FF
Guru
- Joined
- Oct 12, 2007
- Messages
- 22,552
FACTS ABOUT STUFF THAT WILL BLOW YOUR MIND (TO VARYING DEGREES)
-You breathe on average about 5 million times a year.
-The longest time between two twins being born is 87 days.
-If you eat a polar bear liver, you will die. Humans can't handle that much vitamin A.
-A rat can last longer without water than a camel.
-Months that begin on a Sunday always have a Friday the 13th in them.
-The world's deepest post-box is in Susami Bay in Japan. It's 10 metres underwater.
-The critically endangered Kakapo bird has a strong, pleasant, musty odour which allows predators to easily locate it. Hence, it is critically endangered.
-Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks or it will digest itself.
-You are born with 300 bones, by the time you are an adult you will have 206.
-In 2007, an American man named Corey Taylor tried to fake his own death in order to get out of his cell phone contract without paying a fee.
-The male giraffe will continuously head-butt the female in the bladder until she urinates. The male then tastes the pee and that helps to determine whether the female is ovulating.
-The dot over the letter "i" is called a tittle.
-The average lead pencil will write a line about 35 miles long or write approximately 50,000 English words.
-The oldest condoms ever found date back to the 1640s (they were found in a cesspit at Dudley Castle), and were made from animal and fish intestines.
-Abalones have 5 buttholes.
-A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continuously from the bottom of the glass to the top.
-A quarter of the bones in your body are in your feet.
-In 1923, jockey Frank Hayes won a race at Belmont Park in New York despite being dead - he suffered a heart attack mid-race, but his body stayed in the saddle until his horse crossed the line for a 20-1 outsider victory.
-A banana slug can be 6-8 inches. The slug's erect penis be just as long. Also, their penises emerge from their heads. After sex, banana slugs eat each other's penises.
-A female ferret will die if it goes into heat and cannot find a mate.
-The average person spends 2 weeks of their lifetime waiting for the light to change from red to green.
-Most Muppets are left-handed. (Because most Muppeteers are right-handed, so they operate the head with their favoured hand.)
-Dead people can get goose bumps.
-Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.
-It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it.
-Female kangaroos have three vaginas.
-A full head of human hair is strong enough to support 12 tons.
-A 2 x 4 is really 1-1/2" by 3-1/2".
-Earth's population is expected to rise to 15 Billion by the year 2080.
-It costs the U.S. Mint almost twice as much to mint each penny and nickel as the coins are actually worth. Taxpayers lost over $100 million in 2013 just through the coins being made.
-The blood from a human erection has enough blood to keep 3 gerbils alive.
-During the chariot scene in "Ben Hur" a small red car can be seen in the distance (and Heston is wearing a watch).
-The largest recorded snowflake was 15 inches wide and 8 inches thick.
-Light doesn't necessarily travel at the speed of light. The slowest light has been recorded moving is 38 mph.
-The word "facetiously" contains all 5 vowels and "y" in alphabetical order.
-On average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily!
-The tip of a bullwhip moves so fast that the sound it makes is actually a tiny sonic boom.
-Casu marzu is a Sardinian cheese that contains live maggots. The maggots can jump up to five inches out of cheese while you're eating it, so it's a good idea to shield it with your hand to stop them jumping into your eyes.
-The national anthem of Greece has 158 verses.
-Sherlock Holmes NEVER said "Elementary, my dear Watson".
-Native Americans used to name children after the first thing they saw after leaving the tepee following birth. Hence the names Sitting Bull and Running Water.
-The loneliest creature on Earth is a whale who has been calling out for a mate for over two decades but whose high-pitched voice is so different to other whales that they never respond.
-Dragonflies have shovel shaped penises so they can scoop out their rival's sperm.
-Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made of wood.
-The Matami Tribe of West Africa play their own version of football, instead of a normal football they use a human skull.
-The spikes on the end of a stegosaurus' tail are known among palaeontologists as the "thagomizer". A term coined by cartoonist Gary Larson in a 1982 Far Side drawing.
-There was a ten foot tall ape called Gigantopithecus that is now thought to be extinct. The fossil record also indicates that they most likely buried their dead, which indicates a cognitive level that only one other ape possesses.
-The number of possible ways of playing the first four moves per side in a game of chess is 318,979,564,000.
-Coca-Cola would be green if colouring wasn't added.
-During World War II, the crew of the British submarine HMS Trident kept a fully grown reindeer called Pollyanna aboard their vessel for six weeks (it was a gift from the Russians).
-There are more possible iterations of a game of chess than there are atoms in the known universe. It's called The Shannon Number.
-There are no words in the dictionary that rhyme with orange, purple and silver.
