Mercury gets its chemical symbol Hg from “Hydragyrum,” the Greek for “liquid silver”!

A White rhino weighing 2 tons can run faster than Usain Bolt!

How did doctors figure out if women were pregnant back in the day? They used frogs, of course! Before the 1960's, the only reliable pregnancy test involved injecting a woman's urine into an African clawed frog and seeing if the frog spawned.

This peculiar method, known as the 'frog pregnancy test,' may sound bizarre today, but it was a common practice in the early to mid-20th century. The African clawed frog, a species native to sub-Saharan Africa, was preferred for this test because of its unique reproductive system.

If a woman was pregnant, her urine would contain hormones that would induce the frog to lay eggs, confirming the pregnancy. While this method may seem unusual by modern standards, it was an early example of using biological indi ...

This fly-sized frog is the world's smallest known vertebrate. Paedophryne amauensis is 7.7 millimetres long and inhabits New Guinean rain forests.

An enormous tomb has been unearthed in northern Greece, guarded by two beautifully preserved female figures. It’s been dated to the time of Alexander the Great.

Don't ask questions, just get on. Genets are small, mongoose-like felines found in Africa - and this one has been caught on camera hitching rides from at least two different species over the past month. This is the first time this behaviour has ever been seen in the mammal...

Fuzzy green aliens? Not quite, but that doesn't make the colony of living balls that took up residence on an Australian beach last weekend any less peculiar.

"They're actually a really unusual growth form of seaweed, because seaweeds mostly grow on the rocks but occasionally they get knocked off and rolled around in the ocean forming these beautiful little balls. It's quite an unusual phenomenon, it's only been seen a handful of times around the world."

Source: http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20142409-26225.html ...