February 2011
40 posts
The oldest twins in the world are 100 years of age.
Edna Pugh and Lily Millard of Garthbrengy, England recently stole this title from 98-year-old French twins Raymonde and Lucienne Wattelade, after Guinness checked their birth certificates. The pair are very close and call each other on the phone every day despite the fact that they are both extremely hard of hearing! Edna and Lily still reside...
January 2011
31 posts
Julius Caesar may have worn a laurel wreath to hide his baldness.
Caesar was so concerned about his dome that he was even said to have pioneered the comb-over by growing his hair out to cover the bald spot! Supposedly, Cleopatra recommended that Caesar try a home remedy that consisted of ground up mice, horse teeth, bear grease and deer to cure his hairline problems. Wouldn’t it be easier...
UK citizens are the most surveyed people in the world.
There are up to 4.2 million surveillance cameras in Britain. There’s roughly 1 camera for every 14 people. Britain is also the worst country in the Western world at protecting individual privacy. The two worst countries in this regard are Malaysia and China, but Britain makes it to the top five do to its endemic surveillance.
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Australians used to name their hurricanes after politicians they disliked.
This tradition is said to have been started by a meteorologist by the name of Clement Wragge, who is often considered to be the father of modern meteorology. “Inclement” Wragge, as he was often called, was the first person to do real weather forecasting “down under”. He was very outspoken and expressed his disapproval for...
Researchers have found that your memories take hold better when you sleep.
A group of German scientists recently performed a study showing that memories are more readily stored in the brain during sleep. When humans first acquire new information, it is kept temporarily in the section of the brain called the hippocampus. This information remains vulnerable to being forgotten until it is able to...
The woman who downloaded iTunes’ ten billionth app hung up on Apple when they called to congratulate her.
After one of her daughters downloaded a free game called Paper Glider, UK resident Gail Davis received a phone call. Believing it to be a prank, Davis hung up on the Apple executive, who had been calling to inform her that the family had won a $10,000 iTunes gift card!
Upon her daughters’...
Nebraska’s official state soft drink is Kool-Aid.
This was declared on May 21, 1998 by then-Governor (and current Senator) Ben Nelson. The reason the state holds Kool-Aid in such high regard is because it was invented in Hastings, Nebraska in 1927 by Edwin Perkins. Personally, we think Governor Nelson had the state legislature “drinking the Kool-Aid.”
As you can see in this document, Governor...
Sea urchins have self-sharpening teeth.
Urchins are infamous for their spiny outer shell, but most people do not know that these creatures are able to chew through rock! The secret to this unique ability lies in the composition of their teeth, which are only 2 centimeters long. Scientists examined urchins’ teeth with an x-ray to find that 200 million years of evolution has created an ingenious...
A car in New York City was completely frozen in place.
On Tuesday, 32-year-old New Yorker Peter Helfer returned to his Audi A3 station wagon to find that it had become a giant icicle! In a major case of bad luck, Helfer had parked directly over a busted water line. The combination of subfreezing temperatures and passing traffic splashing water onto his vehicle for 48 hours had completely encased...
In the original Wizard of Oz novel, Dorothy wore silver slippers.
The color of the shoes was changed from silver to ruby by screenwriter Noel Langley in order to take full advantage of filming in Technicolor! When trying to design an appropriate pair to film, Oz’s costuming department experimented with several different types of slippers. The most vivid-looking looking ones turned out to be a...
The drummer for the rock group Def Leppard only has one arm.
In 1983 the band was fresh off their breakout album, Pyromania, and eager to record a followup. These plans were soon derailed on New Year’s Eve the following year when drummer Rick Allen had a serious car accident. Allen took a turn too fast and lost control of his black Corvette, slamming violently into a stone wall. Allen’s...
A new type of glass has been invented that is stronger than steel.
Not only is the glass stronger than steel, it is actually more durable than any known substance! This new “superglass” is a microalloy composed of palladium, a metal that has a high stiffness ratio and bends instead of cracking in response to high levels of physical stress. Glass samples cannot be more than a few millimeters...
At a length of 45 letters, “Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagunamaugg” is the longest place name in the United States.
This tongue-twisting body of water is located in central Massachusetts. The big C word is a Nipmuck Indian name which means “English knifemen and Nipmuck Indians at the boundary or neutral fishing place.” The lake’s name is SO difficult to write that many road signs,...
An armadillo can hold its breath for up to six minutes.
This makes armadillos very capable swimmers. Though they can float on the surface of the water by inflating their stomachs with air, they can also travel underwater for up to 6 minutes without breathing.
Read more armadillo facts.
Writing down your worries just before taking an exam can boost your test score.
The study, published in 2010, showed that simply expressing your worries on paper before taking a test can relieve stress and help you achieve a better overall performance! This proved to be especially true for students who are especially anxious about taking tests.
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Ariel is the only Disney Princess to have had a child.
