Read interesting facts from past puzzles

Every list below is a Sortations-style ranking, already solved. Each item shows its value and the story behind it.

Planets by distance from the Sun

closest to farthest · average distance from the Sun, in millions of kilometers

  1. 1

    Mercury58 million km

    Mercury sits closest to the Sun but isn't the hottest planet - Venus steals that title with a runaway greenhouse atmosphere. A year there lasts just 88 Earth days, so birthdays would come at an alarming rate.

  2. 2

    Venus108 million km

    Venus is Earth's twin in size and almost nothing else. Its surface runs hot enough to melt lead, and it spins backwards so slowly that a single Venusian day outlasts its year.

  3. 3

    Mars228 million km

    Mars hosts Olympus Mons, the tallest volcano in the solar system at roughly three times the height of Everest. That famous rusty color is iron oxide - the planet is essentially covered in rust.

  4. 4

    Saturn1,434 million km

    Saturn's rings are mostly chunks of water ice, some no bigger than a grain of sand. The planet is also less dense than water, so given a big enough bathtub, Saturn would float.

  5. 5

    Neptune4,495 million km

    Neptune was found with math before anyone saw it through a telescope - astronomers predicted its location from wobbles in Uranus's orbit. It also has the fastest winds in the solar system.

US national parks by year established

oldest to newest · year established

  1. 1

    Yellowstone1872

    Yellowstone was the first national park anywhere in the world, signed into being by Ulysses S. Grant before Wyoming was even a state. It sits atop an active supervolcano, which is why it has more geysers than the rest of the planet combined.

  2. 2

    Yosemite1890

    Yosemite's granite walls turned it into a climber's cathedral, and El Capitan remains one of the most famous big walls on Earth. John Muir's writing about the valley helped convince Congress it was worth saving.

  3. 3

    Rocky Mountain1915

    Rocky Mountain National Park crams more than 70 peaks above 12,000 feet into a single park. Its Trail Ridge Road climbs so high that snow keeps it closed for much of the year.

  4. 4

    Grand Canyon1919

    The Colorado River spent millions of years carving the canyon, exposing rock layers close to two billion years old. Theodore Roosevelt protected it as a national monument in 1908; full park status took another eleven years.

  5. 5

    Great Smoky Mountains1934

    The Smokies draw more visitors than any other national park in the country, and the blue haze they're named for is vapor released by the forest itself. It's also one of the few major parks that charges no entrance fee.

Famous mountains by height

shortest to tallest · elevation in meters

  1. 1

    Kilimanjaro5,895 m

    Kilimanjaro is the tallest freestanding mountain on Earth - no range around it, just one enormous volcano rising off the Tanzanian plains. Hikers pass through five climate zones on the way up, from farmland to arctic summit.

  2. 2

    Denali6,190 m

    North America's highest peak lost about ten feet on paper in 2015, when better surveying technology corrected the old number. Its name means roughly 'the tall one' in Koyukon Athabascan.

  3. 3

    Kangchenjunga8,586 m

    Kangchenjunga was considered the world's tallest mountain until surveyors recalculated in the 1850s. Out of respect for local beliefs, many climbers deliberately stop a few steps short of the true summit.

  4. 4

    K28,611 m

    K2 is shorter than Everest and far deadlier, with vicious weather and no easy route up. It picked up its blunt name from a surveyor's notebook and somehow never got a better one.

  5. 5

    Mount Everest8,849 m

    Everest's official height was revised upward to 8,848.86 meters in 2020 by a joint Nepali and Chinese survey. It gains a few millimeters every year as India keeps shoving into Asia.

Great rivers by length

shortest to longest · length in kilometers

  1. 1

    Danube2,850 km

    The Danube passes through more countries than any other river on Earth - ten of them - and four national capitals. Strauss called it blue; it is almost never actually blue.

  2. 2

    Mekong4,900 km

    The Mekong feeds tens of millions of people across six countries. Each monsoon season it pushes so hard that it reverses the flow of an entire lake in Cambodia.

  3. 3

    Yangtze6,300 km

    The longest river in Asia, the Yangtze is the only home of the finless porpoise. Its Three Gorges Dam is the largest power station in the world by capacity.

  4. 4

    Amazon6,400 km

    The Amazon moves more water than the next several largest rivers combined, pushing fresh water so far out to sea that early sailors drank it out of sight of land. Whether it or the Nile is longer is still genuinely disputed.

  5. 5

    Nile6,650 km

    The Nile flows north, which quietly confuses a lot of people looking at maps. Ancient Egypt built its entire calendar around the river's annual flood, which the Aswan High Dam finally ended in the 1960s.

Countries by total area

smallest to largest · total area in square kilometers

  1. 1

    Australia7,692,024 km²

    Australia is the only country that is also a full continent, and roughly 85% of its people live within 50 km of the coast. The middle is mostly outback, and mostly empty.

  2. 2

    Brazil8,515,767 km²

    Brazil borders every South American country except Chile and Ecuador. It also holds around 60% of the Amazon rainforest inside its own borders.

  3. 3

    China9,596,961 km²

    China spans five geographic time zones but officially runs on just one, so sunrise in the far west can arrive close to 10 a.m. It borders fourteen countries, tied for the most in the world.

  4. 4

    Canada9,984,670 km²

    Canada has the longest coastline of any country on the planet, by an enormous margin. It also contains more lakes than the rest of the world combined.

  5. 5

    Russia17,098,242 km²

    Russia is so wide it crosses eleven time zones and sits on two continents at once. It's larger than Pluto - genuinely, by surface area.

The Great Lakes by surface area

smallest to largest · surface area in square kilometers

  1. 1

    Lake Ontario18,960 km²

    Ontario is the smallest Great Lake by surface area but deeper than Erie, so it holds far more water. It's also the last stop before the St. Lawrence carries everything out to the Atlantic.

  2. 2

    Lake Erie25,700 km²

    Erie is the shallowest of the five, which makes it the warmest, the stormiest, and the most likely to freeze over entirely. Shallow water also means it produces more fish than the other four combined.

  3. 3

    Lake Michigan58,000 km²

    Michigan is the only Great Lake entirely inside the United States. Technically it and Lake Huron are one connected body of water, joined at the Straits of Mackinac - they just have different names.

  4. 4

    Lake Huron59,600 km²

    Huron has the longest shoreline of any Great Lake once you count its thousands of islands. One of them, Manitoulin, is the largest island in any freshwater lake on Earth.

  5. 5

    Lake Superior82,100 km²

    Superior is the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area and holds roughly 10% of the planet's surface fresh water. Spread over both North and South America, it would cover them a foot deep.

Oceans by surface area

smallest to largest · surface area in millions of square kilometers

  1. 1

    Arctic Ocean14 million km²

    The Arctic is the smallest and shallowest ocean, and much of it wears a lid of sea ice. That ice cover has been shrinking measurably for decades.

  2. 2

    Southern Ocean20 million km²

    The Southern Ocean is the newest one on the map - it wasn't widely recognized as a distinct ocean until 2000, and National Geographic only started labeling it in 2021. It's defined by a current rather than by coastlines.

  3. 3

    Indian Ocean70 million km²

    The Indian Ocean is the warmest of the oceans, which limits how much marine life it can support. Its monsoon winds shaped trade routes for well over a thousand years.

  4. 4

    Atlantic Ocean106 million km²

    The Atlantic is still growing, widening a few centimeters a year as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge pushes the Americas away from Europe and Africa. Iceland sits directly on that seam.

  5. 5

    Pacific Ocean165 million km²

    The Pacific covers more of the planet than all the land on Earth put together. Its Mariana Trench is deep enough to swallow Everest with more than a mile to spare.

US presidents by the year they took office

earliest to most recent · year they took office

  1. 1

    George Washington1789

    Washington is the only president elected unanimously by the Electoral College, and he did it twice. He walked away after two terms, setting a limit that stood on tradition alone for nearly 150 years.

  2. 2

    Abraham Lincoln1861

    Lincoln took office with the country already coming apart, and seven states had left before he was even sworn in. He's also in the National Wrestling Hall of Fame, which is not a fact most people expect.

  3. 3

    Franklin D. Roosevelt1933

    FDR was elected four times, the only president ever to break the two-term tradition - which is exactly why the 22nd Amendment now makes it illegal. He served through the Depression and most of a world war.

  4. 4

    John F. Kennedy1961

    Kennedy was the youngest person ever elected president, at 43. He set the Moon landing goal in 1961 and didn't live to see it happen.

  5. 5

    Ronald Reagan1981

    Reagan spent decades as a Hollywood actor and union president before entering politics. He was the oldest person elected president at the time - a record that has since been broken more than once.

Everyday inventions by year invented

oldest to newest · year invented

  1. 1

    Telephone1876

    Alexander Graham Bell filed his telephone patent on the same day as a rival inventor, Elisha Gray - a coincidence lawyers argued about for years. Bell reportedly refused to keep one in his study because he found it distracting.

  2. 2

    Light bulb1879

    Edison didn't invent the light bulb so much as finally make one that lasted, after testing thousands of filament materials including bamboo. Several inventors had working bulbs before him; his just didn't burn out in an hour.

  3. 3

    Airplane1903

    The Wright brothers' first flight at Kitty Hawk lasted twelve seconds and covered less ground than the wingspan of a modern jetliner. They were bicycle mechanics, not engineers.

  4. 4

    Television1927

    Philo Farnsworth transmitted the first electronic television image at 21, having sketched the idea as a teenager while plowing a field. The first thing he sent was a simple straight line.

  5. 5

    Microwave oven1946

    Percy Spencer noticed a chocolate bar melting in his pocket while he worked near an active radar set, and followed the hunch. The first thing he deliberately microwaved was popcorn.

Home game consoles by release year

oldest to newest · year released

  1. 1

    Atari 26001977

    The Atari 2600 popularized the idea that one machine could play many games via swappable cartridges. It also helped cause the 1983 crash, when a flood of terrible games buried the market.

  2. 2

    Nintendo Entertainment System1985

    Nintendo launched the NES in America two years after the Famicom hit Japan, and deliberately styled it like a VCR because retailers had soured on the word 'console.' It largely revived the industry single-handed.

  3. 3

    Sega Genesis1989

    The Genesis went straight at Nintendo with attitude, speed, and a mascot with sunglasses energy. Outside North America it's the Mega Drive - a naming dispute over trademark.

  4. 4

    Sony PlayStation1994

    The PlayStation began as a Nintendo collaboration that fell apart, so Sony finished it alone and took the market. It was the first console to ship more than 100 million units.

  5. 5

    Nintendo Wii2006

    The Wii bet everything on motion controls rather than raw graphics power, and pulled in players who had never touched a console. Nintendo's internal codename for it was Revolution.

Social platforms by launch year

oldest to newest · year launched

  1. 1

    LinkedIn2003

    LinkedIn launched out of a co-founder's living room and grew slowly at first - some days it added barely twenty new members. Microsoft bought it in 2016 for more than $26 billion.

  2. 2

    Facebook2004

    Facebook started inside Harvard and spread school by school, requiring an .edu email address for its first couple of years. The 'The' in the original name lasted until 2005.

  3. 3

    YouTube2005

    YouTube was originally pitched as a video dating site, and when nobody uploaded dating videos the founders opened it to everything. The first upload was eighteen seconds of a co-founder at the zoo.

  4. 4

    Twitter2006

    Twitter's 140-character limit existed because text messages capped at 160 and the team wanted room for a username. It began as a side project inside a struggling podcasting company.

  5. 5

    Instagram2010

    Instagram started as a cluttered check-in app called Burbn, and the founders stripped it down to just photos, likes, and comments. Facebook bought it two years later, when it had thirteen employees.

Famous landmarks by year completed

oldest to newest · year completed

  1. 1

    Colosseum80

    The Colosseum held somewhere around 50,000 spectators and could empty in minutes through a numbered-ticket system modern stadiums still borrow from. Much of its missing stone was quarried away to build Renaissance Rome.

  2. 2

    Leaning Tower of Pisa1372

    The tower started leaning during construction, when builders were only three stories up, because the ground underneath was soft. It took nearly 200 years to finish, and engineers straightened it slightly in the 1990s to stop it falling.

  3. 3

    Eiffel Tower1889

    The Eiffel Tower was built for a world's fair and meant to come down after twenty years, but it survived by being useful as a radio antenna. Parisian artists signed a public letter calling it a monstrosity.

  4. 4

    Golden Gate Bridge1937

    The bridge's International Orange color was originally just a primer, but everyone liked how it looked against the fog. Painting it is a permanent, never-finished job.

  5. 5

    Sydney Opera House1973

    The Opera House ran roughly ten years late and wildly over budget, and its architect resigned partway through and never saw it finished. Those famous shells are covered in more than a million tiles.

Land animals by top speed

slowest to fastest · top speed in miles per hour

  1. 1

    Elephant25 mph

    Elephants can't actually run in the technical sense - they always keep a foot on the ground - but their fast walk still outpaces most humans. Not bad for something that weighs several tons.

  2. 2

    Greyhound45 mph

    Greyhounds accelerate roughly as fast as a sports car and spend about three-quarters of a sprint fully airborne. They're also famously enthusiastic nappers between bursts.

