It takes an oyster 10 years to produce a pearl the size of a pea.
Ants pause to rest from time to time but never sleep.
While a worker ant only lives 4-6 weeks, a queen ant can live as long 20 years.
There are 13.5 million termites on Earth for every human.
Cats are the only clawed animals that walk on their claws instead of their paw pads.
The average canned cat meal is the equvalent of eating five mice.
Cats and humans have about the same number of bones - but most of a cat's bones are in its tail.
The foot of a horse is composed of a single toe encased in a hard hoof.
60% of the genetic codes that define humans and dogs are identical.
Less than half of humans can smell the bitter almond odor of cyanide.
It's estimated that the upper body of an adult male Neanderthal was 2-3 times as strong as a modern man in good condition.
Modern man has only been on earth for half as long as the Neanderthals managed to survive before they became extinct.
The cities of the Roman Empire were connected by a network containing 50,000 miles of well paved roads. The US highway system only contains 42,000 miles of roads.
Consumers spend 4 times as much on repairing road damage to their vehicles than state highway departments spend fixing the problems in the roads that cause the damage.
80% of the Earth's volcanic activity occurs under the oceans.
During Stalin's purges of the 1930's, over 19 million people were put on trial and at least 7 million were executed.
The 32,000 Sq Ft of sail that the historic Cutty Sark clipper ship could unfurl extracted an estimated 3000 horsepower from the wind.
A table top would have to be 10 feet high in order to allow time for a slice of toast dropped from its surface to complete a full rotation and land on the floor jelly side up.
The Information Technology Industry grew 57% and grossed $866 billion in 1997, making it the nation's largest industry.
It's estimated that over 12 million people logged onto the Internet for the first time in 1997.