Facts for Ages 14+
838 facts perfect for this age group
Dinosaurs found in Antarctica would have lived through months of total polar darkness every winter. Scientists think some of them may have migrated, while others stayed and survived the dark season somehow — possibly hibernating.
Florida carpenter ants have been observed performing a form of surgery, amputating the injured limbs of nest-mates to prevent infection and improve survival rates.
The implantable cardiac pacemaker was invented by accident in 1956 when engineer Wilson Greatbatch used the wrong resistor in a heart-rhythm recording device and noticed it produced electrical pulses.
Basque, spoken in Spain and France, is not related to any other known language on Earth.
Human cells have 46 chromosomes, arranged in 23 pairs, that carry all your genetic instructions.
In real-world data, the number 1 appears as the first digit about 30% of the time — this is called Benford's Law.
Microbursts are powerful downdrafts from thunderstorms that can produce wind damage as severe as a small tornado.
The coconut octopus collects coconut shells and uses them as portable shelters — one of the few invertebrates known to use tools.
The ocean absorbs about a quarter of the carbon dioxide that humans produce, helping to slow climate change.
There are underwater waterfalls in the ocean caused by differences in water temperature and saltiness.
Wi-Fi technology was developed by Australian scientists in the 1990s while they were studying black holes.
Icelandic has changed so little over 1,000 years that modern Icelanders can still read Viking-age sagas.
If you heat a magnet hot enough, it loses its magnetism permanently because the atoms get too scrambled.
Hungarian has 18 grammatical cases for nouns, while English really only has two (like "he" vs "him").
The ocean has a giant conveyor belt of currents that moves water around the entire planet and takes about 1,000 years to complete one loop.
The polar vortex is a swirl of cold air over the Arctic that sometimes wobbles and sends freezing air far to the south.
The Ryder Cup, a biennial golf competition between Europe and the United States, has been played since 1927 and is one of the most watched events in golf.
A derecho is a widespread, long-lasting windstorm with straight-line winds that can exceed 100 mph.
Some Khoisan languages of southern Africa use up to 100 different click consonants, produced by pulling the tongue sharply away from different parts of the mouth.
In Turkish, you can express an entire sentence with just one word because of how suffixes are stacked onto word roots.