The Ebola virus kills 4 out of every 5 humans it infects.

Somewhere in the flicker of a badly tuned TV set is the background radiation from the Big Bang.

Each person sheds 40lbs of skin in his or her lifetime.

When Krakatoa erupted in 1883, its force was so great it could be heard 4,800 kilometres away in Australia.

The low frequency call of the humpback whale is the loudest noise made by a living creature.

Without its lining of mucus your stomach would digest itself.

If you could drive your car straight up you would arrive in space in just over an hour.

The speed of light is generally rounded down to 186,000 miles per second. In exact terms it is 299,792,458 m/s (metres per second – that is equal to 186,287.49 miles per second).