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If you do a little shopping at the Christmas Market in Nuremberg, Germany, you'll be taking part in a tradition that's hundreds of years in the making. The proof of that can be found in a small box that the Germanisches Nationalmuseum keeps safe. The simple treasure holds an inscription that reads: "Sent to Regina Susanna Harßdörfferin by Miss Susanna Eleonora Erbsin (or Elbsin) on the occasion of the Christmas Market of 1628.

Plenty of communities hold Santa Claus parades, and each one is special in its own way. However, the parade that happens each year in Peoria, Illinois, is the oldest parade of its kind in the U.S. It's taken place every holiday season since 1888—that's well over 100 years of festive fun

In the 1823 poem, A Visit from Saint Nicholas, which originally introduced the world to Santa's reindeer, two of the flying creatures had slightly different names, according to Syracuse.com. Donner and Blitzen were instead Dunder and Blixem, which is a Dutch way to refer to "thunder and lightning.

Back in 1983, a young Peter Billingsley starred in A Christmas Story as Ralphie, a typical suburban kid who celebrates a holiday filled with hilarious ups and downs with his family. In 2003, Billingsley then popped up in another seasonal classic, Elf, as Ming Ming the toy-making supervisor in Santa's workshop. He's also appeared in other festive and non-festive films, including Four Christmases, Iron Man, and Spider-Man: Far from Home.

In Scandinavian countries, the Yule goat figures into the Christmas decor of many homes. In Norse mythology, the two goats pulled Thor's flying chariot the same way reindeer do for Santa's sleigh. On top of that, there's also a festive tale that focuses on an invisible Yule goat that checks in on holiday prep before the big day. That's why, in 1966, the Gävle Goat was created in an effort to draw shoppers to the Swedish city where it resides. Standing 42.6 feet high and seven meters in length, it also weighs a whopping 3.6 tons

Dentistry goes all way back to when humans first had teeth…well not quite that long. However, one study found evidence of teeth being drilled in skulls that dates from 7,500 to 9,000 years ago. The holes were likely made using a prehistoric bow-drill. Could that be the work of the first dentist? Other biting research conducted by the University of Bologna, Italy on a 14,000-year-old skull found that "one rotten tooth in the jaw had been deliberately scoured and scraped with a tool," according to the BBC. That makes dentistry one of the oldest recorded professions and is definitely a reason to smile

Don't worry, your prized red roses aren't going to turn turquoise overnight, but an increase in UV radiation due to the ozone layer deteriorating over the past decades has caused flowers all over the globe to change.

Mount Everest may not have physically grown, having reached maturity a long time ago, however, the most recent measurement performed by surveyors representing China and Nepal has the mountain peak standing taller than we'd thought in the past. Previous readings have ranged from 29,002 feet above sea level in 1856 down to 20,029 in 1955, according to NPR. But after the long process of measuring the mountain with GPS devices, experts have now stated that Mount Everest stands at a whopping 29,031.69 feet, due to plate tectonics

Finding previously undiscovered organisms in the depths of the ocean may sound like something straight out of a sci-fi horror film, but a 2020 study of a deep-sea volcano near New Zealand, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, uncovered "over 90 putative bacterial and archaeal genomic families and nearly 300 previously unknown genera." Some research has linked hydrothermal vents, like deep-sea volcanoes, to the "origin of life." So are we looking at the early signs of future land-dwellers? We'll have to wait and see.

Fin whales are basically the Barry White of the ocean. The deep, bellowing songs that males use to attract mates are considered to be the loudest of all marine life and can be "heard up to 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) away," according to Scientific American. They can also be used to sonically map out the ocean floor thanks to the fact that the sound can reach depths of 2.5 kilometers (1.6 miles) under the water

Around 80 percent of Greenland is covered by the Greenland Ice Sheet, which Britannica explains is the "largest and possibly the only relic of the Pleistocene glaciations in the Northern Hemisphere." But has it always been so icy? Well, at the bottom of a 1.4 km core sample, which was taken in 1966 at Camp Century during the Cold War, researchers found "well-preserved fossil plants and biomolecules," which means that the massive sheet melted and reformed at least once in the last million years. Brrrrr!

If you're an avid rainbow gazer and want to get your fill of the beautiful phenomenon, look no further than the state of Hawaii. A study published by the American Meteorological Society in 2021 noted that the area's "mountains produce sharp gradients in clouds and rainfall, which are key to abundant rainbow sightings." Air pollution, pollen, and a large amount of cresting waves also help to put Hawaii at the top of the list when it comes to rainbow quantity and quality.