Facts for Ages 11–13
1607 facts perfect for this age group
The Milky Way galaxy is so vast that light takes about 100,000 years to travel from one side to the other.
Vikings may have used a crystal called a sunstone to navigate on cloudy days when they could not see the Sun directly. Iceland spar, a type of calcite crystal, can reveal the position of the Sun even through thick clouds. Modern scientists have confirmed this technique actually works.
The Alps are still growing by about one to two millimetres per year as the African tectonic plate continues to push northward into the Eurasian plate.
A greenish tint to the sky during a thunderstorm can signal that the cloud contains large hailstones, though the exact reason for the green colour is still debated by scientists.
Saturn has a mysterious hexagonal storm at its north pole — a six-sided jet stream about 32,000 kilometres wide that has persisted for at least 40 years.
Underwater volcanoes heat the surrounding seawater, creating unique habitats where tube worms, shrimp, and other creatures thrive in water that would otherwise be freezing cold.
Lesotho is the only country in the world that lies entirely above 1,000 metres in elevation. It is also completely surrounded by South Africa.
Evidence shows that early humans were using and controlling fire at least one million years ago in South Africa. Learning to cook food with fire allowed early humans to extract more nutrients and may have helped their brains grow larger.
Virginia opossums are immune to the venom of most North American pit vipers, including rattlesnakes, due to a special protein in their blood.
The popular story that baseball was invented by Abner Doubleday in 1839 is a myth. Historians now believe baseball evolved gradually from older English games like rounders and cricket in the early 19th century.
The vampire squid lives in the ocean's oxygen minimum zone, where almost no other animal can survive. Despite its scary name, it feeds on tiny bits of sinking organic matter called 'marine snow'.
The first recognised dinosaur eggs were discovered in the Gobi Desert in 1923 during an expedition by the American Museum of Natural History.
Blaise Pascal built one of the first mechanical calculators in 1642 at the age of 18 to help his father add up tax figures. It could only add and subtract, but it was a breakthrough in computing history.
Ski jumpers hold their skis in a wide V-shape during flight because Swedish jumper Jan Boklöv discovered in 1985 that it creates more lift and allows much longer jumps. Before that, skis were held parallel.
Cleopatra lived closer in time to the Moon landing than to the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza. The pyramids were built around 2500 BC, Cleopatra lived around 50 BC, and the Moon landing was in 1969. That gap is surprisingly small!
Pterodaustro was a pterosaur with hundreds of long, bristle-like teeth in its lower jaw that it used to filter tiny organisms from the water, similar to a flamingo. Scientists believe it may even have been pink for the same reason as flamingos — its diet.
Broccoli, kale, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, and kohlrabi all come from the exact same wild plant species — wild mustard. Farmers selectively bred different parts of the plant over thousands of years to create them all.
Baby corals drifting in the water can detect the sounds of a healthy reef and swim towards it to settle down and grow.
Cheddar cheese is naturally white or pale yellow, not orange. The orange colour is added using annatto, a natural dye from the achiote tree. This tradition began in the 17th century.
Every time a cell divides, it must copy all 3 billion base pairs of DNA in the human genome with remarkable accuracy — the error rate is about one mistake per billion letters copied.