2. This is Elizabeth Ann, a black-footed ferret and the first-ever endangered species cloned in the US. The hope is that she'll provide some much needed genetic diversity to a species that was once believed to be extinct:
4. When the Curiosity rover collects a rock and soil sample, it drills a hole like this, which is actually much smaller than it looks (roughly the size of a dime):
5. The Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey — once a cathedral, then a museum, and now a mosque — was built 1,500 years ago and still contains the scars (in this case, graffiti) from a 10th century Viking raid:
6. Blue whales are absolutely massive animals and can weigh up to 200 tons. They also have incredibly long life spans; the oldest blue whale ever discovered was 110 years old:
8. North Dakota's blizzard of '66 was one of the worst storms on record for the Great Plains. With 20–30 inches of total snowfall over three miserable days and 70-mph winds that caused drifts of up to 40 feet. At least 18 people died in the storm:
9. The inventor of karaoke is a man named Daisuke Inoue, and among his reasons for not patenting the invention is that he didn't actually expect it to become so popular:
12. Donald Harvey, also known as the "Angel of Death," would poison his victims' food with cyanide, which a medical examiner was actually able to smell during an autopsy (cyanide is said to smell like bitter almonds):
13. During Hurricane Andrew in 1992, zoos searched for creative ways to safely store animals. The Miami Zoo famously put their flamingos in the men's room:
15. For an episode of How Hard Can It Be on the National Geographic channel, a team of professionals inspired by Pixar's Up managed to fly a house using only weather balloons — oh, and there were people inside: