Category: bitefact
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Venus has a wild quirk—a day on the planet is longer than its year! Venus takes 243 Earth days to spin once on its axis, which means one Venusian day lasts that long. But it only takes 225 Earth days to orbit the Sun, making its year shorter than its day. This slow spin is…
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Butterflies have a strange superpower—they taste with their feet! These colorful insects, found all over the world, have taste sensors on their legs that let them “sample” a surface as soon as they land. When a butterfly touches a flower, it can instantly tell if there’s nectar or if the plant is good for laying…
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The first emoji ever created was a heart, and it appeared in 1995! Shigetaka Kurita, a Japanese designer, made it for a mobile phone company called NTT DoCoMo to help users express emotions in text messages. At the time, texting was new, and messages were limited to 250 characters, so Kurita wanted to add a…
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Penguins might waddle on land, but they can jump up to six feet high! Species like the Adélie and Emperor penguins, found in Antarctica, use their powerful legs to leap out of the water onto icy slopes or rocky ledges. This skill helps them escape predators like leopard seals and reach their nesting sites, which…
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Your body contains a tiny amount of gold—about 0.2 milligrams! Most of it is in your blood, with smaller traces in your bones, liver, and kidneys. That’s not enough to make you rich—it’s less than a grain of sugar—but it’s a fascinating fact about human biology. Gold is a natural element, and tiny amounts get…
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The first traffic light appeared in 1868, long before cars were common! It was installed in London, England, outside the Houses of Parliament to manage horse-drawn carriages and pedestrians. Invented by John Peake Knight, a railway engineer, the system used gas-lit signals with red and green lights, operated manually by a police officer. Red meant…
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Octopuses are ocean oddities with a surprising feature—they have three hearts! Two of these hearts pump blood to the gills, where oxygen gets picked up, while the third heart pumps oxygenated blood to the rest of the body. What’s even weirder? The main heart stops beating when an octopus swims, which is one reason they…
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The first email ever sent happened in 1971, long before the internet as we know it existed. Ray Tomlinson, a computer programmer, sent the message between two computers sitting side by side at a research lab in Massachusetts. The computers were connected through ARPANET, an early network that laid the groundwork for the internet. Tomlinson…
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Bananas are radioactive—yes, really! These yellow fruits contain a tiny amount of potassium-40, a naturally occurring radioactive isotope. Potassium is essential for your body—it helps with muscle function and heart health—and bananas are packed with it, which is why they’re a go-to snack for athletes. But a small fraction of that potassium, about 0.01%, is…