Browsing Category Fun & Interesting Facts

A Massachusetts Institute of Technology study noted that germs from one sneeze could travel from 19 to 26 feet. What’s also unfortunate is how fast these germs travel: A sneeze can move 100 miles per hour, which makes getting away from someone when they sneeze close to impossible. Also, a single sneeze sends around 10,000 germs flying.

Women tend to hiccup less than men, and men are more likely to develop long-term hiccups. A study that analyzed 318 studies published between 1990 and 2013 found that men were more likely to experience hiccups. Male susceptibility to developing hiccups could potentially be attributed to the lower synaptic threshold and easier excitability of afferent or efferent nerves in the hiccup reflex arc among men.

The ocean is home to 94–95% of all life on Earth. The ocean covers over 70% of the Earth’s surface and contains more life than anywhere else on Earth. 90% of ocean life lives in the coastal zone, which is the shallow, warmer waters along the coast that are full of nutrients that support life.

The first wheelbarrows seem to have been created in China—along with the first gunpowder, paper, seismoscopes, paper currency, magnetic compasses, crossbows, and many other key inventions. The earliest evidence of Chinese wheelbarrows is found in illustrations dated around 100 CE, during the Han dynasty.

Most wild seahorses are monogamous and mate for life. At times, they’ve even been known to wrap their tails around their mates so they don’t lose each other (sound the cuteness alarm). Additionally, this aspect of their anatomy also makes them skilled hitchhikers.

Nails, like hair, can change during pregnancy. Extra hormones can make them grow faster and become stronger. Some women, though, find that their nails split and break more easily during pregnancy. Like the changes in hair, nail changes aren’t permanent.

Yes, guide dogs are trained to go to the bathroom on command. The handler uses verbal and hand signals, such as “Do your business,” to tell the dog when to stop and proceed. As the pup finishes relieving the handler may choose to mark the behavior and use a food reward as soon as the pup returns from the squat to a normal position.

The thumb is not a reliable tool to take your pulse. This is because it has its own unique artery called the princeps pollicis, which makes it biologically unreliable. While taking your pulse with your thumb, you will feel your own pulse instead of the artery in your neck.

Considered the second smartest animals on Earth, after humans. Dolphins have the highest brain-to-body ratio of any animal species, except for humans. They are also capable of mimicry, learning, and using tools to manipulate their environment.

It’s impossible to burp in space. Without gravity, the gas can’t be separated from the liquids and solids, and it becomes impossible to burp without throwing up.

China’s first Olympic medal was won in 1984 at the Los Angeles Games, when Xu Haifeng, a Chinese sharpshooter, won the gold medal in the 50m pistol event. Xu was the first Chinese to win an Olympic gold medal. China did not participate from 1956 to 1976 because of the International Olympic Committee’s recognition of Taiwan.

The word “hippopotamus” comes from the Greek word for “water horse” or “river horse,” although hippos and horses aren’t closely related. According to the San Diego Zoo, the closest living relatives of hippos are pigs, whales, and dolphins.

In general, galaxies are moving away from each other at an ever-increasing rate, carried along by the expansion of the Universe. The further away a galaxy is from us, the faster it moves away. This relationship between distance and ‘redshift’ is called the Hubble-Lemaître Law.

Due to the effect of heat on water at the molecular level, cold and warm water have different densities. Cold water is denser than hot water because, without heat, the water molecules can not fuel fast movement.

Blinking supports eye health, but more frequent blinking can occur with certain health conditions or injuries. Blinking is essential for eye health. It helps your eyes stay moist and oxygenated and clears debris from your eyes.

Toilets are by far the main source of water use in the home, accounting for nearly 30 percent of an average home’s indoor water consumption. Older, inefficient toilets that use as much as 6 gallons per flush also happen to be a major source of wasted water in many homes.

Singapore banned the sale, import, and manufacture of chewing gum in 1992, citing litter that disrupted the mass rapid transit trains. The ban also aims to stop the placement of used gum in inappropriate places, such as the sensors of subway doors, inside lock cylinders, elevator buttons, and the high costs of cleaning up the litter.

The historical people known as Vikings, who hailed from Scandinavia in Northern Europe, are well-known today for their exploits in the West. However, the merchant warriors also made their way into Eastern Europe, where they helped found a medieval federation in the territory now known as Belarus, Ukraine, and part of Russia.

A group of ravens is called a conspiracy, or an unkindness. Other terms for a group of ravens include a treachery. These names come from folklore or superstitions that associate these birds with death or fear. Some people may also get an ominous feeling when they see ravens grouped in a flock.

Chemoreceptors in the taste buds of your tongue require a liquid medium for the flavors to bind to the receptor molecules. Without liquid, you won’t see results. Technically, you can use water rather than saliva for this purpose.

Having a heart of gold has been with us for quite some time. It appears in William Shakespeare’s play Henry V, written about 1599. The simple explanation is that gold was, and still is, thought of as both pure and precious. These characteristics can be applied to somebody’s personality and, thus, their heart.

The human body is made up of 206 bones and 52 of these are found in your feet (26 in each foot). In addition to 26 bones, each foot also has 33 joints and over 100 muscles, ligaments, and tendons. Babies’ foot bones keep developing until they become teenagers.

The average golf ball has 336 dimples, but the number can vary from 250 to 500. The dimples are small indentations that look like craters, and the number of dimples depends on the golf ball, manufacturer, and dimple design.

Sticky rice mortar was invented in ancient China, utilizing organic materials in inorganic mortar. Hydraulic mortar was not available in ancient China, possibly due to a lack of volcanic ash. Around 500 CE, sticky rice soup was mixed with slaked lime to make an inorganic−organic composite mortar that was stronger and more water-resistant than lime mortar.

The word “fork” comes from the Latin word furca, which means “pitchfork”. The first dining forks were used by the ruling class in the Middle East and the Byzantine Empire.

Though the fork was sporadically used throughout Europe by royalty and wealthy merchants, it was often viewed as overly feminine and dainty, Royal Museums Greenwich writes. Some members of the Roman Catholic clergy saw it as downright sinister.

Left-handedness is less common than right-handedness. Left-handed people are more skillful with their left hand when performing tasks. Studies suggest that approximately 10% of the world’s population is left-handed. Mixed-handedness is the change of hand preference between tasks.

Cats have 32 muscles in each ear, which allows them to rotate their ears 180 degrees and move them independently. This anatomy helps cats identify the source of sounds, express themselves, and amplify sound waves by two or three times. Cats can also use their ears to detect faint sounds from far away.

It has been supposed that just as the pattern of every person’s fingerprints is unique, each dog’s rhinarium (the section of bare skin at the tip of a dog’s nose) has a distinguishing design of dimples, dots, and ridges that, when combined with the shape of his nostril openings, is believed to make a mark that is distinctive enough to identify one dog among all others conclusively.

A werewolf is also known as a lycanthrope. The word “lycanthrope” is a fancy way to describe a werewolf or wolfman, or any other mythical human-wolf creature. The word “lycanthropy” comes from the Greek words lykos meaning “wolf” and anthropos meaning “man”

Sunlight travels at the speed of light. Photons emitted from the surface of the Sun need to travel across the vacuum of space to reach our eyes. The short answer is that it takes sunlight an average of 8 minutes and 20 seconds to travel from the Sun to the Earth.

In his autobiography, Mark Twain claimed to be the first author to submit a typewritten book manuscript for publication. He used a Remington typewriter to type out his manuscripts, and he states ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer’ as the first typewritten manuscript. The year—1876.

Aboriginal Australians have a wide variety of cultural practices and beliefs that make up the oldest continuous cultures in the world. During the European colonization of Australia, they comprised complex cultural societies with more than 250 languages and varying degrees of technology and settlements.

Air is a very poor conductor of electricity and gets extremely hot when lightning passes through it. In fact, lightning can heat the air it passes through to 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit (5 times hotter than the surface of the sun).

