NASA have announced that 715 new planets circling 305 stars have been discovered outside the Earth's solar system, including four planets that are more than double the size of our own. This discovery boosts the number of known planets in our galaxy to over 1,700.
The first scientific detection of an exoplanet was in 1988. However, the first confirmed detection came in 1992; since then, and as of 1 April 2017, there have been 3,607 exoplanets discovered in 2,701 planetary systems and 610 multiple planetary systems confirmed.
The Sun is over 300,000 times larger than the Earth.
Sunlight takes a little more than 8 minutes to reach the Earth; this means that when we are looking at the sun as it as 8 minutes ago.
It is because of lower gravity, a person who weighs 100kg on earth would only weigh 38kg on the surface of Mars.
The diameters of the Sun, the Earth and the Moon are 870,000 miles (1,391,000 kilometers), 7,926 miles (12,756 kilometers) and 2,173 miles (3,477 kilometers, respectively.
Mercury, the first and smallest planet in the Solar System, speeds around the Sun in 88 Earth days, but takes almost 176 Earth days to go from sunrise to sunset.
The temperatures during the day on Mercury can be 840° F; at night, the temperatures plummet to -300° F.
Mercury has a very low surface gravity and has no atmosphere, which means there is no wind, no water and no air.
Mercury is the least explored terrestrial or rocky planet in our Solar System. which formed around 4.6 billion years ago.
Compared with our own Moon, which is about the same size, the Mercury planet reflects much less light.
There's a lot more carbon dust thrown off from comets close to the Sun, where Mercury orbits -- about 50 times as much for Mercury as for our moon.
Venus has often been described as Earths sister planet since the two are very similar in size and bulk composition.
Venus is the second planet from the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days.
It has almost the Earth size, and is covered in thick clouds that are made mostly of carbon dioxide and acid. The surface temperature can be as high as 930° F, caused mostly by the clouds that trap the heat and reflect it back.
One day on Venus is 243 Earth days, and its year is 225 Earth years.
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, the densest planet in the Solar System, the largest of the Solar System's four
terrestrial planets, and the only astronomical object known to accommodate life.
Formed about 4.6 billion years ago, the Earth speeds around the Sun in 365 Earth days. The average temperatures on Earth is around 59° F.
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second smallest planet in the Solar System.
It is a Red Planet and the closest planet to Earth, has polar ice caps, suggesting the water is on Mars. Temperatures on Mars during the day are about 80° F, but at night drop to -270° F.
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet in the Solar System.
It has no surface because it is made mostly of gasses. The average temperature on Jupiter is -235° F. Jupiter has a day that lasts 9.9 Earth hours and a year that lasts 11.9 Earth years.
Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest planet in the Solar System, after Jupiter.
It is a gas giant planet with no surface to walk on. The average temperature on Saturn is -218° F. One day on Saturn is 10 Earth hours and one year is 29.46 Earth years.
Uranus, has the third-largest planetary radius and fourth-largest planetary mass in the Solar System. It is
a gas giant with no surface to walk on, and is a unique planet with its blue-green color caused by the methane gas that reflects back blue and green light. Only one pole of Uranus faces the Sun, while the other is in complete darkness. One side of Uranus gets 42 years of light, followed by 42 years of darkness.
Uranus has a temperature of -323° F. The average day on Uranus is 17.9 Earth hours and a year is 84 Earth years.
Neptune, which is the eighth and farthest planet from the Sun in the Solar System, has many dwarf planets (i.e.; it isnt large enough to be considered a planet).
On this planet the winds blow over 1,200 miles per hour and the temperature is -350° F. One day on Neptune is equal to 19 Earth hours and one year is equal to 164.8 Earth years.
Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910) was the first woman physician in the U.S. She received her medical degree in 1849 from Geneva Medical College in New York.
The University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine (former College of Philadelphia Department of Medicine), which was established on May 3, 1765, was the first medical college in the U.S.
The first commencement was held June 21, 1768, when medical diplomas were presented to ten members of graduating class.
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 1827), a German composer and pianist, is the most admired composers in the history of Western music.
Beethoven's works rank amongst the most performed of the classical music repertoire and span the transition from the Classical period to the Romantic era in classical music. Many of the pieces that
he wrote are still recognized today and even used in contemporary musical compositions. Most remarkable about his career is that the infamous musician was
completely deaf while continually played his music.
One of Beethovens best-known works among modern audiences,
Symphony No. 5 is known for its ominous first four notes. His ninth and final symphony,
completed in 1824, is the most famous piece of music in history.
Confucius (551 - 479 BCE) is Chinas most famous teacher, philosopher, and political theorist, whose ideas have profoundly
influenced the civilizations of China and other East Asian countries. His philosophical teachings, called Confucianism, emphasized
personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice, kindness, and sincerity. Confucianism was part of the Chinese social fabric and way of life; to Confucians, everyday
life was the arena of religion.
