In the 14th century the Black Death killed 75,000,000 people. It was carried by fleas on the black rat.

Christian Barnard performed the first heart transplant in 1967 - the patient lived for 18 days.

Humans have 46 chromosomes, peas have 14 and crayfish have 200.

The African Elephant gestates for 22 months.

A quarter of the world's plants are threatened with extinction by the year 2010.

If the Sun were the size of a beach ball then Jupiter would be the size of a golf ball and the Earth would be as small as a pea.

The largest meteorite craters in the world are in Sudbury, Ontario, canada and in Vredefort, South Africa.

The largest ever hailstone weighed over 1kg and fell in Bangladesh in 1986.