100 Fascinating Facts About Earth [Free Fact Cards]

Today we’re going to spin like the Earth and roll into some fun facts about Earth. We live in a really special place, and it’s the only world we know that has things like fluffy dogs, towering trees, and, of course, ice cream! So, let’s put on our adventure hats and zoom around the Earth to see what makes it so cool with these facts about Earth.

Did you know that Earth is like a giant magnet? That’s right! It has a North Pole and a South Pole, which is why compasses work, pointing us in the right direction when we’re on an adventure. Not only does the magnetic pole allow a compass to work, but Earth’s magnetic field also helps protect us from space stuff, like solar storms, which are like big gusts of wind but from the Sun!

Did you know that Earth has layers? If you could cut the Earth like an apple, you’d see it has different parts inside. There’s a super hot core in the middle, a squishy mantle all around that, and a hard shell called the crust, which is where we live. Did you know that doesn’t stand still—the Earth’s crust is made of big pieces that move super slowly, like turtles on a race!

Earth also has seasons based on where it is in its journey around the sun. Earth gives us spring flowers, summer beaches, fall leaves, and winter snowmen. It’s always changing, giving us new things to see and do.

Isn’t Earth amazing? It’s not just our home; it’s a floating science lab with oceans to explore, mountains to climb, and skies to gaze at. Let’s keep our eyes wide open as we discover more about our wonderful world. Ready for the adventure? Let’s explore facts about Earth.

Don’t forget to grab your free Earth fact cards below! 

Are you collecting all our fact cards? Be sure to grab our Facts About Red Wolves and our Facts About Lightning.

Best Facts About Earth

1. The oldest trees in the world are 4,600 years old and grow in America.
2. Earth is part of the Milky Way galaxy, containing more than 200 billion stars!
3. 200,000 people are moving away from cities every day because they can no longer support them.
4. If we were to start recycling all newspapers, we could save an average of 250 million trees every year.
5. Modern glass bottles can take more than 4000 years to decompose, but they can easily be recycled.

6. About 90 percent of the Earth’s freshwater is locked in the polar ice sheets of Antarctica.
7. Around 5 million tons of the oil produced yearly ends up in the ocean each year.
8. Using an automatic dishwasher rather than doing the dishes by hand can use an average of six gallons less hot water per cycle, adding up to over 2,000 gallons of hot water a year.
9. The first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970.
10. 27,000 trees are cut down every day for toilet paper.

11. One in four mammals are facing extinction.
12. 40% of all the water sold in the world as bottled water is actually tap water.
13. For 2,000 years, humans believed that the Earth was the center of the universe. Today, we know that the sun is in the center and the planets, including Earth, orbit around it.
14. We throw away enough wood and paper every year would be enough to heat 50 million homes for 20 years.
15. Between 50 and 100 species of plants and animals go extinct every single day because their habitats are destroyed by humans, often for farming.

16. The word Earth is at least 1,000 years old. It originates from Old English and German words meaning ground.
17. The Earth’s core is as hot as the Sun’s surface and is made of iron. It’s 4,300 miles across!
18. In 2012, the hole in the ozone layer was smaller than it has ever been in the last 10 years.
19. Using renewable energy sources can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 20,000 pounds annually. That also means 70 pound less sulfur will be emitted into our atmosphere annually, too.
20. Americans alone use 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour and the vast majority of these are thrown away.

21. The outer layer of the Earth is the crust (where we live) and is 19 miles thick.
22. We have so much water on the Earth’s surface that it’s often called the “blue planet” or the “ocean planet.”
23. The oldest surviving world map is the Babylonian World Map, which dates back to the 6th century BCE. The clay tablet contains a labeled depiction of the known world, centered around the Euphrates River. It’s currently housed in the British Museum.
24. An average of 100 acres’ worth of rainforests are being cut down every minute.
25. The tilt of the Earth is what creates the four seasons — spring, summer, fall, and winter.

