Top 30 Most Interesting World Facts You'll Ever Hear

Just over 96% of the total amount of the world's water is held in its oceans, according to Water in Crisis: A Guide to the World's Fresh Water Resources via the United States Geological Survey (USGS). However, that's primarily saltwater. To find the bulk of the world's freshwater you need to trek to the poles, as 68.7% of it is encased in ice caps, permanent snow, and glaciers.

Hang on to your hats because this isn't your average wind storm. In 1996, a tropical cyclone named Olivia hit off the coast of Barrow Island, Australia with such a force that it broke an incredible record. According to The Weather Channel, "Olivia's eyewall produced five extreme three-second wind gusts, the peak of which was a 253 mph gust," which blew past the previous wind record of 231 mph set in Mount Washington, New Hampshire back in 1934.

Europe has been experiencing serious dry spells and extreme heat since 2015, which has caused major droughts. Research done led by the University of Cambridge (and published on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration website) looked at isotopes in the rings of old European Oak trees in Central Europe which formed over thousands of years to try to pin down the cause. They discovered that the dry spells are a "result of human-caused climate change and associated shifts in the jet stream," according to EurekAlert!

If you're an avid rainbow gazer and want to get your fill of the beautiful phenomenon, look no further than the state of Hawaii. A study published by the American Meteorological Society in 2021 noted that the area's "mountains produce sharp gradients in clouds and rainfall, which are key to abundant rainbow sightings." Air pollution, pollen, and a large amount of cresting waves also help to put Hawaii at the top of the list when it comes to rainbow quantity and quality.

Around 80 percent of Greenland is covered by the Greenland Ice Sheet, which Britannica explains is the "largest and possibly the only relic of the Pleistocene glaciations in the Northern Hemisphere." But has it always been so icy? Well, at the bottom of a 1.4 km core sample, which was taken in 1966 at Camp Century during the Cold War, researchers found "well-preserved fossil plants and biomolecules," which means that the massive sheet melted and reformed at least once in the last million years.

Fin whales are basically the Barry White of the ocean. The deep, bellowing songs that males use to attract mates are considered to be the loudest of all marine life and can be "heard up to 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) away," according to Scientific American. They can also be used to sonically map out the ocean floor thanks to the fact that the sound can reach depths of 2.5 kilometers (1.6 miles) under the water, which bounces back and provides researchers with accurate measurements.

Finding previously undiscovered organisms in the depths of the ocean may sound like something straight out of a sci-fi horror film, but a 2020 study of a deep-sea volcano near New Zealand, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, uncovered "over 90 putative bacterial and archaeal genomic families and nearly 300 previously unknown genera."

Mount Everest may not have physically grown, having reached maturity a long time ago, however, the most recent measurement performed by surveyors representing China and Nepal has the mountain peak standing taller than we'd thought in the past. Previous readings have ranged from 29,002 feet above sea level in 1856 down to 20,029 in 1955, according to NPR. But after the long process of measuring the mountain with GPS devices, experts have now stated that Mount Everest stands at a whopping 29,031.69 feet, due to plate tectonics.

Don't worry, your prized red roses aren't going to turn turquoise overnight, but an increase in UV radiation due to the ozone layer deteriorating over the past decades has caused flowers all over the globe to change. A 2020 study led by Clemson University scientists determined that the UV pigmentation in flowers has increased over time which has led to the degradation of their pollen. Although we can't see the color change with our eyes, it is a big problem for pollinators like bees who are attracted to the bright colors that flowers produce.

Dentistry goes all way back to when humans first had teeth…well not quite that long. However, one study found evidence of teeth being drilled in skulls that dates from 7,500 to 9,000 years ago. The holes were likely made using a prehistoric bow-drill. Could that be the work of the first dentist? Other biting research conducted by the University of Bologna, Italy on a 14,000-year-old skull found that "one rotten tooth in the jaw had been deliberately scoured and scraped with a tool," according to the BBC. That makes dentistry one of the oldest recorded professions and is definitely a reason to smile.

No matter where you go, it's comforting to know you can always enjoy a Coca-Cola. Well, almost anywhere. While this fizzy drink is sold practically everywhere, it still hasn't (officially) made its way to North Korea or Cuba, according to the BBC. That's because these countries are under long-term U.S. trade embargoes.

The world's total population is more than 7.5 billion. And obviously, that number sounds huge. However, it might feel a little more manageable once you learn that if every single one of those people stood shoulder-to-shoulder, they could all fit within the 500 square miles of Los Angeles, according to National Geographic.

You might think twins are a rarity, but they're actually becoming more common than ever. "From about 1915, when the statistical record begins, until 1980, about one in every 50 babies born was a twin, a rate of 2 percent," writes Alexis C. Madrigal of The Atlantic. "Then, the rate began to increase: by 1995, it was 2.5 percent. The rate surpassed 3 percent in 2001 and hit 3.3 percent in 2010. [That means] one out of every 30 babies born is a twin."

The "weapons-grade" Dragon's Breath chili pepper is so hot it's downright deadly. If you ate one, it could potentially cause a type of anaphylactic shock, burning your airways and closing them up.

