May 2010
The female bedbug has no sexual opening. To get around this, the male uses his penis to DRILL A VAGINA into the female.
The process, known as “traumatic insemination” is a practice used by mites and bedbugs, and a species of spider in Israel called “Harpactea sadistica”.
In traumatic insemination the males pierce through the females’ body wall to inseminate...
In 1938, Nicholas Winton helped 669 Jewish kids escape certain death from the Nazis. He never told anyone that he did this.
While on ski trip in Switzerland, Winton took a detour in Czechoslovakia to help the children of refugees. Nazi Germany had recently annexed a large part of Czechoslovakia and the news of Kristallnacht, a violent attack on Jews in Germany and Austria, had just reached...
There are more cows in India, than there are cars in the United States.
India has more cows than any other country. There are over 280 MILLION (281,700,000) cows in India. That’s more than a quarter of the entire world population of cows in JUST ONE COUNT(28.29% to be precise).
To put that into perspective the United States has only 96,669,000 cows (less than half the number of cows that...
LOL isn’t just laugh out loud. LOL is also “fun” in Dutch.
Another translation has it as “a feeling of delight at being entertained”. A pretty interesting coincidence to say the least.
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About 1 in 32 people in the U.S. are in jail, on probation, or on parole.
More than 1 in 100 Americans are in jail, which translates to more than 2.3 million people behind bars in the U.S. With that many people in jail the U.S. leads the world in both the number of people it has incarcerated (more than China, whose overall population is much higher) and it has a higher percentage of its...
The word “verb” is actually a noun.
The creator of the NIKE Swoosh symbol was paid only $35 for the design.
Nike paid Carolyn Davidson, a young graphic design student, $35 for the now famous Swoosh symbol. The founder of Nike, Phil Knight was teaching accounting at Portland State University when he met Davidson. He hired her to do some design work for his company, Blue Ribbon Sports, Inc.
For a presentation with some potential...
No matter how hard you squeeze the two ends of an egg, it will NEVER break.
There are 7 rays on each crown of each Statue of Liberty. They represent the 7 continents and 7 seas of the world.
* Her feet are 25 ft long, making her a US women’s shoe size 879.
* She is made out of copper. When originally built, she looked like a shiny new penny! She’s green mostly because of the salt in the air from the water. Test it: Put a penny in a cup of water with salt...
Huge boulders in Death Valley mysteriously move really far, all on their own. No one knows how, because no one’s ever seen it happen.
In Death Valley there is a dry lake bed full of really unusual rocks. The namesake rocks often appear with tracks behind them indicating that they have moved or have been pushed somehow. This is strange because some of these rocks are SEVERAL HUNDRED...
We think of it as a New York landmark but most of the island that the Statue of Liberty stands on is in New Jersey.
The Statue of Liberty isn’t technically in either state, but the land it stands on is mostly in the jurisdiction of New Jersey. A Supreme Court case in 1998 determined that only the natural parts of Liberty Island are New York, and the rest of the island that was...
A soccer player can run 10 km in one game! That’s more than 6 miles!
In 2007, AC Milan’s Gennaro Gattuso ran an estimated 10 km in one game against Manchester United. The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) had been working on a system for calculating things like how far individual players run, and how far and fast the ball gets kicked by tracking them with multiple...
Inês de Castro became queen of Portugal AFTER SHE DIED. King Pedro of Portugal dug up her body and crowned her as his queen.
When Dom Pedro was prince of Portugal he cheated on his wife with Inês de Castro. Pedro’s father, Dom Afonso IV, was afraid of the influence that Inês and the rest of the Castro family had over his son, so he had her executed.
Pedro was infuriated. After his father...
Put two straws in your mouth: one inside a drink and one outside it. You won’t be able to drink through either straw. Try it!
The smallest human penis ever recorded was only 5/8 of an inch (~1 cm) long.
The #1 most shoplifted book of all time? THE BIBLE.
Johnny Depp lost his virginity at 13 years old. He also started smoking at 12, and played guitar in a rock band called The Flame. He lost his virginity to a slightly older groupie at 13, in the back of the band’s van.
Oysters can change genders back and forth.
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As a punishment for misbehavior, Thai cops have to wear pink Hello Kitty armbands.
