Santa Cruz del Islote – The World’s Most Densely Populated Island
Santa Cruz del Islote, an islet in Colombia’s San Bernardo Archipelago, only covers the area of two football fields, but it has a population of over 1,200 people.
The World’s Oldest Living Grapevine Has Been Around for Over 400 Years
A 416-year-old wild grapevine in the mountains of eastern Tibet was recently acknowledged by Guinness World Records as the world’s oldest living vine.
Massive Brown Seweed Belt Spreading Through Atlantic Ocean Is Visible from Space
The Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt is a shockingly large mass of brown algae almost double the width of the American continent, and clearly visible from space. The first major bloom of the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt was observed by scientists in 2011. In the almost 15 years since, it has ballooned into a giant mass […]
You Need a Permit to Wear High Heels in This California City
The small city of Carmel-by-the-Sea is famous for requiring visitors to get an official permit in order to legally walk in heels higher than two inches. Carmel-by-the-Sea’s infamous high-heel permit sounds like an urban myth, but it’s a real, official requirement in the Monterey city. If your heels are over two inches in height and […]
Montenapoleone – The New World’s Most Expensive Street
For the longest time, New York’s Upper Fifth Avenue held the title of ‘the most expensive street in the world’ but it was recently dethroned by Montenapoleone, an upscale shopping street in Milan, Italy. Every year, American firm Cushman & Wakefield publishes a global index that ranks the world’s most expensive shopping areas by the […]
The World’s Largest Cashew Tree Covers an Area of Over 8,000 Square Meters
The Pirangi Cashew Tree in Brazil’s Rio Grande do Norte is considered the world’s largest cashew tree. It has a circumference of around 500 meters and covers an area of 8,400 square meters. Legend has it that the Pirangi Cashew Tree was planted in 1888 by a local fisherman who later died at the age […]
The World’s Shortest Commercial Flight Is Over in Less Than 2 Minutes
The airplane flight between the Scottish islands of Westray and Papa Westray holds the world record for the shortest commercial flight, as the plane is usually in the air for just under 2 minutes. Most of us can just hop into a car, bus, or train for short trips, but things are different in the […]
This Tiny One-of-a-Kind Gem Is the World’s Rarest Mineral
Kyawthuite is a transparent reddish-orange mineral of which only a single, tiny sample exists – an 0.3-gram gem – making it the rarest mineral in the world, by far. There are around 6,000 minerals recognized by the International Mineralogical Association, and while many of them are classified as ‘rare’, none of them rival kyawthuite in […]
In the Coldest Place on Earth Temperatures Drop to Minus 135.8 Degrees Fahrenheit
According to NASA Earth Observatory satellites, the coldest place on Earth is a mountain ridge on the East Antarctic Plateau where temperatures can drop to -135.8 degrees Fahrenheit (-93.2 degrees Celsius). For the past week, much of the US has been affected by an extreme winter storm that brought massive snowfalls, destructive winds, and freezing […]
Scientists Discover World’s Largest Plant Covering Area Over 112 Miles in Size
A team of scientists recently announced that a giant meadow of seagrass covering an area three times the size of Manhattan consists of clones of the same exact plant, making it the world’s largest plant. Elizabeth Sinclair, a senior research fellow at the School of Biological Sciences and Oceans Institute at The University of Western […]
You Have Tiny Mites Living Inside Your Face And There’s Nothing You Can Do About It
Did you know you have dozens of tiny eight-legged arachnids living inside the pores of your face, feeding on the sebum secreted by the skin and mating on your face as you sleep? Don’t freak out, though, we all have them, and there’s nothing we can do to get rid of them. Demodex folliculorum, or […]
Website Helps Icelandic Couples Avoid Incest
In a country with only 300,000 people, the risk of two people who like each other being related is quite high. Throw in the absence of last names, and the confusion only increases. This is precisely the case in Iceland today. Luckily, they have a website that keeps them from committing incest. So when a man […]