(Come on, I can’t be the only one.)

Yet, in just a decade, we’ve had so many new discoveries and fun facts that brought

us closer to understanding how the world works.

Let’s go back in time and check it out: 2010

• Scientists found an ancient finger which belonged to an undiscovered ancestor of ours.

The species was given the name Denisovans but we’re still not sure what they looked

like.

• The world’s tallest building opened in Dubai.

It’s the Burj Khalifa and it stands at 2,723 feet.

• It was also the year of the longest traffic jam in history.

It stretched 62 miles and lasted 12 days.

• Experts found some sharks in the Gulf of Mexico that are as small as 5 & 1/2 inches.

They look like mini sperm whales.

• A yellow-bellied lizard finally evolved to give birth.

It’s a species of an Australian lizard that reproduces by laying eggs.

Yet, a few of its kind that live in colder environments, started giving birth to live

young instead of eggs.

2011 • The space shuttle Discovery, which had

been active since 1984, took its 39th and final flight that year.

• On October 31st the world population reached 7 billion.

• We’ve discovered Neptune more than 150 years ago.

Yet, on July 12th, it completed its first known orbit around the Sun.

Yeah it’s probably been doing that a long time, but we didn’t notice.

• A person put a grape cut in half in the microwave to discover that it caught fire.

Scientists later used that experiment in their physics studies.

Okay, to be clear, let’s not go blowing up grapes.

2012 – The year that made us believe that the world would come to an end.

Oops, not so fast.

• Venus passed directly between the Sun and the Earth.

This won’t happen again until 2117.

• NASA landed a rover on Mars called Curiosity.

It was the 4th one sent by NASA and it cruised around to find out whether there had been

life on Mars.

• Felix Baumgartner became the first person to break the sound barrier without any mechanical

assistance by free-falling from the stratosphere.

• A new research by the National Academy of Science found that aging apes experience

the same midlife crisis we humans go through.

• Fishermen found european catfish can take down pigeons.

They filmed the fish jumping out of the water and targeting the birds at the shore.

• Scientists discovered bacteria can use minerals in soil to conduct electricity despite

their tiny size.

Really shocking news.

• Scientists studied a 300-year-old unique plant, growing only on two cliffs in Spain.

According to their findings, ants are the ones that keep the plant alive.

• There’s a blue African fruit with the most intensely colored tissue ever found in

a biological study.

It reflects 30% of light and has a bluish/purple color.

2013 • The California Institute of Technology

reported that there are at least 100 billion planets in our galaxy alone.

• A skeleton was found beneath a parking lot in England.

After months of research, they determined that it belonged to King Richard the third.

No sign was found of his car.

• Scientists discovered that cheetahs don’t overheat when they run at 70 mph despite being

the fastest land animals.

And I’m sweating sitting here thinking about it.

• A study in social psychology concluded that fonts which are harder to read are more

convincing.

This is because readers are forced to slow down, read things word-by-word, and spend

longer thinking about the facts.

• A full lab-grown burger was finally made.

It took 2 years to produce and it cost 325,000 bucks.

Cows across America began to have hope.

2014 • Scientists discovered that water vapor

was coming out of the dwarf planet “Ceres” – that’s also the largest asteroid in

our solar system.

• Archaeologists excavated a site that was below two ancient temples in central Rome.

There, they found votive offerings, figurines and drinking vessels too.

Maybe even a Vespa.

• NASA’s MAVEN Spacecraft reached Mars for its mission to study the red planet’s

atmosphere.

• A probe named Rosetta let its lander loose on the 67P comet.

It observed the comet’s closest approach to the sun and studied its surface.

• Scientists studied 48 bird species for over 4 years, and they finally announced that

according to genetics, birds evolved from dinosaurs.

• Researchers studied a pink spot on the head of leatherback sea turtles.

As it turned out, it acts as a biological clock which alerts them about changes in sunlight

and seasons.

• Inside the constellation of the Giraffe (yup, seriously), scientists discovered two

massive blue stars merging into one.