A police chief in Bangkok, Thailand instituted a new policy for Bangkok cops in 2007. They have to wear pink Hello Kitty armbands with hearts on them as punishment for misbehaving. This punishment could be for just about anything: breaking the law, littering, showing up late to work, parking in the wrong place.
...
In 1954, Bob Hawke was immortalized by the Guinness Book of Records for sculling 2.5 pints of beer in 11 seconds. Bob later became the Prime Minister of Australia.
In his own words: “In more down-to-earth fashion I inadvertently achieved notoriety as a result of one the quaint and ancient customs of my college. A system operated at dinner in the Great Hall under which if an offence was...
Sealand claims to be the smallest “country” in the world. It’s not even made out of land.
The Principality of Sealand is officially a “micronation”, which is “an entity that resembles a nation or a state, but which for the most part exists only on paper, on the Internet, or in the mind of its creator”. Sealand earns the dubious title of smallest...
The population of the state of California is more than the country of Canada.
California’s population in 2009 was estimated at 36,961,664 people. That’s more than the 33,487,208 people estimated to live in Canada at the time.
The population of the United States as a whole? Almost ten times that! 307,212,123 people!
(sources: 1, 2, 3)
An olive tree can live over 2000 years!
There are well-known olive trees in Croatia and the island of Crete that have been tested and dated at around 1600 and 2000 years old respectively. There have also been claims of the existence of millennial olive trees in Athens, Sardinia, and Israel, some supposedly as old as 4,000 years old!
There are olive trees in the Garden of Gesthemane (where...
Blueberries are purple!
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The total weight of all the ants on Earth is about the same as the weight of all the humans on earth.
Ants also outnumber us a million to one! They also can lift weight twice their size! If they ever wanted to turn on us, they could just pick us all up and throw us in the ocean.
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In Australia, “Burger King” is “Hungry Jack’s”.
Burger King was already a trademarked name in Australia when they started operations in Australia. They opted to use “Hungry Jack’s”, another name owned by then-parent company Pillsbury. They got the trademark name for Burger King back in 1996. However, after a legal dispute they opted to keep calling...
Cows face North or South to graze. They do this all over the world.
Deer also seem to do this. This has been confirmed as a worldwide phenomenon by people using satellite images from Google Earth.
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People eat when they’re not hungry.
It doesn’t really make sense, but we do it all the time. It’s not healthy for you. Television commercials have the power of suggestion to get you to eat when you’re not even hungry. People also eat for social purposes, regardless of how hungry they are. A person eating with 8 others would nearly double their normal calorie intake.
...
Those stars and colours you see when you rub your eyes are called phosphenes.
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Americans have sex 118 times a year, below the average of 127.
Eastern Europeans have sex an average 150 times a year. The countries with the lowest sex frequencies are Sweden (102), Malaysia (100), and Singapore (96). This is according to the Durex survey.
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Tanning can give you cancer and kill you. Tans are just damaged skin cells
You get a tan by exposing yourself to harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation. This is the case, whether you’re tanning in the sun, or in a tanning bed. Exposure to UV radiation can lead to prematurely aged skin (wrinkles, brown spots, etc.) Worse still, you can get skin cancer.
Your risk of melanoma more than...
Even though Jupiter is made of hydrogen and helium, the lightest gasses, it is the heaviest planet in the Solar System.
Jupiter is a giant ball of gas and liquid, with barely any solid surface to stand on. Astronomers believe that Jupiter is primarily made up of hydrogen and helium, the two lightest elements. However, Jupiter has the most mass of any planet in the solar system. It weighs as...
The longest MONOPOLY game in history lasted 70 straight days.
Of course, you might recall that the longest underwater game of Monopoly lasted for 45 days (link). More fun facts: The longest Monopoly game in a bathtub lasted 99 hours. The longest game in a tree-house lasted 286 hours. The longest game played underground was 100 hours, and the longest one played UPSIDE-DOWN was 36 hours. Also:...
There are more TV sets in an average U.S. household than there are people.
By 2006, Nielsen Media Research estimated that the average U.S. household had 2.73 televisions sets. Compare that with an estimated 2.55 people living in an average household in the U.S.
There were 105,480,101 households in 2000 according to the U.S. Census. Assuming that the number of households hasn’t decreased,...