-During the 17th Century, the Sultan of Turkey ordered his whole harem of women to be drowned and replaced with a new one.
-The average American spends about a year and a half of his or her life watching commercials on television.
FACTS ABOUT STUFF THAT WILL BLOW YOUR MIND (TO VARYING DEGREES) [continued]
-If you were to remove all of the empty space from the atoms that make up every human on earth, the entire world population could fit into an apple.
-Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because fating in a spacesuit may damage them.
-The northern leopard frog swallows its prey using its eyes - it uses them to help push food down its throat by retracting them into its head.
-Coffins used for cremation are usually made with plastic handles.
-The first man to urinate on the moon was Buzz Aldrin, shortly after stepping onto the lunar surface.
-Duck vaginas have developed "dead ends" over time to protect them from being raped by other ducks.
-The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin in World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.
-"Almost" is the longest word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order.
-Some fruit flies are genetically resistant to getting drunk - but only if they have an inactive version of a gene scientists have named "happy hour".
-The song Coconut ("She put the lime in the coconut, she drank 'em both up."..) has only one chord in the entire song. It is the only song without any chord changes to reach the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
-If one places a tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death.
-Human thigh bones are stronger than concrete.
-Experiments show that male rhesus macaque monkeys will pay to look at pictures of female rhesus macaques' bottoms.
-The average blue whale produces over 400 gallons of sperm when it ejaculates, but only 10% of that actually makes it into his mate.
-Bruce Lee was so fast that they actually had to s-l-o-w film down so you could see his moves.
-It really is impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
-In 1567, the man said to have the longest beard in the world died after he tripped over his beard running away from a fire.
-A mantis shrimp can swing its claw so fast it boils the water around it and creates a flash of light.
-The first CD pressed in the US was Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA".
-A Ten Gallon Hat will only hold 3/4 of a Gallon.
-The Dance Fever of 1518 was a month-long plague of inexplicable dancing in Strasbourg, in which hundreds of people danced for about a month for no apparent reason. Several of them danced themselves to death.
-Completely blind people don't see blackness, they see nothing.
-The first product Motorola started to develop was a record player... for automobiles.
-Of all the words in the English language, the word "SET" has the most definitions.
-Vladimir Nabokov nearly invented the smiley.
-Llamas are born with an extra pair of fighting teeth that they use to bite off other llamas' testicles therefore making them the only fertile male in the group.
-By raising your legs slowly and lying on your back, you cannot sink into quicksand.
-It is against the law to burp or sneeze inside a church in Nebraska.
-In 1993, San Francisco held a referendum over whether a police officer called Bob Geary was allowed to patrol while carrying a ventriloquist's dummy called Brendan O'Smarty. He was.
-Only Asian people have black hair. Every other supposedly 'black' hair colour is actually really dark brown.
-Charlie Chaplin once won third prize in a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest.
-In 1386 a pig in France was executed by public hanging for the murder of a child.
-Sigurd the Mighty, a ninth-century Norse earl of Orkney, was killed by an enemy he had beheaded several hours earlier. He'd tied the man's head to his horse's saddle, but while riding home one of its protruding teeth grazed his leg. He died from the infection.
-The Indonesian Mimic Octopus can not only change colours, but will mimic the shapes of other animals, like the flounder, poisonous lion fish, and sea snakes.
-An old law in Bellingham, Washington, made it illegal for a woman to take more than three steps backwards while dancing.
-Earth is the only planet not named after a god.
-The Dutch village of Giethoorn has no roads; its buildings are connected entirely by canals and footbridges.
-One species of jellyfish, Turritopsis nutricula, are immortal.
-The Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from public libraries.
-The oldest piece of chewing gum is over 9,000 years old!
-Bats always turn left when exiting a cave!
-A family of people with blue skin lived in Kentucky for many generations. The Fulgates of Troublesome Creek are thought to have gained their blue skin through combination of inbreeding and a rare genetic condition known as methemoglobinemia.
-A blue whale's penis is 11 feet long. Little known side fact - Orsm is a blue whale.
-The glue on Israeli postage is certified kosher.
-Scientists have tracked butterflies travelling over 3,000 miles.
-Powerful earthquakes can permanently shorten the length of Earth's day, by moving the spin of the Earth's axis. The 2011 Japan earthquake knocked 1.8 microseconds off our days. The 2004 Sumatra quake cost us around 6.8 microseconds.
-Cats sleep up to 70% of their lives.
--
"Instead of, 'do what you love,' perhaps the more effective mantra for the entrepreneur, the linchpin and maker of change might be, "love what you do.
If we can fall in love with serving people, creating value, solving problems, building valuable connections and doing work that matters, it makes it far more likely we're going to do important work."
