94 Pretty Great Facts About the Africa You Never Knew

Before the Columbian Exchange, there were no oranges in Florida, no bananas in Ecuador, no potatoes in Ireland, no coffee in Colombia, no pineapples in Hawaii, no rubber trees in Africa, no chili peppers in Thailand, no tomatoes in Italy, and no chocolate in Switzerland.

27. Africa is the only continent that is in all four hemispheres. (Northern, Southern, Western, Eastern)

28. The Prawns in the movie District 9 are not called that because of shrimp but are in reference to the Parktown prawn which is a cricket native to South Africa.

29. There is a frog from Africa, Trichobatrachus robustus, that breaks a bone in its toe pad, pushes the sharp broken bone through its skin, and tries to shank you with it if it feels threatened.

30. Roger Federer's coach, Peter Carter, was killed in a car crash in South Africa in 2002. Every year since 2005, Federer arranges for Carter's parents to fly out of Adelaide to attend the Australian Open in Melbourne, where they sit in his box, stay at his hotel, and attend the celebrations.

In 1962, the CIA tipped off South Africa's intelligence service about the location of Nelson Mandela, leading to his arrest that put him in jail for 27 years

32. In Algeria, the largest country in Africa and 35th in world population, women make up 70% of the country's lawyers and 60% of its judges, as well as dominating the field of medicine. Increasingly, women are contributing more to household income than men. 60% of university students are women.

33. Amazon and Congo were likely one river before Africa and S. America drifted apart.

34. During the peak of Ebola news in 2014 people started to avoid Liberia airport in Costa Rica thinking that it was the country in Africa.

35. During Apartheid in South Africa, Glasgow renamed the street which at the time was the address of the South African Consulate from St George's Place to Nelson Mandela Place. Consular officials would be forced to look at his name when reading and addressing postal correspondence.

Norway owns an uninhabited frozen island located halfway between Africa and Antarctica.

37. There is a fictional island in the South Atlantic, off the west coast of Africa, at lat/long 0,0, called 'Null Island'. Although it doesn't exist in reality, it serves as an error trap for map systems. Map enthusiasts have given the island its own history, geography and even flag.

38. Scientists from South Africa discovered a formula that calculates how likely a frog is to eat another frog. "For every one-millimeter increase in body size, a frog is 2.8 percent more likely to eat other frogs."

39. In 2007, two teams of armed intruders stormed their way into a nuclear plant used to store weapons-grade uranium from South Africa's decommissioned arsenal. The coordinated assault was thwarted by an off-duty firefighter, a plant employee, and their dog.

40. Camels originated in the present-day United States and only later spread to Asia and North Africa

King Leopold II of Belgium was responsible for an estimated 10 million deaths in the Congo

42. In World War 2, Germans tank drivers in Africa would drive tanks over camel poop for luck. Allies responded by planting land mines disguised as camel dung. Germans got wind of this and began riding over dung that was already overrun with tank tracks. In turn, Allies made mines looking like overrun dung

43. Google donated 5 million dollars to a program that uses drones to track poachers in Africa and Asia.

44. Trey Parker, co-creator of South Park, threatened to pull a Dave Chappelle by showing Comedy Central's head of network a plane ticket to Africa because one of their episodes were censored against their will

45. 50 Cent has set a goal of feeding 1 billion people in Africa.

In 1959, Apartheid South Africa, the words "European" and "Non-European" were replaced by "Whites" and "Non-Whites" at Johannesburg Airport, because Americans tended to use the Non-European doors in order to distinguish themselves from actual Europeans.

47. Kenyan javelin thrower Julius Yego, who won Olympic silver medal in Rio Olympics 2016. He learned how to throw javelin properly by watching YouTube videos.

48. There is a tree in Africa that is called "Bloodwood trees" because its sap is blood red.

49. Less than 4% of the slaves sent from Africa to the New World went to the United States.

50. The black-footed cat, Africa's smallest feline predator, has been known to kill sheep by hanging on to their throats until they have bitten through the jugular. Their maximum size is roughly 5 lbs.