  3. 3

    Lion50 mph

    Lions are quick but built for short ambushes, not chases, and give up after a few hundred meters. Most hunting is done by lionesses working as a team.

  4. 4

    Pronghorn55 mph

    The pronghorn is the fastest animal in North America and can hold near-top speed for miles, which no cheetah can manage. It seems to be outrunning a predator that went extinct thousands of years ago.

  5. 5

    Cheetah70 mph

    A cheetah goes from standing to highway speed in about three seconds, using its tail as a rudder through turns. The sprint only lasts twenty or thirty seconds before it has to stop and cool down.

Animals by average lifespan

shortest to longest · average lifespan in years

  1. 1

    House mouse2

    A wild house mouse rarely sees a second birthday, though pampered pet mice do better. They make up for it by breeding roughly as fast as biology allows.

  2. 2

    Rabbit9

    Domestic rabbits often reach their early teens, while wild ones are lucky to see two years. Their teeth never stop growing, which is why they chew constantly.

  3. 3

    Dog12

    Smaller dogs generally outlive larger ones, which is unusual - across species, bigger animals normally live longer. The old 'multiply by seven' rule is a rough myth.

  4. 4

    Horse28

    Horses regularly reach their late twenties, and you can estimate a horse's age from its teeth well into adulthood. The oldest on record supposedly made it past sixty.

  5. 5

    African elephant65

    Elephants live human-length lives and are limited by their teeth - they cycle through six sets, and when the last wears out, feeding gets hard. Herds are led by the oldest female, whose memory of water sources can save everyone in a drought.

Peppers by heat level

mildest to hottest · Scoville heat units

  1. 1

    Bell pepper0 SHU

    The bell pepper is the only common pepper that scores a flat zero, thanks to a recessive gene that switches off capsaicin production entirely. It's the sweet one hiding in a spicy family.

  2. 2

    Jalapeño5,000 SHU

    Jalapeños are named for Xalapa in Veracruz, Mexico. Smoke-dry one and it becomes a chipotle - same pepper, completely different personality.

  3. 3

    Cayenne40,000 SHU

    Cayenne is what's usually hiding in the little shaker of red pepper flakes. Most of it gets dried and ground rather than eaten fresh.

  4. 4

    Habanero200,000 SHU

    The habanero held the world record for heat until the 1990s, when a wave of deliberately bred super-hots knocked it down the list. It carries a distinctly fruity flavor underneath the burn.

  5. 5

    Carolina Reaper1,641,183 SHU

    The Carolina Reaper was bred in South Carolina specifically to break records, and it did. Capsaicin doesn't actually damage tissue - it just convinces your nerves that it is.

Summer Olympic host cities by year

earliest to most recent · year they hosted

  1. 1

    Athens1896

    Athens hosted the first modern Olympics with fourteen countries and no women competing. Winners received silver medals - gold didn't become first prize until later.

  2. 2

    Berlin1936

    The 1936 Games introduced the torch relay from Olympia, an invention of that era rather than an ancient tradition. Jesse Owens won four gold medals in front of a regime built on the opposite idea.

  3. 3

    Tokyo1964

    Tokyo 1964 was the first Games broadcast live by satellite and the first held in Asia. Japan opened its bullet train line days before the opening ceremony.

  4. 4

    Barcelona1992

    Barcelona used the Games to reinvent itself, tearing out industrial waterfront to build beaches the city still uses. The archer who lit the cauldron did it with a flaming arrow.

  5. 5

    Rio de Janeiro2016

    Rio hosted the first Olympics held in South America. It also debuted the Refugee Olympic Team, competing under the Olympic flag.

Sports balls by size

smallest to largest · diameter in millimeters

  1. 1

    Golf ball42.70 mm

    The rules set a minimum size, not a maximum, because a bigger ball is harder to hit well - nobody's cheating upward. Those dimples cut drag and roughly double how far a ball flies.

  2. 2

    Tennis ball67 mm

    Tennis balls are pressurized, which is why they arrive in sealed cans and go dead within a few weeks of opening. The fuzz isn't decorative - it controls how the ball grips the air.

  3. 3

    Baseball74 mm

    A baseball has 108 double stitches in its cowhide cover, and for decades they were sewn by hand. Those raised seams are exactly what lets a pitcher make it curve.

  4. 4

    Soccer ball220 mm

    The classic black-and-white pattern of 32 panels was designed for black-and-white television, so viewers could see the ball spin. Modern match balls use far fewer panels.

  5. 5

    Basketball242 mm

    The first basketball games used an actual soccer ball and peach baskets, with someone climbing a ladder to retrieve the ball after every score. It took years before anyone thought to cut out the bottom.

Major North American sports leagues by year founded

oldest to newest · year founded

  1. 1

    MLB1876

    Major League Baseball traces to the founding of the National League in 1876, making it the oldest of the big leagues by a wide margin. The American League didn't join until 1901.

  2. 2

    NHL1917

    The NHL started with four functioning teams after the league it replaced collapsed in a dispute over one owner. The Stanley Cup is older than the league that awards it.

  3. 3

    NFL1920

    The NFL was founded in a car dealership showroom in Canton, Ohio, under the name American Professional Football Association. Franchise fees were $100, which nobody actually paid.

  4. 4

    NBA1946

    The NBA began as the Basketball Association of America, formed by hockey arena owners looking to fill empty dates. It merged with a rival league in 1949 and took its current name.

  5. 5

    MLS1993

    MLS was founded as part of the deal that brought the 1994 World Cup to the United States, though it didn't play its first season until 1996. Early on it experimented with shootouts and a countdown clock before giving up and playing normal soccer.

Chemical elements by atomic number

lowest to highest · atomic number

  1. 1

    Hydrogen1

    Hydrogen is the simplest possible atom - one proton, one electron - and makes up roughly 90% of all atoms in the universe. Every star runs on it.

  2. 2

    Carbon6

    Carbon bonds with itself so readily that an entire branch of chemistry is devoted to it. Diamond and pencil graphite are the same element, just stacked differently.

  3. 3

    Oxygen8

    Oxygen is the most abundant element in the Earth's crust, not just the air. Early photosynthesizing bacteria pumped so much of it out that they poisoned most life on the planet.

  4. 4

    Iron26

    Iron is where fusion stops paying off inside a star, which is why massive stars collapse once they build an iron core. Most of the iron in your blood was forged in that kind of catastrophe.

  5. 5

    Gold79

    Gold barely reacts with anything, which is why ancient gold artifacts come out of the ground still shiny. Its color comes from an effect that only shows up because its electrons move near the speed of light.

Metals by melting point

lowest to highest · melting point in degrees Celsius

  1. 1

    Mercury-39 °C

    Mercury is the only metal that's liquid at room temperature, which made it perfect for thermometers and terrible for the people handling them. It stays liquid until about 39 degrees below zero.

  2. 2

    Tin232 °C

    Tin melts at a temperature a kitchen oven can nearly reach, which is why it's the backbone of solder. In deep cold it can crumble into powder, a problem called tin pest.

  3. 3

    Aluminum660 °C

    Aluminum was once more valuable than gold because separating it from ore was so difficult. Napoleon III supposedly served his best guests on aluminum plates and everyone else on gold.

  4. 4

    Iron1,538 °C

    Reaching iron's melting point was a serious technological achievement, which is why the Iron Age arrived long after the Bronze Age. Blacksmiths mostly worked it hot and soft rather than fully liquid.

  5. 5

    Tungsten3,422 °C

    Tungsten has the highest melting point of any metal, which is exactly why old light bulb filaments were made of it. Its name comes from Swedish for 'heavy stone.'

US states by year of statehood

earliest to most recent · year of statehood

  1. 1

    Delaware1787

    Delaware ratified the Constitution first, which is why its license plates say 'The First State.' Today more than a million companies are legally registered there, comfortably outnumbering its residents.

  2. 2

    Ohio1803

    Ohio's statehood paperwork was so informal that Congress had to retroactively make it official in 1953, backdated to 1803. Eight presidents were born there.

  3. 3

    California1850

    California skipped the territory stage entirely, jumping straight to statehood because the Gold Rush had flooded it with people. It briefly declared itself an independent republic first, for about a month.

  4. 4

    Oklahoma1907

    Oklahoma was assembled from a territory and Indian Territory, joined together at statehood. It was the 46th state, and its land was famously distributed in a series of chaotic land runs.

  5. 5

    Hawaii1959

    Hawaii became the 50th state, eight months after Alaska became the 49th, prompting the current flag design. It's the only state made entirely of islands and the only one that was once a kingdom with a royal palace.

World cities by metro population

smallest to largest · metro population in millions

  1. 1

    Mexico City22

    Mexico City is built on a drained lake bed and is sinking measurably every year - some buildings have dropped meters. It sits at over 2,200 meters of elevation, so visiting athletes feel it.

