Facts You Probably don’t Need

• The Amazon River is over 4,000 miles long and doesn’t have any bridges that cross it.

• In 2010, Nicholas Cage purchased a twin plot in a New Orleans cemetery and built a nine-foot-tall pyramidal tomb inscribed with the Latin phrase “Omni Ab Uno” (Everything From One).

•  A million seconds is 11.5 days. A billion seconds is 31.7 years.

• Tom Hanks, who played Fred Rogers in the 2019 biopic “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” found out just before the release of the movie that he and Rogers are related. The two share a great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, making them sixth cousins.

• A sound must increase by 10db to be perceived as “twice as loud.”

• The word “astronaut” actually predates the real-life profession. It was first used in 1880 to refer to a spaceship, not a person, in Percy Greg’s sci-fi novel “Across the Zodiac.”

• Umbilicanimism is the philosophical practice of staring at your own naval.

Facts by Sean McVeigh, factologist.