Random Rantings Part 1

I've decided to create a list of things, random things, things you may, or may not know. So here's part 1 of the list.

1. Baby Koala Bears eat their mother's excrement.

2. Sea cucumbers feast of marine waste and excrement and excrete themselves every 15 minutes or so.

3. 25 species go extinct daily.

4. Never urinate in pools or in any other water bodies because bacteria and other substances follow the nitrogen trail up into your scrotum then eventually ending up in your rectum and abdomen which causes all sorts of undetectable illnesses.
If you ever swim in the Amazon and Oranoco Rivers of South America please think twice before urinating in the water. Fish called Candiru or Carnero is attracted by urine smell (urea and ammonia) and it can insert it self into the penis or vagina while urinating. Then penis fish lodges itself somewhere in the urinary tract with its spines and it uses its mouth for feeding by sucking the blood. It is almost impossible for fish to survive inside of the human body. Removal of the fish is extremely hard due to the spines and if problem is not treated it can result in removal of the genitals.

5. The survival rate for you, me and everyone else is zero.

6. Your body produces over 90 gallons of mucus a day. Most of which are swallowed, the rest either spat out through the mouth or blown out/dug out from the nose.

7. An annoyed camel will spit at a person.

8. It is said that if a statue of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, like the Zizkov Monument, the person died of natural causes.

9. Bananas consistently are the number one compliant of grocery shoppers. Most people complain when bananas are overripe or even freckled. The fact is that spotted bananas are sweeter, with a sugar content of more than 20%, compared with 3% in a green banana.

10. Excessive use of credit is cited as a major cause of non-business bankruptcy, second only to unemployment.

11. Your heart beats 101,000 times a day. During your lifetime it will beat about 3 billion times and pump about 400 million litres (800 million pints) of blood.

12. Half the world's population earns about 5% of the world's wealth.

13. The number 13 in Greek is triskaideka and the fear of the number 13 is called triskaidekaphobia.

14. The longest movie in the world according to Guiness World Records is The Cure for Insomnia, directed by John Henry Timmis IV. Released in 1987, the running time is 5220 minutes (87 hours).

15. Pork is the world's most widely-eaten meat.

16. Jean-Dominique Bauby, a French journalist suffering from "locked-in" syndrome, wrote the book "The Driving Bell and the Butterfly" by blinking his left eyelid - the only part of his body that could move.

17. There are more than 7 million millionaires in the world. 80% of whom drive second-hand cars.

18. Jack Mercer was the voice of Popeye the Sailor for 45 years.

19. Thomas Edison filed 1,093 patents, including those for the light bulb, electric railways and the movie camera. When he died in 1931, he held 34 patents for the telephone, 141 for batteries, 150 for the telegraph and 389 patents for electric light and power.

20. The first porn movie was the 1908 Fench film al'Ecu d'or oula bonne auberge.

21. China uses 45 billion chopsticks per year. 25 million trees are chopped down to make 'em sticks.

22. Almost 1,2 billion people are underfed - the same number of people that are overweight to the point of obesity.

23. The US share of the world music market is 31.3%.

24. In 1889, Kansas undertaker Almon B. Strowger wanted to prevent telephone operators from advising his rivals of the death of local citizens. So he invented the automatic exchange.

25. Tobacco is a $200 billion industry, producing six trillion cigarettes a year - about 1,000 cigarettes for each person on earth.

26. 92% of Chinese belong to the Han nationality, which has been China's largest nationality for centuries. The rest of the nation consists of about 55 minority groups.

27. Over the last 150 years the average height of people in industrialised nations increased by 10 cm (4 in).

28. Men loose about 40 hairs a day. Women loose about 70 hairs a day.

29. Beethoven was the first composer who never had an official court position, thus the first known freelance musician. Born in 1770, he grew up poor, but published his first work at age 12. By age 20 he was famous. He often sold the same score to six or seven different publishers simultaneously, and demanded unreasonably large fees for the simplest work. He was short, stocky, dressed badly, didn't like to bath, lived in squalor, used crude language, openly conducted affairs with married women, and had syphilis. Beethoven was deaf when he composed his Ninth Symphony.

30. A person remains conscious for eight seconds after being decapitated.

31. In 1965, CEOs earned on average 44 times more than factory workers. In 1998, CEOs earned on average 326 times more than factory workers and in 1999, they earned 419 times more than factory workers.

32. Unless food is mixed with saliva you cannot taste it.

33. A giraffe can clean its ears with its 50cm (20 in) tongue.

34. The heart of a blue whale is the size of a small car. The tongue of a blue whale is as long as an elephant.

35. The scales of a crocodile are made of ceratin, the same substance that hooves and fingernails are made of.

36. In 1998, American people, foundations and corporations gave more than $175 billion to charities and churches. Churches received 40% of the contributions, while public charities and educational organizations received the remainder.

37. The largest jellyfish ever caught measured 2,3 m (7'6") across the bell with a tentacle of 36 m (120 ft) long.

38. The largest giant squid ever recorded was captured in the North Atlantic in 1878. It weighed 4 tons. Its tentacles measured 10 m (35 ft) long.

39. 2 billion people still cannot read.

40. In 1900, a person could expect to live to be 47. Today, the average life expectancy for men and women in developed countries is longer than 70 years.

41. In 1865, Frederik Idestam founded a wood-pulp mill in southern Finland, naming it Nokia. It rapidly gained worldwide recognition, attracting a large number of workforce and the town Nokia was born. In 1898, the Finnish Rubber Works company opened in Nokia, taking on the town name in the 1920s. After WWII, the rubber company took a majority shareholding in the Finnish Cable Work. In 1967, the companies consolidated to become the Nokia Group. The recession of the 1990s led the group to focus on the mobile phone market.

42. The youngest active system of governance is communism, which was introduced in 1848 by Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx.

43. In 1952, John Cage composed and presented ' 4'33" ', a composition consisting of 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence.

44. The longest kiss in a movie is in Andy Warhol's Kiss. Rufus Collins and Naomi Levine kissed for the entire 50 minutes of the movie.

45. The coloured part of the eye is called the iris. Behind the iris is the soft, rubbery lens which focuses the light on to a layer, called the retina, in the back of the eye. The retina contains about 125 million rods and 7 million cones. The rods pick up shades of grey and help us see in dim light. The cones work best in bright light to pick up colours.

46. Sharks and rays also share the same kind of skin: instead of scales, they have small tooth-like spikes called denticles. The spikes are so sharp that shark skin has long been used as sandpaper.

47. Millions of trees are accidentally planted by squirrels who bury nuts and then forget where they hid them.

48. Don't believe that a novel could be without any e's? Here's an excerpt from page one of Wright's Gadsby:
"If youth, throughout all history, had a champion to stand up for it; to show a doubting world that a child can think; and, possibly, do it practically; you wouldn't constantly run across folks today who claim that "a child don't know anything." A child's brain starts functioning at birth; and has, amongst its many infant convolutions, thousands of dormant atoms, into which God has put a mystic possibility for noticing an adults act, and figuring out its purport."
- Gadsby by Ernest Vincent Wright. Published 1939

49. The first movie to use sound was "The Jazz Singer," released in 1927: the first words, spoken by Al Jolson, were: "Wait a minute, you ain't heard nothing yet."

50. Is a world population of 6 billion too many? Compare that with animals. There are more than a million animal species. There are 6,000 species of reptiles, 73,000 kinds of spiders, and 3,000 types of lice. For each person there is about 200 million insects. The 4,600 kinds of mammals represent a mere 0,3% of animals and the 9000 kinds of birds only 0,7%. The most numerous bird specie is the red-billed quelea of southern Africa. There are an estimated 100 trillion of them.