  2. 2

    Cairo23

    Cairo is the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, sprawling along the Nile. Egypt has been building an entirely new administrative capital nearby to relieve the pressure.

  3. 3

    Shanghai29

    Shanghai's Pudong district was farmland and warehouses in 1990 and is now a skyline of supertall towers. Its port moves more cargo than any other on Earth.

  4. 4

    Delhi33

    Delhi is growing fast enough that it may overtake Tokyo as the world's largest metro area within a decade. It contains New Delhi, the capital, rather than the other way round.

  5. 5

    Tokyo37

    Greater Tokyo has been the world's largest metro area for decades, with more people than most entire countries. Its rail network moves billions of passengers a year and still runs close to on time.

Languages by native speakers

fewest to most · native speakers in millions

  1. 1

    Arabic290 million

    Arabic counts are complicated because its spoken varieties differ enough that speakers from Morocco and Iraq may struggle to converse, while sharing one formal written standard. It's an official language in more than twenty countries.

  2. 2

    Hindi345 million

    Hindi and Urdu are close enough in speech to be mutually intelligible but use entirely different writing systems. Counts swing wildly depending on which related dialects get folded in.

  3. 3

    English380 million

    English has far more second-language speakers than native ones, which is unusual and why it ranks lower here than people expect. Its vocabulary is a magpie's nest of borrowings.

  4. 4

    Spanish485 million

    Spanish is the official language of more than twenty countries, and Mexico has more speakers than Spain by a wide margin. It's the second-most-spoken native language on Earth.

  5. 5

    Mandarin Chinese940 million

    Mandarin has more native speakers than any other language, roughly double the next contender. Its writing system is shared across Chinese languages that sound nothing alike when spoken.

Famous bridges by main span

shortest to longest · main span in meters

  1. 1

    Brooklyn Bridge486 m

    The Brooklyn Bridge was the longest suspension bridge in the world when it opened in 1883, and its chief engineer died before construction began. His wife Emily took over the day-to-day supervision and finished it.

  2. 2

    Golden Gate Bridge1,280 m

    The Golden Gate held the longest-span record for nearly thirty years. Its towers sway measurably in high wind, which is a feature rather than a fault.

  3. 3

    Great Belt Bridge1,624 m

    Denmark's Great Belt Bridge links two of the country's main islands and replaced a ferry crossing. Its span was among the world's longest when it opened in 1998.

  4. 4

    Akashi Kaikyo Bridge1,991 m

    The Akashi Kaikyo held the world record for longest span for over two decades. An earthquake during construction moved the towers apart, and engineers simply adjusted the design to the new, slightly longer distance.

  5. 5

    1915 Çanakkale Bridge2,023 m

    This bridge crosses the Dardanelles in Turkey and took the longest-span record in 2022. Its span length was set deliberately at 2,023 meters to mark a national centenary.

Skyscrapers by height

shortest to tallest · height in meters

  1. 1

    Empire State Building381 m

    The Empire State Building went up in about thirteen months during the Depression, at times gaining more than a floor a day. It sat mostly empty for years afterward, earning the nickname the Empty State Building.

  2. 2

    Petronas Towers452 m

    The Petronas Towers took the world's-tallest title in 1998 on the strength of their spires, which counted, unlike antennas. Two separate contractor teams built one tower each, in a race.

  3. 3

    Shanghai Tower632 m

    The Shanghai Tower twists as it rises, a shape that cuts wind load enough to save serious money on structural steel. It also runs some of the world's fastest elevators.

  4. 4

    Merdeka 118679 m

    Merdeka 118 in Kuala Lumpur became the world's second-tallest building when it topped out, giving Malaysia two entries near the top of the list. Its facade is a mosaic of angular glass panels.

  5. 5

    Burj Khalifa828 m

    The Burj Khalifa is so tall that people at the top can watch the sunset, ride an elevator down, and watch it again. Its concrete was poured at night so it wouldn't cure too fast in the heat.

Classic board games by year released

oldest to newest · year released

  1. 1

    Monopoly1935

    Monopoly descends from The Landlord's Game, designed to demonstrate how badly landlords could squeeze tenants - an anti-capitalist lesson that got repackaged as a game about crushing your family. Parker Brothers initially rejected it for being too complicated.

  2. 2

    Scrabble1948

    Scrabble's inventor counted letter frequencies by hand in newspaper front pages to set the tile distribution. It flopped for years until a department store executive played it on vacation and ordered crates.

  3. 3

    Clue1949

    Clue was invented in wartime Britain by a man passing time during air-raid blackouts, and is called Cluedo there. The original design had more rooms and more weapons before it was trimmed.