France is a beautiful country, filled to the brim with delicious wines, scrumptious cheese, and tons of romance. So it's no surprise that more people want to visit France than any other country in the world, according to the United Nations World Tourism Organization.

In 2017, the European country welcomed 86.9 million people. Spain was the second-most popular destination with 81.8 million visitors, followed by the United States (76.9 million), China (60.7 million), and Italy (58.3 million).

Santa Cruz del Islote in the Archipelago of San Bernardo off the coast of Colombia may only be about the size of two soccer fields (two acres), but the artificial island has four main streets and 10 neighborhoods. Five hundred people live on the island in around 155 houses. With so many people packed into such a small space, it's the most densely populated island in the world, according to The Guardian

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It might seem safe to assume that the Canary Islands were named after canary birds, but the location was actually named for a different animal. Although it's off the coast of northwestern Africa, the archipelago is actually part of Spain. In Spanish, the area's name is Islas Canarias, which comes from the Latin phrase Canariae Insulae for "island of dogs."

Though there are short people and tall people everywhere, Indonesia is home to some of the shortest people in the world, according to data compiled from various global sources by the Telegraph in 2017.

When taking both genders into account, the average adult is around 5 feet, 1.8 inches. People in Bolivia don't tend to be much taller, with an average adult height of 5 feet, 2.4 inches. The tallest people among us live in the Netherlands, where the average adult height is 6 feet.

When 174 world leaders signed the Paris Agreement on Earth Day in 2016 at the United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York, it was the largest number of countries ever to come together to sign anything on a single day. The agreement aims to combat climate change and accelerate and intensify the actions and investments needed to strengthen the global climate effort.

Silence is golden, as they say. And while it may not be worth quite as much as jewels and gold to most people, it certainly was the primary goal for those who built the quietest room in the world. Located at Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, Washington, the lab room measures a background noise of -20.35 dBA, which is 20 decibels below the threshold of human hearing and breaks previous records for spaces that were deemed the planet's quietest places, according to CNN.

For simplicity's sake, most of the more than 200 countries in the world use the metric system when describing things like length or mass. However, there were recently three countries that stood out: Liberia, Myanmar, and the United States.

In 2018, Liberia commerce and industry minister Wilson Tarpeh said the government planned to adopt the metric system in order to promote accountability and transparency in trade, according to the Liberian Observer. Myanmar made a similar commitment, which leaves the U.S. as the lone holdout.

People who live in Mamungkukumpurangkuntjunya Hill, Australia, need a little patience when it comes to learning to spell their hometown's name. But you know what? So do the folks from Lake Chargoggagoggman-chauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg in Massachusetts and Tweebuffelsmeteen-skootmorsdoodgeskietfontein, South Africa.

None of them have quite as much work to do when jotting down their address as those who live in Taumatawhakatangihanga-koauauotamateaturipukakapikimaung-ahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu, New Zealand, though. At 85 letters long, this is the longest place name in the world.

Every second, we welcome four new babies into our overall population. Do a little math and you'll find out that means there are approximately 250 births each minute, 15,000 each hour, and 360,000 each day.

You might think you're accustomed to frigid air and blustery winds, but the average winter day has nothing on the coldest day ever recorded, which was -144 degrees Fahrenheit. The temperature was recorded in Antarctica during a span of research between 2004 and 2016. Just a few breaths of air at that temperature would induce hemorrhaging in your lungs and kill you.

Because of pollution, the Earth's ozone layer has suffered a lot. That's bad news for everyone, since the fragile gas layer protects our planet and shields us from the sun's harmful ultraviolet rays. Fortunately, climate change experts believe that the ozone layer will fully heal within 50 years, according to a 2018 report from the United Nations.

The recovery is thanks in large part to the Montreal Protocol of 1987, which put a global ban on the use of one of the main culprits for the damage: chlorofluorocarbons (CFOs). Previously, CFOs had been common in refrigerators, aerosol cans, and dry-cleaning chemicals.

Earthquakes can range from minor tremors that are barely noticeable to building-toppling ground-shakers that cause massive destruction. But it's an inevitable part of life for those who live in countries such as China, Indonesia, Iran, and Turkey, which are some of the most earthquake-prone places on the planet. However, according to the USGS, Japan records the most earthquakes in the world.

Not all bacteria are bad. In fact, some of those itty-bitty biological cells are actually good for us and aide the world in various and complex ways. And that's nice to know, considering there are around 4 quadrillion quadrillion individual bacteria on our planet, according to NPR.

Here's another world fact to keep in the back of your mind: According to the Population Reference Bureau, since the time Homo sapiens first hit the scene 50,000 years ago, more than 108 billion members of our species have been born. And a large chunk of that number is alive right now. According to the bureau, the number of people alive today represents a whopping 7% of the total number of humans who have ever lived.

Step aside John, James, Mary, and Jane—the most popular name in the world is believed to be Muhammad. According to The Independent, an estimated 150 million men and boys around the world share this name. The popularity is thanks to a Muslim tradition of naming every first-born son after the Islamic prophet.

The flag of Nicaragua features a rainbow in the center that includes a band of purple, while the flag of Dominica boasts a picture of a sisserou parrot, a bird with purple feathers. These elements make them the only two flags in the world that use the color purple.