Less than half a kidney can take over all the tasks that two kidneys usually accomplish together.

The longest glacier in Antarctica, the Almbert glacier, is 250 miles long and 40 miles wide.

Dr John Gorrie of Appalachicola, Florida, invented mechanical refrigeration in 1851. He patented his device on May 6th, 1851. There is a statue which honours this "Father of Modern Day Air Conditioning" in the Statuary Hall of the Capital building in Washington, DC.

Cats are attracted to automobile antifreeze because of its sweet taste.

In May 2001 an unidentified skull was found in Rodopi Mountain, Bulgaria. It has the size of a baby's head and it weights about 250 grams. A disk-shaped smooth metal object was found nearby the skull too. Some people think that the alloy it was made of cannot be composed on the Earth. Scientists explored the skull and no one was unable to identify it.

The first dinosaur to be the subject of a tavern song was the Diplodocus due to the fact that tycoon Andrew Carnegie gave a replica of the animal to King Edward VII. The tune, which was popular around the turn of the century, went:

"Crowned heads of Europe All make a royal fuss Over Uncle Andy And his old Diplodocus

The mastermind behind the Soviet hydrogen bomb was the physicist Andrei Sakharov, later known as a human rights campaigner and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

There are 6,500 windows in the Empire State Building and more than 10 million bricks.

The Moon is 400 times closer to the Earth than the Sun and exactly 400 times smaller.