  4. 4

    Risk1957

    Risk was created by a French filmmaker and originally titled The Conquest of the World. It is statistically the leading cause of abandoned game nights.

  5. 5

    Twister1966

    Twister was denounced as scandalous when it launched, and a major retailer refused to stock it. Then Johnny Carson played it with a guest on live television and it sold millions.

Candy bars by year introduced

oldest to newest · year introduced

  1. 1

    Hershey's Milk Chocolate Bar1900

    Milton Hershey sold his successful caramel company to bet everything on milk chocolate, which was then a European luxury. His process gives American chocolate its distinctive tang, which the rest of the world finds baffling.

  2. 2

    Milky Way1923

    The Milky Way was designed to taste like a malted milkshake in bar form. Outside the US, the same recipe is broadly sold as the Mars bar, while the local Milky Way is something else entirely.

  3. 3

    Snickers1930

    Snickers is named after a horse owned by the founding family. It's consistently among the best-selling candy bars on the planet.

  4. 4

    Kit Kat1935

    Kit Kat began in England as Rowntree's Chocolate Crisp and was renamed a couple of years later. Japan embraced it partly because the name sounds like a phrase meaning 'you will surely win,' which is why it comes in hundreds of flavors there.

  5. 5

    M&M's1941

    M&M's were designed with a hard shell so soldiers could carry chocolate without it melting. The two M's are the surnames of the two men behind the deal.

Cartoon characters by debut year

oldest to newest · year of debut

  1. 1

    Mickey Mouse1928

    Mickey debuted in Steamboat Willie, one of the first cartoons with synchronized sound, which is what actually made him a sensation. Walt Disney voiced him himself for about twenty years.

  2. 2

    Popeye1929

    Popeye arrived as a minor character in an existing newspaper comic strip and hijacked it within months. The spinach connection was reportedly built on a decimal-point error in old iron-content data.

  3. 3

    Bugs Bunny1940

    Bugs took shape across several earlier prototype rabbits before A Wild Hare locked in the wisecracking version everyone knows. His voice actor, Mel Blanc, reportedly disliked carrots.

  4. 4

    Charlie Brown1950

    Charlie Brown first appeared in the Peanuts strip, which Charles Schulz drew almost entirely alone for fifty years - roughly 17,000 strips. He hated the name Peanuts, which the syndicate chose over his objection.

  5. 5

    Scooby-Doo1969

    Scooby-Doo was retooled late in development from a moodier mystery show into a comedy, and the dog was promoted to star. His name came from a line in a Frank Sinatra song.

Superheroes by first comic appearance

earliest to most recent · year of first appearance

  1. 1

    Superman1938

    Superman's creators sold the rights for $130 and spent decades fighting to get credit and compensation. He couldn't originally fly - early stories only had him leaping tall buildings.

  2. 2

    Batman1939

    Batman arrived a year after Superman as a deliberately darker counterweight, with no powers at all. Early versions carried a gun, which was dropped almost immediately.

  3. 3

    Wonder Woman1941

    Wonder Woman was created by a psychologist who also helped develop an early lie detector - which explains the lasso. He pitched her explicitly as a counterexample to the era's punch-first heroes.

  4. 4

    Spider-Man1962

    Spider-Man debuted in the final issue of a comic that was being cancelled anyway, so nobody cared what they printed. Sales came back so strongly he got his own title.

  5. 5

    Iron Man1963

    Iron Man was reportedly created as a challenge - build a wealthy arms manufacturer readers would root for anyway. The original armor was bulky and gray before someone had the idea to paint it gold.

Theme parks by opening year

oldest to newest · year opened

  1. 1

    Tivoli Gardens1843

    Tivoli in Copenhagen is one of the oldest operating amusement parks in the world, and Walt Disney visited it while planning his own. Its founder reportedly argued that people who are amusing themselves don't cause trouble.

  2. 2

    Disneyland1955

    Disneyland's opening day was a near-disaster - counterfeit tickets, a plumbers' strike, and asphalt soft enough to swallow heels. It was broadcast live anyway, hosted in part by Ronald Reagan.

  3. 3

    Six Flags Over Texas1961

    The original Six Flags is named for the six nations whose flags have flown over Texas. It's where the modern log flume ride was introduced.

  4. 4

    Magic Kingdom1971

    Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom was built on land quietly assembled through shell companies so prices wouldn't spike. Walt died five years before it opened.

