These are all from funfacts.com. Read them & learn something. I apologize for Google's changing of type sizes:
It is possible to age a lobster by counting the rings on its eyestalks.
Chimps can play rock-paper-scissors at the same level as a 4 year old human child
In 1992, a group of French youths removing graffiti from a cave accidentally erased a painting of a bison that was 15,000 years old.
In 1853, the Venus de Milo statue was put on trial for nudity in Mannheim, Germany.
Saltwater crocodiles enjoy catching a wave and can travel hundreds of kilometers by "surfing" on ocean currents.
In 1986, a Soviet pilot made a bet with his co-pilot that he could land the airplane with an instrument-only approach, with no visual contact with the ground. He crashed the plane, killing 70 of the 94 passengers and crew on board.
At least 1 in every 10,000 people living today has a page about them on Wikipedia.
A woman named Glenda Blackwell once bought a scratch-off lottery ticket to prove to her husband that it was a waste of money and she ended up winning $1 million.
Bears have favorite trees and will walk for miles just to scratch their backs on them.
Charles Darwin's cousin Francis Galton invented underwater spectacles so he could read in the bath.
Celebrated inventor and physicist Nikola Tesla swore by toe exercises – every night, he'd repeatedly ‘squish' his toes, 100 times for each foot.
Billionaire oil tycoon J. Paul Getty installed
a pay phone at his mansion for guests to use so that he would not be billed for
their calls.
In Russia, Jews were believed to have a a
secret vegetable they eat so they don't become alcoholics. Anti-semitism was
justified because they refused to share their "magic vegetable."
In 2007, Scotland spent £125,000 devising a
new national slogan. The winning entry was: "Welcome to Scotland."
A pioneer of the fire insurance industry was
named Nicholas If-Christ-had-not-died-for-thee-thou-hadst-been-damned Barebone.
Dragonflies can get fat. They
become less successful at finding a mate.
If you tickle a rat every day,
it'll start laughing as soon as it sees you.
The world record for the most
naked people on a rollercoaster is 102.
In Mississippi it's illegal to have more than
one child out of wedlock
The Kentucky Coal Mining Museum is powered by
solar energy.
During mating season, mouse
lemur testes swell to be bigger than their brains.
Hamsters can store half their
own weight in food in their cheeks.
The first armored presidential
car was a Cadillac that had previously belonged to Al Capone.
Scientists detected an atomic
nucleus traveling at 99.9999999999999% of the speed of light, with energy
20 quintillion times that of visible light. It was appropriately named the
"Oh-My-God Particle."
Chimpanzees fart so loudly and
frequently that scientists locate them in forest occasionally by following
the farts.
I'm not sure where I got these, but I think it was from BuzzFeed:
Most American movie
villains have British accents because we associate them with having high
intellect and low morals.
Millions of years ago,
Earth was covered with giant mushrooms instead of tall trees.
It
sounds like something out of a Dr. Seuss novel, but around 420 to 350 million
years ago, trees were just a few feet tall, while mushrooms were 24 feet tall and 3 feet wide.
There's a sexual phenomenon
named after President Calvin Coolidge, of all people.
The Coolidge Effect, as it's called, is when a male who is
uninterested in sexual activity with one female is suddenly interested in
sexual activity when presented with a new female. Now, "Silent Cal,"
as he's often called, isn't often thought of as one of the more sensual
presidents, but a visit to a chicken farm with his wife Grace gave the medical
phenomenon its name. According to a popular anecdote, Mrs. Coolidge noticed that a rooster was
mating with hen after hen. She asked the attendant to point out the rooster's
vigor and prowess to her husband, and when it was brought to his attention, the
president said, "Tell Mrs. Coolidge that there is more than one hen!!"
Modern thong underwear was introduced by Fiorello LaGuardia, the mayor of New York City.Yes, the LaGuardia that the airport is named after. Thongs as a concept were old hat by the time he got involved in 1939 — they were highly present in Ancient Greece, Rome, and other cultures — but the mayor is recognized as the man responsible for bringing them into the mainstream. That year, he ordered all nude dancers in New York City to cover up during the World's Fair to make the city seem a little more classy. Thanks to his demand, G-string thongs were invented, and underwear as we know it has never been the same.
The animal that kills
the most people every year isn’t snakes, sharks, or even other humans — it’s
the mosquito.
The humble mosquito bests creatures hundreds of times its size
when it comes to murder. Mosquitos kill an average of 750,000 people a year, mostly
because of malaria. Compare that to 475,000 human-related deaths, 50,000
snake-related deaths, and 10 shark-related deaths per year, and mosquitos
suddenly seem even more terrifying than before.
Chainsaws,
the horror-movie murder weapon of choice, were invented for aid in childbirth
The prototype for modern chainsaws was invented
in the late 18th century by Scottish doctors John Aitken
and James Jeffray. The hand-operated saw aided in symphysiotomy, aka cutting
into and widening a woman’s pelvic bone during childbirth as an alternative to
a C-section. It was a
risky and (obviously) painful procedure,
especially before the invention of anesthesia. Luckily, symphysiotomies — and
medical chainsaws in general — fell out of favor by the end of the 19th
century, and chainsaws began
being used to topple trees in the early 1900s.
Do you feel any smarter now?----fishducky
