Egg Fun Facts

In 2012, a hen in Sri Lanka gave birth to a live chick without laying an egg first. The egg had hatched inside the mother's body. Veterinarians confirmed the chick was healthy.

Source: BBC News, March 2012

Double-yolk eggs occur in about 1 in every 1,000 eggs. They're most common in young hens whose reproductive systems haven't fully synchronized yet.

Source: University of Illinois Extension

There's a superstition in parts of England that if you eat an egg and don't crush the shell afterward, a witch will use it as a boat.

Source: A Dictionary of English Folklore (Oxford University Press)

In the 17th century, 'egg flips' — drinks made from beaten eggs, sugar, and ale or spirits — were popular in English taverns. The modern eggnog descends from this tradition.

Source: The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink

Some chickens lay eggs with wrinkled, bumpy, or oddly textured shells. These 'body-checked' eggs are safe to eat — the bumps are just extra calcium deposits.

Source: Poultry Science Association

Astronauts on the International Space Station eat freeze-dried scrambled eggs reconstituted with hot water. NASA has been perfecting space eggs since the Gemini program in the 1960s.

Source: NASA Johnson Space Center — Space Food Systems Laboratory

In 2008, a British supermarket sold an egg with a perfectly round shape (no pointed end). The odds were estimated at 1 in a billion.

Source: The Daily Telegraph, 2008

The 'egg drop' — the physics challenge where you engineer protection for an egg dropped from a height — has been a standard STEM education exercise since the 1950s.

Source: National Science Teaching Association

The Araucana chicken breed lays naturally blue eggs. The color comes from a pigment called oocyanin that permeates the entire shell — not just the surface.

Source: Poultry Science, 2013

The word 'oeuf' (French for egg) gave us the culinary term 'eggs en cocotte,' but the tennis term 'love' (meaning zero) also likely derives from 'l'oeuf' — because zero looks like an egg.

Source: Oxford English Dictionary (disputed etymology)

Egg-shaped objects have been found in ancient Roman tombs, placed there as symbols of rebirth and the afterlife.

Source: Cambridge Archaeological Journal