World Facts You'll Ever Hear

Muhammad is thought to be the most popular name in the world.

Step aside John, James, Mary, and Jane—the most popular name in the world is believed to be Muhammad. According to The Independent, an estimated 150 million men and boys around the world share this name. The popularity is thanks to a Muslim tradition of naming every first-born son after the Islamic prophet.

Colombia’s brightest rainbow is in its river

Normally you’d find rainbows in the sky, but the Caño Cristales, also known as the “River of Five Colours”, beams brighter than any rainbow in the sky.

Located in Colombia’s Serranía de la Macarena National Natural Park, this stunning river owes its multi-coloured beauty to the Macarenia Clavigera, a plant that lives in the riverbed. It’s best to visit between May to November when the river weeds blossom in yellow, blue, green and red. They get brighter hues during this time as the waters are shallower, allowing more sunlight to reach the plants.

It snows in the Sahara Desert

Deserts are known to have very low precipitation. And if rainfall is rare, wouldn’t snowfall be even rarer? Well, the impossible happened in 2018 and the Sahara Desert was covered in a blanket of white snow. However, the snow only lasted for a day before melting under the hot sun.

The first recorded snowfall was in 1979 — a snowstorm that lasted half an hour. Although temperatures drop to freezing in the night, the lack of moisture makes it almost impossible to produce any snow. But who knows, you might be lucky enough to see it on your next trip to the Sahara!

Indonesia is home to some of the shortest people in the world.

Though there are short people and tall people everywhere, Indonesia is home to some of the shortest people in the world, according to data compiled from various global sources by the Telegraph in 2017.

When taking both genders into account, the average adult is around 5 feet, 1.8 inches. People in Bolivia don't tend to be much taller, with an average adult height of 5 feet, 2.4 inches. The tallest people among us live in the Netherlands, where the average adult height is 6 feet.

The world's most densely populated island is the size of two soccer fields.

Santa Cruz del Islote in the Archipelago of San Bernardo off the coast of Colombia may only be about the size of two soccer fields (two acres), but the artificial island has four main streets and 10 neighborhoods. Five hundred people live on the island in around 155 houses. With so many people packed into such a small space, it's the most densely populated island in the world, according to The Guardian.

There are fossilized plants in Greenland under 1.4 km of ice.

Around 80 percent of Greenland is covered by the Greenland Ice Sheet, which Britannica explains is the "largest and possibly the only relic of the Pleistocene glaciations in the Northern Hemisphere." But has it always been so icy? Well, at the bottom of a 1.4 km core sample, which was taken in 1966 at Camp Century during the Cold War, researchers found "well-preserved fossil plants and biomolecules," which means that the massive sheet melted and reformed at least once in the last million years. Brrrrr!

The fastest gust of wind ever recorded on Earth was 253 miles per hour.

Hang on to your hats because this isn't your average wind storm. In 1996, a tropical cyclone named Olivia hit off the coast of Barrow Island, Australia with such a force that it broke an incredible record. According to The Weather Channel, "Olivia's eyewall produced five extreme three-second wind gusts, the peak of which was a 253 mph gust," which blew past the previous wind record of 231 mph set in Mount Washington, New Hampshire back in 1934.

Glaciers and ice sheets hold about 69 percent of the world's freshwater.

Just over 96% of the total amount of the world's water is held in its oceans, according to Water in Crisis: A Guide to the World's Fresh Water Resources via the United States Geological Survey (USGS). However, that's primarily saltwater. To find the bulk of the world's freshwater you need to trek to the poles, as 68.7% of it is encased in ice caps, permanent snow, and glaciers. For more facts sent right to your inbox, sign up for our daily newsletter.