Interesting Facts - Page 80

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396

The Parliament of the United Kingdom spent 700 hours debating whether to ban fox hunting, but only 7 hours debating whether to invade Iraq.

397

Many scientists believed that the moon was formed when a Mars-sized planet (named Theia) slammed into the Earth 4.51 billion years ago. The impact blasted material into a disk orbiting the Earth which eventually coalesced into the moon.

398

Earth has nearly 10 times the mass of Mars.

399

Death Valley may be the hottest place on Earth, but there are other places that feel even hotter. Due to a combination of heat and humidity, the places with the highest ever "Heat Index" are found on the coast of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf.

400

In Medieval times, France had its own caste of untouchables who were known as Cagots. Cagots looked, spoke, and acted just like everyone else but were for some reason considered unclean. No one knows how this superstition started, but it didn't fully die off until the 20th century.

29 Comments

+14

Level 68

Feb 4, 2020

One interesting fact is that, with the obvious exception of Hawaii, is that every state has at least one straight line border, check for yourself!

Level 66

Feb 6, 2020

South Carolina?

Level 68

Feb 8, 2020

Even South Carolina, there is a straight line segment on the North Carolina border.

+15

Level 68

Feb 8, 2020

Surely this is a trivial statement though? All borders are generally defined as a collection of straight lines, so that a region becomes a collection of polygons. I don't think there's any border in the world which is defined as a curve, rather than a series of lines.

+12

Level 80

Dec 20, 2020

The 12 Mile Circle border between Delaware and Pennsylvania is a 12 mile arc.

Level 68

Oct 25, 2021

Some borders are defined by rivers or mountains, so not everything is defined by lines.

Level 68

Sep 6, 2024

LONG, straight lines that are visibly straight on a zoomed out map

Level 26

Jan 31, 2025

You owned the Geographystar so hard right here, gg

+10

Level 68

Feb 8, 2020

Allow me to explain, there are three types of borders, borders that follow a river or other body of water, and therefore are not straight, straight line borders, like a lot of the borders in the American west, and circle borders, like Delaware, every U.S. state has at least one example of the second type of border.

+11

Level 68

Feb 8, 2020

It seems you're correct, this isn't such a trivial statement! I had no idea curved borders existed (e.g. penn-dela), and completely forgot about natural borders. Thanks for the info!

Level 68

Feb 8, 2020

No problem!

Level 68

May 26, 2022

Looking back at this, I have slight correction for past me, there are other natural borders, like mountain ranges and other similar stuff.

Level 64

Mar 19, 2024

colorado?

+15

Level 73

Feb 14, 2020

What about this one - The Moon is moving away from the Earth at about the same speed as your fingernails grow

Level 68

Feb 17, 2020

Did you know that the orbit of Saturn is closer to the sun than the orbit of Uranus. I think that this would make a good interesting fact.

Level 70

Aug 19, 2020

As Saturn is about half the distance from the Sun (1500 million km) as compared to Uranus (3000 million km) it is not really surprising that the orbit of Saturn is nearer to the Sun than Uranus.

Level 61

Mar 19, 2021

Here's an interesting fact Uranus should be renamed "King George" in my opinion and was called Georgium for a while briefly after its discovery!

Level 51

Jun 15, 2021

nah dont change it, i like uranus, its great

Level 43

Feb 26, 2020

Here is one,

Every 248(or 284 I forgot) years,

Neptune is farther away from the sun than Pluto

Level 55

Mar 21, 2020

I read the Cagot fact in Wikipedia. I also read that they were only allowed to be carpenters most of the time.

Level 70

Apr 3, 2020

oops! the alaska fact already exists!

Level 36

Mar 12, 2021

#396 tho

Level 47

May 20, 2021

is #396 kind of an example of bikeshedding

Level 70

Sep 16, 2021

Fox Hunting is not a trivial matter, as it divides the people of the UK along elitist lines. The 'elite' have to desperately hang-on to every little particle of difference between the have and the have-nots or more precisely the 'In crowd' and the 'Out crowd' society wise......... As the summing up of the Fox-Hunting Debate wisely put it ........ "A serious difficulty of the ruling elite in linking legal and political responsibility to legitimate authority in the exercise of democratic power".

Level 69

May 26, 2021

Cagots... Hmm in Spanish we have a word that is very similar, 'cagar', the vulgar way of saying 'to poop'. I wonder if there is some correlation here.

Level 75

Nov 18, 2025

Maybe. Wiktionary states that French Cagot was borrowed from Occitan cagot which is of unknown origin. The most common theory is that it comes from Occitan cagar ("to poop") with the dimunitive suffix -ot.

Level 66

Mar 7, 2022

Armenia isn't a -stan country, or at least in English.

Since Armenia in Armenian is Hayastan (meaning land of the Armenians), it technically is in Armenia.

Level 50

Feb 12, 2024

The Cagots also lived in northern Spain, where they were known as Agotes. They suffered the same discrimination for the same unknown reasons until recent years.

Level 37

Jan 15, 2026

The main evidence supporting this theory that is widely accepted today is that the rocks from the Moon are primarily anorthosite, a feldspar rich rock found on Earth in the roots of deeply eroded mountains like the Adirondacks in New York. This rock type forms deep in the Earth and the theory is the collision broke through into the molten interior of the Earth and this was released and caught in the gravitational pull of the Earth.