Zero was invented independently in multiple places, including India and Mesoamerica. It was not a concept in many cultures at first; for example, zero is not part of Roman numerals.

Zero is the only real number that is neither positive nor negative.

The number 1 is not considered a prime number.

The number 2 is the only even prime number.

Eleven is the smallest two digit prime number.

A googol is 1 followed by 100 zeros. The website Google draws its name from this. A googolplex is 1 followed by a googol zeros, a number so vast it cannot be written out within the observable universe.

The number 4 is the only number with the same quantity of letters as its value.

A circle has the largest area of any shape with the same perimeter.

A triangle is the only shape that is always rigid; it cannot be deformed without altering its side lengths.

A sphere has the smallest surface area for a given volume.

The number of faces on a cube (6) equals the sum of opposite sides on a die (which is always 7).

A tesseract is a four dimensional cube.

Pi (π) never ends or repeats, and more than 62 trillion digits have been computed.

The ancient Egyptians approximated π as 3.16049, long before the modern approximation of 3.14.

Honeybees are natural mathematical engineers; they build hexagonal cells because this shape uses the least wax for the most storage space.

A triangle will always have interior angles totaling 180 degrees, unless it is on a curved surface such as a sphere.

Sunflowers follow the Fibonacci sequence in their seed spirals.

The number of petals on many flowers (3, 5, 8, 13) are Fibonacci numbers.

Snowflakes almost always have six fold symmetry.

The human ear naturally detects octaves, which represent powers of 2 in frequency.

The word “hundred” comes from the Old Norse word hundrath, which meant 120, not 100.

Forty is the only number whose letters are in alphabetical order.

One is the only number with its letters in reverse alphabetical order.

A jiffy is an actual unit of time; in computing, it is 1/100th of a second.

The equals symbol (=) was invented in 1557 because the writer was tired of repeating “is equal to.”

The plus symbol (+) is more than 600 years old.

The ancient Babylonians used a base 60 system, which is why we have 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour.

The Mayans used a base 20 system and independently invented zero.

Ancient Egyptians performed multiplication by using a doubling method, similar to binary operations today.

The earliest known mathematical texts are more than 4,000 years old.

The ancient Greeks classified all numbers as odd, even, or perfect.

Binary code, using 0s and 1s, is the foundation of all modern computers.

Sudoku puzzles are based entirely on Latin squares, a concept from 1782. They were an American invention that later became popular in Japan.

Randomness is extremely difficult for computers to generate; they can only simulate it.