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    The Everything KIDS' Book of Outrageous Facts: Explore the most fantastic, extraordinary, and unbelievable truths about your world!
    The Everything KIDS' Book of Outrageous Facts: Explore the most fantastic, extraordinary, and unbelievable truths about your world!
    The Everything KIDS' Book of Outrageous Facts: Explore the most fantastic, extraordinary, and unbelievable truths about your world!
    Ebook252 pages2 hours

    The Everything KIDS' Book of Outrageous Facts: Explore the most fantastic, extraordinary, and unbelievable truths about your world!

    By Beth L Blair

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    About this ebook

    Did you know...
    The average person eats up to 430 insects a year?
    Dinosaurs used bad breath as a weapon?
    A soccer player runs about 7 miles per game?
    An ear of corn always has an even number of rows?

    Want to perplex your parents and flabbergast your friends with the who, what, where, why, how, and "yuck!" about the world we live in? Then you need this all-in-one collection of the weirdest, most fascinating, and sometimes just icky truths out there! You will gasp, gag, and giggle at facts about:
    • Sports and famous athletes
    • Animals at home and in the wild
    • Science and chemistry
    • Bugs and other creepy crawlies
    • Dinosaurs and dragons
    • Planets and the sun
    Featuring factoids and experiments about almost everything under the sun, this book is perfect for curious kids who won't be satisfied with ordinary truths--after all, the stranger the better!
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster
    Release dateOct 15, 2011
    ISBN9781440529924
    The Everything KIDS' Book of Outrageous Facts: Explore the most fantastic, extraordinary, and unbelievable truths about your world!
    Author

    Beth L Blair

    Beth L. Blair is an illustrator and graphic designer. She is the author and coauthor of numerous Everything® KIDS’ books, including The Everything® KIDS’ Gross Mazes Book and The Everything® KIDS’ Animal Puzzle and Activity Book. She lives in Canterbury, New Hampshire.

    Read more from Beth L Blair

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      Book preview

      The Everything KIDS' Book of Outrageous Facts - Beth L Blair

      Figure

      Our universe contains stars, galaxies, planets, space, and us! Although the universe has been around for a long time, scientists think it probably formed very quickly. Because it keeps growing and growing, even the best experts can only guess how big the universe is or what shape it may be. Some people believe there are many different universes. Our universe is a big, big place in outer space!

      Countless Galaxies

      Have you ever seen the Milky Way? This collection of stars can be seen all over the world. The Milky Way looks like a ring of milk spilled across the sky. It is a small part of Earth’s own Milky Way Galaxy, which contains billions of stars. If you could see the Milky Way from another galaxy, it would look like a pinwheel that spins around every couple of hundred million years. Other galaxies may look like a racetrack or a splatter of paint. Did you know that if someone gave you a penny and then doubled that amount each day, so that you had 1 penny the first day, 2 the next day, 4 the next day, and so on and so on, you would soon have more money than you could ever spend? The same is true for our galaxies! There are just too many to be counted.

      FUN FACT

      A REALLY LONG NIGHT

      One night on Venus lasts almost as long as a year here on Earth. And because it turns so slowly and it is closer to the sun, Venus’s temperature can reach almost 900 degrees on the Fahrenheit scale! Not a good place for a Popsicle.

      Round and Round They Go

      Do you ever say the sun is coming up? It really does seem like the sun is traveling around our earth. The Egyptian astronomer, Ptolemy, thought the same thing almost 2,000 years ago. But the truth was discovered many centuries later, when a stargazer named Copernicus suggested that our planet really circles around the sun! A famous astronomer called Galileo proved it about 400 years ago.

      Did you know that while the earth is busy circling around our sun, the sun circles around the center of our galaxy? Yikes! With so many stars and moons and planets moving around in the universe, it is amazing so few things collide.

      FUN FACT

      STEADY STAR

      The North Star is the only star in the Northern Hemisphere that does not move. On a clear, dark night see if you can find it!

      You’ll Get a Bang out of This

      Some scientists spend a lot of time trying to figure out how the universe was formed. Have you ever played with a magic grow sponge? You add a drop of water to a little capsule and quick as a wink, quite a large foam animal appears. Well, some scientists believe the creation of the universe grew quickly and quietly like that, except the capsule was a particle of matter smaller than a grain of sand and the foam was really a type of super-hot material that grew thousands— maybe millions or billions—of times larger within seconds.

      Figure

      Other scientists believe that there was a big bang like fireworks—only louder—when it happened. That’s why the creation of the universe is often called the Big Bang. Some scientists even believe that they know when the Big Bang happened because they have learned how to measure the age of the galaxies. Just imagine! If we were having a birthday party for the universe, we would need around 15 billion candles for the cake!

      DID YOU KNOW?

      The risk of being struck by a falling meteorite for a human is one occurrence every 9,300 years.

      Figure

      The Sun: Too Hot to Handle

      Have grown-ups ever told you never to look directly at the bright sun? They’re right; it can hurt your eyes. But maybe you have watched the sun as it was setting in the sky. Sometimes it looks as though it is on fire, especially when it is shining through the clouds. The reason it looks that way is because the sun is on fire. Can you guess how hot the fire at the center of the sun is? It is more than 25 million degrees on the Fahrenheit scale! That’s 250,000 times hotter than the hottest summer day at your favorite amusement park. More bad news for Popsicles! But what may surprise you even more is there are many stars in the universe that are thousands of times hotter than the sun.

      Have you ever wished things were a little hotter or cooler here on Earth? Well, scientists believe that our sun’s temperature is just right for us. And they think that the sun will keep burning for many billions of years.

      FigureFigure

      Sun-sational Things

      Have you ever seen a rainbow in the sky? Sometimes you can spot one if it rains right after a sunrise, or just before a sunset, and then the sun comes back out. Do you know what causes the brilliant colors? It’s the sun shining through the moisture in the air after the rain has stopped.

      Another fun thing to watch for is sundogs. Sundogs look like colored lines that curve around the sun. The best time to spot them is when the sun is not too far above the horizon. Sundogs get their color from ice particles that are floating in the air.

      What other sun-sational things might you see? What if you stood on top of a mountain? Well, if the sun shined from behind you, and the clouds filled with rain below you, you might see a silhouette of your head on those clouds! Your head’s shadow might even have a halo surrounding it, just like the moon does at times.

      Of course, these strange sightings, which are called the glory, are very rare. But maybe you could try it on a plane! If you sit in a window seat away from the sun and then watch closely, you may see the silhouette of your plane on the clouds below, with colored rings around it!

      Figure

      Earth Is Juuuuust Right!

      Do you remember the story about the three bears? Goldilocks kept looking until she found a place that was just right for her. Well, you don’t have to search very far to find the perfect place for you, because you and all your friends live on it. From space, our planet looks like a big blue-and-white marble. Astronauts are always dazzled to see just how lucky we are to have all those white, fluffy clouds and all that water!

      People use water every day for all kinds of things, like taking a bath or watering their lawn. Water can also be used for fun. You can take a trip to the beach, canoe down a river, or ski down a mountain. And of course we need it to grow the fruits and veggies we eat!

      Astronomers have discovered there are other planets orbiting stars in distant galaxies, but they don’t think we could live on any of them. Although many of the other planets in our solar system have mountains, sunrises, and sunsets, they don’t have air or water. Do you think they ever did?

      One of the biggest mysteries in space is why Earth is the only planet in our solar system—and maybe even the whole universe—that can support life. What makes a planet just right? How many answers can you think of? Here are just a few.

      Figure Our sun creates enough gravity to hold all the planets in orbit. That means the earth travels around the sun in the same path all the time so we don’t dash off into space or crash into another planet. The other planets stay on their paths, too!

      Figure The earth is just the right distance from our sun to warm us up without burning us up. The other planets are more Papa and Mama Bear’s bowls of porridge: Too hot! Too cold!

      Figure The earth turns every day, so everyone gets a turn to warm up and enjoy some sunshine (well, when it isn’t pouring or snowing outside!).

      Figure The earth is tipped a little, so it has seasons. No freezing or roasting!

      FUN FACT

      MONKEY BUSINESS

      Although there were no people on the first missions into space, Russian satellites called Sputniks carried dogs, rodents, and even plants. Later, the United States and other countries sent monkeys and other small animals into space. And before all this happened, fruit flies were placed on board rockets, along with rye and cotton seeds! You can think about that amazing flight whenever an insect’s bugging you!

      Our Neighbor the Moon

      What do you see when you look at the moon? Is it a man’s face or does it look more like some type of animal? Many people think they see the man in the moon. Others say they see something else, like a cow, which may have started the whole cow jumping over the moon story.

      Okay, so you certainly couldn’t jump over the moon like the cow in the nursery rhyme. But did you know that you could jump six times higher off the ground if you lived on the moon? With one small jump, you could probably touch the roof of your house!

      Figure

      So, just how is that possible? Well, the moon is not only smaller than the earth, but it is made of much lighter materials. That means its gravity is a lot weaker!

      Before astronauts landed on the moon,

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