Things I learned lately 1 Dec

• The polka dot could have just as easily been called the jive dot, the disco dot, the watusi dot, or the hula dot. It was named the polka dot because the polka was very popular at the time. Seriously.
• The ISS has now been orbiting earth for 20 years.
• There are nearly four times as many jihadist militants today than on 9/11.
• Thanks to overwhelming poaching of elephant tusks, natural selection seems to be favouring elephants with shorter tusks.
• The Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway (pictured) is designed to protect a variety of plant seeds in case of a global catastrophe. Each sample pack contains 500 seeds and there are 983,524 individual samples stored there. The vault is inside a mountain and was designed to withstand the melting of the polar ice caps.
• Compared to the Grand Canyon on Earth, Valles Marineris on Mars is nearly five times deeper, about four times longer, and 20 times wider.
• Olympus Mons (on Mars) is more than twice as high as Hawaii's Mauna Loa, the tallest mountain on Earth from top to bottom.
• A South Sudanese family auctioned off their 16-year-old daughter to marry the highest bidder on Facebook, which didn't notice until 2 weeks later.