The ocean's deepest point is nearly 11 kilometers down.
Challenger Deep bottoms out around 10,935 m; drop Everest in and its peak stays ~2 km below the surface.
HISTORICAL ARCHIVE
Sources · October 21, 2026
Every claim from this day’s challenge, with its verdict, explanation and sources.
Round 1
Antarctica is the largest desert on Earth.
Deserts are defined by precipitation, not heat: the Antarctic polar desert (~14 million km²) dwarfs the Sahara (~9 million km², largest hot desert).
Meteorites are burning hot to the touch when they hit the ground.
The fiery entry only lasts seconds and strips away the outer layer; the inside stays cold from space. Freshly fallen meteorites are usually cool or barely warm to the touch.
Round 2
The Eiffel Tower is up to six inches taller in summer.
Heat expands the iron lattice; the tower physically grows ~15 cm on hot days and shrinks back in winter.
We have explored less than 5% of the ocean.
Depends what "explored" means: about a quarter of the seafloor is now mapped with modern sonar, but only a tiny fraction has ever been seen directly by people or cameras.
Napoleon was comically short — just 5 feet 2 inches.
He stood ~5'6"–5'7", average for his era; British caricatures mixed up the longer French inch with the English one to shrink him.
Round 3
The Sun holds about 99.8% of all mass in the solar system.
Every planet, moon, asteroid, and dust grain shares the leftover ~0.2% — and Jupiter takes most of that.
A jellyfish is about as watery as the sea it swims in.
Close: jellyfish are about 95% water and seawater is about 96.5% water. With no brain, bones, or heart, a beached jelly basically evaporates in the sun.
The first vending machine was an 1880s London device selling blank postcards.
Hero of Alexandria built a coin-operated holy-water dispenser in the 1st century AD — vending machines are ancient technology.