A bird flew from Alaska to New Zealand without stopping.
Bar-tailed godwits have been tracked flying roughly 11,000 km non-stop across the Pacific, for about eight days.
Source: Science News
The fact archive
Catch up on previous website exclusives, or explore released video facts. Each comes with a source.
Wombats make cube-shaped poo.
Stiff and stretchy sections of their intestine contract at different speeds, which squeezes the droppings into cubes. A wombat can leave up to 100 of them in a day.
Source: Smithsonian Magazine
A bird can stay in the air for about 200 days.
Alpine swifts tracked with tiny data-loggers stayed airborne for almost 200 days between September 2011 and April 2012.
Source: National Geographic
A recording of someone falling in love is flying out of the Solar System.
Ann Druyan's brain waves and heartbeat were recorded days after she got engaged to Carl Sagan and put on the Voyager Golden Record, along with the greetings and music.
Source: Smithsonian Magazine
Antarctica has a river that only runs in summer.
The Onyx River in the Dry Valleys only flows during the short Antarctic summer, and it runs inland towards Lake Vanda instead of out to sea.
Source: Onyx River
One man survived both atomic bombs.
Tsutomu Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, then travelled home to Nagasaki and was there on 9 August. Japan officially recognised him as a survivor of both in 2009.
Source: HistoryNet
A fish thought extinct for millions of years turned up in a fishing net.
The coelacanth was known only from fossils until one was caught off South Africa in 1938.
Source: Smithsonian Institution
A lake in Cameroon once breathed out a deadly cloud.
On 21 August 1986 Lake Nyos released a huge burst of carbon dioxide that flowed down into nearby villages and killed 1,746 people.
Source: Atlas Obscura / Slate
A tree from the dinosaur age was found alive in 1994.
The Wollemi pine was known only from fossils until a small grove was discovered in a gorge near Sydney.
Source: Wollemi Pine FAQ
Boston was once flooded with molasses.
On 15 January 1919 a storage tank burst and about 2.3 million gallons of molasses swept through the streets of Boston. Twenty-one people died.
Source: History.com
Helium was found on the Sun before anyone found it on Earth.
It was spotted in sunlight in 1868, and its name comes from helios, the Greek word for Sun.
Source: Astronomy magazine
Antarctica has a waterfall that flows blood red.
Blood Falls pours from the Taylor Glacier. Its colour comes from salty, iron-rich water that turns red when it meets the air.
Source: National Geographic
The centre of the Earth is nearly as hot as the Sun's surface.
The solid inner core is a ball of iron and nickel at temperatures close to the surface of the Sun.
Source: Smithsonian Magazine
One man's 'no' stopped a nuclear launch in 1962.
On 27 October 1962 a Soviet submarine needed three officers to agree to fire its nuclear torpedo. Vasili Arkhipov was the one who said no.
Source: PBS: Secrets of the Dead
Much of the gold on Earth was made in star crashes.
When two neutron stars collide, they forge heavy elements such as gold. Astronomers watched this happen in 2017.
Source: UC Berkeley News
The largest living thing in the world is a fungus you can't see.
A honey fungus under Oregon's Malheur National Forest covers about 2,385 acres, around 3.7 square miles, and may be thousands of years old.
Source: Oregon Encyclopedia
A blob with no brain redesigned a rail network.
Slime mould given food in the pattern of Tokyo's major cities grew a network very close to the real rail system.
Source: National Geographic
One ant colony stretches across the whole of southern Europe.
Argentine ants in Europe form a single supercolony more than 3,700 miles (about 6,000 km) long, along the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts. Ants from opposite ends treat each other as family.
Source: Scientific American
You may be able to see a single particle of light.
A 2016 study suggested that humans can detect single photons, the smallest possible unit of light.
Source: Rockefeller University
Spiders can fly using the Earth's electric field.
Researchers at Bristol showed that spiders can lift off on tiny strands of silk using electric fields in the air, even with no wind at all.
Source: University of Bristol (2018)
A frog can freeze solid and come back to life.
Wood frogs survive the winter with ice in their bodies and a stopped heart, then thaw and hop away.
Source: Carleton University
A pope once put a dead pope on trial.
In 897, Pope Stephen VI had his predecessor Formosus dug up, sat the corpse on a throne and put it on trial. It was found guilty, and the body was thrown in the Tiber.
Source: National Geographic
Platypuses glow green.
Under ultraviolet light, platypus fur glows blue-green. It is one of the few mammals known to do this.
Source: Smithsonian Magazine
Earth once ran its own nuclear reactors.
About two billion years ago, uranium deposits at Oklo in Gabon started a chain reaction by themselves, on and off, with no humans involved. They are the only natural nuclear reactors ever found.
Source: GRS: Oklo natural reactor