Facts Archive - Page 2 of 77 - Interesting Facts

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Calories aren’t the only difference between a can of Coca-Cola and a can of Diet Coke. If you were to drop a full, closed can of each into water, you’d observe another distinction: Regular Coke sinks, while Diet Coke floats.

It’s a curious idiosyncrasy given that the two cans seem nearly identical otherwise; they're the same size, contain the same amount of liquid, and use the same aluminum material. This peculiarity comes down to a difference in density, aka how much mass is packed into their given volumes.

Aluminum soda cans can be recycled only once.

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Aluminum cans are actually highly recyclable. They can be recycled repeatedly without losing much quality, making them one of our most sustainable materials.

A 12-ounce can of regular Coke contains 39 grams of sugar (roughly 10 teaspoons). Diet Coke, though, gets its sweetness from artificial sweeteners such as aspartame. Because that sugar substitute is about 200 times sweeter than the real thing, very little of it — just 0.2 grams per can — is needed to achieve the same taste.

The diet can, then, contains far less dissolved sweetener and therefore weighs a bit less overall. Objects that are denser than water sink while those that are less dense float, and Coca-Cola’s sugar adds enough extra mass to make the can slightly denser than water.

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Numbers Don't Lie

Maximum recommended grams of added sugars per meal for adults

10

Year Coca-Cola removed cocaine from its formula

1903

Length (in feet) of the largest floating structure ever built (Shell’s offshore natural gas facility)

1,601

Fixed price (in cents) of a bottle of Coke from 1886 to 1959

5

More Interesting Reads

Growing black currants was once banned in the U.S.

Elephant trunks have more than 40,000 muscles.

Volvo gave away its seat belt patent to save lives.

Some animals can pause their pregnancies.

People used to say ‘prunes’ instead of ‘cheese’ while taking a photo.

The name of the porous volcanic rock that can float is ______.

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The name of the porous volcanic rock that can float is pumice.

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Coca-Cola originated as a “wine.”

You may have heard that early Coca-Cola contained cocaine, but in its earliest form, the drink was also an alcoholic beverage. In the 1880s, Georgia pharmacist John Stith Pemberton created a drink called Pemberton’s French Wine Coca, inspired by popular European coca wines such as Vin Mariani that combined coca leaf extract with alcohol.

Pemberton’s tonic contained wine, kola nuts for caffeine, and coca leaves, which naturally contained small amounts of cocaine. It was marketed as a medicinal drink that claimed to boost energy, improve mood, and relieve headaches. But in 1886, shortly after Pemberton debuted his drink, his home base of Atlanta passed prohibition legislation. To continue selling his product, Pemberton removed the alcohol and reformulated the recipe as a soft drink.

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Nicole is a writer, thrift store lover, and group-chat meme spammer based in Ontario, Canada.

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Photographers have relied on the magic of cheese for decades — just mentioning the word is enough to turn up the corners of our mouths into a picture-perfect grin. But the earliest photographers utilized a different food to help purse their subjects’ puckers: prunes. According to Christina Kotchemidova, a communications professor and researcher, British photography studios of the past encouraged people to say “prunes” in an effort to tighten their lips, a look that was more socially preferable than a wide smile.

Before instant photos, Polaroid created goggles for dogs.

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Instant photos hit the market in 1948 thanks to inventor Edwin Land. But his company, Polaroid, used polarizer filters in other items before cameras. Some of Land’s earliest products included a 3D movie process, upgraded military periscopes, and even glare-reducing dog goggles.

Most 19th- and early 20th-century photos show subjects with a solemn expression, a look that’s often attributed to the long exposure times of early cameras; holding a neutral expression for several minutes was easier than maintaining a smile. But social norms also played a big role — stern faces remained popular even after photo technology had improved well enough to easily capture smiles by the late 1800s, and some historians say that smiling was once considered improper. Beauty standards of the time called for mouths to have a subdued appearance; Kotchemidova’s research suggests people were expected to have “carefully controlled” mouths with small pouts.

According to one study of nearly 38,000 high school yearbook photos from the 1900s to the 2010s, smiling in photos became more popular by the mid-20th century. Some historians believe the switch was influenced by two factors: dental care and home photography. Without widespread access to dental care, missing or rotten teeth were common, a detail many wouldn’t have wanted featured in their portrait. Dentistry became a more established field in the early 1900s, the same time period when Kodak was marketing its amateur cameras as a way to capture life’s happier, spontaneous moments — smiles included.

