Random Facts
The original oranges from Southeast Asia were a tangerine-pomelo hybrid, and they were actually ____. In fact, oranges in warmer regions like Vietnam and Thailand still stay _____ through maturity.
green
Yes, there was a real John Chapman who planted thousands of apple trees on U.S. soil. But the apples on those trees were much more bitter than the ones you’d find in the supermarket today. “Johnny Appleseed” didn’t expect his fruits to be eaten whole, but rather made into ____ _____ _____.
hard apple cider
Chicago’s nickname was coined by 19th-century journalists who were referring to the fact that its residents were “windbags” and “full of hot air.” What is that nickname?
The windy city
The longest English word is 189,819 letters long. We won’t spell it out here, but the full name for the protein nicknamed titin would take ____(amount of time)________ to say out loud.
three and a half hours
When there was a cotton shortage during World War I, Kimberly-Clark developed a thin, flat cotton substitute that the army tried to use as a filter in _______. The war ended before scientists perfected the material for _______, so the company redeveloped it to be smoother and softer, then marketed Kleenex as facial tissue instead.
gas masks
Scotland has ___ words for “snow”
421
Armadillo shells are _________, In fact, one Texas man was hospitalized when a _____ he ____ at an armadillo ricocheted off the animal and hit him in the jaw. Fill in the blanks
Bulletproof - bullet - shot
A cow-bison hybrid is called a _______. You can even buy its meat in at least 21 states.
“beefalo”
The original jeans only had four pockets: that tiny one, plus two more on the front and just one in the back. What was the intended purpose of the tiny pocket?
Made for pocket watches
The current American flag was designed by a ______________, in 1958. President Dwight D. Eisenhower called to say his design was approved.
high school student
extra facts: It started as a school project for Bob Heft’s junior-year history class, and it only earned a B-. His design had 50 stars even though Alaska and Hawaii weren’t states yet. After his design was approved, Heft’s teacher changed his grade to an A.
Which fast food chain once made bubblegum-flavored broccoli?
McDonald’s
The tropical _______ called Ophiocordyceps infects ants’ central nervous systems. By the time the _______ been in the insect bodies for nine days, they have complete control over the host’s movements.
fungus, fungi
Thanks to _________, NASA can basically “email” tools to astronauts
3D printing
No number before _____ contains the letter A
1,000
Giraffe tongues can be __ inches long
20
There’s only one letter that doesn’t appear in any U.S. state name. What is it?
Q
Octopuses lay ___(thousands)___ eggs at a time. The mother spends six months so devoted to protecting the eggs that she doesn’t eat. The babies are the size of a grain of rice when they’re born.
56,000
You only have two body parts that never stop growing, what are they?
noses and ears
The Eiffel Tower can grow more than ___ inches during the summer
six
According to a Johns Hopkins research team, 250,000 deaths in the United States are caused by __________ each year. This makes ________ the third-leading cause of deaths in the country.
medical error
Only _________ of the Sahara Desert is sandy. The rest of it is covered in gravel, though it also contains mountains and oases.
a quarter
The world’s largest desert is in ___________
Antarctica
Theodore Roosevelt had a pet _____, name the animal, hint it is not a common one.
hyena
The ____ headquarters has its own Starbucks, but baristas don’t write names on the cups
CIA
A cattle rancher in New Jersey is credited for inventing ______ , and it was by accident. Henry Ruschmann from Bernardsville, New Jersey was a machinist who crushed plastic while trying to find a way to dispose of it and thus made _____ in 1934.
glitter