A diamond will break if you hit it with a hammer.

Organist William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus in 1781 with the first reflecting telescope that he built. He named it Georgium Sidium in honour of King George III of England but in 1850 it was renamed Uranus in accordance with the tradition of naming planets for Roman gods.

Plates carrying the continents migrate over the earth’s surface a few centimetres (inches) per year, about the same speed that a fingernail grows.

The tail of the Great Comet of 1843 was 330 million km long. (It will return in 2356.)

During a total solar eclipse the temperature can drop by 6 degrees Celsius (about 20 degrees Fahrenheit).

Summer on Uranus lasts for 21 years – but so does winter.

Planets, meaning wanderers, are named after Roman deities: Mercury, messenger of the gods; Venus, the god of love and beauty; Mars, the god of war; Jupiter, king of the gods; and Saturn, father of Jupiter and god of agriculture; Neptune, god of the sea.

One year on earth is 365.26 days long. One day is 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4 seconds long. The extra day in a leap year was introduced to compensate for the discrepancy in the Georgian calendar.

There are more than 326 million trillion gallons of water on Earth.

More than 70% of earth’s dryland is affected by desertification.

In ancient China, the nose of a criminal who attacked travellers was cut off.

There are more than 16,400 parking metres in Manhatten, New York.

The first motorcycle speedway race was held in Maitland, Australia, in 1925.

Traffic lights were used before the advent of the motorcar.

The fewest aeroplane passengers killed in one year was 1 in 1993 and the most was 583 in 1977 when two Boeing 747s collided on the runway at Los Rodeos airport, Tenerife, the Canary Islands.

Leonardo da Vinci could write with the one hand and draw with the other simultaneously.

An exocannibal eats only enemies. An indocannibal eats only friends.

The name Wendy was first used in JM Barrie’s Peter Pan.

The 17th-century French Cardinal Mazarin never traveled without his personal chocolate-maker.

Alexander Graham Bell never phoned his wife or mother because they were deaf.