Pop Culture
Released originally in 2006, the popular gaming platform Roblox has many game options, such as “Welcome to Bloxburg,” “Dress to Impress,” and “Adopt Me!” Despite its massive popularity, it is only available to play on PC.
In addition to PC, Roblox is available on most consoles, such as PlayStation and Xbox.
The “Harry Potter” series stars protagonist Harry Potter, a muggle-born wizard who learns he has magic powers and is invited to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry on his 11th birthday. There, he befriends Ron and Hermione, plays quidditch, and uncovers the secrets of the castle as the Dark Lord, Voldemort, rises to power.
Harry is not muggle-born – both his parents were magical, though he was raised by his muggle aunt and uncle after their deaths.
The Wright Brothers — Orville and Wilbur — were incredibly important figures in the history of seafaring, having built the first fully controllable ship that could sail independent of wind and wave patterns.
The Wright Brothers built the first controllable aircraft, not ship.
Unlike its neighbors — Mars and Saturn — the largest planet in our solar system, Jupiter, has no moons.
Jupiter has the most moon out of any planet in our system — a staggering 95. Mercury and Venus are the only two planets with no moons.
Of the 50 state capitals, 5 are named after presidents: Jackson, Jefferson City, Lincoln, Madison, and Washington, D.C.
Only 4 are named after presidents. Washington D.C. is not a state capital, even though it is the national capital.
Actress Millie Bobby Brown is an English actress who starred in the hit Netflix TV series, “Stranger Things.” There are 5 seasons, but Brown only appeared in 4 of them.
Brown starred in all 5 seasons of the show.
The “Magic Tree House” series contains over 40 books that technically can be read out of order. The overarching plot, however, involves the cousins Jack and Annie discovering a magical treehouse in the woods behind their house that teleports them across time and space to go on fantastic adventures.
Jack and Annie are brother and sister, not cousins.
Harriet Tubman was an incredibly important figure in American history, freeing over 70 slaves along the Underground Railroad during the Revolutionary War. She also served as a scout, spy, and nurse for the Union Army.
Tubman was active during the Civil War, not the Revolutionary War.
Light waves require physical matter like air or water to travel, but sound can move inhibited through the vacuum of space. This is why sound travels so quickly in almost any environment — 767 miles an hour!
Sound needs physical matter to travel, not light. Sound can travel at 767 miles an hour on average in dry, open air.
The only officially-recognized subcontinent on Earth is India.
There are no officially-recognized subcontinents. Unofficially, however, there are 6 – the Indian Subcontinent, Arabian Subcontinent, Greenland, Central America, Eastern Siberia, and Eastern Africa.
The movie franchise Star Wars is one of the most influential series of films of all time. There are 9 mainline movies; in 1999, Episode 1, “The Phantom Menace,” was the first to be released.
Episode 4, “A New Hope,” was the first Star Wars film released, 22 years before Episode 1! (Yes, it’s confusing.)
In “Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lighting Thief,” demigod (or, “Half-blood”) Percy Jackson discovers his true parentage — he is the son of the Greek god of the sea, Poseidon. He has been framed for the theft of a lightning bolt belonging to his uncle, Zeus. Throughout his quest across the United States to recover it, Percy and his friends discover that the Titan Kronos — Percy’s grandfather — has stolen the bolt from Zeus for himself.
It is actually Luke, son of Hermes and fellow camper, that stole Zeus’s lighting bolt for Kronos.
Jane Goodall was an anthropologist known for her study of gorillas in Tanzania. She advocated for animal rights and protections, and is celebrated as one of the most influential zoologists of the last century.
Goodall studies chimpanzees, not gorillas.
Butterflies are the only insects to undergo the incredible phenomenon called metamorphosis — starting as caterpillars (larvae), turning into chrysalisises (pupas), and eventually emerging as adult butterflies.
Many insects perform metamorphosis, such as moths, beetles, flies, ants, and bees.
The California Gold Rush completely changed the United States in the mid-19th century, when go-getters from all over the world flocked to the West Coast in the hopes of getting lucky and finding gold. Before 1849, there were only a few thousand non-indigenous residents in California, but after the hundreds of thousands of settlers arrived, California was brought into the Union as the nation’s 50th state.
California was the 31st state, not the 50th (that was Hawaii in 1959!).
The Met Gala is an annual event that raises funds for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s costumes department by inviting everyday people to walk the runway in themed outfits.
The Met Gala is very exclusive. Department head Anna Wintour hand-selects attendees.
The Wild Robot features Roz the Robot, stranded on an island after a cargo ship carrying 1000 robots sinks in a storm at sea. Her crate washes ashore, and she slowly learns to adapt to the wilderness, adopting a gosling she names Brightbill and befriending the other islanders as she makes a home for herself and her son.
The cargo ship was carrying 500 crates of robots, not 1000.
Ruby Bridges played a significant role in the history of desegregation, despite being only a young child at this major turning point in the Civil Rights Movement. On November 14th, 1960, Bridges was escorted just five blocks away from her home to the formerly all-white William Franz School by the FBI to protect her from hoards of angry protestors.
She was escorted by the National Guard, not the FBI.
The highest layer of our atmosphere on Earth is called the thermosphere. There isn’t much air there, and it is very hot, though scientists are not sure why.
The highest layer of the atmosphere is called the exosphere, not the thermosphere. The thermosphere is the second-to-last layer.
Interestingly, where the human population lives on planet Earth is divided almost perfectly in half, with 50% living in the Northern Hemisphere and 50% living in the Southern Hemisphere. The line that divides the two hemispheres is called the equator, which has a latitude of 0* exactly.
About 90% of humanity lives in the Northern Hemisphere.
Singer Sabrina Carpenter has many talents. Some of her popular songs include “Espresso,” “Please Please Please,” and “Feather.” Not only is she a successful musical artist, but she is also an actress who got her start on Nickelodeon TV shows.
Carpenter did not get her start acting in Nickelodeon shows. She starred in “Girl Meets World” on The Disney Channel.
“The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” is the first written and published book in C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia series. The four siblings Peter, Susan, Peter, and Lucy – who have fled London to an estate in the English countryside due to the threat of Japanese bombers during WWII – stumble into a magical world hidden inside a wardrobe. There, the ice queen threatens the realm, and the Pevensies help save Narnia from her clutches.
The Pevensies were escaping German bombers during WWII (the "Blitz"), not Japanese.
Michel Louis Christophe Roch Gilbert Paulette du Motier — a key strategist and leader in both the American and French Revolutions — is perhaps better known to us today as the Marquis de Lafayette. After helping with the turning point success at the Battle of Yorktown, Lafayette returned to France and, after helping Napoleon establish a new government, spent the remainder of his life living in a peaceful retirement in Austria.
Lafayette actually fled to Austria to escape radicals who opposed his revolution. He was captured there and imprisoned for 5 years before Napoleon ordered his release.
The variation in the physical characteristics of humans is incredibly diverse due to our DNA — an acronym for “deoxyribonucleic acid,” which is a sequence of chemicals composed of the inherited genes from both parents. Even the smallest physical trait is represented in a person’s DNA. Someone with blue eyes, for example, only shares about 70% of the same genetic code as someone with green eyes!
All humans share about 99.9% of their DNA with each other. We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.
Mount Everest is the tallest mountain on Earth. If you placed Everest at the bottom of the Mariana Trench — which is the deepest point on Earth’s surface, located in the Pacific Ocean — the mountain's peak would still rise above the surface of the water.
Technically, Everest is not the tallest mountain in the world. Mauna Kea, a volcano in Hawaii, is the tallest, though most of it is already underwater.