World Facts

Eruption of Mount St. Helens On this day in 1980, following an earthquake with a magnitude of 5.1 on the Richter scale, Mount St. Helens in Washington state erupted in one of the greatest volcanic explosions ever recorded in North America. @worldtruth #todayinhistory📆

The Murchison meteorite is one of the oldest known rocks. In 2020, experts reported that the meteorite contained certain particles that were about 7 billion years old, older than even the Solar System. It was also found to contain amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. @worldtruth #facts 🪨

Abuna Yemata Guh is a monolithic church in the Hawzen woreda of the Tigray Region in Ethiopia. The church is located at a height of 2,580 meters (8,460 feet) and can only be reached by climbing on foot. It is known for its dome and wall paintings that date back to the 5th century. @worldtruth #facts⛪️

Two of Charles Darwin's notebooks worth millions of pounds were reported stolen from Cambridge University's library. They have now been mysteriously returned, about two decades after their disappearance. The notebooks, still in good condition, were left in the library inside a pink gift bag. @worldtruth #facts📙

Vasa is a Swedish warship that sank in 1628, after sailing about 1,300 meters (1,400 yards) into her maiden voyage. 333 years later, in 1961, she was salvaged with most of her wood still intact. Today, the ship is housed in Stockholm’s Vasa Museum and is said to be the world’s best preserved ship from the 17th century. @worldtruth #facts ⛴

School segregation outlawed by U.S. Supreme Court On this day in 1954, lawyer Thurgood Marshall scored a landmark victory as the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. @worldtruth #todayinhistory📆

This stunning indoor rainbow is not created by sunlight. It is actually an artwork made by Gabriel Dawe, who used 60 miles of ordinary embroidery thread to create this ethereal and shimmery pattern that creates the optical illusion of a rainbow. @worldtruth #amazingfacts🌈

Kākāpō is a species of large, flightless, ground-dwelling parrots that look like owls. Also known as owl parrot, Kākāpō has a large grey beak, finely blotched yellow and green plumage, short legs, large feet, and short tail and wings. They are the heaviest parrots in the world and have a reported lifespan of up to 100 years. @worldtruth #facts🐦

Before alarm clocks became prevalent, there were people called knocker-ups or knocker-uppers who would go to each client's house and knock on their doors or windows with a short, heavy stick until they woke up. The profession lasted well into the Industrial Revolution and continued until the early 1970s in some places in England. @worldtruth #facts😯

In 2019, a laptop containing six dangerous types of malware was sold as an artwork for $1.3 million. Titled "The Persistence of Chaos," this artwork was a joint venture between cybersecurity company Deep Instinct and artist Guo O Dong. @worldtruth #facts💻