This is shown in the terrible straight-to-video sequel, The Little Mermaid 2: Return to Sea. In the film, Ariel’s daughter Melody has a rebellious streak just like her mother, and once again the family is put into jeopardy. Only this time, Aurora is a human and she wants to become a mermaid. So, in a plot that is definitely not exactly the...
A rabbit’s teeth never stop growing.
This is why rabbits are so renowned for their nibbling skills. If a rabbit wasn’t constantly chewing on something, its teeth would overgrow! This is also true for other animals such as horses. If you have ever heard someone use the expression “long in the tooth” to describe someone who is old, you now know where that phrase came from!
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Seth McFarlane, the creator of Family Guy, was supposed to be on one of the planes on 9/11.
On 9/11, MacFarlane was scheduled to return to LA on AA Flight 11 from Boston. Suffering from a hangover from the previous night’s celebrations, and with an incorrect departure time from his travel agent, he arrived at the airport sometime around 7:30 and was unable to board the flight as the gates...
A 10-year-old girl has discovered a supernova.
Kathryn Aurora Gray received credit from the Royal Astronomical Society for finding the exploding star, along with 2 co-discoverers: her father Paul Gray, and family friend David Lane. This is actually Paul Gray’s 7th supernova discovery. Lane captured some images of space with his telescope on New Year’s Eve, and took the images to the Grays to...
If the world’s population stood shoulder to shoulder, we would only fill an area the size of the city of Los Angeles.
The chicken is the T-Rex’s closest living relative!
That’s right. Analysis of a 68 million year old T-Rex protein confirms that the dinosaur is closely related to birds. In fact, it has a more recent ancestor to birds than it does to alligators, which suggests that it’s more related to birds than reptiles. The two birds that T-Rex is particularly closely related to is the ostrich and the...
NASA has voted 2012 the most scientifically flawed film ever made.
We’ve already discussed before why NASA thinks that 2012 doomsday theories are ridiculous, but it turns out that NASA isn’t done yet. It has also decided to take aim at Roland Emmerich’s apocalyptic blockbuster film on the subject.
Apparently, the film (despite being completely ridiculous) fanned the flames on...
Nearly 3,000 dead blackbirds mysteriously fell from the sky in Arkansas over New Years.
Scientists are not sure what caused this strange phenomenon, but they believe it may have been due to fireworks fired off over the holiday. Blackbirds typically do not fly at night because they cannot see, which would explain why many appear to have crashed.
This story has gotten even stranger when coupled...
The movie Alien is all about rape.
The 2002 documentary The Alien Saga went behind the scenes of the iconic science fiction movie series, and the findings are quite shocking! Screenwriter Dan O’Bannon is quoted as saying:
“One thing that people are all disturbed about is sex… I said ‘That’s how I’m going to attack the audience; I’m going to attack them sexually....
Star Trek’s Captain Kirk was in the slasher film Halloween…sort of.
The low budget film resorted to using the cheapest mask they could find in the costume store for their now-infamous villain Michael Myers to wear. They settled on a mask of William Shatner. They spray-painted it white, cut the eyeholes, removed the sideburns and teased up the hair to create iconic image of Myers’ mask.
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Movies based on the works of science fiction writer Philip K. Dick have generated over $1 billion in revenue.
That includes such films as Blade Runner (based on “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”), A Scanner Darkly (based on “A Scanner Darkly”), Total Recall (based on “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale”), and Minority Report (based on “The...
You do not lose the majority of your body heat through your head.
Your head loses just as much heat as any other part of your body! This myth likely originated in a 1970 U.S. Army survival guide which advised covering one’s head when it is cold because “40-45% of body heat is lost” from one’s head! Another reason this logic seems valid is because the face, head, and chest are more sensitive to...
Hawaiian Punch was originally intended to be an ice cream topping.
The original version was invented in 1934 in California by Leo, Yates and Harrison. This first version was a thick red concentrate and one of several different flavors to be used atop ice cream. The product quickly grew popular, not as an ice-cream topping, but by being mixed with water and consumed as a fruity beverage! The...
A species of mushroom has over 28,000 distinct sexes.
This would be the Schizophyllum commune. Some more primitive species of fungi only have 2 sexes, but the more complex species have more. Fungi reproduce when 2 different strains of fungi touch and exchange nuclei. A species can be divided into sexes by determining which fungi can mate with one another. As long as the 2 strains are different...
There is a language that only one person speaks.
The Yaghan people of Chile are the world’s southernmost indigenous culture, but they are slowly dying. A town on the southernmost tip of South America, Puerto Williams, is home to the last 70 Yaghan descendants - a tribe that has existed for at least 6,000 years! Today 78-year-old Cristina Calderón is both the only pureblooded descendant of the...
Thomas Edison held a record 1,093 patents during his lifetime.
Edison’s first patent was for an “electrographic vote recorder” in 1869, at the age of 23. This device was actually a bit ahead of its time, as it was TOO efficient and preventing polls from lobbying for vote-switching, a commonly accepted practice at the time. His invention of an improved stock ticker and the sale of its patent...