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Numbers Don't Lie

Numbers Don't Lie

Exposure time (in hours) of the 1827 Niépce Heliograph, the earliest surviving photo

8

Cost of a commercial U.S. photo portrait in the early 1860s (about $6-$60 today)

$0.25-$2.50

Pounds of fruit produced by a mature prune plum tree each year

150-300

Shelf life of unrefrigerated prunes (in months), with an additional six months if refrigerated

6

More Interesting Reads

Growing black currants was once banned in the U.S.

Elephant trunks have more than 40,000 muscles.

Cans of Diet Coke and Coca-Cola dropped into water

Coke cans sink in water, but Diet Coke cans float.

Volvo gave away its seat belt patent to save lives.

Some animals can pause their pregnancies.

In the U.S., ______ is the top prune-growing state.

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In the U.S., California is the top prune-growing state.

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Cameras from the Apollo space missions are still on the moon.

Documenting humankind’s voyage into space has required astronauts to cart cameras outside Earth’s atmosphere, but they haven’t always returned. Cameras used during many of the Apollo missions are still on the moon five decades later, including one used by Neil Armstrong during the first moonwalk. Between 1961 and 1972, NASA crews prepared and sent into space bare-bones cameras, stripped down for efficiency and to reduce user error, but weight requirements for returning to Earth meant astronauts kept only the film, ditching the cameras to make room for moon rocks and other space samples. In 1969, NASA announced that its moon garbage heaps — which would eventually include 12 cameras — totaled about $1 million in abandoned equipment (about $8.1 million today). However, the film brought back to Earth from the Apollo missions captured 18,000 of our first glimpses into space.

Nicole Garner Meeker

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Nicole Garner Meeker is a writer and editor based in St. Louis. Her history, nature, and food stories have also appeared at Mental Floss and Better Report.

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McDonald’s is likely the world’s most popular restaurant, with more than 44,000 locations spread across 100-plus countries. The glow of its golden arches is like a beacon for hungry diners around the world — the company famously boasts that it serves 63 million people every day. However, in one southern Arizona city, it wasn’t always so successful. It took a special sliding window to bring in tons of patrons, particularly those wearing military uniforms. That’s right: The first drive-thru window at McDonald’s was created in 1975 to serve the armed forces.

The first McDonald’s mostly sold hot dogs.

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First known as McDonald’s Famous Bar-B-Q, the fast-food chain ran as a barbecue restaurant for eight years, primarily selling hot dogs, before switching to a burger-first operation in 1948.

Sierra Vista, Arizona, sits about 20 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border and is home to the Fort Huachuca Army base. While military bases are often good for boosting local businesses, management of the town’s McDonald’s realized that service members often passed by the restaurant without stopping. It wasn’t from lack of hunger; uniform regulations of the time prevented personnel from going into public places on personal business while wearing their uniforms. Soldiers interested in stopping for a burger and fries had to return home and change into civilian clothes before they could place an order.

Knowing this, franchise owner David Rich thought up a way his military customers could skirt the rules. Taking inspiration from other restaurants like In-N-Out Burger and Jack in the Box — which were already using drive-thrus — he added a sliding window to the side of his building where customers could order and receive their food without leaving their cars. Rich’s drive-thru — the first in McDonald’s history — caught on with the restaurant chain. Later that year, a second McDonald’s in Georgia added its own drive-thru, followed by another in Oklahoma City, and by 1979, more than half of McDonald’s 5,000 locations featured drive-thrus. Today, nearly 70% of McDonald’s sales come through its drive-thrus, which are visited by service members and civilians alike.

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Numbers Don't Lie

Numbers Don't Lie

Height (in feet) of the world’s largest Big Mac, housed at Pennsylvania’s Big Mac Museum

14

Average fast-food drive-thru wait time (in seconds), from entrance to exit

343

Number of Big Macs sold each year, about 1.5 million per day

550 million

Pounds of McNuggets sold each year

700 million

More Interesting Reads

Growing black currants was once banned in the U.S.

Elephant trunks have more than 40,000 muscles.

Cans of Diet Coke and Coca-Cola dropped into water

Coke cans sink in water, but Diet Coke cans float.

Volvo gave away its seat belt patent to save lives.

