The things I can tell you.

I have come across some very interesting and not so well-known facts about our planet at Space.com. Their article, 101 Amazing Earth Facts, answers questions ranging from ” What makes thunder?” to “Can rocks float?”. Here are a few examples.

Q. What is the hottest place on Earth?
A. El Azizia in Libya recorded a temperature of 136 degrees Fahrenheit (57.8 Celsius) on Sept. 13, 1922 — the hottest ever measured.

Most people would have thought Death Valley but the highest temperature recorded there was 134 Fahrenheit on July 10, 1913.

Q. And the coldest place around here?
A. 129 Fahrenheit (-89 Celsius) at Vostok, Antarctica, on July 21, 1983.

No surprise there!

Q. What was the deadliest known earthquake?
A. The world’s deadliest recorded earthquake occurred in 1557 in central China. It struck a region where most people lived in caves carved from soft rock. The dwellings collapsed, killing an estimated 830,000 people. In 1976 another deadly temblor struck Tangshan, China. More than 250,000 people were killed.

That is a lot of people to get caught in a quake. I wonder what the population of China was at that time.

Q.What’s the driest place on Earth?
A. A place called Arica, in Chile, gets just 0.03 inches (0.76 millimeters) of rain per year. At that rate, it would take a century to fill a coffee cup.

Q. Will Earth always be here?
A. Astronomers know that over the next few billion years, the Sun will swell so large as to envelop Earth. If we’re still here, we’ll probably fry and the
planet will be vaporized. There’s a chance, however, that the changing mass of the Sun will cause Earth to move into a more distant and pleasant orbit. One mathematical calculation shows it would be theoretically possible for humans to engineer such a move before it’s too late.

There are many more facts in this article, I hope you find them as interesting as I do.