🗄 The Library Front Desk
Welcome in, friend. Wipe your feet — the facts stay clean around here.
This is the front desk of the Frank's Facts Fact Library: seven shelves, hundreds of entries, every single one checked by Frank before it got filed. Some libraries make you whisper. This one encourages you to run to the next room shouting "did you know a wombat's droppings are cube-shaped?" — because they are, and somebody in your household deserves to know it.
There is no card catalog, no late fees, and no shushing. Pick a shelf below and start reading. If you'd rather have the facts brought to your door, that's what Frank's Five is for — five beauties, every Friday, free.
📚 The Seven Shelves
| Shelf | A free sample, on the house |
|---|---|
| 🐙 Animal Facts | Wombats produce cube-shaped droppings — the only animal known to do it. |
| ⚗️ Science Facts | The Eiffel Tower grows about 15 centimeters taller every summer, because heat expands the iron. |
| 🚀 Space Facts | A single day on Venus lasts longer than a whole Venusian year. |
| 🏛 History Facts | Oxford University was teaching students centuries before the Aztec Empire was founded. |
| 🥫 Food Facts | Honey found in ancient Egyptian tombs was still perfectly edible after some 3,000 years. |
| 🔤 Word Facts | The dot over a lowercase "i" or "j" has an official name: the tittle. |
| 🔢 Number Facts | "Forty" is the only number in English spelled with its letters in alphabetical order. |
- Two independent sources, minimum. If Frank can't find it twice in respectable places, it waits in the drawer.
- No "my cousin swears it happened." Frank's cousin is a lovely man, but he is not a citation.
- Numbers get double-checked. When the precise figure is fuzzy, Frank says "about" and sleeps soundly.
- Famous phonies get evicted. Goldfish memory, the Great Wall from space — they've been marched over to Myths Debunked for sentencing.
🗃 Recently Filed — Fresh From the Cart
The returns cart by the desk always holds the latest arrivals. Here's what Frank shelved this week:
- FACT #11 Sharks are older than trees. Sharks have been swimming the oceans for roughly 450 million years; the earliest known trees appeared tens of millions of years later. (filed under Animal Facts)
- FACT #110 Bananas are very slightly radioactive, thanks to the natural potassium they contain. You'd need an absurd number of bananas for it to matter, so enjoy your breakfast. (filed under Science Facts)
- FACT #205 Saturn is less dense than water — so in principle, the whole planet would float in a big enough bathtub. (filed under Space Facts)
- NEW ARRIVAL Cleopatra lived closer in time to the Moon landing than to the building of the Great Pyramid of Giza. The pyramid was already more than two thousand years old when she was born. (headed for History Facts)
- NEW ARRIVAL Peanuts aren't nuts at all — botanically speaking they're legumes, in the same family as peas and beans. (headed for Food Facts)
- NEW ARRIVAL The word "astronaut" comes from Greek roots meaning "star sailor." The Russians say "cosmonaut" — "sailor of the universe." (headed for Word Facts)
- NEW ARRIVAL A billion seconds is more than 31 years. A million seconds, by contrast, is under twelve days — a handy way to feel the difference between the two. (headed for Number Facts)
Still deciding where to start? The house recommendation is the Animal Facts shelf — it wins the Poll of the Week more weeks than not. And when you've read your fill, try your luck on the Trivia Quiz.
The library never closes. Frank just dims the lights a little after ten. ★