26. On average, 50,000 species living in our tropical rainforests become extinct yearly, even those we have not yet discovered.
27. 80% of all the forests in the world that were there after the departure of the last ice age are now gone, mainly because of the logging industry and our need for more arable land.
28. Earth’s moon is about 239,000 miles away. The first humans landed on the moon in 1969. Their names were Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins.
29. Earth may be the fifth largest planet in our solar system, but it’s the largest terrestrial planet. Terrestrial planets are planets that are made up of rocks or metals with a hard surface.
30. 40% of our waterways are dangerous to drink from because of the toxins and chemicals that have been spilled in them.

31. There are thousands of man-made satellites in space, but Earth has just one natural satellite — the moon.
32. Most families, it is though, throw away around 88 pounds of plastic annually.
33. We only use 11% of the Earth’s surface to grow food.
34. The Greek name for Earth was Gaia. It means “Mother Earth.”
35. 75% of every vehicle is actually recyclable.

36. Earth looks like a ball shape or sphere, but it actually isn’t perfectly round. Our home planet bulges slightly around the equator
37. The Earth is tilted 23.4 degrees on its “axis” which is an imaginary straight line through the middle of the planet.
38. Research suggests that the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old. Scientists at the National Center for Science Education estimated this approximate age by dating rocks and meteorites.
39. The population of people on Earth has grown more in the last 50 years than in the last 4 million.
40. The coldest place on Earth is Antarctica where temperatures can get as low as -100 degrees Fahrenheit!

41. 78% of our marine mammals are threatened with extinction because of accidental deaths caused by getting caught in nets meant for catching fish, for instance.
42. The billions of used batteries that are thrown away in America alone constitute to 88% of the mercury and 54% of the cadmium in the landfills today.
43. Only 1% of all the water on our Earth is drinkable. The rest is ocean water or is frozen in the Arctic.
44. The Earth is made up of three layers, the core (the center), mantle, and crust (the top layer).
45. Paper can actually only be recycled six times.

46. Earth is the only planet that is not named after a Greek or Roman god.
47. 90% of all rubbish in the world’s oceans is plastic which can end up killing or disfiguring animals and plants.
48. Humans on Earth are 93 million miles away from the Sun which means it takes 8 minutes and 19 seconds for sunlight to reach us.
49. Seventy-one percent of the surface of the Earth is covered by water. That means only 29 percent is land.
50. Americans use one million gallons of oil every couple of minutes.

51. Asia is the largest continent on Earth stretching 6,800 miles (11,000 km). That’s about nine-tenths as long as the diameter of Earth.
52. Americans throw away, rather than recycle, an entire commercial fleet of airplanes’ worth of aluminum every three months.
53. Earth’s largest tree is located in Sequoia National Park in California. It’s 2,000 years old and 52,500 feet in volume.
54. Here is a ‘garbage patch’ in the Pacific Ocean that is just a twisting and turning vortex of trash and waste. Its size is twice that of continental America and it thought to contain nearly 100 million tons of garbage.
55. Just one supermarket can throw away over 60 million paper bags each year. Many of these will end up in the world’s oceans.

56. We gain 77 million people yearly, so resources are getting very stretched.
57. 17 trees, 4,100 kilowatts of energy, 2 barrels of oil and 3.2 cubic yards of waste space can be saved by recycling a ton of paper.
58. Approximately 6,000 lightning strikes happen on Earth every minute!
59. The Earth spins on its axis at 1,000 miles per hour. That’s 11 times as fast as a fastball thrown by a Major League Baseball pitcher.
60. Geology means the study of Earth’s physical structure and substances. Geologists (people who study geology) study the physical history of the Earth including rocks and volcanoes.

61. It takes about eight minutes for light from the sun to reach us on Earth.
62. Every day, there are approximately 27 oil spills somewhere in the world.
63. The Stromboli Volcano in Italy is the most active in the world. It’s been erupting non-stop for more than 2,000 years!
64. Both the Earth and the moon experience earthquakes. The moon’s aren’t as powerful as those down here on our home planet, but they’re caused by the tidal connection with the Earth.
65. Some species of fish have been reduced to just one tenth of their original population because fishing has gotten out of control.