--Seth Godin
“It is never too late to be what you might have been.” George Eliot
-You breathe on average about 5 million times a year.
-The longest time between two twins being born is 87 days.
-If you eat a polar bear liver, you will die. Humans can't handle that much vitamin A.
-A rat can last longer without water than a camel.
-Months that begin on a Sunday always have a Friday the 13th in them.
-The world's deepest post-box is in Susami Bay in Japan. It's 10 metres underwater.
-The critically endangered Kakapo bird has a strong, pleasant, musty odour which allows predators to easily locate it. Hence, it is critically endangered.
-Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks or it will digest itself.
-You are born with 300 bones, by the time you are an adult you will have 206.
-In 2007, an American man named Corey Taylor tried to fake his own death in order to get out of his cell phone contract without paying a fee.
-The male giraffe will continuously head-butt the female in the bladder until she urinates. The male then tastes the pee and that helps to determine whether the female is ovulating.
-The dot over the letter "i" is called a tittle.
-The average lead pencil will write a line about 35 miles long or write approximately 50,000 English words.
-The oldest condoms ever found date back to the 1640s (they were found in a cesspit at Dudley Castle), and were made from animal and fish intestines.
-Abalones have 5 buttholes.
-A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continuously from the bottom of the glass to the top.
-A quarter of the bones in your body are in your feet.
-In 1923, jockey Frank Hayes won a race at Belmont Park in New York despite being dead - he suffered a heart attack mid-race, but his body stayed in the saddle until his horse crossed the line for a 20-1 outsider victory.
-A banana slug can be 6-8 inches. The slug's erect penis be just as long. Also, their penises emerge from their heads. After sex, banana slugs eat each other's penises.
-A female ferret will die if it goes into heat and cannot find a mate.
-The average person spends 2 weeks of their lifetime waiting for the light to change from red to green.
-Most Muppets are left-handed. (Because most Muppeteers are right-handed, so they operate the head with their favoured hand.)
-Dead people can get goose bumps.
-Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.
-It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it.
-Female kangaroos have three vaginas.
-A full head of human hair is strong enough to support 12 tons.
-A 2 x 4 is really 1-1/2" by 3-1/2".
-Earth's population is expected to rise to 15 Billion by the year 2080.
-It costs the U.S. Mint almost twice as much to mint each penny and nickel as the coins are actually worth. Taxpayers lost over $100 million in 2013 just through the coins being made.
-The blood from a human erection has enough blood to keep 3 gerbils alive.
-During the chariot scene in "Ben Hur" a small red car can be seen in the distance (and Heston is wearing a watch).
-The largest recorded snowflake was 15 inches wide and 8 inches thick.
-Light doesn't necessarily travel at the speed of light. The slowest light has been recorded moving is 38 mph.
-The word "facetiously" contains all 5 vowels and "y" in alphabetical order.
-On average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily!
-The tip of a bullwhip moves so fast that the sound it makes is actually a tiny sonic boom.
-Casu marzu is a Sardinian cheese that contains live maggots. The maggots can jump up to five inches out of cheese while you're eating it, so it's a good idea to shield it with your hand to stop them jumping into your eyes.
-The national anthem of Greece has 158 verses.
-Sherlock Holmes NEVER said "Elementary, my dear Watson".
-Native Americans used to name children after the first thing they saw after leaving the tepee following birth. Hence the names Sitting Bull and Running Water.
-The loneliest creature on Earth is a whale who has been calling out for a mate for over two decades but whose high-pitched voice is so different to other whales that they never respond.
-Dragonflies have shovel shaped penises so they can scoop out their rival's sperm.
-Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made of wood.
-The Matami Tribe of West Africa play their own version of football, instead of a normal football they use a human skull.
-The spikes on the end of a stegosaurus' tail are known among palaeontologists as the "thagomizer". A term coined by cartoonist Gary Larson in a 1982 Far Side drawing.
-There was a ten foot tall ape called Gigantopithecus that is now thought to be extinct. The fossil record also indicates that they most likely buried their dead, which indicates a cognitive level that only one other ape possesses.
-The number of possible ways of playing the first four moves per side in a game of chess is 318,979,564,000.
-Coca-Cola would be green if colouring wasn't added.
-During World War II, the crew of the British submarine HMS Trident kept a fully grown reindeer called Pollyanna aboard their vessel for six weeks (it was a gift from the Russians).
-There are more possible iterations of a game of chess than there are atoms in the known universe. It's called The Shannon Number.
-There are no words in the dictionary that rhyme with orange, purple and silver.
-During the 17th Century, the Sultan of Turkey ordered his whole harem of women to be drowned and replaced with a new one.
