Meta: Muse Spark 1.3

Since I don't know what you do know, here's one that surprises almost everyone:

You can hear temperature.

If you pour hot water and cold water - same amount, same cup, eyes closed - most people can tell which is which just by the sound. Hot pours sound duller and splashier, cold pours sound brighter and more tinkly.

It's not magic, it's physics. Hot water is less viscous and has more vapor, so the bubbles it makes are bigger and the pitch drops a little. Baristas actually use this without realizing it.

Go try it in the kitchen, it works.

A couple rapid-fire ones in case you already knew that:

1. Cleopatra lived closer in time to the iPhone than to the pyramids. The Great Pyramid was built around 2560 BCE, Cleopatra died around 30 BCE, and the iPhone came out in 2007. That's ~2,530 years vs. ~2,037 years.

2. Sharks are older than trees, and older than Saturn's rings. Sharks have been around for about 450 million years. Trees showed up about 350 million years ago. Saturn's rings are maybe only 100 million years old.

3. Wombats poop cubes. They're the only known animal to make cube-shaped poop, and it's so they can stack it to mark territory without it rolling away. Scientists only figured out how in 2018 — their intestines stretch unevenly.

Want more in a specific lane — space, history, human body, animals?

Since I don't know what you already know, here's one that surprises almost everyone:

Cleopatra lived closer in time to the Moon landing than to the building of the pyramids.

It feels like ancient history all blurred together, but check the math:

• The Great Pyramid of Giza was built around 2560 BCE
• Cleopatra was born around 69 BCE — that's ~2,500 years after the pyramids
• The Moon landing was in 1969 CE — that's only ~2,000 years after Cleopatra

She's closer to us with iPhones and astronauts than she was to the people who built the pyramids.

Want another one from history, science, or space?