Facts, Interesting, Odd, Strange

Interesting Facts

Glass takes one million years to decompose, which means it never wears out and can be recycled an infinite amount of times!

Gold is the only metal that doesn't rust, even if it's buried in the ground for thousands of years.

Your tongue is the only muscle in your body that is attached at only one end.

If you stop getting thirsty, you need to drink more water. When a human body is dehydrated, its thirst mechanism shuts off.

Zero is the only number that cannot be represented by Roman numerals.

Kites were used in the American Civil War to deliver letters and newspapers.

The song, Auld Lang Syne, is sung at the stroke of midnight in almost every English-speaking country in the world to bring in the new year.

Drinking water after eating reduces the acid in your mouth by 61 percent.

Peanut oil is used for cooking in submarines because it doesn't smoke unless it's heated above 450F.

The roar that we hear when we place a seashell next to our ear is not the ocean, but rather the sound of blood surging through the veins in the ear.

Nine out of every 10 living things live in the ocean.

The banana cannot reproduce itself. It can be propagated only by the hand of man.

Airports at higher altitudes-require a longer airstrip due to lower air density.

The University of Alaska spans four time zones.

The tooth is the only part of the human body that cannot heal itself.

In ancient Greece tossing an apple to a girl was a traditional proposal of marriage. Catching it meant she accepted.

Warner Communications paid 28 million for the copyright to the song Happy Birthday.

Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.

A comet's tail always points away from the sun.

The Swine Flu vaccine in 1976 caused more death and illness than the disease it was intended to prevent.

Caffeine increases the power of aspirin and other painkillers, that is why it is found in some medicines.

The military salute is a motion that evolved from medieval times, when knights in armor raised their visors to reveal their identity.

If you get into the bottom of a well or a tall chimney and look up, you can see stars, even in the middle of the day.

When a person dies, hearing is the last sense to go. The first sense lost is sight.

In ancient times strangers shook hands to show that they were unarmed.

Strawberries are the only fruits whose seeds grow on the outside.

Avocados have the highest calories of any fruit at 167 calories per hundred grams.

The moon-moves about two inches away from the Earth each year.

The Earth gets 100 tons heavier every day due to falling space dust.

Due to earth's gravity it is impossible for mountains to be higher than 15,000 meters.

Mickey Mouse is known as "Topolino" in Italy.

Soldiers do not march in step when going across bridges because they could set up a vibration which could be sufficient to knock the bridge down.

Everything weighs one percent less at the equator.

For every extra kilogram carried on a space flight, 530 kg of excess fuel are needed at lift-off.

The letter J does not appear anywhere on the periodic table of the elements.

Odd Facts

The world is a strange place, but you probably already know that. Yet even some things that you take for granted have bizarre backgrounds that you might not have known about.
Some of these 15 "out-there" facts will challenge how you think of time and space. Some are just flat-out weird. Regardless, they're things you should know to impress (or weird out) your friends.

1. While the Pyramids at Giza were being built, there were still woolly mammoths roaming around.
Granted, the mammoths that were around 4,000 years ago, during the Pyramids' construction, were a small, isolated population in Northern Siberia. The mammoth had already died out elsewhere in the world.

2. Speaking of Egypt, Cleopatra lived closer in time to the moon landing than to the construction of the Pyramids.
We tend to lump "ancient Egypt" into one period, but it actually spanned thousands of years. Cleopatra was the last ruler before Egypt was absorbed into the Roman Empire about 2,000 years ago. The pyramids were built about 2,500 years before that.

3. The Spanish national anthem, the "Marcha Real," has no lyrics.
Spain is one of only four countries whose anthems have no official lyrics. The others are Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and San Marino.

4. Honey doesn't spoil.
It can ferment, though, by absorbing moisture from the air, which gives us mead. If it's sealed properly, however, honey can keep for thousands of years. It's been used as a preservative for this reason — even for human bodies.

5. A small percentage of static on TV and radio is radiation left over from the Big Bang.
Called "cosmic background radiation," this is the remaining echo of the Big Bang, which happened about 14 billion years ago.

6. Wombats poo squares.
The wombat's waste comes out in this weird square shape. No one's sure how, but it's useful for marking territory, as it doesn't roll away.