2015: It was all about space this year • The spacecraft named Messenger had been

sent to study Mercury’s matter, and after 4 years of orbiting the planet, it crashed

onto its surface.

• 10 years after NASA’s April Fools joke that water existed on Mars, scientists discovered

that there’s actually liquid water occasionally flowing on Mars despite its freezing temperature.

• A guy named Sven held the world record for the longest birthday ever.

His day lasted around 46 hours as he crossed multiple time zones to achieve his goal.

• NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft flew by Pluto and gave us a closer look at what

it looks like.

Scientists found a huge floating mountain made of water ice.

And some signs reading “hey, we’re still a planet”.

2016: • Bottled water was sold more than carbonated

soft drinks for the first time ever.

• The daily Google searches began to approach 3 billion.

• 123456 was the most commonly used password for 3 years in a row.

• The world’s largest blue star sapphire was found in Sri Lanka.

It’s a little more than 1,400 carats.

• A paleontologist isolated a fossil from 440 million years ago and it was the oldest

fossilized fungi ever found.

• DNA showed that Nile crocodiles, which eat any living being in their path, made their

way to Florida’s swamps.

The alligators there were not thrilled by this.

2017: • A 16-year-old was asking a fast food chain

through social media for free chicken nuggets for a year, and it worked.

Why didn’t I think of that?

• An airline filled a plane with puppies to help them escape from Hurricane Harvey.

• NASA’s Cassini Spacecraft found a possible energy source for life on Enceladus – one

of Saturn’s moons.

• Speaking of, researchers found that you can actually “hear” the universe through

gravitational waves.

Those waves came when two neutron stars collided.

2018: • Experts found that citrus fruits go all

the way back to the foothills of the Himalayas.

• There were 65,000-year-old cave paintings in Spain made by the Neanderthals.

This makes them the first species on earth to begin documenting history.

• The world’s oldest message in a bottle was discovered in Australia and it was around

132 years old.

It had been thrown from a German ship called Paula in 1886.

• Scientists also discovered that unlike modern reptiles, dinosaurs possibly shed their

skin gradually.

• During a solar eclipse, scientists found out that bees stopped buzzing.

When the moon blocked the sunlight, they all just went quiet.

• Scientists discovered that even though our eardrums have nothing to do with our sight,

they move when our eyes move.

• Researchers found that we store around 5,000 faces in our memory, yet the number

could go as high as 10,000.

• It was estimated that there are 10 million black holes in our galaxy alone.

• A new study showed that some types of spiders can produce milk for their babies,

and it’s even more nutritious than cow’s milk.

Uh uh, not me.

You can go milk a spider.

• Scientists discovered a new organ in our body that contains little spaces filled with

fluid and it holds up to 20% of our body weight.

• It was proved that playing video games can affect our moods positively and impact

our motivation.

2019: • Because our diets changed in the last

centuries, scientists found out that our teeth and jaws evolved and altered the way we talk.

• This year, we saw a naturally green colored puppy being born, it was given the name Hulk.

Another one was born two years ago and got the name Forest.

I can’t wait for the little “pea” to arrive.

Hey!

What name would you give to a green colored puppy?

Let me know down in the comments!

• Giraffes with dark spots were found to be more dominant than the ones with lighter

colored spots.

• Another research about bees showed that they can do math.

They can add, subtract, and understand the concept of Zero.

• Mars Opportunity Rover’s mission ended after 15 years because of a powerful sandstorm

that damaged all communications.

• A stolen Picasso painting was finally found in March of 2019 – it was recovered

after 20 years by an art detective.

• We had the first photo of a black hole that made the Internet go crazy.

It’s 6.5 billion times the mass of the Sun and 55 million light years away.

• Vantablack is a material that used to be the darkest human-made object in the world.

But now, MIT engineers developed something 10 times darker.

It doesn’t have a name yet, but it absorbs more than 99.99% of light.

Can’t wait to see what happens this decade!

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