Comets have three main parts: the nucleus, the coma, and the tail.

Copernicus was the man who developed the theory of a sun-centered system.

Edward Braddock was leader of the British forces during the French and Indian War.

The amount of time it takes for the earth to travel around the sun is a solar year, or one revolution.

Just outside of Neptune's orbit is a belt of comets known as the Kuiper Belt.

Meteroids are particles of rock and space debris that are smaller than asteroids. Meteors are those particles while they are in the earth's atmosphere, and meteorites are those particles when they have impacted with the earth's surface.

When the moon and sun line up directly with the earth, the resulting, more extreme tides are called spring tides.

The ability of the atmosphere to retain heat is called the greenhouse effect.

Our country's first Vice President was John Adams, who later became the second President.

Pluto is over 100 times farther away from the sun than Mercury.

Planets revolve around the sun in an orbit in the shape of an ellipse. One foci is the sun and the other is a random spot in space.

The nearest galaxies to our galaxy are the Sagittarius Dwarf galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud, and the Large Magellanic Cloud.

Nathan Hale, the famous spy known for saying, "I regret that I have but one life to lose for my country," was actually a young schoolteacher who volunteered to spy on the British.

King George the III was king during the American Revolution.

A supernova is formed when a star explodes; a nova is simply when a star flares up, then dims to its ordinary brightness.

The brightest star in the sky is Sirius.

There are three main types of galaxies: spiral galaxies, elliptical galaxies, and irregular galaxies.

The earth's magnetic field (the magnetosphere) is created by electric currents in the earth's outer core.

Roger William's Rhode Island colony had the first complete religious freedom in America.

The aurora borealis is caused when particles from solar winds are caught in the earth's magnetosphere, funneled to the North Pole, and collide with molecules of air in the atmosphere.

Early English colonists to America named both the James River and the Jamestown colony after King James the I.

When a stalagmite reaches a stalactite or the top of a cave, the resulting formation is called a column.

Most caves are formed when water creeps through cracks into limestone and eats away at it with natural acids, forming an open space inside the ground.

Petroleum is a mixture of thousands of tiny substances called hydrocarbons.

The Navajo are the largest current tribe of Indians in the United States.

Emerald is created when traces of chromium are found in beryl.

Rubies and sapphires are both formed when traces of a certain metal (for rubies, chromium, for sapphires, iron or titanium) are found in the mineral corundum.

Marble is created when limestone is put under extreme heat and pressure.

Pumice is formed from gas-filled lava, leaving hollow spaces full of air in the pumice that makes it light enough to float on water.

Mt. St. Helens is what is known as a composite volcano, which is formed by alternating layers of lava and tephra.

Mount St. Helen's eruption was 500 times more powerful than an atom bomb; the eruption of Krakatoa was 20 times stronger than that.

Shield volcanoes are formed by fluid, runny lava that hardens to add layers on the volcano.

Fumaroles are holes or cracks near active or dormant volcanos that vent underground gases.

THe Richter Scale measures the magnitude of an earthquake.

Underwater trenches are formed when the edge of a plate is forced under another plate.

The inner core of the planet can be up to 9000 degrees Fahrenheit.

Paramecium move by using tiny hairs called cilia.

Dakota means "friends" or "allies."

Amoebas move by the use of pseudopods, a word which means "false-feet."

Cells are controlled by a central part called the nucleus.

The Portugese Man O' War is not a true jellyfish. It is actually a colony of jellyfishlike creatures.

Sea stars are able to push their stomachs out of their bodies.

An indian named Sequoyah invented the Cherokee syllabary (a sort of alphabet based on syllables rather than single letters.)

The nautilus has up to 94 tentacles, but none of them have suction cups.

Roger WIlliams was the founder of Rhode Island.

Despite the millipede's name, which means "thousand-footed," the most legs a millipede may have is less than 750.

The Hopewell Indians buried their dead in large burial mounds, sometimes putting a thousand or more in one mound.

Wampum, which is beads made from the shell of the quahog (a type of shellfish), was used by Native Americans as money, gifts, and tokens of friendship.

The Atlantic Ocean is the saltiest ocean in the world.

The New England states are Maine,New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.

The Appalachian Mountains are the most prominent feature of Eastern North America.

The water spider spends its entire life underwater.

The ogre-faced spider drops net webs onto its prey from a thin strand of silk.

The Goliath Birdeater Tarantula is the largest spider in the world.

