21 Now-You-Know Facts About This Giant Ball Of Lava And Ice We All Have To Share

Carl Sagan famously said "Look at that dot. That's here. That's home. Wait, no, that's a piece of dust on my laptop. Sorry, the cleaning crew just came through, but they just kind of spread the dust around..."

The point is: that mote of dust is packed full of wonders, and mankind has been trying to make sense of it forever. "Geography" may sound boring, but it's really just our desperate attempt to understand this flying ball of death we're stranded on. Here are some bonkers facts about this wild spinning rock and the ways we, as a species, have tried to make sense of it: