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No matter how epic your summer BBQ, it probably can't beat the longest one ever. Over the course of 80 hours (or 3.3 days), grillmaster Jan Greef of Columbus, Georgia, cooked up 1,000 hot dogs, 558 burgers, 526 boerewors (South African sausage), 104 pieces of chicken, and 200 pieces of corn. He set the record on Apr. 27, 2014, according to Guinness World Records.

If you notice yourself feeling more chipper in the warmer months, you're definitely not alone. For a 2011 study published in the journal Science, researchers looked at the tweets of some 2.4 million people around the world for two years. They found that when the change in daylight was positive (i.e. in the approach to the summer solstice), people posted significantly happier tweets than they did when the change in daylight was negative (i.e. in the approach to the winter solstice).

The world's largest ship, Royal Caribbean's Harmony of the Seas, is composed of 18 decks and is around 1,200 feet long. A football playing field is 100 yards, which is 300 feet, making the ship four times the size of the turf where your favorite team plays!

This phrase wasn't inspired by lethargic, overheated pups. The "dog" in question is Sirius the Dog Star, which rises in the sky during late July as a part of the Greater Dog constellation, according to National Geographic. To the Greeks and Romans, the "dog days" indicated the hottest time of the year, a period that was said to bring fever and other types of catastrophe.

That's more than 150 million (!) hot dogs, according to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council. And between Memorial Day and Labor Day, Americans consume a whopping 7 billion hot dogs, or 818 every second.

It's no secret that sunshine offers multiple health benefits, and many of them are mental. According to research from the University of Liege in Belgium (via The Independent), "human brains work better in summer." After having volunteers work on attention and memory tests at different times throughout the year, researchers discovered that "brain activity peaked in the summer on the attention task…" So if you have a thought-heavy task in mind, you might want to schedule it for July or August.

The fact that bears are able to hibernate through the winter is a wonder of nature. But what helps them to survive those cold, food-free months is that they pack on the pounds during the summer. Fortunately for us, Explore.com runs live-streams from Alaska's Katmai National Park, which allow viewers from all over the world to watch brown bears strolling around the river, feeding on salmon, wrestling with each other, and even frolicking in the water with their cubs. Keep an eye out for the bear who puts on the most weight, because they might be deemed the (staggeringly chubby) champion of Fat Bear Week.

Kids and fun-loving adults have been playing with Frisbees for years. But though the Wham-O toy company started producing Frisbees back in 1957, History.com notes that the "story of the Frisbee began in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where William Frisbie opened the Frisbie Pie Company in 1871." University students would play with the empty pie tins, which prompted Walter Frederick Morrison and Warren Franscioni to create the "Flying Saucer" in 1948. After many later incarnations, Frisbee is now an organized sport that can get rather competitive.

Summer brings to mind sunny days and sizzling temperatures. However, thunderstorms occur very frequently during the summer, especially in the afternoons and evenings. How Stuff Works explains that this is due to the fact that thunderstorms need both moisture and "rapidly rising warm air" in order to develop. Because of that, "it makes sense that they would occur more often" during the warmer summer months, "particularly in humid areas such as the southeastern United States."

Did you know that July is National Ice Cream Month? It's the perfect time to indulge in the sweet treat, though you'd need a huge appetite to master the biggest scoop ever, which weighed a belly-busting 3,010 pounds. Created by Kemps Dairy in Cedarburg, Wisconsin as part of their 100th anniversary, the scoop stood 5'6" high, stretched 6'2" wide, and was made of around 733 containers of ice cream. What flavor, you ask? Strawberry, which means that it was a pretty pink and looked as good as it surely tasted!

Swimming is a classic summer pastime that can be both invigorating and relaxing. However, there are some who take their underwater efforts to the extreme. Just take Budimir Šobat, for example. In March 2021, the Croatian freediver, who was 56 years old at the time, set a Guinness World Record after holding his breath for an incredible 24 minutes and 37.36 seconds. "While I am doing my maximum static apnea [a breath-holding technique], I have my eyes closed and all I am focused on is to try to hear my heartbeat," the diver said. "Once I heard it, I became calm and ready to fight the time."

During the spring, there are cherry blossom-viewing picnics in Japan. And in Argentina, it's tradition to picnic for Christmas. However, if you prefer to dine outside in the summer, then you'll be thrilled to find out that there's a picnic-related holiday in August, thanks to Australia. A tradition that's been around the Northern Territory "since at least the late 1800s," according to National Today, Picnic Day takes place on the first Monday of the month. (Granted, August isn't summer in Australia, but you can celebrate the holiday wherever you aare, if you like.)