Pointless Factoids

The air around a lightning bolt is superheated to about five times the temperature of the Sun. This sudden heating causes the air to expand faster than the speed of sound, which compresses the air and forms a shock wave. We hear it as thunder.

If one places a tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death.

The San Andreas fault, which runs north-south, is slipping at a rate of about 2 inches per year, causing Los Angeles to move towards San Francisco. Scientists forecast LA will be a suburb of San Francisco in about 15 million years.

Donald Duck comics were banned from Finland because he doesn't wear pants.

The distance from the surface of Earth to the center is about 3,963 miles. Much of Earth is fluid. The mostly solid skin of the planet is only 41 miles thick--thinner than the skin of an apple, relatively speaking.

Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.

A place called Arica, in Chile, gets just 0.03 inches of rain per year. At that rate, it would take a century to fill a coffee cup.

A snail can sleep for three years.

The Grand Canyon is considered to be Earth's largest canyon system. Its main branch is 277 miles long. But Valles Marineris on Mars extends for about 3,000 miles. If added to a U.S. map, this vast scar on the Martian surface would stretch from New York City to the coast of California.
In places it is 5 miles deep.
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Colorado River from Cardenas Butte (top)
Angels Gate from outside Vishnu Canyon (middle)
Clear Creek Canyon (below)