Page 190 - Animal Facts

The second satellite ever launched by the United States is still orbiting the Earth.

Although it was only the fourth to be launched, Vanguard 1 is the oldest artificial earth satellite to still be in orbit! The orb was part of the Vanguard project in the 1950s - it was named "vanguard" because scientists hoped that it would be the first element of human space exploration. This was not the case, however, since the Russian Sputnik satellites and America's Explorer beat Vanguard 1 to the punch.

Vanguard 1 was launched on March 17th, 1958, achieving the highest altitude of any man-made vehicle up to that point, and was also the first satellite to be powered by solar energy. Since that time, it has completed more than 200,000 Earth orbits and racked up well over 6 billion miles of travel! It has almost outlived all its creators and is predicted to remain in orbit well into the 22nd century.
(Sources: 1, 2)

The original ketchup recipe contained no tomatoes.

In China ke-tsiap was a pickled fish sauce. English sailors discovered it in the 17th century. Back then, what they called ketchup was more akin to soy sauce or Worcestershire sauce. They didn't add tomatoes to it until the 1700s. Back then an alternative name for ketchup was "tomato soy".

The history of ketchup.

Dogs can tell the size of another dog by listening to its growls.

In fact, dogs' growl detection abilities are so good that, in an experiment, they were able to match the sound of another dog's growl with a PHOTOGRAPH of that dog. This is a cognitive ability so complex that it has only previously been observed in primates.

Dogs also can detect the intent of a growl. For instance, there is a distinct growl that dogs use when they are protecting a bone that they don't want to share.

To learn more about this exciting experiment and its findings, check out this article.

Another interesting dog fact: Studies suggest that when dogs encounter something unexpected or new they respond by looking to the left.

The human tongue can detect a drop of lemon juice diluted in 129,000 drops of water.

An adult human tongue has about 10,000 tastebuds, but babies can taste nearly twice as well because they have 19,000! Also, similar to fingerprints, every single person's tongue-print is completely unique.

Think you know everything about tongues? Why don't you check some more tongue facts?

4 in 10 Americans do not believe in evolution.

In a recent Gallup poll, 40% of respondents declared that they believed in creationism, that God created human beings less than 10,000 years ago. This number is actually down from a high in 1999, where 47% of Americans polled said that they believe in creationism.

Another 38% believe that God guided the process by which humans evolved from their caveman ancestors over millions of years. Only 16% believe in a completely secular evolutionary process, with humans evolving absent any divine intervention. In 1982, that number was as low as 9%.

Read this article to see how those numbers break down demographically.