The CIA once built a cyborg cat spy.
Operation Acoustic Kitty wired a cat with a microphone and antenna; the project was dropped in 1967 without the cat ever being deployed. The famous story that it was run over by a taxi was, per the CIA, a joke.
HISTORICAL ARCHIVE
Sources · October 28, 2026
Every claim from this day’s challenge, with its verdict, explanation and sources.
Round 1
Humans share about half their genes with bananas.
By one NHGRI estimate, roughly half of our genes have a recognizable counterpart in bananas — but those genes aren't identical, and the actual DNA sequence we share is well below 1%.
Polar bears hunt penguins at the North Pole.
They never meet: polar bears live only around the Arctic, while wild penguins live almost entirely in the Southern Hemisphere — the northernmost, in the Galápagos, barely cross the equator.
Round 2
Sea stars have no blood.
Instead of blood, they pump seawater through a water vascular system to move nutrients around their bodies and power their tiny tube feet. They also have no brain.
Hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones are different kinds of storms.
They're the same weather phenomenon — a tropical cyclone — with different names depending on the ocean: hurricanes in the Atlantic and Northeast Pacific, typhoons in the Northwest Pacific, cyclones in the South Pacific and Indian Ocean.
Humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time.
Non-bird dinosaurs died out about 66 million years ago, and our species appeared only about 300,000 years ago. Tens of millions of years separate them.
Round 3
The entire human race could stand shoulder-to-shoulder in Rhode Island.
8 billion people at 3.5 sq ft each need ~1,000 sq mi; Rhode Island has 1,034.
The Hundred Years' War lasted 100 years.
It lasted 116 (1337–1453) — and it wasn't one continuous war, but a series of conflicts broken up by truces.
Turkey makes you sleepy because it is packed with tryptophan.
Turkey has no more tryptophan than chicken or cheese; the holiday coma comes from massive carbs, fat, and alcohol.