Humans have 46 chromosomes, peas have 14 and crayfish have 200.

There are 60,000 miles of blood vessels in the human body.

The call of the humpback whale is louder than Concorde and can be heard from 500 miles away.

A quarter of the world's plants are threatened with extinction by the year 2010.

Each person sheds 40lbs of skin in his or her lifetime.

The largest galaxies contain up to 400 billion stars.

The Universe contains over 100 billion galaxies.

More germs are transferred shaking hands than kissing.

The fastest speed a falling raindrop can hit you is 18mph.

A thimbleful of a neutron star would weigh over 100 million tons.

The mortality rate if bitten by a Black Mamba snake is over 95%.

In the 14th century the Black Death killed 75,000,000 people. It was carried by fleas on the black rat.

If every star in the Milky Way was a grain of salt they would fill an Olympic sized swimming pool.

Tuberculosis is the biggest global killer of women.

Some species of bamboo grow at a rate of 3ft per day.

Saturn would float if you could find an ocean big enough.

A pinhead-sized piece of a neutron star weighs 1 million tons.

A neutron star is 15 miles across and weighs more than the Sun.

There are over 100 billion stars in our Milky Way Galaxy.

A human heart beats 100,000 times a day.

Every heartbeat pumps 1/15th of a pint of blood.

The first bicycle was manufactured in 1817.

We share 98.4% of our DNA with a chimp - and 70% with a slug.

Men who ride a bike for ten hours a week are four times as likely to be impotent as non-bike riders say US scientists.

The earliest human tools have been dated at 2.7 million years old.

One third of all adults experience difficulty distinguishing left from right.

Apart from humans the only land animal that cries is the elephant.

On average women say 7,000 words per day. Men manage just over 2000.

There are 1600 calories in a pint of Hippopotamus milk.

97.2% of the Earth's water is salt water.

The oceans contain enough salt to cover all the continents to a depth of nearly 500 feet.

The speed of light, Warp Factor 1 on Star Enterprise is a mind boggling 670,610,000 miles per hour.

The interstellar gas cloud Sagittarius B contains a billion, billion, billion liters of alcohol.

Alcohol lowers the level of the sex hormone testosterone in men but increases it in women.

70% of the molecular structure in a tree is also human.

The first spectacles were invented in 1280.

Polar Bears cannot be detected by infrared cameras, due to their transparent fur.

The biggest star has a diameter of 1800 million miles, making it 2000 times bigger than the Sun.

4,800 years ago the ancient Egyptians worked out that there were 365 days in a year.