The math measurement Pi has been accurately calculated to 1.24 trillion decimal places.
When you divide the circumference of a circle by the diameter of a circle, the number you get has an infinite number of decimal places. Numbers that do this are called “irrational”.
Since this number is particularly important, we use this symbol (π) or just call it “pi” rather than...
A Rubik’s cube has 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 possible configurations.
With 6 colored sides, 21 pieces and 54 outer surfaces, there’s a combined total of over 43 quintillion different possible configurations. To put that into perspective: if you turned the Rubik’s cube once every second it would take you 1400 trillion years to finish to go through all the configurations....
The only place you can tickle your self is the top of your mouth. TRY IT.
The sensation of tickling is important to have. It’s similar to the feeling of having bugs or spiders crawling on you. The reaction you have to being tickled is important to keep those kind of animals from crawling on you.
You tickle mostly because of surprise. Even if you know you’re about to be tickled, you...
Dolphins shut down half of their brains when they sleep.
Scientists hooked electrodes to dolphins’ heads (this is called electronography). That way they could monitor their brain activity throughout the day. What they found: rather than sleeping the way we do, they spend 8 hours every day with half of their brains shut down. They just float around semi-consciously.
Dolphins are...
Think of a number. Multiply it by 2. Add any even number. Divide your answer by 2. Subtract your original number. Your answer will always be half of the even number you added.
Your funny bone is not actually a bone. It’s actually a really sensitive nerve. And hitting that nerve isn’t funny at all!
The ulnar nerve (scientific name for “funny bone”) is a huge nerve that extends from your elbow to your hand. It lies directly under the skin on your arm. Usually nerves like that are protected under muscles. The ulnar nerve isn’t protected...
An average person will spend 1 1/2 years of their lifetime in the bathroom.
This is according to research done in the United Kingdom. In addition, women spend an average of 1 year, 7 months, and 15 days longer in the bathroom than men. However, men spend more time on the toilet than women do (an hour and 45 minutes every week, compared to an hour and 20 minutes a week for women).
Other...
The NASDAQ Stock Exchange was totally disabled by a SQUIRREL.
One day in December 1987 a squirrel started a power failure in Trumbull, Connecticut, shutting down the National Association of Securities Dealers’ automatic quotation service for 82 minutes. One little squirrel made an impact around the world, halting trading at the Chicago Board Options Exchange, the American Stock Exchange,...
Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made of plaster.
The Oscars used to be made of bronze but now the statues are made out of britannia metal, a pewter-like alloy which is then plated in copper, nickel silver, and finally, 24-karat gold. However, due to a metal shortage in World War II, the Academy Awards used painted plaster instead for three years. When the...
Cats sweat through the pads of their feet.
So do dogs. They can’t sweat through their skin, just through their footpads and noses. They lose water by panting instead of sweating.
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Sharks have been around for LONGER than dinosaurs - nearly 400 million years. Some prehistoric sharks were 80 feet long - almost as long as a BASKETBALL COURT.
Sharks started appearing in the Ordovician period over 400 million years ago, before the dinosaurs were around. Later, in the Carboniferous period, there was the “Golden Age of Sharks”. Back then there were tons of different...
The first number that will use the letter “A” is thousand.
Unless you spell numbers like “101” as one hundred AND one, or if you want to count negatives like negative one. But if you were going to count straight up from one normally, none of the numbers have the letter “a” until you get to 1000.
The Basenji is a unique breed of dog. It can’t bark!
Basenji dogs are weird. They don’t bark, and they can clean themselves like a cat. While they can’t bark, they can sing (not very well).
The following video is not a Basenji dog. It is, however, a dog that can beatbox. Enjoy.
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The Shining holds the world record for the most takes of a single scene.
The Guinness Book of World Records says that it took 127 takes to shoot the scene where Shelley Duvall’s character swings a bat at Jack Nicholson. Apparently there was some complications with the (then new) Steadicam device.
There’s some confusion over this, however. The assistant director and the Steadicam...
The lion sleeps for 20 hours a day.
Lions are mainly nocturnal, so they sleep for about 20 hours every day. You can find them lying under shady bushes after killing their prey.
Lions live for about 12-16 years in the wild. That means a lion is only awake for about 3 years. And you thought your cat slept a lot!
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