Samuel Adams (1722 1803), a graduate of Harvard College, was an American statesman, political philosopher, and a Founding Father of the United States.
He was a leader of the American Revolution, and one of the architects of the principles of American republicanism that shaped the political culture of the United States;
he served as Governor of Massachusetts in 1794. Before becoming a well-known politian Adams was an unsuccessful businessman and tax collector, who often failed to collect taxes from his fellow citizens; and he has also often been described as a brewer, but actually he worked as a maltster and not a brewer.
After his death in 1803 the Boston Beer Company used Samuel Adams's name for creating the Samuel Adams Boston Lager, which became a popular award-winning brand.
William Holmes McGuffey (1800 1873), a U. S. educator and clergyman,
is remembered chiefly for his series of illustrated readers for elementary school, and is best known for writing the
McGuffey Readers, the first widely used series of elementary school-level
textbooks that educated millions of Americans. Mr. McGuffey helped to organize the public school system of Ohio, and served as the president
of the Woodward Free Grammar School in Cincinnati, OH, one of the earliest public schools in the U.S.
More than 120 million copies of McGuffey Readers were sold between 1836 and 1960.
He was very fond of teaching children as he geared the books toward a younger audience. McGuffey's Readers, which was graded collections of didactic tales and excerpts from great books, reflecting
his view that the proper education of young people required their introduction to a wide variety of topics and practical matters, could guide children from learning the alphabet all the way to
high school materials, as each volume increased in skill level; they became standard texts in nearly all states in the U.S. since 1836.
Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in Maryland, 1818. At that time, Black children were not allowed to attend school,
but he understood the power and value of literacy, so, at a young age, he taught himself to read and write. He educated himself on the rights of freedom; after several unsuccessful attempts to escape slavery,
he finally managed to escape when he was 20-year old. Douglass was an excellent writer and wrote several books. He was a firm believer in the equality of all peoples, white, black, female, Native American, and
Chinese immigrants. He traveled throughout the northern and midwestern states, speaking on behalf of the anti-slavery movement. He successfully fought for the 13th Amendment (which abolished slavery),
the 14th Amendment (which granted citizenship to those born in the United States as enslaved persons) and the 15th Amendment (which granted voting rights to men of all color women would not gain the right to vote until
the 19th Amendment in 1920).
The longest one-syllable words in the English language are "scraunched" and "strengthed" (10 letters). Some suggest that "squirreled" could be included, but squirrel is intended to be pronounced as two syllables (squir-rel) according to most dictionaries.
"Screeched" and "strengths" are two other long one-syllable words, but they only have 9 letters.
"Stewardesses" is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand.
There are only four common words, which end in "dous", in the English language: tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous; the other words ending in "dous" include apodous, horrendous, iodous, iridous, jeopardous, macropodous, molybdous, palladous,
phyllocladous, podous, and vanadous, but they are rarely used.
There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar (e.g.; 4 quarters, 10 dimes, 20 nickels, 100 pennies, 3 quarters + 25 pennies, etc).
A dime (10 cents) has 118 ridges around the edge.
Most people fall asleep in 7 minutes.
Just like unique finger prints, humans also possess a unique tongue print; the tongue plays an important role in our living, it performs various functions,
such as helping in the mixing process of foods, containing inguinal tonsils to filter out germs, binding and contorting itself to form letters when a person speaks, and constantly pushing saliva down the throat when a person is sleeping.
After eating, it takes about 6 to 8 hours for food to pass through stomach and small intestine. Food then enters the large intestine (colon) for further digestion, absorption of water and, finally, elimination of
undigested food. It averagely takes about 36 hours for food to move through the entire colon.
The right side of our body is controlled by the left side of our brain while the left side of our body is controlled by the right side of our brain.
Antibiotics, which are medications that destroy or slow down the growth of bacteria, are only effective against bacteria, they won't help in fighting off a virus, and cannot treat viral infections, such as cold,
flu, and most coughs.
Apples, pears, summer squashes and bananas are fruits that float in water because they consist of around one quarter air by volume, a feature of their uniquely porous, relatively dry flesh.
The worlds youngest university graduate was a 9-year-old Belgian student Laurent Simons.
After completing high school in roughly a year, Laurent born in Belgium but now living in the Netherlands started college and finished the three-year bachelors program in electrical engineering from Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands in just nine months in early 2020.
The youngest person to obtain a college degree is American Michael Kearney, who achieved the feat in June 1994 at the age of 10 years 4 months.
In the U.S. parents could mail their kids to any place using the U.S. postal service until 1914.
