Looking from a scientific perspective, there are a whole lot of curious facts surrounding the Earth's geographical characteristics and its shape, definitely more interesting than what we can see with the naked eye.
- Earth is the only planet in the solar system that is not named after an ancient Roman deity. Its name in the different languages is pronounced differently but still means earth - a symbol of the life it gives;
- Our planet is the only one that has its own holiday. Earth Day is celebrated every year on April 22. The event was founded in 1970 and coincidentally falls on the 100th anniversary of Lenin's birthday, which was why Western countries initially refused to commemorate Earth Day;
- There are over 1000 artificial satellites and 21 000 pieces of man-made space junk over 4″ (10 cm) long around Earth's orbit;
- Even though it looks perfectly round, our planet is not perfectly spherical. The diameter measured between Earth's poles is nearly 27 mi (43 km) smaller than that measured at the equator;
- Since the Earth is not a perfect sphere, gravity is not distributed evenly. This means that if a person weighs 150.16 lb (68.1 kg) at the equator, their weight at the North Pole will be 151.04 lb (68.5 kg);
- 70.8% of the Earth is covered by water, while 29.2% is dry land. The largest section of water in the Pacific Ocean which covers nearly 1/3 of Earth's surface. Even though dry land is not dominant, if every person were to be given an equal share, they would have a piece of land equaling to 2.5 football fields;
- The sun's rays take 8 min. and 3 seconds to reach Earth;
- The Earth is nearly 5 billion years old, while life has only existed on it for the past 150-200 million years. This means that life has only been around for 5-10% of Earth's history;
- The most spoken language on the planet is Chinese, used by about 1 billion people. After it comes English, spoken by 512 million people around the world;
- The rate of Earth's spin around its axis has been slowing over time and eventually 1 Earth day will last for 27 hours, instead of the current 24.
