6th. ARE YOU CURIOUS?

ANIMALS

. Flying insects were around before the dinosaurs. Most dinosaurs were herbivores and laid eggs.

. The smallest dinosaur was smaller than a chicken. The word dinosaur means “terrible lizard”.

. Dinosaurs died out around 66 million year ago; and it was around 245 miliion year ago that the first dinosaurs appeared.

. The first dinosaur park was opened to the public in 1854 in the grounds of Crystal palace in London.

. In ancient China people thought dinosaur fossils were dragon bones. “Godzilla” is a Japanese dinosaur-like  monster which appeared in several films.

. Diplodocus walked on four legs, but megalosaurus on two.

. Modern birds are descendend from dinosaurs. Dinosaurs died before humans appeared on Earth.

. We don’t know what colour dinosaur were because fossils don’t  preserve colour.

. In the 19th century, the young girl Mary Anning made some of the most important dinosaur discoveries, the ichtyosaurus.

. Some male penguins give females rocks as presents. Penguins can’t fly, but they can jump.

. A newborn baby leopard has no spots.

. Ants can carry over 50 times their own body weight.

 . Baby sand tiger sharks eat their brothers and sisters.  

. Only three of the more than 1,300 species of bats inthe world drink blood.

. Bats have been considered lucky in China since ancient times, so you can see imabes of these animals in many Chinese houses.

. Ravens are very intelligent and social animals. They can remember the faces of different people they meet.

. Crows are super-intelligent birds. They have solved mazes and puzzles, and can remember individual human faces.

. A wolf’s sense of smell is a hundred times stronger than a human’s.

. Wolves howl to communicate with each other, and the sound travel up to seven miles away.

. Owls can turn their heads up to 270 degrees. A full circle is 360 degrees, and humans can only turn their heads 180 degrees.

. In ancient Greek mythology, the goddess Athenea often had a littel owl on her shoulder that was said to give her advice.

. Some spiders mimic ants to escape predators.

. Some male penguins give females rocks as presents. Penguins can’t fly, but they can jump.

. A newborn baby leopard has no spots.

. Centipedes (never have 100 legs) are fierce, fast-moving meat eaters while millipedes are slow-moving plant eaters.

. Monarch butterflies have a bright orange and black colour to mark a danger signal that tells potential predators that are poisonous.

. Camels can go for months without drinking water. And they don’t sweat.

. Australia is home to around a million camels. They were introduced in the 19th century. They cause problems because they drink so much water.

. The narwhal is called “The unicorn of the sea”. This whale, found in the cold Artic Ocean has a long spiral “horn” that can grow over 3 m. long.

. The manchineel tree, found in Florida and the Caribbean, is so poisonous that even sitting underneath it causes a painful rash.

. The world’s most venemous animal is the Australian box jellyfish. It has 15 tentacles with 5,000 stinging cells in each.

. Some dogs can sniff out when humans are ill.

. The praire dog is actually a type of rodent,  the flying fox is a type of bat, and the killer whale is a type of dolphin.

 . In 1783, a sheep, a duck and a rooster took a hot air balloon trip before any people did.

. The largest animal that has ever lived is the blue whale.

. A blue whale’s heart is about as big as a motorbike.

. The world’s longest lived mammal is the whale, over 200 years.

. The part of the body that butterflies use to taste their food is their feet.

. Koalas feed mainly on eucalipto leaves and can spend up to 22 hours a day sleeping.

. The world’s largest reptile is the saltwater crocodile.

. The fruit that cats don’t like to smell of is the orange.

. On average, a cat has 24 whiskers on its face.

. The world’s largest eye on Earth belongs to the giant squid, it’s about a dinner plate size.

. The world’s largest land predator is the polar bear.

. The largest land animal is the African elephant.

. The bird that lays the largest egg is the ostrich.

 

 

FOOD AND PLANTS

. Bamboo is the world’s fastest growing plant, nearly 90 cm. a day.

. Cocoa pods are fruits that grow on the cocoa tree, so the chocolate could be considered a fruit.

. An oak tree does not produce acorns until it is at least 40 years old.

. Peanuts are not nuts. They grow in pods underground and are considered a legume like peas or beans.

. Caesar salad is not named after Julius Caesar. It was invented in 1924 by an Italian chef called Caesar Cardini en Tijuana, Mexico.

. Fortune cookies do not come from China. They became popular in Japan in the 19th century.

. The largest flower in the world is also one of the smelliest.

.  Honey can last more than 3,000 years without going bad.

. In 1957, in a classic April Fool’s joke a BBC TV documentary showed spaghetti growing on trees.

. The supertrees in Singapore work as solar power generators, collect rainwater and absorb heat.

. The world’s largest living thing is a giant sequoia tree in California, United States, called General Sherman.

. 95% of a cucumber is water.

 

PEOPLE

. Queen Elizabeth II was a trained truck mechanic.

. Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman in space, in 1963. She was there for more than 2 days.

. The first person to go up into space was Yuri Gagarin in 1961, a cosmonaut from the Soviet Union (now Russia).

. The British swimmer  Lewis Pugh, in July 2007 swam for 19 minutes in the icy water surrounding the North Pole.

. Charle Lindbergh was the first person to fly SOLO non-stop across the Atlantic Ocean, from New York to France, in 1927.

. Leonardo da Vinci designed a helicopter way back in the 16th century, but it was never built.

. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a 20th century US civil leader and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 for his campaign against racial inequality.

. Cleopatra was an African queen in the 1st century B.C.. She was on of the few female rulers of Egypt, and was killed by a bite from a snake.

. Nelson Mandela was a 20th century African politician. He was the first president of South Africa and was in prison for 27 years.

 

PLACES AND FESTIVALS

. When Columbus arrived in the Americas, he thought he was in Asia. America was named after the Italian explorer Americo Vespucci.

. Scotland national animal is the unicorn, and it was chosen in the 12th century because people believed it was the strongest animal.

. At the North Pole, it is completely dark from the end of October until the end of January.

. The mountain in Africa, Kediet ej Jill, is almost entirely of magnetite, so a compass won’t be much help climbing the mountain.

. At the Lehe Ledu Wildlife Zoo in Chongqing, China, visitors pay to be locked in cages .

. The longest ever tennis match took 11 hours and 5 minutes, in 2010 during the Wimbledon Championships.

 

OBJECTS

. A hotel in Nagasaki, Japan, has robot staff members. They recognise guests’s faces, carry the bags and clean the rooms.

. The world’s largest car has 26 wheels and it’s a luxury limousine of 30 metres long with a swimming pool and a helicopter landing pad.

. Mobile phones are dirtier than toilets. There are around 18 times more bacteria on a phone screen than on a toilet flush handle.

. The mobile phone was invented in 1973.

. The light travels more slowly in water then in air.

. The speed of the light is almost 300,00 Km per hour.

. Gold is heavier than silver.

. A plastic bag takes up to 500 years to decompose.

. The camera was invented in the 19th century.

 

BODY

. Not all blood is red. It can be yellow in some beetles,   green in some earthworms, or blue in lobsters and squids.

. Farts in a jar were once used to try and cure plague victims.

. You have more than 5 senses. As well as sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch, you have the sense of balance, temperature, pain, hunger and thirst.

. The human eye can see up to 10 million shades of colour.