There are 27 cubic feet in a cubic yard.

Flies, gnats, and mosquitoes belong to the Diptera family. Diptera means "two wings."

The monarch butterfly's scientific name is danaus plexippus.

The scientific name of the ordinary house-cat is felis catus.

Saskatchewan's main product is its wheat. In fact half of Canada's wheat comes from Saskatchewan.

Penicillin, an important drug, comes from mold.

The Bay of Fundy has some of the highest tides in the world.

Prince Edward Island is the most densely populated province in Canada, but it is also the smallest.

The tallest sequoia tree is called the General Sherman Tree, which is 272 feet tall and 36 feet around at the base.

Lake Superior is the largest freshwater lake in the world.

The sugar maple is the primary source of maple syrup.

Removing a ring of bark from around a tree, a process known as girdling, is harmful to the tree as it cuts off its supply of nutrients and water from the soil.

The blue whale (over 100 feet long) is the largest mammal and the giraffe (18 feet tall) is the highest land animal, but they are dwarfed by trees like the white oak, giant sequoia, and especially the California redwood, which can be up to 360 feet tall.

Pemmican is a mixture of dried meat pounded together with fat and berries.

The beaver is North America's largest rodent.

Peanuts are actually part of the legume family, and are more closely related to peas than nuts.

Fruits form from the ovaries of flowers.

Most glaciers in the Northern Hemisphere come from the ice in Greenland.

The Great Salt Lake is 4 to 7 times saltier than the ocean.

A carrot is actually a large central type of root called a taproot. Other edible taproots include beets and radishes.

The Gulf of Mexico is the largest gulf in the world.

Oxygen exits leaves through holes called stomata; these are so small that tens of thousands may be on a leaf section the size of a quarter.

The Arctic tern is known as the "migration champion of the world," flying over 11,000 miles from the Arctic to Antarctica.

The gastrocnemius is the calf muscle, and the latissimus dorsi is the lower back muscle.

Tropical rain is the only form of precipitation that does not begin as an ice crystal. Instead, it forms from water vapor condensing around a particle of sea salt.

Some bones make blood; it is created in the red marrow.

The first pianos were made in 1698.

The first British colonists in Australia were people who had been in jail for political reasons or for being too poor to pay their debts.

Although Captain James Cook was the first man to sail around the Antarctic Circle, Roald Amundsen was the first man to reach the South Pole.

High blood cholesterol creates a greater risk of heart disease.

Jupiter's famous Great Red Spot could easily hold three Earths.

John Wesley, although he told many about God, was not saved until after a frightening experience on a boat to England

You exercise your mind through reading, studying, memorizing, and working out problems.

Question: If a month begins on a Wednesday and ends on a Friday, how many Thursdays are in the month?

The answer is in the comments!

Benjamin Franklin invented the first bifocals and the Franklin stove.

You should floss your teeth at least once a day before brushing.

The ancient Celts believed winter was caused by the sun being kidnapped by the evil tyrant Samhain.

The largest land animal on the continent of Antarctica is an insect less than one tenth of an inch long.

Of the main groups of the islands of Oceania (Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia), Polynesia is the largest.

Australia is the world's leading wool producer.

The scientific name for the tailbone is the coccyx.

The Murray River is Australia's longest river that flows year-round.

The term aerobic refers to the presence of oxygen.

Colonial muskets during the War for Independence only shot from 40 to 50 feet. A lucky colonist could get about 2 or 3 shots off before the Redcoats were close enough to use bayonets.

Starfish do not always have 5 legs; they may have from as few as 3 legs to as many as 50 legs.

India's tiger population has dropped from 3,700 in 2002 to only 1,350.

Bucharest, Romania, is often called "the Paris of the East" because of its culture and architecture.

Ukraine is the second-largest European country (after Russia).

The Siberian tiger is the largest living cat in the world.

The word xylophone comes from two Greek words: xylo, meaning wood, and phone, meaning sound.

The purpose of the gallbladder is to hold bile created by your liver.

The stomach's acids break down sugars and starches from carbohydrates the soonest, with proteins taking longer to break down and fats taking the longest, possibly up to six hours.

To keep high sound quality, most radio stations put songs into computer files that are usually around 1 gigabyte in size. The WZZK station in Birmingham, Alabama, has about two terabytes (approximately 2,000 gigabytes) worth of music.

Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of allowing some free enterprise to keep the people from starving was known as Perestroika, a Russian word for restructuring of business.