-The average American spends about a year and a half of his or her life watching commercials on television.
FACTS ABOUT STUFF THAT WILL BLOW YOUR MIND (TO VARYING DEGREES) [continued]
-If you were to remove all of the empty space from the atoms that make up every human on earth, the entire world population could fit into an apple.
-Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because fating in a spacesuit may damage them.
-The northern leopard frog swallows its prey using its eyes - it uses them to help push food down its throat by retracting them into its head.
-Coffins used for cremation are usually made with plastic handles.
-The first man to urinate on the moon was Buzz Aldrin, shortly after stepping onto the lunar surface.
-Duck vaginas have developed "dead ends" over time to protect them from being raped by other ducks.
-The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin in World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.
-"Almost" is the longest word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order.
-Some fruit flies are genetically resistant to getting drunk - but only if they have an inactive version of a gene scientists have named "happy hour".
-The song Coconut ("She put the lime in the coconut, she drank 'em both up."..) has only one chord in the entire song. It is the only song without any chord changes to reach the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
-If one places a tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death.
-Human thigh bones are stronger than concrete.
-Experiments show that male rhesus macaque monkeys will pay to look at pictures of female rhesus macaques' bottoms.
-The average blue whale produces over 400 gallons of sperm when it ejaculates, but only 10% of that actually makes it into his mate.
-Bruce Lee was so fast that they actually had to s-l-o-w film down so you could see his moves.
-It really is impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
-In 1567, the man said to have the longest beard in the world died after he tripped over his beard running away from a fire.
-A mantis shrimp can swing its claw so fast it boils the water around it and creates a flash of light.
-The first CD pressed in the US was Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA".
-A Ten Gallon Hat will only hold 3/4 of a Gallon.
-The Dance Fever of 1518 was a month-long plague of inexplicable dancing in Strasbourg, in which hundreds of people danced for about a month for no apparent reason. Several of them danced themselves to death.
-Completely blind people don't see blackness, they see nothing.
-The first product Motorola started to develop was a record player... for automobiles.
-Of all the words in the English language, the word "SET" has the most definitions.
-Vladimir Nabokov nearly invented the smiley.
-Llamas are born with an extra pair of fighting teeth that they use to bite off other llamas' testicles therefore making them the only fertile male in the group.
-By raising your legs slowly and lying on your back, you cannot sink into quicksand.
-It is against the law to burp or sneeze inside a church in Nebraska.
-In 1993, San Francisco held a referendum over whether a police officer called Bob Geary was allowed to patrol while carrying a ventriloquist's dummy called Brendan O'Smarty. He was.
-Only Asian people have black hair. Every other supposedly 'black' hair colour is actually really dark brown.
-Charlie Chaplin once won third prize in a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest.
-In 1386 a pig in France was executed by public hanging for the murder of a child.
-Sigurd the Mighty, a ninth-century Norse earl of Orkney, was killed by an enemy he had beheaded several hours earlier. He'd tied the man's head to his horse's saddle, but while riding home one of its protruding teeth grazed his leg. He died from the infection.
-The Indonesian Mimic Octopus can not only change colours, but will mimic the shapes of other animals, like the flounder, poisonous lion fish, and sea snakes.
-An old law in Bellingham, Washington, made it illegal for a woman to take more than three steps backwards while dancing.
-Earth is the only planet not named after a god.
-The Dutch village of Giethoorn has no roads; its buildings are connected entirely by canals and footbridges.
-One species of jellyfish, Turritopsis nutricula, are immortal.
-The Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from public libraries.
-The oldest piece of chewing gum is over 9,000 years old!
-Bats always turn left when exiting a cave!
-A family of people with blue skin lived in Kentucky for many generations. The Fulgates of Troublesome Creek are thought to have gained their blue skin through combination of inbreeding and a rare genetic condition known as methemoglobinemia.
-A blue whale's penis is 11 feet long. Little known side fact - Orsm is a blue whale.
-The glue on Israeli postage is certified kosher.
-Scientists have tracked butterflies travelling over 3,000 miles.
-Powerful earthquakes can permanently shorten the length of Earth's day, by moving the spin of the Earth's axis. The 2011 Japan earthquake knocked 1.8 microseconds off our days. The 2004 Sumatra quake cost us around 6.8 microseconds.
-Cats sleep up to 70% of their lives.
--
"Instead of, 'do what you love,' perhaps the more effective mantra for the entrepreneur, the linchpin and maker of change might be, "love what you do.
If we can fall in love with serving people, creating value, solving problems, building valuable connections and doing work that matters, it makes it far more likely we're going to do important work."
--Seth Godin
“It is never too late to be what you might have been.” George Eliot