7. Dead people can get goosebumps.
Goosebumps happen when muscles under the skin contract. When rigor mortis sets in (between 12 and 48 hours after death), all the muscles in a body stiffen, which can result in goosebumps.

8. Maryland's state sport (for individuals) is jousting.
Their official team sport is lacrosse. Jousting tournaments have been held in the state since the colonial period, and the Maryland State Jousting Championship has been held annually since 1950.

9. Your nostrils switch off.
When you breathe through your nose, one nostril will take in more air than the other. They'll also switch sides about every 15 minutes.

10. If you collected all the gold that's ever been mined in the world, you could melt it down into a 67-foot cube.
It's estimated that there's still as much as 52,000 tons of gold underground, and even more in the core of the Earth. We're likely not getting to the latter any time soon.

11. There are more possible iterations of a game of chess than there are atoms in the known universe.
Called the Shannon Number, it's estimated that there are about 10 to the 123rd power chess combinations, compared to 4 X 10 to the 81st power estimated atoms. Also, these chess pieces are from the 11th century, and they look as stumped as you do about this fact.

12. Writing was developed separately by many different cultures.
These include the Sumerians, Egyptians, Maya, Chinese, Polynesians, and various European cultures. Each culture came up with their own system for words, ideas, and sounds, all depicted visually. The earliest independent examples of writing come from the Indus Valley, Mesopotamia, and Egypt.

13. Giraffe dating involves pee.
A male giraffe will repeatedly headbutt a female in the bladder until she pees. He then tastes the urine to see if she's ovulating. We've all probably had worse dates.

14. It can take as long as 40,000 years for a photon to get from the sun's core to its surface.
It takes only 8 minutes for it to get from the sun's surface to the Earth.

15. The kakapo is endangered because it smells so good.
This flightless bird from New Zealand is critically endangered due to the introduction of predators by Polynesians and Europeans. Their pleasantly musty odor attracts these predators, and has resulted in their only being around 126 left in the world. Conservation efforts are currently underway.

Now you know about fragrant birds and 14-billion-year-old static. Has your world gotten a little richer? We hope so.

Obscure Facts

So You think you Know everything?

A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.
A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.
A crocodile cannot stick out its tongue.
A dragonfly has a life span of 24 hours.
A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.
A "jiffy" is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.

A snail can sleep for three years.
A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.
Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer.
All 50 states are listed across the top of the Lincoln Memorial on the back of the $5 bill.
Almonds are a member of the peach family.

An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
Babies are born without kneecaps. They don't appear until the child reaches 2 to 6 years of age.
Butterflies taste with their feet.
Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds. Dogs only have about 10.
"Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt".

February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have afull moon.
In the last 4,000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.
If the population of China walked past you, in single file, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction.
If you are an average American, in your whole life, you will spend an average of 6 months waiting at red lights.
It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.
Maine is the only state whose name is just one syllable.
No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, or purple.
On a Canadian two dollar bill, the flag flying over the Parliament building is an American flag.
Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.
Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.

Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.

"Stewardesses" is the longest word typed with only the left hand and "lollipop" with your right.
The average person's left hand does 56% of the typing.
The cruise liner, QE2, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.
The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.
The sentence: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" uses every letter of the alphabet.

The winter of 1932 was so cold that Niagara Falls froze almost completely solid.
Technically, there are 3 separate waterfalls that make up the Niagara Falls system. The American & Bridal Veil Falls are part of the U.S. System, while the Horseshoe Falls is on the Canadian side.
The American Falls has a lower water flow than the Horseshoe Falls, which causes less water to flow over the rock face of the Falls and allows for that water to freeze quickly. Since records have been kept, the American Falls has frozen a total of six times in 1883, 1896, 1904, 1909, 1936 and 1947, with the longest occurring in February of 1936.
Neither the river nor the falls ever freezes solid, however. The water continues to flow beneath the ice at all times, albeit reduced to a mere trickle on rare occasions when ice jams block the river above the falls.

The words 'racecar,' 'kayak' and 'level' are the same whether they are read left to right or right to left (palindromes).
There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.
There are more chickens than people in the world.

There are only four words in the English language which end in "dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous
There are two words in the English language that have all five vowels in order: "abstemious" and "facetious."

