32 of the best and weirdest facts from Weird But True on Disney+

Disney+may be associated with fairytale princesses and intergalactic bounty hunters, but as the home of National Geographic, there's also plenty of educational content - including the aptly named Weird But True.

Now entering its third season, hosts Charlie Engelman and Carly Ciarrocchi will be exploring volcanoes, flying planes and digging for dinosaur bones looking for facts which are, you guessed it, weird but true.

If you’re not already a Disney Plus user, it’s easy to sign up – you can subscribe for £59.99 annually or £5.99 monthly.

The 13-episode season drops on as one of the new releases on Disney+ for August on Friday 14th August. We've rounded up some of the weirdest facts uncovered this time around.

Dinosaurs

• The Argentinosaurus was the size of three entire buses.
• The youngest person ever to discover a new species of dinosaur was a seven-year-old named Diego from Chile, who stumbled across the fossils while playing with rocks near his house. The dinosaur was named Chilesaurus Diegosuarezi in his honour.
• The closest living relative to the T-Rex are birds such as chickens!

National Parks

• There are over 4,000 National Parks across the world, in nearly 100 different countries.
• Over 14 billion people have visited US national parks since 1904. That’s about 2 visits for every person on Earth.
• Supervolcanoes are the largest, most powerful volcanoes on the entire planet. They have mega-colossal eruptions that are thousands of times stronger than ordinary volcanos.

Trains

• It is thanks to trains that going on holiday became popular - travelling was far too slow beforehand.
• Trains are credited for the creation of national time zones - beforehand each town had its own local time, creating great confusion on train journeys.

Bugs

• Ladybirds might look like cute, but they can release toxic chemicals to protect themselves from predators.

Germs

• More germs are exchanged by shaking hands than by kissing.
• Mobile phones on average have about 18 times more bacteria on them than toilet handles in public restrooms.

Photography

• The first selfie was taken in 1839 - long before iPhones and Instagram.
• The smallest camera is the size of a grain of salt.
• In 2015, a photographer sold a photo of a potato for over a million dollars (yes, really!).

Our Solar System

• One day, soil from Mars could be used to grow crops and fertiliser - and human hair could be the key to making it work.
• There are more stars in the sky than grains of salt on the planet.
• Voyager 1 travelled through space for more than 40 years - further than any other human-made object.

Camping

• Bears often mistake items like bug repellent and toothpaste for food because they’re attracted to the smells.
• If you’re out camping and want to know what the temperature is... just listen to the crickets! Count the number of times a cricket chirps in 14 seconds, then add 40 and you’ve got the temperature in degrees Fahrenheit.

Cooking

• Deep-fried tarantulas are a popular snack in Cambodia!
• Chimps spend around six whole hours chewing their food every day - and researchers think early humans did the same thing.
• In some Asian countries burping out loud after a meal is a compliment to the cook.
• The blender was invented a hundred years ago to make milkshakes.

Venomous Animals

• Scorpions glow in the dark when you shine a black light on them.
• Black mamba snakes have enough venom to knock out 10 full-grown adults.
• A poison dart frog has enough poison to kill 10,000 mice.

Explorers

• Explorers on the Pacific Ocean would navigate their boats based on the direction birds were flying.
• What is the biggest desert in the world? The Sahara maybe? No - it's Antarctica! A desert is an area that gets less than 25cm of rain per year - so can be hot or cold.

Scuba Diving

• It is estimated that over 100 million species live in the ocean.
• The world's first snorkels were created over 5,000 years ago when ancient sponge divers used hollowed out reeds to breathe right under the water’s surface. It wasn't until the 1940s that the aqualung was invented – a self-contained underwater breathing apparatus more commonly known as SCUBA.
• There’s a dive spot in Indonesia near an active underwater volcano.

Rockets

• The Saturn V rocket burned more than 25,000 pounds of fuel every second.

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