Some animals can pause their pregnancies.

A McDonald’s in ______ has the world’s only “McSki,” a drive-thru for skiers.

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A McDonald’s in Sweden has the world’s only “McSki,” a drive-thru for skiers.

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Fast-food dining inspired automobile manufacturers to add cup holders.

Dining and automobiles have always gone together, but until the 1980s, cup holders weren’t commonly included in cars. The earliest vehicles — such as the Model T — had kitchenettes that could be strapped onto the running boards, and by the 1950s, metal tray-like accessories that hung from dashboards could be used to hold snacks. But these items were meant to be used while cars were parked at diners, drive-ins, or picnic sites, not on the go. As restaurant drive-thrus increased in popularity, more people began eating in their cars while en route to their destinations, and auto manufacturers took notice. In 1983, Chrysler installed the first permanent cup holder in its Dodge Caravan and Plymouth Voyager vans, paving the way for long-distance snacking free(r) from spills.

Nicole Garner Meeker

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Nicole Garner Meeker is a writer and editor based in St. Louis. Her history, nature, and food stories have also appeared at Mental Floss and Better Report.

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Whales are some of the most majestic creatures on the planet. The blue whale is the largest animal to ever exist, the bowhead whale can live for more than 200 years, and a few humpback whales saved the future of humanity in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. In fact, these creatures are so amazing that even their earwax is a vital tool — at least for helping scientists understand the mysterious mammals themselves. Take, for instance, the 10-inch-long earplug of an adult blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus). Cetologists — scientists who study whales — can cut into a plug of earwax and learn the whale’s age, much as dendrochronologists do with tree rings. Earwax from blue whales (and other large whales such as humpbacks) forms rings, known as “laminae,” every six months, which give scientists a snapshot of the creature’s entire life through cycles of summer feeding and winter migration.

All whales used to walk on land.

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Fifty million years ago, the early ancestor of all cetaceans walked on four legs. This goatlike mammal, dubbed Pakicetus, lived on riverbanks in India and Pakistan. Slowly, its descendants became more comfortable in water until they eventually evolved into today’s whales.

And these waxy earplugs can tell scientists more than just a whale’s age. Earplugs also capture a chronological “chemical biography” that shows what chemicals and pollutants were found in the animal’s body throughout its life, including levels of the stress hormone cortisol. Scientists have compared whale cortisol levels with whaling data, using records from 1870 to 2016, and found an unmistakable positive correlation. The only discrepancy was during World War II, when whale stress levels increased despite a decrease in whaling overall (scientists assume increased military activity was the likely culprit). Despite a near-international moratorium on whaling in the 1980s, whales still exhibit high cortisol levels thanks to increased ship noise, climate change, and other factors. But with the help of whale earwax, scientists can at least continue to examine the health of these majestic beasts and the oceans they inhabit.

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Numbers Don't Lie

Numbers Don't Lie

Estimated number of blue whales before the 1900s

225,000

Main types of earwax (wet and dry)

2

Year the U.S. Congress passed the Marine Mammal Protection Act in an effort to save whales from extinction

1972

Estimated percentage of people in the U.S. experiencing excess earwax buildup in 2012

6%

More Interesting Reads

Growing black currants was once banned in the U.S.

Elephant trunks have more than 40,000 muscles.

Cans of Diet Coke and Coca-Cola dropped into water

Coke cans sink in water, but Diet Coke cans float.

Volvo gave away its seat belt patent to save lives.

Some animals can pause their pregnancies.

The scientific name for earwax is actually ______.

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The scientific name for earwax is actually cerumen.

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Using Q-tips to clean your ears is a bad idea.

If you see or feel excess wax in your ear, you should grab a Q-tip, right? Not so fast. Earwax actually plays an important role in auditory health. Produced by the skin in the ear canal, earwax prevents dust and other debris from damaging deeper structures such as the eardrum. However, an excess of earwax can cause “impaction,” which produces symptoms including irritation, hearing loss, and even dizziness. But removing earwax buildup with a cotton swab is not recommended. Otolaryngologists (doctors who treat the ears, neck, throat, and other areas) warn that cotton swabs can actually exacerbate impaction by pushing wax toward the eardrum, where it can harden. If your ears do become impacted, see your local ENT or primary care physician — but don’t toss those Q-tips. You can still use them for cleaning your outer ear or other hard-to-reach spots like faucets, computer keyboards, or car interiors.

Darren Orf

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Darren Orf lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes about all things science and climate. You can find his previous work at Popular Mechanics, Inverse, Gizmodo, and Paste, among others.

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No object — whether made by humans or found in nature — is a mathematically perfect sphere. But that’s not to say that we can’t rank natural objects in terms of their sphericity. For many years, the sun held the record as the roundest known natural object ever measured. But then scientists found a star 5,000 light-years away that’s even rounder.

The sun is roughly 865,000 miles in diameter, yet despite its enormous size, it’s almost perfectly round. The difference between its widest and narrowest points (its equatorial and polar diameters, which differ slightly due to the effects of rotation) is only about 6.2 miles. That makes our star a 99.9997% perfect sphere — a staggering achievement of near-perfect cosmic geometry.

But the sun no longer holds the record. In 2016, a team of astronomers from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research announced they had discovered the roundest object ever observed in nature: Kepler 11145123. That hot, luminous A-type star is more than twice the size of the sun and rotates three times more slowly — which partly explains its remarkable shape, as the slower rotation produces less centrifugal flattening.

A cubic inch of water has 120 times more water molecules than there are stars in the observable universe.

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A 1-inch cube of water contains about 600 sextillion molecules (written out, that’s "6" followed by 23 zeros). In comparison, the observable universe contains an estimated 5 sextillion stars.

Other factors that could contribute to the star’s roundness include the possibility of a weak magnetic field surrounding the star’s equator (essentially acting as a giant girdle and keeping the star in trim spherical shape) and differential rotation between its core and surface. In other words, the exterior layers of the star could rotate faster than the core, meaning the star may not be spinning as fast as it appears by looking at it from the outside.

Using asteroseismology — the study of the oscillations of stars — the astronomers were able to measure the star’s shape with extraordinary precision. They found the difference between the equatorial and polar radii of the star is a mere 1.86 miles — an astonishingly small number compared to the star’s mean radius of approximately 932,000 miles. When it comes to roundness, Kepler 11145123 will be very hard to top.

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Numbers Don't Lie

Numbers Don't Lie

Length of a year (in Earth days) on Mercury

88

Distance (in light-years) to Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the sun

4.2

Confirmed moons orbiting Saturn

274

Years it would take to walk to the moon

9

More Interesting Reads

Growing black currants was once banned in the U.S.

Elephant trunks have more than 40,000 muscles.

Cans of Diet Coke and Coca-Cola dropped into water

Coke cans sink in water, but Diet Coke cans float.

Volvo gave away its seat belt patent to save lives.

Some animals can pause their pregnancies.

The color of sunsets on Mars is ______.

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The color of sunsets on Mars is blue.

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Light takes an average of eight minutes and 20 seconds to reach Earth from the surface of the sun.

It may seem as if light from the sun reaches us here on Earth almost instantly, but it actually takes more than eight minutes on average. Considering nothing in the universe travels faster than light, that may seem like quite a long time. But at any given time, Earth is an average of 93 million miles from the sun — a distance even light takes some time to cover.

Tony Dunnell

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Tony is an English writer of nonfiction and fiction living on the edge of the Amazon jungle.

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Each June, stores roll out their Father’s Day best — sales on ties, watches, and barbecue grills. But when Father’s Day was first created, a much smaller token was given out to dads: roses. Flowers aren’t as heavily advertised for Father’s Day now as they are for mothers in May, yet the link between dads and the delicate blooms comes from the earliest American celebrations of the holiday.

Roses are the national flower of the U.S.

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Many flowers were in the running, but only one became the official bloom of the United States: the rose. President Ronald Reagan signed a proclamation certifying the rose as the national flower in 1986, over other suggestions such as marigolds, dogwoods, and columbines.

The first known Father’s Day is tied to the West Virginia mining community of Fairmont. On July 5, 1908, the town held a church service honoring the lives of fathers in their community, many of whom had perished the December before in what is widely considered the worst mining disaster in U.S. history. However, the church event was held just one time, and another city propelled the holiday into national view.

