AWESOME FACTS ABOUT EVERYTHING CLXXVII

1. "Tsunami" is Japanese for "harbor wave." 

2. The Scandinavian name "Helga" means "blessed."

3.You can request a new Social Security number on religious grounds if it ends in 666. 

4. South Dakota is the only U.S. state that has no letters in common with its capital city, Pierre. 

5. Seattle, Washington is known as the Emerald City because of its year-round lush, green coniferous trees.

6. The Mosquito Coast is a remote, 225-mile long, 40-mile wide region along the eastern Caribbean coasts of Honduras and Nicaragua. "Mosquito" is a corruption of the name of the indigenous Miskito people, for whom the area is named.

7. Iceland was historically one of the only places on Earth without mosquitos because the rapid freezing and thawing of ponds in spring and autumn killed the larvae before they could mature. However, in October, 2025, mosquitos were discovered in Iceland for the first time - a result of climate change and globalization, according to scientists. Antarctica is now the only place on Earth without mosquitos.

8. A white dwarf is a star (like our sun) that has exhausted its nuclear fuel and its gravity causes it to collapse in on itself. The mass of the star is now contained in a volume roughly  the size of the earth. It is so dense that a single teaspoon of white dwarf material would weigh 5 to 15 tons on Earth. Our sun, which is now about 4.6 billion years old, will transition into a white dwarf in approximately 7 to 8 billion years. 

9. An acre is 43, 560 square feet. But why this exact amount? Historically, the acre was defined as the amount of land a yoke of oxen could plow in a single day. An acre is approximately the size of 90% of a standard American football field, without the end zones.

10. Lucy Webb Hayes served as the 19th First Lady of the United States, as the wife of President Rutherford B. Hayes, from 1877-1881. She was a staunch supporter of the temperance movement - opposed to alcohol - and refused to serve it in the White House - a very controversial decision that garnered her the nickname Lemonade Lucy.