Yes, severe depression can cause us to biologically age more by increasing the aging process in cells. Depressed individuals have a higher incidence of various diseases of aging, including cardiovascular-related mortality, which are features commonly associated with advancing chronological aging

Before making a name for himself in the fashion industry, Ralph Lauren went by his birth name, Ralph Lifshitz. The designer was teased constantly in school over his name, and later decided to change it to Lauren after his brother Jerry presented the idea when they were teenagers.

Cryptic pregnancy is when a pregnant person doesn’t know they’re pregnant. It’s also known as stealth pregnancy or denied pregnancy. If you have this, you may not realize you’re pregnant until very late into your pregnancy or until you go into labor. Cryptic pregnancy is rare. Studies estimate that 1 in 400 or 500 women are 20 weeks (about 5 months) into pregnancy before realizing it.

The tallest mountain in the world from base to peak is Mauna Kea, a long-dormant volcano in Hawaii, USA. It is approximately 10,205m (33481 feet) in height, taller than Mount Everest’s 8,849m (29032 feet). Over half of Mauna Kea is underwater in the Pacific Ocean.

Venus has an optical phenomenon called a ‘glory,’ which – like a rainbow – forms when sunlight falls on cloud droplets. However, glories are caused by the interference of light waves within droplets, whereas rainbows are caused by the reflection, refraction and dispersion of light.

Although it may seem safe to assume that one horsepower is the output a horse can create at any one time, that is incorrect. In fact, a horse’s maximum output can be up to 15 horsepower, and a human’s maximum output is a bit more than a single horsepower.

It might seem counterintuitive, but generally speaking, skinny people don’t have faster metabolisms than people who weigh more. In fact, the bigger your body, the more calories you burn. Basal (or resting) metabolism refers to the total number of calories all the cells in the body need to stay alive and functioning.

The hashtag symbol, also known as the pound sign or number sign, is technically called an octothorpe. The origins of the term are a bit unclear, but it is believed to have been coined by employees at Bell Laboratories in the 1960s.

Moonquakes are different from earthquakes in a few key ways. They can last much longer on the moon, sometimes for hours. Because of the moon’s weaker gravity, a quake will feel much stronger than Earth. Even a moderate amount of shaking could take you off your feet.

If you look up the meaning of the word “nurdle,” you’ll find that it is a small pellet of plastic used to make plastic products. Apparently, it is also what toothpaste manufacturers call the dab of toothpaste that sits on top of toothbrushes.

A “jiffy” is a real unit of time, equal to how long it takes for light to travel one femtometer, which is one quadrillionth of a meter. In other words, it’s really, really brief: A single second contains three hundred thousand billion billion jiffys.

The ‘Marcha Real’ is one of only four national anthems in the world (along with those of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and San Marino) with no official lyrics.

You can’t get your SCUBA certification without learning what this acronym stands for. It means “Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus,” which is a pretty straightforward description of the equipment and the activity. The term originated in 1952, and “scuba-diving” came around by 1956.

Discover Magazine reports that there’s quite a bit of gold on — or, really, in — our planet: 99 percent of the precious metal can be found in the Earth’s core. How much is there? Enough to coat the entire surface of the Earth in 1.5 feet of gold

Yes it is true that lighter were invented before matches, the modern match box was created by British Chemist John Walker in the year 1827, where as the cigarette lighter was created eleven years prior in the year 1816 by German chemist J.W. Dobereiner.

Alfred P. Southwick, a dentist and inventor from Buffalo, New York, is credited with inventing the electric chair in 1881. Southwick’s goal was to develop a more humane alternative to hanging, which often resulted in prolonged suffering for the condemned. Southwick’s idea was to use electricity to carry out the death penalty.

Their 3rd eyelid is called a nictitating membrane. This transparent barrier protects its eye from dust and sand. And it can also act like a contact lens, improving their vision. Many animals have three eyelids, including horses, cats and dogs, sharks, and many birds.