The first known case of a mailed baby was in 1913 when a couple in Ohio used the postal service to ship their 10-pound infant son to his grandmothers home about a mile away, paying 15 cents in postage and springing for $50 in insurance (optional); however,
records do not indicate whether his grandmother received her mail in a mailbox or through a letter slot. Some children were mailed much farther, hundreds of miles away, with the appropriate stamps stuck to their clothes.
Vegetarians are people only eats plant-based foods, like vegetables, fruits, beans, soy, grains, rice and nuts; they don't eat meat, poultry, fish or seafood of any kind.
A demi-vegetarian or semi-vegetarian is a person who does not eat meat, but eats poultry, fish or seafood.
A shrimps heart is in its head; a crocodile cannot stick its tongue out; tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur;
the giant squid has the largest eyes in the world; an ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain; shark is the only known fish that can blink with both eyes; a giant Panda eats around 28 pounds of bamboo a day;
Kangaroos can not walk backwards; and Hummingbirds' wings can beat up to 200 times a second.
Snakes do not eat any type of plant material, but small animals, including lizards,
frogs, other snakes, small mammals, birds,
eggs, fish, snails or
insects. Because snakes cannot bite or tear their food to pieces, they must swallow prey whole.
The blue whale, a marine mammal, is 98 feet (30
meters) in length and 190
tones or more in weight;
it is the largest existing animal and the heaviest that has ever existed. A new born blue whale measures 20-26 feet (6.0 - 7.9 meters) long and weighs up to 6,614 pounds (3003 kg).
In 2014 there were 1,864 giant pandas alive in the wild. Counting number of pandas in the wild is not an easy task. It requires a massive effort, with teams of 40 researchers spending many
hours trekking through steep, mountainous bamboo forests looking for telltale signs, such as dung. When they find some, they carefully studying any bite marks to identify individual pandas because their bite marks are all unique.
Only 6.7% of the worlds population holds a college degree. In the U.S., approximately one-third of all Americans hold a college degree, of which 49.8% for Asian, 27.6% for
Caucasian/While, 17.3% for African American, 11.5% for Native American and 11.4% for Hispanic.
There are many interesting facts about Disney's Mickey Mouse. Some of these include Mickey Mouse made his debut on November 18, 1928 in Steamboat Willie at the Colony Theatre, New York City;
creating Mickey is not as simple, one cartoon could include 10,000 drawings; more than 100 Mickey cartoons were produced in the 1930s and were shown in theatres as films, newsreels and dramas and comedies; Walt Disney earned an honorary Academy award in 1932 for
creating Mickey Mouse; Mickey appeared in his first appearance in colour was in The Band Concert on February 23, 1935; in 1955, Mickey Mouse made his TV debut in The Mickey Mouse Club.
The Amish are a group of Christian people who choose to live very simple; they wear traditional, 18th century style clothes, and are known for reluctance to adopt many conveniences of modern technology, such as cars,
televisions, and computers. In 2010 there were approximate 250,000 Amish people living in the U.S., of which over 90% lived in Pennsylvania; between 1992 and 2013, the Amish population increased by about 120%, while the US population increased by around 23%.
Buddhism is a religion and dharma that encompasses a variety of traditions, beliefs and
spiritual practices largely based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. In 2010 there were about 495 million Buddhists, of which about 487 million lived in Asia, 3.9 million in North America, 1.3 million in Europe, and
1 million in the South America, Africa and the Middle East.
Lake Mead is the largest reservoir in the United States in maximum water capacity. It is 112 miles (180 km) long when the lake is full,
and 532 feet (162 m) at greatest depth, with a surface elevation of 1,221.4 feet (372.3 m) above sea level; it has 759 miles (1,221 km) of shoreline, 247 square miles (640) km of surface, and 28 million acre feet (35 km) of water when filled to capacity.
In 1999 Sony designed and sold a robotic dog (AIBO) with the ability to learn, entertain and communicate with its owner.
Video games can be played on a number of different platforms, which include game consoles, handheld systems, computers, mobile phones, and others. Popular game consoles that dominate current markets are
Nintendo Wii,
Microsoft Xbox 360 and
Sony Playstation 3.
Televisions first went on sale in the late 1920s;
color television sets were developed and become widespread in 1970s, and televisions with remote controls were in the market since early 1980.
John Adams (March 4, 1797 March 4, 1801) was the first president to live in the White House.
George Washington (April 30, 1789 March 4, 1797) was the wealthiest president, who had a net worth over half a billion in todays dollars. He also owned many slaves but decided to free them in his will.
The tallest president is
Abraham Lincoln, (March 4, 1861 April 15, 1865), who was 6'4" tall; the shortest president is
James Madison, (March 4, 1809 March 4, 1817), who was 5'4" tall; the heaviest president was
William Howard Taft (March 4, 1909 March 4, 1913), who weighted more than 300 lbs.
Abraham Lincoln (March 4, 1861 April 15, 1865) was virtually unknown in the
Republican Party in 1858 when he challenged powerful U.S. Sen.
Stephen Douglas (4 March 1847 3 June 1861) of Illinois.
Lincoln lost to Douglas for the Senate but beat him in the presidential election.
John Adams (March 4, 1797 March 4, 1801) and
Thomas Jefferson (March 4, 1801 March 4, 1809) died on the same day, July 4, 1826; five years later,
James Monroe (March 4, 1817 March 4, 1825) died on July 4, 1831.
Grover Cleveland was the only president to serve two nonconsecutive terms: the 22nd president (March 4, 1893 March 4, 1897) and the 24th president (March 4, 1885 March 4, 1889).
Woodrow Wilson (March 4, 1913 March 4, 1921) (received a PhD in history and political science from Johns Hopkins University) was the 13th President of Princeton University (19021910) before he was the 28th U.S. president.
Many U.S. presidents had well-known nick names:
Ronald Reagan) (January 20, 1981 January 20, 1989) 's nick name is Dutch;
Theodore Roosevelt (September 14, 1901 March 4, 1909) - the Rough Rider;
Woodrow Wilson (March 4, 1913 March 4, 1921) - the Professor;
Franklin D. Roosevelt (March 4, 1933 April 12, 1945) - the Boss;
Martin Van Buren (March 4, 1837 March 4, 1841) - the Little Magician; and
Abraham Lincoln (March 4, 1861 April 15, 1865) - the Rail Splitter.
There were four U.S. presidents who were assassinated while in office: Abraham Lincoln (March 4, 1861 April 15, 1865),
James Abram Garfield (March 4, 1881 September 19, 1881),
William McKinley (March 4, 1897 September 14, 1901), and
John F. Kennedy (January 20, 1961 November 22, 1963).
There were other attempts, the latest being attempts on the lives of U.S. presidents included
Truman (April 12, 1945 January 20, 1953),
Gerald Ford (August 9, 1974 January 20, 1977), and
Ronald Reagan (January 20, 1981 January 20, 1989).
In the U.S., the president, who is elected by the entire country and serves a four-year term, is the head of the executive branch, which makes laws official. The president appoints or removes cabinet members and high level officials.
In the U.S., Senate there are 100 senators (two from each state) elected by their states and serve six-year terms. The U.S. vice president is considered the head of the Senate, but does not vote in the Senate unless there is a tie.
The Senate approves nominations made by the President to the Cabinet, the Supreme Court, federal courts and other important posts.
In the U.S., House of Representatives there are 435 representatives elected by their states and serve two-year terms. The Speaker of the House, elected by the representatives, is considered the head of the House.
If the U.S. president does not believe the bill is good for the country, he does not sign it; this is called a veto. However, with enough votes the legislative branch (U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives) can override the President's veto, and the bill becomes a law.
Virginia is the birth state of the most presidents.
The Cathedral of St. John the Divine (in New York City), which was begun to build in 1892 and was completed in 2008, is the largest cathedral in the world: 601-ft wide at the nave and 320-ft wide at the transept.
Rockefeller Center, in New York City, occupies more than 22 acres and has 19 building.
The Taj Mahal (1632-1650), at Agra, India, built by Shah Jahan as a tomb for his wife, is one of the most beautiful building in the world.
The Great Sphinx of Egypt, one of the wonders of ancient Egyptian architecture, adjoins the pyramids of Giza and has a length of 240 ft. Built in the 4th dynasty, it is approximately 4,500 years old.
Angkor Wat (outside the city of Angkor Thom, Cambodia), which was built during the 12th century, is one of the most beautiful of Cambodian or Khmer architecture.
The Great Wall of China (228 B.C.E.), which was built mainly of soil/sand and stone, is 1,400 miles long and varies in height between 18 to 30 ft. Designed specifically as a defense against nomadic tribes, it has many large watch towers.
Wiley Post took a Lockheed Vega aircraft, Winnie Mae, 15,596 miles to fly solo around the world in 7 days, 18 hours, 49.5 min (July 15-22, 1933).
The U.S. is the fourth largest gold-producing nation (242,000 kgs), the Republic of South Africa led the world in gold production (272,128 kgs) following by
China (247,200 kgs), Australia (247,000 kgs); the other countries have large gold production are Peru (203,268 kgs), Russia (159,340 kgs) and Canada (104,198 kgs).
Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937), of Bologna, Italy, was the first person to prove that radio signals could be sent over long distances. In 1906, the
American inventor Lee de Forest (1873-1961) built a device that made voice radio practical.