66. The Earth’s longest mountain range is underwater! It is 50,000 miles long and is called the Atlantic Mid-Ocean Ridge System
67. Aluminum can be recycled endlessly, so there is no excuse to throw your cans away!
68. It is estimated that only 10% of every landfill can be cleaned up.
69. Every year we lose 50 million acres of rainforest – that’s an area the size of England, Wales and Scotland all together.
70. The snowiest place in the world is Aomori City, Japan with an average of 312 inches of snow per year.

71. It is estimated that 84% of all household waste could be recycled rather than thrown in landfills and left to take hundreds, if not thousands of years to decompose.
72. If we do recycle just one glass bottle, we save enough energy to light a normal light bulb for around four hours.
73. It takes the Earth 365 days to complete one entire orbit around the sun. We call this orbit a year.
74. Earth is one astronomical unit away from the sun. That’s not some great coincidence—historically, an astronomical unit was just the average distance from the Earth to the sun. It gave scientists a shorthand for communicating distances. New York to California is about .00003 astronomical units.
75. The Earth’s diameter (the distance through the middle) is 7,917.5 miles (12,800 km). That’s about the length of 116,150 football fields.

76. The mantle, or middle layer of the Earth that surrounds the core, is 1,800 miles thick. That’s about half as long as the Amazon River.
77. Disposing of just one gallon of motor oil improperly can end up contaminating up to 2 million gallons of water.
78. Earth is in the Milky Way galaxy, the third planet from the sun in our solar system.
79. Earth is the only planet in our solar system that is known to support life. Its distance from the Sun means it’s not too hot or cold for living things to survive.
80. Every year we dump 14 billion pounds of trash into the ocean rather than either recycling it or disposing of it properly in designated landfills.

81. Less than 4% of America’s forests are left after being cut down for building materials and fuel.
82. The Earth’s largest living structures are coral reefs. They contain thousands of species per unit including clownfish, anemones, sea urchins, and sea turtles.
83. Plastic bags and other plastic products that are thrown into the ocean will kill on average 1 million sea creatures each year.
84. We use approximately 5 billion aluminum cans each and every year.
85. The Earth travels around the sun at 67,000 miles per hour! Comparatively, the average speed of a racecar is 200 miles per hour. Our Earth is moving FAST!

86. The moon’s gravitational pull is what creates high and low tides in the oceans down here on Earth.
87. American businesses alone generate enough paper daily to encircle the globe 20 times.
88. Over 200 of the world landfills were completely full in 1995. We are really starting to run out of space to dump all our rubbish, most of which can simply be recycled!
89. The Earth is not only tilted on its imaginary axis, but it also spins. We have daytime and nighttime because of its rotation.
90. The Earth’s atmosphere is mostly made up of oxygen and nitrogen. This allows us to breathe.

91. Only 3 percent of the Earth’s water is fresh! The rest — 97 percent — is salt water.
92. The Sahara is Earth’s hottest desert in Africa. The average temperature is 86 degrees Fahrenheit, but during the hottest months, temperatures can exceed 122 degrees Fahrenheit. The hottest temperature recorded was 136 degrees Fahrenheit.
93. The North Pole is located in the middle of the Arctic Ocean on drifting ice. That means it’s difficult for scientists to study, and it also means it moves.
94. The theory of plate tectonics suggests that the Earth’s crust is made up of massive rock plates. When these plates move and shift, they can cause mountains to form. They also cause earthquakes.
95. In the fall, leaves actually constitute 75% of all our solid waste.

96. About 250 million years ago, the continents were all connected in a massive land mass called Pangea.
97. Earth is home to 8.7 million different species of plants and animals!
98. The lowest point on Earth is the Dead Sea located between Jordan and Israel. It’s 1,400 feet below sea level.
99. The oldest existing maps of Earth are thousands of years old. The oldest surviving maps are thousands of years old; there’s thought to be a map of the stars found in the Lascaux caves of France that dates back to 14,500 BCE.
100. Recycling just one aluminum can save enough energy to run a television for three hours.

Do you have even more interesting facts about Earth? Share them with us in the comments! Also, don’t forget to grab your free moon fact cards to add to your collection!