In 1909, Sonora Smart Dodd launched her campaign to honor fathers from her home in Spokane, Washington. As the daughter of a Civil War veteran and widower who had raised six children, Dodd believed fathers deserved recognition for their roles. Within a year, she had drummed up community support, and on June 19, 1910, Washington became the first state to celebrate Father’s Day. Dodd’s first festivities included an exchange of roses; children gave red roses to their fathers and pinned color-coded buds to their shirts — red for living fathers and white roses in honor of the deceased. The activist even rode through the city, handing out flowers and gifts to fathers who couldn’t leave home. Over time, the tradition of giving roses to dads faded away, but the holiday stuck around. After years of rallying, Father’s Day became a federally recognized holiday in 1972.

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Numbers Don't Lie

Numbers Don't Lie

Number of children fathered by John Tyler, the most of any U.S. president

15

Number of countries where Father’s Day is recognized (although not all celebrations are held in June)

111

Estimated number of fathers in the U.S., according to the U.S. Census Bureau

74 million

Estimated number of stay-at-home dads in the U.S. as of 2022

239,000

More Interesting Reads

Growing black currants was once banned in the U.S.

Elephant trunks have more than 40,000 muscles.

Cans of Diet Coke and Coca-Cola dropped into water

Coke cans sink in water, but Diet Coke cans float.

Volvo gave away its seat belt patent to save lives.

Some animals can pause their pregnancies.

The Thousand-Year Rose, the world’s oldest rose bush, grows alongside a church in ______.

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The Thousand-Year Rose, the world’s oldest rose bush, grows alongside a church in Germany.

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Organizers once tried to merge Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.

Mother’s Day and Father’s Day have long been honored as separate holidays, but in their earliest years, some organizers considered merging the two. A few American activists pushed for a replacement “Parents’ Day” during the 1920s and ’30s, with plans for the festivities to be held on the second Sunday in May (overwriting Mother’s Day). Robert Spero, one of the idea’s most ardent supporters, regularly led Parents’ Day festivities in New York City’s Central Park; in 1931 he argued that separate holidays created a “division of respect and affection” within families that should be replaced with a date that instead served as a “reminder that both parents should be loved and respected together.” However, Spero’s efforts never took hold on a grand scale, in part because of the Great Depression. Retailers capitalized on Father’s Day to generate gift-giving dollars in a tight economy, and with the onset of World War II, the date became a new way to honor men’s contributions to the war effort.

Nicole Garner Meeker

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Nicole Garner Meeker is a writer and editor based in St. Louis. Her history, nature, and food stories have also appeared at Mental Floss and Better Report.

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Your brain works hard all day, processing information that comes in at a staggering rate of 1 billion bits per second. It’s no wonder, then, that it needs some downtime to freshen up. Scientists have long theorized that humans and other animals need sleep because it helps maintain the brain, but they’ve also discovered that, during sleep, the brain is literally washed with fluid in a sort of rinse cycle that clears out chemical waste.

You only use 10% of your brain.

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Your entire brain is active all the time — when you’re doing math, when you’re watching TV, and even when you’re asleep. The myth that people use only 10% of their brains began before our modern scientific understanding of the brain.

A waste clearance network called the glymphatic system is responsible for this brain rinse, which is thought to happen largely when we’re asleep. Unlike other parts of the body, the brain doesn’t have lymphatic vessels to help it move fluids around. However, it does seem to have developed a work-around: In a study with mice, researchers found that blood volume and cerebrospinal fluid levels varied in response to pulses of norepinephrine, a neurotransmitter found in the brain that regulates alertness and affects your sleep-wake cycle, among other things.

Norepinephrine pulses cause the brain’s blood vessels to clench — and, with the hard wall of the skull creating resistance, that clenching action creates a pumping effect. Cerebrospinal fluid moves in to fill the gap made by the clenching vessels. When the blood vessels relax, the fluid is moved out again, carrying away waste.

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Numbers Don't Lie

Numbers Don't Lie

Percentage of a lifetime we spend sleeping (or attempting to sleep)

33%

Milliliters of cerebrospinal fluid produced by the body each day

500

Miles of blood vessels in the brain

400

Percentage of the body’s energy used by the brain

20%

More Interesting Reads

Growing black currants was once banned in the U.S.

Elephant trunks have more than 40,000 muscles.

Cans of Diet Coke and Coca-Cola dropped into water

Coke cans sink in water, but Diet Coke cans float.

Volvo gave away its seat belt patent to save lives.

Some animals can pause their pregnancies.

Nearly 60% of the human brain is made up of ______.

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Nearly 60% of the human brain is made up of fat.