There's no Betty Rubble in the Flintstones Chewables Vitamins
Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.
TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard

Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance

Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks; otherwise it will digest itself.

...Now you know everything!

Strange Facts
about Cannibalism

First 10 Fun Facts about Cannibalism

Cannibalism is not illegal in most countries
Cannibalism is not recognized in the manual of mental disorders.
For 19th century sailors, survival guidelines included drawing straws to determine who would be killed and eaten.
Cannibalism is common in fairytales, such as Snow White's evil stepmother who wants to eat her heart.
The average human body contains enough protein to meet the daily new frictional requirements for 60 adults.
Cannibalism has been observed in over 1,500 species in the animal kingdom.
Some anthropologists think there are tribes in New Guinea practicing cannibalism today.
Famous cannibals include Jeffrey Dahmer who had 15 victims.
Members of Uruguay’s national Rugby team survived 72 days by consuming human flesh after their plane crashed.
Hannibal Lecter is one of the most famous characters to practice cannibalism.

Now on to the Strange Facts about Cannibalism

Cannibalism is one of mankind’s ultimate taboos... but what would it take to kill and devour another human being?

The term 'Cannibal' originates from the Carib Indians of the Caribbean. The Carib Indians were accused by their neighbours as being very fierce and of eating people. The Spanish had a problem pronouncing the letter 'r' in Carib, so this became 'Canib' and eventually 'Canibales'.
Those of us who have bitten our finger nails or eaten a bit of our own hair can be counted as a type of cannibal. Also known as auto cannibalism or self cannibalism.
“Kuru” is a disease found amongst certain tribes in Papua New Guinea which is said to be contracted by eating human flesh. Scientists think of it as the human equivalent of Mad Cow disease.
Even fairytales have cannibals; the wicked stepmother wanted to eat Snow Whites heart, the giant in Jack and the Beanstalk enjoyed to eat English men and Hansel and Gretel were captured by an evil child eating witch.
The Aztecs are believed to have engaged in Cannibalism in order to appease their Gods. One of their emperors Moctezuma is said to have been quite partial to human thighs served with tomatoes and chilli pepper sauce.
In 1972 an airplane carrying a Uruguayan rugby team across the Andes crashed. Those who didn’t perish were forced to eat the flesh of the other victims in order to survive and were eventually rescued 72 days later.
There are also Cannibals in the animal kingdom. The Humboldt squid is known to eat its counterparts especially if they are injured. Their sharp, barbed tentacles cut their prey apart and drag it to their mouth where their baseball sized beak can shred it into edible chunks.
The Fore tribe of Papua New Guinea ate every part of their deceased including their bones and faeces. This practice known as endo-cannibalism, was actually born out of love and respect as they viewed it as a way their deceased to literally live on forever.
A cannibalistic practice known as Ko Ku and Ko Kan occurred in China. Sons and daughters would donate parts of their body such as their liver to their sick parents. A Princess called Miao Chuang surrendered her severed hands to her ailing father, after which she was deified.
There are many different forms of Cannibalism. Some of the less documented forms include Gastronomic cannibalism which is non survival cannibalism, medicinal cannibalism which involves the consumption of human tissues or bone for medical purposes and sadistic cannibalism which is the killing and eating of individuals out of sadistic or psycho pathological motives.
Two scientists named Garn and Block suggested that the meat yield from the average human body would provide about 4.0 Kilograms of protein thus meeting the daily nutritional requirements of only sixty adults.
The Donner party was a group of American pioneers who on their journey to California in 1846 resorted to cannibalism in order to survive after being snowbound in the Sierra Nevada. Of the 87 members of the party that originally set out only 48 survived to reach California.
Vegetarian campaigners in Berlin created a website advertising a new restaurant named ‘Flime’ calling diners to donate their body parts. They said the reason for the elaborate hoax was to draw consumer’s attention to ‘the evils of meat eating.’
In 2007 the Tolai tribe from Papua New Guinea apologized for killing and eating four 19th century missionaries. They were murdered on the orders of their warrior chief, Taleli and were subsequently cooked and eaten.
In Australia, cannibalism was practiced to gain the powers of the particular person who was being eaten. Tribes who ate their enemies rationalized their consumption quite literally, eating the brain for knowledge, the heart for courage and power and the legs if the victim was a fast runner.