  5. 5

    Universal Studios Florida1990

    Universal Studios Florida opened with several headline rides that broke down repeatedly on day one. It has since grown into Disney's most direct competitor in Orlando.

Space milestones by year

earliest to most recent · year it happened

  1. 1

    Sputnik 1 launch1957

    Sputnik was a polished metal sphere about the size of a beach ball that did little except beep, and that was enough to terrify half the world. Amateur radio operators everywhere could hear it pass overhead.

  2. 2

    First human in space1961

    Yuri Gagarin orbited the Earth once, in a flight lasting under two hours, and ejected to parachute down separately from his capsule. He was 27.

  3. 3

    Apollo 11 Moon landing1969

    The lunar module's guidance computer threw alarms during descent and Armstrong flew much of the landing manually, touching down with seconds of fuel margin. The whole computer had less power than a modern greeting card.

  4. 4

    Hubble Space Telescope launch1990

    Hubble launched with a mirror ground to the wrong shape, producing blurry images and an enormous public embarrassment. Astronauts installed corrective optics in 1993 and it became one of the most productive instruments in history.

  5. 5

    First ISS module in orbit1998

    The station began with a single Russian module and grew piece by piece into the largest structure humans have ever assembled in space. It has been continuously occupied since 2000.

Deserts by area

smallest to largest · area in square kilometers

  1. 1

    Mojave Desert124,000 km²

    The Mojave is the smallest North American desert and home to Death Valley, which holds the highest reliably recorded air temperature on Earth. Its Joshua trees grow nowhere else naturally.

  2. 2

    Kalahari Desert900,000 km²

    The Kalahari gets enough rain in places to support grass and grazing animals, so it's a semi-desert by strict definitions. It sits on top of substantial groundwater and diamond deposits.

  3. 3

    Gobi Desert1,300,000 km²

    The Gobi is a cold desert - snow sometimes settles on its dunes, and winter temperatures drop well below freezing. It's also one of the richest dinosaur fossil sites on the planet.

  4. 4

    Arabian Desert2,330,000 km²

    The Arabian Desert contains the Empty Quarter, the largest continuous sand sea in the world. Beneath it lie some of the largest oil reserves ever found.

  5. 5

    Sahara Desert9,200,000 km²

    The Sahara is roughly the size of the United States and was green grassland with lakes only a few thousand years ago. Dust blown off it fertilizes the Amazon rainforest across the Atlantic.

Islands by area

smallest to largest · area in square kilometers

  1. 1

    Great Britain209,331 km²

    Great Britain is the largest island in Europe, and no point on it sits more than about 70 miles from the sea. It was connected to the continent by land until rising water cut it off.

  2. 2

    Madagascar587,041 km²

    Madagascar split from other landmasses so long ago that the vast majority of its species exist nowhere else. Lemurs, for instance, live wild only there.

  3. 3

    Borneo743,330 km²

    Borneo is the only island divided among three countries - Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei. Its rainforest is among the oldest on Earth, far older than the Amazon.

  4. 4

    New Guinea785,753 km²

    New Guinea is the most linguistically diverse place on the planet, with something like 800 languages spoken across it. A mountain spine down the middle kept communities separate for millennia.

  5. 5

    Greenland2,166,086 km²

    Greenland is by far the largest island, and map projections make it look even bigger - on a Mercator map it appears about the size of Africa, which is fourteen times larger. Roughly 80% of it is covered in ice.

Classic toys by year introduced

oldest to newest · year introduced

  1. 1

    Kaleidoscope1817

    The kaleidoscope feels like a psychedelic 1960s gadget, but Scottish physicist David Brewster invented it in 1817 while studying how light bounces between mirrors. It became an overnight craze, and knockoffs spread so fast he barely made a penny from his own invention.

  2. 2

    Slinky1945

    The Slinky was invented by accident when a naval engineer knocked a tension spring off a shelf and watched it walk itself down. It sold out its first 400 units in about ninety minutes.

  3. 3

    Frisbee1957

    The flying disc was sold as the Pluto Platter before being renamed after a pie company whose empty tins college students had been throwing for years. The same company later gave the world the Hula Hoop.

  4. 4

    LEGO brick1958

    The modern LEGO brick's stud-and-tube design was patented in 1958, and bricks made that year still snap onto bricks made today. The name comes from Danish words meaning roughly 'play well.'

  5. 5

    Rubik's Cube1974

    Ernő Rubik built the cube as an architecture teaching tool and then needed over a month to solve his own invention. There are around 43 quintillion possible arrangements and exactly one solved state.

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