Facts

1. SpaceA gamma-ray burst spotted on 16 December 1999 was nicknamed the Beethoven Burst because it arrived on the composer's presumed birthday.Adapted from Wikipedia
2. SpaceThe largest outpouring of lava ever witnessed came from Pillan Patera, a volcano on Jupiter's moon Io, in 1997.Adapted from Wikipedia
3. ScienceAn amphibian that lived about 300 million years ago is named Fedexia, after the delivery company FedEx.Adapted from Wikipedia
4. AnimalsAustralia's blue ant is not an ant. It is a wasp.Adapted from Wikipedia
5. AnimalsFor years, a gannet named Nigel was the only real gannet on New Zealand's Mana Island, living among concrete decoy birds.Adapted from Wikipedia
6. AnimalsA former stray cat named Tama was made stationmaster of a small Japanese railway station, and visitors came to see her.Adapted from Wikipedia
7. NatureThe world's smallest primate is Madame Berthe's mouse lemur, one of Madagascar's lemurs.Adapted from Wikipedia
8. PlacesA cave outside San Antonio, Texas, is the summer home of the largest bat colony in the world.Adapted from Wikipedia
9. PlacesA disused trolley bridge in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, became a garden partly because tearing it down cost too much.Adapted from Wikipedia
10. PlacesMount St. Helens is named after a British diplomat, Alleyne FitzHerbert, whose title was Baron St Helens.Adapted from Wikipedia
11. TechnologyBy 2013, the 1993 New Yorker cartoon "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" had earned its artist $200,000 to $250,000 from reprints.Adapted from Wikipedia
12. TechnologyIn 1966 an RAF engineer testing a Lightning fighter jet on the ground accidentally took off in it.Adapted from Wikipedia
13. TechnologyThe first compact disc made in the United States for commercial release was Bruce Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A.Adapted from Wikipedia
14. MathsMathematicians have proved that every nontrivial "tame" knot in three-dimensional space has a straight line passing through it at four points.Adapted from Wikipedia
15. HistoryClay tablets from around 1180 BCE record a priestess named Eritha disputing with her community over whether her land was held for her god.Adapted from Wikipedia
16. LanguageBluestocking, an old word for a learned woman, is said to come from the blue stockings worn by a man.Adapted from Wikipedia
17. FoodA food writer once called red velvet cake "the Dolly Parton of cakes".Adapted from Wikipedia
18. FoodSouth Korea's central bank asked the makers of a cheese-filled snack to change its design because it looked too much like a coin.Adapted from Wikipedia
19. Everyday lifeWater bottle flipping got so popular in 2016 that some schools banned it.Adapted from Wikipedia
20. LanguageJuly was not added to the calendar for Julius Caesar. An existing month, Quintilis, was renamed after him.Adapted from Wikipedia

20 facts so far. Each is rewritten in Browse's words after its sources were checked, and says whose words it adapts. How facts are picked and checked: Facts. Follow new facts in a feed reader: RSS.