51. The Bible, the world's best-selling book, is also the world's most shoplifted book.

52. Industrial hemp contains less than 1% of THC, the psychoactive component of marijuana.

53. A compass does not point to the geographical North or South Pole, but to the magnetic poles.

54. Esther is the only book in the Bible that does not contain the word "God."

55. Nowhere in the Bible does it say there were three wise men - Matthew 2:1 only says: "Magi from the east came to Jerusalem" and later they present three gifts.

56. Summer on Uranus lasts for 21 years - but so does winter.

57. The tallest waterfalls in the world are Angel Falls in Venezuela. At 979 m (3,212 ft), they are 19 times taller than the Niagara Falls, or 3 times taller than the Empire State Building.

58. All the planets in the solar system rotate anticlockwise, except Venus. It is the only planet that rotates clockwise.

59. There is zero gravity at the centre of earth.

60. The 12 disciples were not were not allowed to carry food, money, or extra clothing.

61. In the 6th century BC Greek mathematician Pythagoras said that earth is round - but few agreed with him.
Greek astronomer Aristarchos said in the 3rd century BC that earth revolves around the sun - but the idea was not accepted.
In the 2nd century BC Greek astronomer Erastosthenes accurately measured the distance around the earth at about 40,000 km (24,860 miles) - but nobody believed him.
In the 2nd century AD Greek astronomer Ptolemy stated that earth was the centre of the universe - most people believed him for the next 1,400 years.

62. The shortest verse in the NIV Bible is John 11:35: "Jesus wept."

63. The word "trinity" is not mentioned in the Bible.

64. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson both grew hemp. Ben Franklin owned a mill that made hemp paper. The US Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper.

65. To most Americans, the orient is China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam; to Europeans it is the area of India and Pakistan.

66. Eskimos use refrigerators to keep food from freezing.

67. Women make up 49% of the world population.

68. It is not true that the Great Wall of China is the only man-made structure that can be viewed from space - many man-made objects, including the Dutch polders, can be viewed from space.

69. There are more than 600 million telephone lines today, yet almost half the world's population has never made a phone call.

70. In ancient China, the nose of a criminal who attacked travellers was cut off.

71. Accounts from Holland and Spain suggest that during the 1500s and 1600s urine was commonly used as a tooth-cleaning agent.

72. Only one of the Seven Wonders of the World still survives: the Great Pyramid of Giza.

73. The people killed most often during bank robberies are the robbers.

74. An exocannibal eats only enemies. An indocannibal eats only friends.

75. Leonardo da Vinci could write with the one hand and draw with the other simultaneously.

76. The shortest war on record took place in 1896 when Zanzibar surrendered to Britain after 38 minutes.

77. There are four types of marriages: monogamy, polygyny (polygymy), polyandry, and group marriage. Monogamy is one wife, one husband. Polygyny is one husband, several wives. Polyandry is one wife, several husbands. Group marriage is by far the rarest and has never been the prevailing form of marriage in any known society.

78. Rock drawings from the Red Sea site of Wadi Hammamat, dated to around 4000 BC show that Egyptian boats were made from papyrus and reeds.

79. Since 1495, no 25-year period has been without war.

80. The very first bomb that the Allies dropped on Berlin in World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.

81. Global spending on defence total more than $700 billion. Global spending on education is less than $100 billion.

82. The two-finger 'V' sign actually represents victory instead of the commonly known peace.

83. In pagan times Friday was the luckiest day of the week because it was ruled by the planet Venus, the symbol of love and fortune. In fact, Friday is named in honour of Freya, goddess of Love. But for Christians, Friday has not been a good day. Adam and Eve is said to have eaten the forbidden fruit on a Friday and died on a Friday. Jesus was crucified on a Friday.

84. The fear of clowns is known as Coulrophobia

85. Gymnasiums were introduced in 900BC and Greek athletes practised in the nude to the accompaniment of music. They also performed naked at the Olympic Games.

