Zoom Out
Fun Facts
By Abigail Strauss
This blog post is called Zoom Out. The reason? Because I’ll be telling facts about our world (and beyond) zooming out as I go. We begin in Melbourne, my future home, and a staple among Australian cities.
Melbourne, Australia
Melbourne is often ranked as having among the highest numbers of live music venues per capita in the world.
In 2010, residents on the outskirts of Melbourne reported fish falling from the sky.
Melbourne has its own “Bermuda Triangle.” Between Williamstown, Point Cook, and Port Phillip Bay, the so-called Bass Strait Triangle is rumored to have claimed thousands of lives.
Some cafés in Melbourne serve a “selfieccino,” where your photo is printed in the foam on top of your coffee.
Thousands of flying foxes (the world’s largest bats) live throughout Melbourne.
The Luna Park entrance, shaped like a giant clown face, has wooden teeth that have been thought to have been there for 110 years.
Each of Melbourne’s roughly 70,000 trees has an email address so people can report damage or learn more about them. (People have even written love letters to their favorite trees!)
Melbourne has frog tunnels under roads to help migrating frogs cross safely.
There’s a 24-hour pizza vending machine in the CBD that cooks your meal in just three minutes.
A duck once wandered onto a tram and refused to leave for several stops until it was lured off with chips.
Australia, Oceania
Australia is home to the world’s oldest living cultures. Aboriginal Australians have lived there for over 65,000 years.
Around 90% of Australia’s native species can be found nowhere else on Earth.
Despite its reputation, Australia has fewer deadly animal attacks per year than many other countries.
Emus and kangaroos appear on Australia’s coat of arms because they are unable to move backward — symbolizing progress.
The Dingo Fence stretches more than 5,600 km and is used to keep dingoes off farmland.
The “tuna toss” is a novelty competition where participants throw a large (fake) tuna as far as they can, hammer-throw style.
The Australian Alps receive so much snow, that it is thought to get more than the Swiss Alps.
The town of Banana in Queensland was named after a yellow colored bullock (bull) called Banana.
Some Outback postal regions are so vast that they cover areas larger than Denmark.
Mount Disappointment was named by explorers who were disappointed by the view at the top.
Oceania, Earth
Oceania is the largest region of islands on Earth, with more than 25,000 islands.
The International Date Line runs through Oceania.
Many islands in Oceania formed when coral grew around sinking volcanoes, creating coral islands called atolls.
Surfing originated in Polynesia as a spiritual and cultural practice.
In Fiji, polished whale teeth called tabua were traditionally used for trade, marriage proposals, and peace offerings.
Kiribati stretches across the Equator and the International Date Line, making it the only nation in all four hemispheres.
Nauru is one of the least-visited countries in the world, welcoming only a few hundred tourists each year.
Many communities in the Solomon Islands have a higher rate of albinism than the global average.
The Yapese people of Micronesia once used giant stone disks called rai as currency, some measuring over 3 m wide.
In Vanuatu, men still practice land diving (naghol), by leaping from tall wooden towers with vines tied around their ankles.
Earth, Solar System
The Moon is slowly drifting away from Earth, about 3.8 cm per year.
Earth’s core is as hot as the surface of the Sun, reaching up to 6,000 °C.
Earth’s magnetic poles reverse every few hundred thousand years. The last flip occurred about 780,000 years ago.
Earth’s oceans contain roughly 20 million tons of dissolved gold but it’s far too diluted to be worth anything.
Earth’s rotation is gradually slowing down. In about 200 million years, a day will last 25 hours.
Lightning strikes Earth around 8 million times every day.
Ten thousand years ago, the Sahara was lush and green, filled with lakes and even hippos.
Some underwater mountains are taller than Everest. Mauna Kea in Hawaii measures over 10,000 m from base to summit.
Antarctica’s Blood Falls is a red waterfall caused by iron-rich water oxidizing when it meets the air.
Earth once had rings. A massive impact left debris that floated around Earth billions of years ago.
Solar System!
The Sun makes up 99.86% of our Solar System’s total mass.
Venus spins backwards, so the Sun rises in the west and sets in the east
The Sun’s outer atmosphere (the corona) reaches millions of degrees, while its surface is “only” about 5,500 °C.
Mercury – despite being the closest planet to the sun – has ice at its poles, hidden in craters that never see sunlight.
Uranus rotates on its side, giving it 42 Earth years of daylight followed by 42 Earth years of night.
A day on Venus is longer than its year. One rotation takes 243 Earth days, while its orbit lasts 225 days.
Mars’s canyon system, Valles Marineris, stretches 2,500 miles long and 125 miles wide.
Saturn’s rings are slowly disappearing; scientists estimate they’ll vanish in about 100 million years.
If you flew through the asteroid belt, you’d almost never hit anything because the rocks are millions of kilometers apart.
Neptune was discovered through mathematics before it was ever seen through a telescope.
I hope this blog post leaves you inspired and amazed by all the new facts you’ve learned. The truth is, our world is incredible, and it will never stop inspiring us. Now take these facts and go impress your friends!
Personal Note:
This was a good break from fictional stories for me. I had a lot of fun writing this, and certainly learned a lot of new facts. I hope you did too. By writing this blog post, I learned so much about our world, got to switch up my writing genre, and I feel really impressed with how it turned out. Until next week!
