HISTORICAL ARCHIVE
Every claim from this day’s challenge, with its verdict, explanation and sources.
A lightning bolt heats the air to about five times hotter than the Sun's surface.
Air resists the electric current so strongly that a lightning channel can reach about 50,000 °F (roughly 27,700 °C). That sudden heating makes the air expand explosively — which is the thunder you hear.
A flamingo stands on one leg using almost no muscle effort.
Their leg joints lock passively, stabilizing the pose — even deceased birds balance one-legged in lab tests.
Organic crops are grown entirely without the use of pesticides.
Organic farming relies heavily on pesticides; they just have to be derived from natural sources rather than synthesized chemically. Natural does not always mean safer or chemical-free.
A group of flamingos is called a "flamboyance."
It's one of the more colorful collective nouns in English. Flamingos are highly social and gather in flocks of thousands, so the word gets plenty of use.
The outward push you feel in a turning car does not exist as a real force.
"Centrifugal force" is classed as fictitious: it is your inertia — your body trying to continue straight while the vehicle turns beneath you.
Hummingbirds migrate by riding on the backs of geese.
Hummingbirds migrate under their own power — the ruby-throated hummingbird even crosses the Gulf of Mexico nonstop. They also travel on different schedules and routes than geese.
The Pacific Ocean is larger than all of Earth's land combined.
The Pacific covers more than 60 million sq mi (155 million km²) — more than all the continents combined — and holds almost twice the Atlantic's water.
Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone.
He received the key 1876 patent, but Elisha Gray filed a design the very same day, and Antonio Meucci had developed a voice-transmitting device years earlier. Who deserves credit is still debated.
Emperor Nero played the fiddle while Rome burned.
The fiddle didn't exist for over a thousand years after the fire of 64 CE. Nero was reportedly about 35 miles away in Antium when it started, and Tacitus says he rushed back and opened shelters for the homeless.