86. Chemical and biological warfare have been used long before World War 1. During the Peloponnesian War in the 5th century BC, Spartans used sulphur and pitch to overcome the enemy. During ancient and medieval times, soldiers sometimes threw bodies of plague victims over the walls of besieged cities, or into water wells. During the French and Indian wars in North America (1689-1763), blankets used by smallpox victims were given to American Indians in the hope they would carry the disease.

87. When fabric gets wet, light coming towards it refracts within the water, dispersing the light. In addition, the surface of the water causes incoherent light scattering. The combination of these two effects causes less light to reflect to your eyes and makes the wet fabric appear darker.

88. Hitler had only 1 testicle...must have been a big one for him to try conquer the world...

89. The smell of new furniture and cars is Formaldehyde, which embalmer use to preserve dead bodies,

90. Meal time just isn’t meal time in a restaurant if you don’t have a Marlboro Light in one hand and a piece of fried chicken in the other.

91. Parthenophobia is the fear of little girls.

92. Edgar Allan Poe, American poet, was seventeen years old when accepted into Virginia University. First year he managed to gamble all his scholarship money. It was also reported that Edgar owed around $2500 to local gamblers. Gambling addiction led to alcoholism, which is still debated by many Poe's followers. However, it was reported by school systems that Edgar showed up in class drunk even during the examinations. The interesting fact is that Edgar Allan Poe finished with highest grades in his class and became best student of his generation.

93. In 490 BCE, Pheidippides, a Greek soldier, ran from Marathon to Athens (about 25 miles) to inform the Athenians the outcome of the battle with invading Persians. The distance was filled with hills and other obstacles; thus Pheidippides arrived in Athens exhausted and with bleeding feet. After telling the townspeople of the Greeks' success in the battle, Pheidippides fell to the ground dead. In 1896, at the first modern Olympic Games, held a race of approximately the same length in commemoration of Pheidippides.

94. The word "testis" cames from the Latin meaning to bear witness. In ancient Rome, only men could bear witness or testify in a public forum. In order to show importance to their testimony, they would hold their testicles as they spoke, and an oath was declared while holding another's testicles.

95. The fear of sexual intercourse is coitophobia.

96. Did you know that the average chocolate bar in the U.S. contains at least 8 pieces of an insect in it? Harvesting of the cacao beans occurs in the tropical countries of South America with low sanitation levels. Cacao tree beans are cut and piled in the farmer's field where they ferment for 6 days. During this process, children and adults walk over the piles; insects, rodents, small animals and other living things that make their nests in the piles. Actually the The U. S. Department of Health publishes a book entitled "The Food Defect Action Levels" in which they list unavoidable defects in food (insect, rodents etc.) all allowed by FDA.

97. An Octopus has three hearts and it can squeeze through a hole the size of a 10-cent coin.

98. When a female horse and a male donkey mate, the offspring is called a mule, but when a male horse and a female donkey mate, the offspring is called a hinny.

99. After several debates, astronomers have determined the age of the universe by using a Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe. By examining the microwave background radiation that WMAP provided, astronomers were able to pin down the age of the universe, accurate to 1%, to 13.7 billion years old.

100. In 1940 Dr. S.S. Bryukhonenko at the Institute of Experimental Physiology and Therapy, Voronezh, U.S.S.R conducted research where he experimented with dogs and proved that dogs head can leave without its body for three days. Special artificial conditions were created to power the head with arterial and venous pumps. Dog's isolated head reacted to all basic external stimulants: light, sound, pain and taste. This disturbing experiment helped scientist around the world to create artificial organs that are used by many medical institutes. More recently Dr. Robert White of Ohio claims that he transplanted a monkey’s head onto another monkey’s body. If you have a good stomach check this odd video which shows in detail how dog's head is living without body.
this is the link to the video http://www.interestingfacts.org/?page=russia_dog_living_head