11 Surprising Facts That'll Teach You Something New This Week

The southernmost tip of Canada is farther south than all of Minnesota and Montana.

1. The southernmost part of Canada is farther south than 13 US states, including parts of California.

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The southernmost point of Canada is the south point of Middle Island, in Lake Erie. That's just north of the coast of Ohio, which makes it farther south than the entirety of states like Montana, Idaho, and Minnesota. It's even farther south than the northern parts of California and Nevada.

2. There are no mosquitoes in Iceland. It's one of only a few places on Earth — and the only independent country — where you definitely won't get a mosquito bite...even though nearby Greenland has mosquitoes.

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According to Icelandic limnologist Gísli Már Gíslason, this is likely because of the rapid changes in weather and climate in Iceland. Random spikes in temperature in the winter mean that mosquitoes would hatch early and die off quickly.

3. The most expensive first-class ticket for the Titanic cost $2,560, which in today's dollars would be more than $68,000.

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A first-class passenger by the name of Charlotte Drake Cardeza purchased one of these tickets. She had a two-bedroom suit with an extra sitting room and two wardrobe rooms, plus a private promenade deck.

4. Reese Witherspoon was originally going to be cast in Brave, but she had to drop out because her Scottish accent was so bad.

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Reese revealed in an interview that she just couldn't get the accent right and has trouble with accents in general.

5. Reese's Pieces have zero chocolate in them.

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They're mostly just peanut butter in a candy shell. In fact, Reese's Pieces actually have VANILLA flavoring in them!

6. Jennifer Lopez's infamous Grammys dress is the reason Google Images was created.

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It was one of the most popular searches Google had ever had at the time, so it sparked the idea to allow users to search for images directly.

7. And YouTube was inspired by the Janet Jackson–Justin Timberlake "wardrobe malfunction" at the Super Bowl.

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One of the site's creators had missed the halftime show and didn't see the moment that everyone was talking about, so he and his friends created the video-uploading site.

8. The order of the alphabet has remained more or less the same since 900 BCE, but nobody really knows how or why that order was decided on.

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So basically, the order of the alphabet is completely arbitrary as far as we know. And, thus, so is everything we organize alphabetically.

9. How long would you guess the dashed lines on roads are? Most people estimate 2 feet, but they're actually 10 feet long.

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If they're up to US federal standards, those dashed lines should be 10 feet long. So many people underestimate the length because of the angle at which we view them while driving, since we're usually looking approximately 100 feet ahead of our car.

10. You've probably never noticed, but you can tell the difference between hot and cold water by how it sounds while being poured.

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This has to do with how the viscosity of the water changes when it changes in temperature.

11. The state of Michigan is bigger than Great Britain (if you include total territory).

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If you include both land and water area, the area of Great Britain is 94,226 square miles and the area of Michigan is 96,716 square miles. However, if you consider only land area, Britain has Michigan beat by a little over 36,000 square miles.

Want more facts? Check out previous installments from March 6 and March 19!