Bright Side

May 31st, 1911. The Titanic is finally complete after 2 years of construction. It’ll be ready for its first voyage a year later. It’s the most luxurious ship in the world. You’ve just read the groundbreaking news in the Daily Herald, and decide to treat yourself to a trip on this floating gem. You head over to White Star Line’s headquarters in London to buy yourself a ticket. You get the cheapest first-class fare for £30 (that’d be over $4,500 today).

Wednesday, April 10th, 1912. The day is finally here! The majestic ship in front of you is bigger than you imagined. As you board the Titanic, Captain Edward Smith himself greets you! Your trip will begin shortly. By the time the liner stops at Cherbourg and Queenstown, over 2,200 passengers and crew will be on board, embarking on their trans-Atlantic trip. The Titanic is ready to sail, and you hear the horns from the deck as you wave goodbye to the people below. The ship is scheduled to arrive in New York a week later on April 17th. But that’s only if things go according to plan… So could the Titanic sinking have been avoided? What if the Titanic never sank?

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The Guinness World Records award for "the deepest human invasion into the Earth's crust" goes to the Kola Superdeep Borehole. Its depth is 7.4 mi. You can find it in the icy part of Russia where the winter temperature of -40°F is a common thing. Local scientists started to dig it in the 1970s. The grand plan was to reach the depth of 9.3 mi. It was a purely scientific project to study the Earth's crust and maybe get to the hot mantle.

Up to the depth of 4.3 mi, the drill easily coped with granite rock. Then, denser layers came and broke the drill. The scientists had to change the drilling pattern. In the end, it resembled a tree with many branches. The deeper it went, the hotter it became. The temperature went up to 350°F. The equipment was constantly out of order and work was stopped completely in 1992. The place is now abandoned, overgrown with moss and rust. But it has its fair share of myths surrounding it too...

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We all have heard of the lost civilization of Atlantis sinking into the waters off the coast of Ancient Greece. The story is supposed to be a myth, but have scientists finally found the lost city? Not sure about that, but they did find a lost continent! How careless do you have to be to misplace an entire continent? We’ll have to ask our planet about that one.

Earth lost what was called Greater Adria between 100 and 120 million years ago. So, how did that happen, and where did it go? The only way to describe the process would be kinda like a snake slipping through rocks or going down into a hole. Most snakes don’t leave trails. And scientists might never have found Adria if it weren’t for the snakeskin. I mean, the mountains… Confused? Let's figure out!

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Until a couple of years ago, most people knew next to nothing about carnivorous plants. If you had asked an expert, though, they would have excitedly submerged you in a sea of information. Meat-eating plants used to munch on tiny creatures - mostly insects, frogs, more rarely a mouse or rat. That is, until recently. Back when days were good, there were just about 700 kinds of carnivorous plants on the planet. They grew all over the world, except Antarctica.

Good old plants got most of their food by basking in the sun. But it wasn't enough - they also needed nutrients, which they slurped up with their roots. But carnivorous plants lived in areas with nutrient-poor soil. That's why they started to catch prey. Such a high-protein diet helped them survive and grow faster. Little did we know at that time that soon, life would change beyond recognition. Because when a scientific experiment went way out of control, all plants on Earth became carnivorous! The event even got the name of the Great Carnivorous Disaster...

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Around 65 million years ago, the Earth turned faster, days were a half-hour shorter, and the continents we know today were beginning to take shape. The dinosaurs had been almost wiped out, the age of mammals was dawning, and giant frogs …totally normal. They weren’t the first frogs or anything, frogs have been around for 180 million years! Over time, not much about their body changed…except their size. Let's take Beelzebufo, the biggest frog that ever existed.

Scientists found their first bone sample in Madagascar. It took them 15 years to piece together the whole skeleton. Step by step, they put the frog's skeleton together, just like an ancient jigsaw puzzle. When they saw what they’d found, a huge creature with a weird shield, they gave it its epic name. It's a mix of Greek and Latin, and it means "armored frog from the abyss." Yes, dinosaurs weren't the only amazing prehistoric creatures to have ever existed. Here are incredible facts about some of the most astonishing prehistoric animals to have ever roamed this planet.

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Normally, our lifetime is too short to see any major changes. We don’t notice mountains rise, the way rivers change their course, or how oceans are created. Entire valleys may be sinking, but it usually takes too long for them to sink entirely. Still, a group of scientists recently noticed there’s a new ocean being formed really fast and we can even witness it appear. Not far away from the Horn of Africa peninsula, the sixth ocean is being born at the moment!

By the way, there's a theory that claims the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans might just cease to exist, forming the new ocean basin. Eurasia will be split to form a new ocean, and all the continents will migrate to merge into the supercontinent. Another possible scenario claims the continents might merge into the uniform landmass, or form a circle with a large sea inside, and the Super Pacific Ocean outside. And since all the continents keep drifting northwards even now, it’s quite probable that almost all of them will meet up somewhere at the North Pole. So, here's how the Earth might change in millions of years.

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All the stars we see, including our Sun, are in a balance of powers. Stars are very heavy objects, so they have strong gravity, which presses them from the outside and makes them shrink. But inside a star, while it burns fuel, there are nuclear reactions that produce incredible amounts of energy. This energy is the light and heat that we feel during the day. But most importantly, these reactions increase the pressure inside the star and create a force that is fighting with gravity.

A star the size of our Sun can shine for about 10 billion years. Specifically, our lovely Sun is about 4.5 billion years old and has already burned half its fuel. The next stage in a star's life comes when it runs out of juice. Internal pressure drops, but gravity continues to press. In less than half a second, a huge star turns into a small and dense object. This rapid collapse creates incredible shock waves that cause the upper layers of the star to explode. Boom! But what happens next? Well, the heavier the star, the more interesting the events will be.

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You spot a rapidly growing vertical cloud that's approaching alarmingly fast and becoming dense. The sky is

darkening and a gust of wind blows the hat off your head. And then your hair starts to stand on its end. That's your cue to run for your life! You're about to be hit by lightning.

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Wildlife never ceases to astonish us with its diversity. You've probably never even heard of many of the creatures living on our planet, while their appearance will make your eyebrows go all the way up. "The deeper you go, the creepier they get." You're about to travel to the darkest ocean depths and check whether this claim is true. We decided to create our own little "zoo" with rare and unusual sea critters. Are the creatures living there as scary as people think? Well, let's see.

At a depth of 3,200 ft, you can meet the cookiecutter shark. This creature is a parasite. It attaches itself to big fishes, dolphins, whales, and sometimes even people. Then, using its neatly arranged serrated teeth, it gouges out cookie-sized pieces of meat. At a depth of 4,000 ft, you see something droopy and saggy. The blobfish doesn't have a skeleton or any muscle. Its jelly-like flesh lets the creature survive incredible water pressure. But despite its appearance, the blobfish is an ambush predator. Interested? Here are the most amazing sea creatures found deep within the ocean.

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There are many amazing things in this world like cats that are used as mail carriers, deep-green icebergs, allergy to the moon dust, or the longest bout of the hiccups ever recorded that lasted for 68 years. In other words, nature, people, and animals can always amaze us! That's why we've prepared a new compilation of interesting facts about our world and the lives of its inhabitants.

For example, have you ever heard about a French man who ate a whole plane – Cessna 150 – piece by piece? That took him 2 years! He managed to pull it off because his digestive system was incredibly strong. Apparently... Yeah, people in this world do strange things, and the reality surrounding us is full of incredible facts. Here's another cool bunch of them for you.

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