of the northernmost point of Mexico.

35) Captain Crunchs full name is Captain Horatio Magellan Crunch.

36) Without your pinky finger, you would lose 50% of your hand strength.

37) Seven basketball players have won NCAA, Olympic, and NBA championships - Clyde Lovellette, Bill Russell, K.C. Jones, Jerry Lucas, Quinn Buckner, Michael Jordan, and Magic Johnson.

38) Extirpation is local extinction; the species is extinct locally but still exists elsewhere.

39) The probability of a human living to 110 years or more is about one in seven million.

40) The bald eagles name comes from the old English word piebald which means white headed.

41) Due to air resistance, the fastest a human body can fall is about 120 mph; this is known as terminal velocity.

42) The United States has the most domestic cats of any country in the world; China has the second most.

43) At 5.5 million square miles, the Antarctic Polar Desert is the largest desert in the world.

44) Google is the worlds most visited website.

45) Kobe Bryant is the only person to win an Olympic gold medal and an Oscar; he won Olympic basketball gold medals in 2008 and 2012 and Best Animated Short Film for Dear Basketball in 2018.

46) Armadillos are good swimmers, but they also walk underwater to cross bodies of water. They can hold their breath for 6-8 minutes.

47) The most sweat glands on the human body are on the bottom of the feet.

48) Queen Elizabeth II is the longest reigning British monarch; she surpassed her great great grandmother Victorias reign in 2015.

49) Nevada has the highest percentage of federal land of any state with 81%; Utah is second at 66%.

50) The Incas first domesticated guinea pigs and used them for food, sacrifices, and household pets.

51) Louis Braille developed the Braille system for the blind at the age of 15 and published the first book about it at age 20.