You can buy a square watermelon in Japan! Photo courtesy CC BY 2.0

Random Fun Facts for Kids

1. You can buy a square watermelon in Japan.

2. Before alarm clocks, people would pay someone to knock on their window and wake them up. They were called knocker-uppers.

3. Make tea not war! All British armored vehicles have the equipment needed to make tea.

4. There is only one letter that doesn’t appear in any US state name: “Q”.

5. Arithmophobia is the fear of numbers.

6. Speaking of numbers, the opposite sides of a die (one of a pair of dice) will always equal 7.

7. No number before 1,000 contains the letter “A” when spelled out.

8. The Queen of England has two birthdays.

9. There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.

10. The number four is the only number to have the same amount of letters as its value.

11. In your lifetime, you will spend 25 years sleeping. (Unless you have a lot of children...)

12. The real word for the # symbol is not “hashtag”. It’s “octothorpe”.

13. The 100 folds in a chef’s hat stand for 100 ways to cook an egg.

14. Sesame Street’s Oscar the Grouch was originally orange.

15. Play-Doh was originally used as wallpaper cleaner.

16. You will get cell phone service on the top of Mount Everest.

17. The White House has its own movie theater. It seats 42 people.

18. In Peru, it’s considered good luck to wear yellow underwear on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.

19. “J” was the last letter to be added to the alphabet.

20. The Eiffel Tower can grow up to about 6 inches taller in the summer. That’s because the heat makes the iron expand.

21. Scotland has more than 421 words for “snow”. Skelf, anyone?

22. A nickel (the five-cent coin) is actually only made of 25% nickel. The other 75% is copper.

23. Samsung once used a butt-shaped robot to test the durability of its cell phones. That's because so many people put their phones in their back pocket and accidentally sit on them.

24. Movie trailers originally played after the movie.

25. The people who voiced Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Wayne Allwine and Russi Taylor, were married in real life!

26. There are 31,557,600 seconds in a year.

Fun Facts For Kids About the Human Body

27. Most people cannot lick their elbows. (Try it!)

28. You cannot sneeze with your eyes open. (Try this, too!)

29. People can fart after they die.

30. Also, farts are fast! They travel about 10 feet per second, which is almost 7 mph.

31. But a cough is faster (60 mph) and a sneeze is fastest of all (over 100 mph).

32. Human babies have more bones than adults.

33. The acid in your stomach can dissolve steel.

34. The human brain cannot feel pain.

35. On average, the human body is made up of 60% water.

36. The human nose can detect a trillion different scents.

37. Human noses and ears never stop growing.

38. The human heart beats 115,000 times a day.

39. Women’s hearts beat faster than men’s.

40. Humans lose about 50-100 hairs a day.

41. Newborn babies are colorblind.

42. Human teeth are as strong as shark teeth!

43. Every human has a unique tongue print. (Like snowflakes, no two are alike!)

44. Boys have fewer taste buds than girls.

45. You cannot smell while you sleep.

46. Brown is the most common eye color.

47. The body’s largest organ is skin.

48. It takes your body about 12 hours to fully digest food.

49. Your nose may not grow like Pinocchio’s, but it does get warmer when you tell a lie.

50. About half of the bones in your body are in your hands and feet.

51. A person’s arm span (the length of their arms stretched out) is about equal to their height.

52. You can’t hum while holding your nose.

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Strawberries have their seeds on the outside.

Fun Facts For Kids About Food

53. Strawberries are the only fruits with their seeds on the outside.

54. Because bananas contain potassium, they are radioactive.

55. When cranberries are ripe, they can bounce like a ball.

56. Apples are actually a part of the rose family.

57. Peanuts aren’t technically peanuts. They’re legumes.

58. A jar of Nutella is sold every 2.5 seconds.

59. French fries are Belgian, not French.

60. Tomatoes and avocados are actually fruits, not vegetables.

61. Despite being different colors, Froot Loops are all the same flavor.

62. The blue part of blue cheese is mold.

63. Ripe bananas look blue under black lights.

64. In the 1830s, ketchup was sold as medicine to cure stomach illnesses.

65. In 2014, McDonald’s created bubblegum-flavored broccoli to put in Happy Meals. (After taste tests with kids, the broccoli never made it onto the menu.)

