There are approximately 40,000 thunderstorms on earth every day.

Lightning occurs about 200 times a second.

The US (the state Alaska) and Russia are only about 4km (2.5 miles) apart at their nearest point.

The west coast of Alaska is more western than Hawaii.

In 1867 the US purchased the whole of Alaska from Russia and paid for this the proud amount of $7.2 million.

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 Our sun burns hydrogen and converts it into helium, and thereby radiates energy at such a rate that it’s mass decreases by four million tonnes per second. However, because of its size it will take more than 6,000 million years till it is burned out.

All planets in our solar system could be placed inside our sun many times over.

The brightest known star is the Carinae, as bright as 4 million suns. In spite of its brightness, you cannot see it with your naked eye because it’s too far away.

It is extremely difficult to find planets in outer space. But despite this, more than 200 planets have been detected until April 2007!

Rockets for a space flight need about 530 kg fuel for every extra kg they have to put into space.

The speed of light is unimaginable. It travels so fast, that it needs just one second for travelling 7.5 times around Earth. However, it needs more than 8 min to reach our sun and about 4 years to the nearest star.

The driest area on Earth is the Atacama desert in Chile. No rain has ever been recorded there.

More than half of the earth’s land area, namely deserts, ice regions, mountains, and wild scrub, is uninhabitable. About half of mankind lives on only one-thirties of the available land.

The South Pole was once, namely about 450 million years ago, in the middle of the Sahara Desert.

The saltiest sea in the world is the Dead Sea. It is so salty that no animal can live in its water. You don’t need to swim, and you won’t drown easily; you can just float on the surface and read the newspaper if you like.

In the far north of Norway, Sweden and Finland, the sun shines for about three months without setting each summer.

The first city with a population of more than one million people was London.

Wondering about all the never-ending dust in your house? It has been found that more that 70% of this nuisance comes from our shed skin.

The structure of each snowflake is different from other snowflakes.

You can only hear a whip crack if the end of it travels faster than the speed of sound.

 
The largest hailstone ever recorded was as big as a football and weighed several kg.

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