Russia was named after the Rus Viking tribe.

The cat has a vertical inner eyelid of a pinkish-white color.

Your body needs from 6-11 servings of bread, cereal, rice, and pasta each day.

The three main language groups of Europe are the Romance languages, the Germanic languages, and the Slavic languages.

The bacteria in yogurt helps your body to make Vitamin K in your colon.

The molecules of carbohydrates are like chains, with each link made of a simple sugar. Long chains are called complex carbohydrates, while short chains are called simple carbohydrates.

Amsterdam is the official capital of the Netherlands, but the government buildings are in The Hague.

The first baby buggy, invented by Charles Burton, was outlawed as a traffic hazard.

Frederick the Great was the famous Prussian king who made Prussia a world power.

Switzerland is the most mountainous country in Europe.

The aorta is the largest artery in the human body.

An adult's heart weighs about 1 half pound.

Nearly 1 third of Greece's people live in Athens.

Venice is built on 118 small islands and connected by 400 bridges and a system of canals.

Ferdinand Magellan was the first man to sail around the world.

Seville, Spain, holds Europe's second largest church, the largest being St. Peter's in Rome, Italy.

The Scandinavian Peninsula is made of Norway and Sweden.

The largest amphibian in the world is the rare Japanese giant salamander, which grows to five feet in length.

The largest crocodiles can grow to lengths of 25 feet and weigh over 2,000 pounds, although crocodiles this large are rare.

The turtle has two shell parts: the carapace and the plastron.

The horned lizard can squirt blood from its eyes as a defense against predators.

Only 250 of the over 3,000 species of snakes are venomous.

The fastest known speed of any snake is that of the African black mamba, which can move at seven miles per hour or faster, but only for a short distance.

There are more varieties of bony fish than there are varieties of mammals, amphibians, reptiles, and birds combined.

The Chunnel is a 31-mile-long tunnel that runs beneath the English Channel linking Great Britain and France.

The largest bird in the world is the ostrich.

Most birds have air-filled bones which are strengthened by tiny cross ribs from within.

Queen Victoria ruled England for almost 64 years.

Robert Raikes is known as the "Father of the Sunday School Movement."

Robert Hooke was the first man to see a living cell.

Sir Frances Drake was the first Englishman to sail around the world.

Miles Coverdale published the first printed version of the entire Bible.

The largest hailstone recorded weighed almost 2 pounds and measured six inches across.

Mountains cover 70 percent of Albania.

Sea fog forms when warm air moves over cold water.

Due to the puffy, stacked appearance of the cloud in question, it is named "cumulus" after the same word, meaning "heap" or "pile."

John Wycliffe was the first man to translate the Bible into English.

Water vapor must have something, such as a dust particle, to condense. For this reason, dust is necessary in clouds and snow.

While an earlier Roman emperor, Nero, made it illegal to be a Christian, Constantine made it illegal not to be a Christian.

If air has a humidity of 100%, we say that the air is saturated.

Air always flow away from a region of high pressure to fill in a region of low pressure.

Augustus Caesar was the first emperor of the Roman Empire.

Only about 47% of the sun's radiation gets through the atmospheric barrier. About 35% is reflected into space and the other 18% is absorbed by the atmosphere.

A message on the much written-on walls of Pompeii read, "It is a wonder, O Wall, that thou has not yet crumbled into ruin under the weight of so much written nonsense."

In older times, modern France was called Gaul.

The Senate of ancient Rome was a gathering of the oldest and wisest Roman men.

The Alps are the largest mountain system in Europe.

The timber line of a mountain is the point beyond which trees cannot grow.

The auroras are caused by solar winds made up of subatomic particles colliding with air molecules in the thermosphere at the North and South poles.

Air is 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, and 1% carbon dioxide and other gases.

The city of Alexandria in Egypt was the most important city of its time period.

The dividing line between the moon's lighted and dark regions is called the terminator.

Sirius, one of the stars in the Canis Major constellation, is the brightest star in the sky.

The sun is about 93,000,000 miles away from the Earth, yet its rays only take eight minutes to reach our planet.

Greece is on the Balkan Peninsula, surrounded by the Aegean Sea, the Ionian Sea, and the Mediterranean Sea. The Gulf of Corinth almost cuts Greece in half.

Finnish sailors once believed in "windropes," which, when their three knots were untied, supposedly caused the wind to blow.

Europe is home to three of the world's smallest countries: Andorra, Liechtenstein, and San Marino.