Wacky Facts

Cartilage changes and gravity make noses and ears appear to grow with age.

Designed by D. Udaya Kumar, the symbol blends the Devanagari “र” and the Latin “R”. It was chosen through a public competition.

Some bamboo species are among the fastest-growing plants on Earth, growing up to about 90 cm in 24 hours.

Japanese researchers using ultra-sensitive cameras in 2009 found that the body emits extremely weak visible light that rises and falls during the day. It is about a thousand times too faint for our eyes to see.

Opened in 1998, the line between Maharashtra and Karnataka crosses rivers and hills with around 91 tunnels and many bridges.

Designed in 1913, at least one of the ring colours appears on every nation’s flag.

Deep-sea anglerfish have a glowing lure filled with light-producing bacteria to attract prey in the dark.

The majority of Earth’s volcanic activity takes place on the ocean floor, especially along mid-ocean ridges.

In his 1950 paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence”, Turing replaced the vague question “Can machines think?” with a game: can a machine’s typed answers be told apart from a person’s?

In his seminal astronomical treatise Aryabhatiya written in 499 CE at age 23, ancient Indian mathematician and astronomer Aryabhata computed the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter (pi, π) as 62,832 / 20,000, giving approximately 3.1416. Crucially, Aryabhata used the Sanskrit term asanna (‘approaching’ or ‘approximate’), demonstrating clear awareness that the value of π is irrational.

It forms when air near the surface cools enough for water vapour to condense into droplets.

About 18–35% of people sneeze when suddenly exposed to bright light.

SAP was founded in 1972 in Germany; its first product was a real-time financial accounting system.

Tim Berners-Lee published the first web page at CERN in 1991. CERN has restored it at its original address, info.cern.ch, where you can still read how the web was supposed to work.

The 1896 Athens Games featured about 241 athletes from 14 nations; today over 200 teams compete.

Rogue waves more than twice the height of surrounding waves were once thought a myth; the Draupner wave in 1995 measured about 25.6 m.

Flying squirrels glide, but bats power their flight with wings made of skin stretched over long finger bones.

It is called “snail” in Italian, “monkey tail” in Dutch and “elephant’s trunk” in Danish.

Corals are colonies of tiny animals related to jellyfish. Many get their colour from algae living inside them.

One, three, five, seven, nine — and all larger odd numbers end with one of those words.

Red balls are used in Tests; white balls in limited-overs games since the 1970s; pink balls for day-night Tests since 2015.

Tata Steel’s works began in 1907 at Sakchi, a village in Jharkhand’s forests. The town that grew around it was renamed Jamshedpur after Jamsetji Tata.

Built in the 8th century, it was cut downwards from a basalt cliff, removing an estimated 200,000 tonnes of rock.

An early “inclined elevator” was installed at Coney Island in 1896 as an amusement.

Including Antarctica, which was once warmer and in a different position.

Only about a quarter of the seafloor had been mapped at high resolution by the early 2020s. The Seabed 2030 project aims to map all of it.

Developed by Arbor Software in 1992, it is now part of Oracle’s EPM products.

The word comes from Latin “salarium”. A popular story says Roman soldiers were paid in salt; historians say the link to salt is real but the exact origin is debated.

Mongolia has more than 4 million horses and about 3.5 million people.

Taste buds are replaced every one to two weeks, but their number declines with age.