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Your gut contains a “second brain.”

Within your digestive system lies the enteric nervous system (ENS), often called the “second brain.” It stretches throughout the gastrointestinal tract from the esophagus all the way down to the rectum. This “little brain” controls digestion, from swallowing your food to breaking it down and absorbing its nutrients. The little brain also talks to the big brain, which may explain why you feel “butterflies” in your stomach when you’re excited or stressed.

Researchers used to think that gut conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome were caused or exacerbated by mental health complaints such as anxiety and depression, but they’ve since found evidence that irritation in the ENS may reroute those mood change signals back to the big brain instead.

Ali Eldridge

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Ali Eldridge is a writer and editor based in Chicago. Currently the editor of "What on Earth! Magazine," she has also contributed extensively to Encyclopaedia Britannica and published several books for children. She spends much of her free time learning new languages and trading puns with her clever kid.

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Roughly 90% of humans are right-handed, including Muppeteers — the puppeteers who control Muppets. Though it may sound counterintuitive, this fact is why most Muppets are left-handed: Muppeteers use their dominant hand to control the heads of Kermit, Miss Piggy, Gonzo, and the rest of Jim Henson’s beloved creations, leaving their left hands to control the characters’ hand motions. This, in turn, translates into primarily using the Muppets’ left arms — otherwise the Muppeteer would need to use their left hand to control their character’s right hand, which would be physically counterintuitive.

Jim Henson was in the first season of “Saturday Night Live.”

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A year before “The Muppet Show” debuted, Henson was on the first season of “SNL.” He and the Muppets had a recurring segment called “The Land of Gorch.”

Henson created the Muppets in 1955, more than 20 years before the eponymous TV series premiered in 1976, and his original motley crew was first seen on the show Sam and Friends. The Muppets began appearing on Sesame Street in 1969, made their way to the silver screen for the first time a decade later, and have also starred in such series as Fraggle Rock, The Jim Henson Hour, and Muppets Tonight. Henson received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1991, Kermit got his in 2002, and the Muppets as a whole were honored with theirs in 2012.

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Numbers Don't Lie

Numbers Don't Lie

Episodes of the original “Muppet Show”

120

Emmys won by “The Muppet Show” (from 21 nominations)

4

Muppet feature films, as of 2026

8

Muppets featured in the final shot of “The Muppet Movie”

~250

More Interesting Reads

Growing black currants was once banned in the U.S.

Elephant trunks have more than 40,000 muscles.

Cans of Diet Coke and Coca-Cola dropped into water

Coke cans sink in water, but Diet Coke cans float.

Volvo gave away its seat belt patent to save lives.

Some animals can pause their pregnancies.

Kermit’s eyes were originally made of ______.

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Kermit’s eyes were originally made of Ping-Pong balls.

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Left-handedness has long been associated with evil.

Some superstitions are sillier than others: Near the top of the list would have to be the historical association between left-handedness and evil, which can even be found in the origins of the word “sinister.” It’s based on a Latin word meaning “on the left side,” and those who worship the devil were historically said to be on the left-hand path.

The basis for this appears to be pure prejudice stemming from the fact that most people are right-handed and those who aren’t were once seen as outcasts or worse (read: witches). The ancient Celts were one notable exception, as they associated the left side with femininity and the womb — the source of all life, in other words.

Michael Nordine

Staff Writer

Michael Nordine is a writer and editor living in Denver. A native Angeleno, he has two cats and wishes he had more.

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Wisconsinites are known for their love of cheese, so it’s no surprise that the city of Madison’s official bird is the invariably cheesy plastic flamingo. The lawn bird first “migrated” to town in 1979 as part of a prank on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. Students awoke one day that September to find the school’s Bascom Hill covered with 1,008 plastic flamingos, which had been placed there by the school government’s Pail & Shovel Party. The group was known for their absurdist stunts, including throwing a 10,000-person toga party and building a replica of the Statue of Liberty emerging from nearby Lake Mendota. Yet it wasn’t until 2009, after a successful lobbying campaign from local newspaper columnist Doug Moe, that the Madison City Council voted 15-4 in favor of designating the plastic flamingo as the official city bird. Councilwoman Marsha Rummel defended the decision against the four dissenters by saying, “If you don’t have a little fun, [life’s] not worth living.”

A group of flamingos is called a “flamboyance.”

