25 Fun Facts About Science & History

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This metal is liquid at standard room temperature

Credit: Javaduke | Dreamstime

Mercury is the only metal that is liquid at standard room temperature and pressure. That's because the electrons that spin around the nucleus of a mercury atom have just weak links or bonds with other mercury atoms at room temperature, keeping the metal in a liquid state, according to the Discovery Channel.

Bras were made for comfort?

A 600-year-old linen bra.

(Image credit: Archeological Institute of the University of Innsbruck)

Modern bras didn't come into fashion until the corset fell by the wayside in the late 1800s. But researchers poking around in a scrap pile in an Austrian castle have found linen bra-like garments dating back 600 years.

Seahorses have high metabolisms

Seahorses

(Image credit: Brandi Irwin, Liquid Film Photography)

Seahorses don't have stomachs, just intestines for the absorption of nutrients from food. Food passes through their digestive system rapidly, so they eat plankton and small crustaceans almost constantly.

Corpse flowers are stinky blooms

(Image credit: Jeff Hillyer/WIU.)

Amprophophallus titanium blooms with clusters of flowers that can reach 10 feet (3 m) in height. But these petals smell so much like rotting flesh that the plant is known as the "corpse flower."

Bladderworts are quick little buggers

Bladderwort

(Image credit: Philippe Marmottant)

Carnivorous, bog-dwelling plants called bladderworts can snap their traps shut in less than a millisecond, 100 times faster than a Venus flytrap.

Now what? See our 50 Interesting Facts about Earth.

Stephanie Pappas
Stephanie Pappas
Live Science Contributor

Stephanie Pappas is a contributing writer for Live Science, covering topics ranging from geoscience to archaeology to the human brain and behavior. She was previously a senior writer for Live Science but is now a freelancer based in Denver, Colorado, and regularly contributes to Scientific American and The Monitor, the monthly magazine of the American Psychological Association. Stephanie received a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of South Carolina and a graduate certificate in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz.