A dog was the first in space and a sheep, a duck and a rooster the first to fly in a hot air balloon.

The first mention of soap was on Sumerian clay tablets dating about 2,500 BC. The soap was made of water, alkali and cassia oil.

Only one of the Seven Wonders of the World still survives: the Great Pyramid of Giza.

The world’s first skyscraper was the 10-storey Home Insurance office, built in Chicago in 1885. (During Roman times buildings were up to 8 storeys high.)

Napoleon’s christening name was Italian: Napoleone Buonaparte. He was born on the island of Corsica one year after it became French property. As a boy, Napoleon hated the French.

Excavations from Egyptian tombs dating to 5,000 BC show that the ancient Egyptian kids played with toy hedgehogs.

A green diamond is the rarest diamond.

Hurricanes, tornadoes and bigger bodies of water always go clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere and counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere. This directional spinning has to do with the rotation of the earth and is called the Coriolis force.

All the planets in the solar system rotate anticlockwise, except Venus. It is the only planet that rotates clockwise.

The magnetic north pole is near Ellef Ringes Island in northern Canada.

There is no record of a person being killed by a meteorite but animals are occasionally hit.

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).

Richard M. Nixon was the first president to visit all 50 states.

Andrew Johnson was the only president to sew his own clothes.

David Rice Atchison, the President Pro Tempore of the Senate, was president for a day. When Zachary Taylor was inaugurated in 1849, he refused to take the oath on a Sunday, so someone had to be sworn into office for one day. Atchison got the job.

Woodrow Wilson is the only president buried at Washington D.C.

Millard Fillmore authorized Matthew C. Perry’s trip to Japan, which helped open trade with Japan.

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.