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Also known as a stand, colony, or pod, a collective of flamingos is appropriately described by the colorful term “flamboyance.” Other notable collective terms referring to groups of birds include a murder of crows, a parliament of owls, and an exaltation of larks.

The plastic flamingo may be the lone official bird made of synthetic material, but it’s far from the only one with a feel-good backstory. In 2019, the black-crowned night heron was declared the city bird of Oakland, California, thanks to a multiyear movement begun by a group of third graders who had been helping to rehabilitate local birds after an oil spill. On a statewide level, the California gull is — despite its name — the official bird of Utah, and was designated such to honor the gulls who saved malnourished Mormon pioneers in 1848 by eating the crickets then decimating local crops. In Japan, the green pheasant (kiji) was declared the national bird in 1947 in part because it’s believed that the creatures can detect and warn of impending earthquakes.

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Numbers Don't Lie

Numbers Don't Lie

Total budget of John Waters’ 1972 cult film “Pink Flamingos”

$12,000

Year the plastic flamingo was first designed

1957

Different species of flamingos worldwide

6

Country whose national bird is the flamingo (The Bahamas)

1

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The world’s oldest flamingo lived to be ______ years old.

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The world’s oldest flamingo lived to be 83 years old.

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Flamingos are born a dull gray color and turn pink from their diet.

A flamingo’s defining characteristic is its bright-pink appearance, but that trait is far from hereditary. In fact, flamingo chicks are born a dull gray shade, and develop their pinkish hue as they grow older. The colorful change is due to a flamingo’s diet, which is high in beta-carotene. This red-orange pigment is found in various types of algae and brine shrimp that make up the bulk of a flamingo’s meals. Enzymes in the bird’s digestive system break down these pigments, which are then absorbed into the feathers and skin, turning most flamingos a striking pink hue.

Bennett Kleinman

Staff Writer

Bennett Kleinman is a New York City-based staff writer for Inbox Studio, and previously contributed to television programs such as "Late Show With David Letterman" and "Impractical Jokers." Bennett is also a devoted New York Yankees and New Jersey Devils fan, and thinks plain seltzer is the best drink ever invented.

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Original photo by Alex Stemmers/Shutterstock

There’s a good reason why both main characters in Finding Nemo are male, at least initially. All clownfish are born that way, and it’s only when a group’s dominant female dies or disappears that a male will develop into a female and become the new matriarch. All clownfish have the ability to turn female, and the change is permanent once it occurs. The transformation begins almost immediately after the dominant female leaves, and starts in the brain before manifesting itself in the sex organs. Had the beloved Pixar film been devoted to scientific accuracy, Nemo’s father, Marlin, might not have been just his sole caregiver after tragedy befalls the boy’s mother — he might literally have become his mother.

Male seahorses get pregnant and give birth.

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It's a fact

Along with their equine appearance, seahorses are well known for another unique trait: the fact that males, not females, get pregnant and bear young. The same is true of leafy seadragons and pipefish, fellow members of the Syngnathidae family.

Clownfish aren’t the only reef-dwellers that can change sex. The bluehead wrasse does it as well, only in reverse: When a dominant male leaves its group, the largest female transforms into a male over the course of just 21 days. Researchers have identified no fewer than 500 fish species capable of changing sex; some, like the coral-dwelling species of gobies, can even switch back and forth. The process is believed to have reproductive benefits, as it allows a single fish to reproduce as both sexes throughout its life.

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Numbers Don't Lie

Numbers Don't Lie

Length (in centimeters) of the average clownfish

11

Academy Award nominations received by “Finding Nemo”

4

Eggs a female clownfish can lay at once

1,000

Species of clownfish

28

More Interesting Reads

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Volvo gave away its seat belt patent to save lives.

Some animals can pause their pregnancies.

Clownfish are also called ______.

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Clownfish are also called anemonefish.

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Not all clownfish are orange.

Though the orange-and-white look is the most recognizable, it’s not the only one clownfish can sport. With nearly 30 different species of clownfish, there are other colors, too: Yellow, red, and black are also common, though most also have the characteristic thick white stripes. Despite being known for their bright colors, clownfish aren’t especially friendly when paired with other fish — in fact, they’re downright aggressive.

Michael Nordine

Staff Writer

Michael Nordine is a writer and editor living in Denver. A native Angeleno, he has two cats and wishes he had more.

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