A quick script to query WolfamAlpha for planet diameters to see if all the planets could really fit between the earth and the moon. Yes this is ugly code and it is overdoing it. See https://gist.github.com/4052828 for my inspiration.

factcheck1.py

import xmltodict
import urllib2


PLANETS = ["mercury", "venus", "earth", "mars", "jupiter", "saturn", "uranus", "neptune", "pluto"]
WA_KEY = "GETYOUR-OWNAPIKEY"

def query(q, key=WA_KEY):
    return urllib2.urlopen('http://api.wolframalpha.com/v2/query?appid=%s&input=%s&format=plaintext' % (key,urllib2.quote(q))).read()

def returnfloat(res):
    return float(res["queryresult"]["pod"][1]["subpod"]["plaintext"].split(' ')[0]) # <-- this is very liable to break!

def planetdiam(mes="diameter", planets=PLANETS):
    res = {planet: xmltodict.parse(query("%s of %s" % (mes, planet))) for planet in planets}
    resint = {planet: returnfloat(i) for planet, i in res.items()}
    return resint

def distbetween():
    res = xmltodict.parse(query("distance  between earth and moon"))
    return returnfloat(res) 


if __name__ == "__main__":
    planetdist = {}
    planetdist = planetdiam()
    earthmoondist = distbetween()
    totaldist = 0.0

    for planet,dist in planetdist.items():
        totaldist += dist

    print(totaldist / earthmoondist) * 100 
    # returns ~98.05%