Article: DID YOU KNOW... 10 per cent of your pillow is dead skin and mites? 100 lightning bolts hit the ground every second? why each of us has 33,554,432 ancestors?

Byline: BILL BRYSON

WHEN best-selling author BILL BRYSON realised he knew nothing about science, he did something about it.

'I didn't know a quark from a quasar,' he said. So he set out to find out the answers to these and other questions - and make them interesting to other non-boffins.

His fascinating, and occasionally hilarious, findings are published in his new book, A Short History Of Nearly Everything.

Here, the Mail presents a selection of Bryson's amazing facts relating to life, the universe and (nearly) everything.

UP TO 1,800 thunderstorms are going on in the world at any moment. If you are struck by lightning, your ...

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