66. There is no butter in peanut butter.

67. Chocolate-covered ants are eaten as a treat in Mexico.

68. There is a type of lemon called a baboon.

Fun Facts For Kids About Science

69. You can still see traces of Neil Armstrong’s footprints on the moon.

70. Contrary to popular belief, lightning can strike twice.

71. The planet Neptune’s days are 16 hours long. 

72. Plankton, seaweed, and other ocean organisms create over half the world’s oxygen.

73. White is not actually a color, but the absence of all colors.

74. Chalk is made up of fossils.

75. Wind is actually silent. What we hear is the wind blowing against an object.

76. Clouds aren’t weightless—they can actually weigh over a million pounds.

77. All planets spin counterclockwise except for Venus.

78. There are more than 1,500 possibly active volcanoes on Earth.

79. Because of gravity, you would weigh less on the moon than on Earth.

80. One season on Saturn lasts about seven Earth years.

81. About 80% of all living things on Earth are insects.

82. There is enough gold inside Earth’s core to cover the entire planet.

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You won't believe what the Romans used as mouthwash. Photo courtesy of wuestenigel/CC BY 2.0

Weird Fun Facts About History

83. Romans used urine as mouthwash.

84. Alexander the Great was buried alive.

85. Cleopatra wasn’t Egyptian—she was Greek.

86. The Statue of Liberty was originally supposed to be located in the Suez Canal.

87. Early Americans used corn cobs as toilet paper.

88. The current American flag was designed by a high school student named Bob Heft in 1958. He originally got a B- on the project. After President Dwight D. Eisenhower decided to use his design for the new flag, Bob’s teacher changed his grade to an A.

89. Abraham Lincoln was a champion wrestler.

90. During the Victorian era, it was popular for people to take photographs of their loved ones after they had died.

91. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died hours apart on July 4, 1826.

92. Ancient Egyptians put dead mice in their mouths to help toothaches.

93. Beethoven may have been a musical genius, but he was bad at math—he never learned how to multiply or divide.

94. An 11-year-old boy accidentally invented the ice pop in 1905 when he left soda powder and water outside overnight.

95. In the 1840s, people said “prunes” instead of “cheese” when having their picture taken.

96. The war between the Netherlands and the Isles of Sicily lasted 335 years, and not a single person was killed.

97. The U.S. Treasury printed $100,000 bills between 1934 and 1935. They never were released to the public.

98. Before becoming president, Abraham Lincoln lost 5 different elections.

99. Thomas Edison did not invent the light bulb.

Fun Facts For Kids About Sports

100. The earliest hockey pucks were made out of frozen cow poop.

101. Former NBA basketball player Shaquille O’Neal wears a size 23 shoe. The average male shoe size is around a 10.5.

102. The first golf balls were stuffed with bird feathers.

103. Tug-of-war used to be an Olympic sport.

104. In the early days of baseball, umpires sat in rocking chairs behind home plate.

105. Toe wrestling is a competitive sport.

106. RoboCup is an annual soccer game where the players are robots instead of people. The robots come from all over the world.

107. The Olympics used to give medals for art, not just sports.

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Attention, class! Now for some truly fun facts...

Random Fun Facts About Geography

108. There are 195 recognized countries in the world, according to the United Nations.

109. Alaska is both the most western and most eastern state in the United States. (We'll wait while you go get that globe.)

110. Greenland is the world’s largest island. 

111. The English language is spoken in more than 100 countries around the world.

112. Vatican City is the smallest country in the world.

113. Antarctica is the only continent with no permanent human residents. 

114. Dust from the Sahara Desert in Africa can travel great distances—even as far as Texas.

115. Maine is the closest state to Africa. (Time to look at the globe again.)

116. The state of California has more people than the entire country of Canada.

117. The Dead Sea is the lowest place on the planet.

118. Detroit, Michigan is actually north of Canada.

119. Istanbul is the only city in the world located on two continents—Europe and Asia.

120. Water covers about 70% of the Earth’s surface.

121. Russia is just two miles from Alaska.

122. The Atlantic Ocean is saltier than the Pacific Ocean.

123. Yosemite National Park in California is about the same size as the entire state of Rhode Island.

124. The world’s largest desert is Antarctica.

125. At the Four Corners monument, you can sit, stand, or lie down in four U.S. states at once—Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico.