Concepts, Ideas, Thoughts & Bullsh!t |

On Fridays I post something fun. Why? Because you deserve a reward. We call it our TGIF Post.

Last week was the final post in our series called “Mind Blowing Facts.” The response was so great to that series that we came up with a few more assorted “Data Points.” Some call it trivia - I like to think of it as fun facts that are "Brain Builders." This is the perfect synaptic workout before the weekend.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Remember to print this post and share it with the kids. You’ll be a hero, and they will WOW and amaze their friends.

29 Completely Useless Facts!

1. The word "queue" is the only word in the English language that is still pronounced the same way when the last four letters are removed.
2. Beetles taste like apples, wasps like pine nuts, and worms like fried bacon.
3. Of all the words in the English language, the word 'set' has the most definitions!
4. What is called a "French kiss" in the English speaking world is known as an "English kiss" in France.
5. "Almost" is the longest word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order.
6. "Rhythm" is the longest English word without a vowel.
7. In 1386, a pig in France was executed by public hanging for the murder of a child.
8. There is a place called Rome on every continent.
9. Your heart beats over 100,000 times a day!
10. Horatio Nelson, one of England's most illustrious admirals was, throughout his life, never able to find a cure for his sea-sickness.
11. The skeleton of Jeremy Bentham is present at all important meetings of the University of London
12. Your ribs move about 5 million times a year, every time you breathe!
13. One quarter of the bones in your body, are in your feet!
14. The first known transfusion of blood was performed as early as 1667, when Jean-Baptiste transfused two pints of blood from a sheep to a young man.
15. Most dust particles in your house are made from dead skin!
16. The present population of 6.6 billion plus people of the world is predicted to become 11 billion by 2080.
17. Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian, and had only ONE testicle.
18. Months that begin on a Sunday will always have a "Friday the 13th."
19. On average a hedgehog's heart beats 300 times a minute.
20. More people are killed each year from bees than from snakes.
21. The placement of a donkey's eyes in its head enables it to see all four feet at all times!
22. The six official languages of the United Nations are: English, French, Arabic, Chinese, Russian and Spanish.
23. You're born with 300 bones, but by the time you become an adult, you only have 206.
24. The worlds oldest piece of chewing gum is 9000 years old!
25. The longest recorded flight of a chicken is 13 seconds.
26. Slugs have 4 noses.
27. A man named Charles Osborne had the hiccups for 69 years!
28. The average person laughs 10 times a day!
29. An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.

Related posts

• It’s Friday and That Means… Week 13 (1)
• It’s Friday and That Means… Week 14 (0)
• It’s Friday and That Means… Week 12 (0)
• It’s Friday and That Means… (0)
• Exercise Your Mind - Rebus Puzzles (0)

On Fridays I post something fun. Why? Because you deserve a reward. We simply call it our TGIF Post.

This is week 2 of a 3 part series called "Mind Blowing Facts." Some call it trivia - I like to think of it as assorted "Data Points." Fun facts that are "Brain Builders." This is the perfect synaptic workout before you veg out in front of the idiot box all weekend.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Remember to print this post and share it with the kids. You'll be a hero, and they will WOW and amaze their friends.

Mind Blowing Facts 51 - 100

51. A Dragonfly's eye contains 30,000 lenses.
52. A Pig's tongue contains 15,000 taste buds. In comparison, the human tongue has 9,000 taste buds. (Yet they eat garbage. What am I missing here?)
53. The number system was invented in India. Aryabhatta was the scientist who invented the digit zero.
54. Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.
55. Earth weighs 5,972,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons. But, every day the earth's weight increases by 10 tons because of cosmic dust falling on it from space!
56. Like fingerprints, everyone's tongue print is different.
57. "A duck's quack doesn't echo anywhere." The ONLY FACT HERE is that it is NOT A FACT! It is a commonly repeated Urban Legend.
58. Man is the only animal who'll eat with an enemy.
59. The average woman uses about her height in lipstick every five years.
60. The first Christmas was celebrated on December 25, AD 336 in Rome, after Emperor Constantine had declared Christianity the empire's favored religion.
61. A Cockroach will live nine days without its head, before it starves to death.
62. A Chimpanzee can learn to recognize itself in a mirror, but monkeys can't.
63. A Rat can last longer without water than a Camel can.
64. About 10% of the world's population is left-handed.
65. The common belief that "Dolphins sleep with one eye open" is ONLY a metaphor. Dolphins have to be conscious to breath. This means that they cannot go into a full deep sleep, because then they would suffocate. Dolphins have "solved" that by letting one half of their brain sleep at a time. This has been determined by doing EEG studies on dolphins. Dolphins sleep about 8 hours day in this fashion.
66. Snakes have no external ears. Therefore, they do not hear the music of a "snake charmer." Instead, they are probably responding to the movements of the snake charmer and the flute. However, sound waves may travel through bones in their heads to the middle ear.
67. Many spiders have eight eyes.
68. The tongue of snakes has no taste buds. Instead, the tongue is used to bring smells and tastes into the mouth. Smells and tastes are then detected in two pits, called "Jacobson's organs", on the roof of their mouths. Receptors in the pits then transmit smell and taste information to the brain.
69. Birds don't sweat. Birds pant to expel body heat – they breath very quickly, letting the cooler air passing through the lungs and air sacs carry heat away from the body.
70. The highest kangaroo leap recorded is 10 ft and the longest is 42 ft.
71. Flamingo tongues were commonly eaten at Roman feasts.
72. The smallest bird in the world is the Hummingbird. It weighs 1 oz.
73. The bird that can fly the fastest is called a White. It can fly up to 95 miles per hour.
74. The oldest living things on Earth are 12,000 years old. They are the flowering shrubs called creosote bushes in the Mojave Desert.
75. Tea is said to have been discovered in 2737 BC by a Chinese emperor, when some tea leaves accidentally blew into a pot of boiling water.
76. A person can live without food for about a month, but only about a week without water. If the amount of water in your body is reduced by just 1%, you will feel thirsty. If it's reduced by 10%, you will die.
77. Along with its lengthy neck, the giraffe has a very long tongue. It is over 20 inches long. Surprise! A giraffe can clean its ears with its tongue.
78. Ostriches kick with tremendous force, but only forward. Don't mess with them (unless your behind them).
79. An elephant can smell water three miles away.
80. If you were to remove your skin, it would weigh as much as 5 pounds.
81. A Hippopotamus can run faster than a man.
82. India never invaded any country in the last 10,000 years.
83. The tallest man in modern history was Robert Pershing Wadlow standing a whopping 8' 11". In comparison the average giraffe about about 18 ft.
84. Yao Defen is believed to be the world's tallest woman. She measures 7 ft. 9 in. That is 2 inches more than Sandy Allen (7 ft. 7 in.) of the United States. Allen is currently listed by Guinness World Records as the world's tallest woman.
85. The only 2 animals that can see behind themselves without turning their heads are the rabbit and the parrot.
86. The blue whale is the largest animal on earth. The heart of a blue whale is as big as a car, and its tongue is as long as an elephant.
87. The largest bird egg in the world today is that of the ostrich. Ostrich eggs are from 6 to 8 inches long. Because of their size and the thickness of their shells, they take 40 minutes to hard-boil. The average adult male ostrich, the world's largest living bird, weighs up to 345 pounds.
88. Every dolphin has its own signature whistle to distinguish it from other dolphins, much like a human fingerprint.
89. The world's largest mammal, the blue whale, weighs 50 tons at birth. Fully grown, it weighs as much as 150 tons.
90. 90% of all the ice in the world is located on the continent of Antarctica.
91. Antarctica is DRIEST continent. Antarctica is a desert.
92. Antarctica is COLDEST continent, averaging minus 76 degrees in the winter.
93. Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun. It doesn't have a moon. Its atmosphere is so thin that during the day the temperature reaches +750 degrees, and at night can plunge to -300 degrees.
94. Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system. It is so large that if it were hollow, you could fit 1,000 Earths inside! Jupiter is made up of gas and is not solid. The most famous feature of Jupiter is its Red Spot, which is actually an enormous hurricane that has been raging on Jupiter for hundreds of years! Currently 27 of Jupiter's moons are officially recognized.
95. Saturn is a very windy place! Winds can reach up to 1,100 miles per hour. Saturn is also made of gas. This planet is famous for its beautiful rings, and at last count has at least 60 moons.
96. Uranus is the third largest planet, and is also made of gas. It's tilted on its side and spins north-south rather than east-west. Uranus has 27 named moons. 5 of them are massive enough to be considered dwarf planets if they were in orbit about the Sun.
97. Neptune is the eighth planet from the sun, the fourth largest, and appears blue because it is made of methane gas. It is named after the Roman god of the sea. Neptune is four times the size of Earth, and its day lasts a little more than 16 hours. Its year is about 165 Earth years. Neptune's orbit is a perfect circle.
98. Until recently Pluto was considered to be the farthest planet from the Sun. It has such an unusual orbit that occasionally it passes closer to the Sun than Neptune. Pluto is made of rock and ice. It is so small that astronomers are debating whether it should even be considered a planet. Recently other planet like objects have been discovered orbiting the Sun even further out in space than Pluto.
99. Mars has seasons like Earth. Mars has polar caps like Earth, containing frozen carbon dioxide (and small amount of water). The Sun appears about half the size on Mars as it does from Earth. The largest volcano in the Solar System is on Mars. It is called Olympus Mons. Mars is believed to have had water flowing around it like Earth once. It may have had a blue sky, too. However, it is unlikely that it had grass, trees and plants like Earth has now.
100. Mars is the one planet that people believe is most likely to contain or to have contained life. Around 1900, The Guzman Prize was offered to the first person to be in contact with an extra-terrestrial being. However, this extra-terrestrial being was not allowed to come from Mars because that would make the competition too easy!

EDITOR'S NOTE: Please read the CITB story "What in the HELL Mars is this?" for revealing and fascinating photos of possible life on Mars.

Related posts

• It’s Friday and That Means… Week 18 (0)
• It’s Friday and That Means… Week 12 (0)
• It’s Friday and That Means… Week 14 (0)
• It’s Friday and That Means… (0)
• I Guess You’ll Do - You Can Pick Me Up at Eight… (0)

On Fridays I post something fun. Why? Because you deserve a reward. We call it our TGIF Post.

The last post in our TGIF series was “29 Completely Useless Facts!” The response was great! We came up with a few more assorted “Data Points.” Some call it trivia - I like to think of it as fun facts that are "Brain Builders." The perfect synaptic workout before the weekend.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Remember to print this post and share it with the kids. You’ll be a hero, and they will WOW and amaze their friends.

77 Human Body Facts!

1. The shark cornea has been used in eye surgery, since its cornea is similar to a human cornea.
2. The number one cause of blindness in adults in the United States is diabetes.
3. The eyeball of a human weighs approximately 28 grams.
4. The eye of a human can distinguish 500 shades of gray.
5. The cornea is the only living tissue in the human body that does not contain any blood vessels.
6. The conjunctiva is a membrane that covers the human eye.
7. Sailors once thought that wearing a gold earring would improve their eyesight.
8. Research has indicated that a tie that is on too tight can increase the risk of glaucoma in men.
9. People generally read 25% slower from a computer screen compared to paper.
10. Men are able to read fine print better than women can.
11. Close to fifty percent of the bacteria in the mouth lives on the surface of our tongue.
12. You have approximately 9,000 - 10,000 taste buds; however, they're not all on the tongue. Some are under the tongue; some are on the inside of the cheeks; some are on the roof of the mouth. Some can even be found on the lips; these are especially sensitive to salt.
13. 85% of the population can curl their tongue into a tube.
14. In a month, a fingernail grows an eighth of an inch.
15. People who have a mouth with a narrow roof are more likely to snore. This is because they have less oxygen going through their nose.
16. While sleeping, one man in eight snores, and one in ten grinds his teeth.
17. It takes food seven seconds to go from the mouth to the stomach via the esophagus.
18. In one day, a human sheds 10 billion skin flakes. This amounts to approximately 4,5 pounds in a year.
19. Every square inch of the human body has about 19,000,000 skin cells.
20. Every hour one billion cells in the body must be replaced.
21. The small intestine in the human body is about 2 inches in diameter, and 22 feet long.
22. The human body has approximately 37,000 miles of capillaries.
23. The aorta, which is the largest artery located in the body, is about the diameter of a garden hose.
24. The adult human body requires about 88 pounds of oxygen daily.
25. An average women has about 17 square feet of skin. When a women is in her ninth month of pregnancy she has approximately 18.5 square feet of skin.
26. The width of your arm span - stretched out - is the length of your whole body.
27. Women hearts beat faster than men.
28. Three years after a person quits smoking, their chance of having a heart attack is the same as someone who has never smoked before.
29. The human heart weighs less than a pound.
30. The human heart can create enough pressure that it could squirt blood a distance of thirty feet.
31. The first recorded open heart surgery was performed by Dr. Daniel Hall Williams in 1893.
32. Scientists have discovered that the longer the ring finger is in boys, the less chance they have of having a heart attack.
33. The right lung of a human is larger than the left one. This is because of the space and placement of the heart.
34. The human heart beat roughly 35 million times a year.
35. In a lifetime, the heart pumps about one million barrels of blood.
36. In 1967, the first successful heart transplant was performed in Cape Town, South Africa.
37. People that suffer from gum disease are twice as likely to have a stroke or heart attack.
38. Most heart attacks occur between the hours of 8 and 9 AM.
39. The human heart beast roughly 35 million times a year.
40. At one time it was thought that the heart controlled a person's emotions.
41. The smallest bone in the human body is the stapes bone which is located in the ear.
42. There are 54 bones in your hands including the wrists.
43. The only bone fully grown at birth is located in the ear.
44. The human face is made up of 14 bones.
45. If an identical twin grows up without having a certain tooth, the other twin will most likely also grow up with that tooth missing.
46. Humans are born with 300 bones in their body, however when a person reaches adulthood they only have 206 bones. This occurs because many of them join together to make a single bone.
47. Gardening is said to be one of the best exercises for maintaining healthy bones.
48. Enamel is hardest substance in the human body.
49. Although the outsides of a bone are hard, they are generally light and soft inside. They are about 75% water.
50. Adult human bones account for 14% of the body's total weight.
51. 1 in 2000 babies are born with a tooth that is already visible.
52. Fingernails grow nearly 4 times faster than toenails!
53. The strongest bone in your body is the femur (thighbone), and it's hollow
54. In the United States women are twice as likely to be diagnosed with depression than men.
55. The human brain has about 100,000,000,000 (100 billion) neurons.
56. Of all the oxygen that a human breathes, twenty percent goes to the brain.
57. People who ride on roller coasters have a higher chance of having a blood clot in the brain.
58. Once a human reaches the age of 35, he/she will start losing approximately 7,000 brain cells a day. The cells will never be replaced.
59. It is not possible to tickle yourself. The cerebellum, a part of the brain, warns the rest of the brain that you are about to tickle yourself. Since your brain knows this, it ignores the resulting sensation.
60. A women from Berlin, Germany has had 3,110 gallstones taken out of her gall bladder.
61. In America, the most common type of mental illness is Anxiety Disorders.
62. Your brain is 80% water.
63. Your brain is move active and thinks more at night than during the day.
64. The smile is the most frequently used facial expression. A smile can use anywhere from 5 to 53 facial muscles.
65. The slowest growing finger nail is on the thumb, and the fastest growing is the nail on the middle finger.
66. The sensitivity of a woman's middle finger is reduced during menstruation.
67. The same amount of calories are burned in 6 sessions of 5 minutes each of an activity, or doing 1 session of that activity for 30 minutes.
68. The pectin that is found in apples aids in lowering cholesterol levels.
69. The most frequent season for suicides to occur is spring. The winter months have the lowest number of suicides.
70. The majority of American models are skinnier than 98% of American women.
71. The longest case of hiccups on record was by an American pig farmer, whose hiccups persisted from 1922 through 1987.
72. The length of a human esophagus is 25 centimeters.
73. The human liver performs over 500 functions.
74. The feet have approximately 250,000 sweat glands.
75. The eight most popular foods to cause food allergies are: milk, eggs, wheat, peanuts, soy, tree nuts, fish, and shellfish.
76. The earliest known occurrence of a fetus yawning was at eleven weeks after conception.
77. The average ear grows 0.01 inches in length every year.

Related posts

• It’s Friday and That Means… Week 13 (1)
• It’s Friday and That Means… Week 12 (0)
• It’s Friday and That Means… (0)
• Facts About Sleep You Probably Didn’t Know… (0)
• It’s Friday and That Means… Week 15 (2)

As an editor I am a lover of information. Some might call it trivia - I like to think of it as assorted "Data Points" (that term is for my engineering friends - you know who your are!).

It's Friday and because of it being Friday I get to post something just for the fun of it. This is totally off topic for the scope of our blog. BUT IT'S OK! Why? Because it's my blog and I think you should do something fun on Fridays!

So here it is...

Mind Blowing Facts 1 - 49

1. Turtles have no teeth.
2. Prehistoric turtles may have weighed as much as 5,000 pounds.
3. Only one out of a thousand baby sea turtles survives after hatching.
4. Sea turtles absorb a lot of salt from the sea water in which they live. They excrete excess salt from their eyes, so it often looks as though they're crying.
5. Helium is a colorless, odorless, tasteless inert gas at room temperature and makes up about 0.0005% of the air we breathe.
6. Helium Gas makes balloons float. Helium is lighter than air and just as the heaviest things will tend to fall to the bottom, the lightest things will rise to the top.
7. Camels can (and DO) spit.
8. An ostrich can run 43 miles per hour (70 kilometers per hour).
9. Pigs are the fourth most intelligent animal in the world.
10. Dinosaurs didn't eat grass? There was no grass in the days of the dinosaurs.
11. Dolphins can swim 37 miles per hour (60 kilometers per hour).
12. A crocodile's tongue is attached to the roof of its mouth? It cannot move. It cannot chew but its Digestive juices are so strong that it can digest a steel nail, Glass pieces, etc.
13. Sharks are immune to disease i.e. they do not suffer from any Disease.
14. Animals are either right- or left-handed? Polar bears are always left-handed, and so is Kermit the Frog.
15. Paris, France has more dogs than people.
16. New Zealand is home to 70 million sheep and only 40 million people.
17. Male polar bears weigh 1400 pounds and females only weight 550 pounds, on average.
18. Bison are excellent swimmers? Their head, hump and tail never go below the surface of the water.
19. There are 6 to 14 frog’s species in the world that have no tongues. One of these is the African dwarf frog.
20. A frog named Santjie, who was in a frog derby in South Africa jumped 33 feet 5.5 inches.
21. The longest life span of a frog was 40 years
22. The eyes of a frog flatten down when it swallows its prey
23. The name `India' is derived from the River Indus
24. The Persian invaders converted it into Hindu. The name `Hindustan' combines Sindhu and Hindu and thus refers to the land of the Hindus.
25. Chess was invented in India.
26. The' place value system' and the 'decimal system' were developed in 100 BC in India.
27. The game of snakes & ladders was created by the 13th century poet saint Gyandev. It was originally called 'Mokshapat.' The ladders in the game represented virtues and the snakes indicated vices. It became the classic children's board game Chutes and Ladders.
28. India has the most post offices in the world
29. 'Navigation' is derived from the Sanskrit word NAVGATIH
30. The word Navy is also derived from the Sanskrit word 'Nou'.
31. Until 1896, India was the only source for diamonds to the world
32. The' place value system' and the 'decimal system' were developed in 100 BC in India.
33. A snail can sleep for 3 years.
34. The names of the continents all end with the same letter with which they start
35. Twenty-Four-Karat Gold is not pure gold since there is a small amount of copper in it. Absolutely pure gold is so soft that it can be molded with the hands.
36. Electricity doesn't move through a wire but through a field around the wire.
37. The first bicycle that was made in 1817. The German Baron Karl Drais von Sauerbronn invented the "Laufmaschine" or "Running Machine", a type of bicycle. The steerable Laufmaschine was made entirely of wood and had no pedals; a rider would push his/her feet against the ground to make the machine go forward.
38. The first steam powered train was invented by Robert Stephenson. It was called the Rocket.
39. A cheetah does not roar like a lion - it purrs like a cat (meow).
40. The original name for the butterfly was 'flutterby'
41. An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
42. Ants don't sleep.
43. Dolphins usually live up to about twenty years, but have been known to live for about forty.
44. Dolphins sleep in a semi-alert state by resting one side of their brain at a time
45. A dolphin can hold its breath for 5 to 8 minutes at a time
46. Bats can detect warmth of an animal from about 16 cm away using its "nose-leaf".
47. Bats can also find food up to 18 ft. away and get information about the type of insect using their sense of echolocation.
48. The eyes of the chameleon can move independently & can see in two different directions at the same time.
49. Cockroach: Can detect movement as small as 2,000 times the diameter of a hydrogen atom.

Related posts

• It’s Friday and That Means… Week 13 (1)
• It’s Friday and That Means… (0)
• It’s Friday and That Means… Week 18 (0)
• Making Stress Less Stressful (1)
• Get Your Mind Right and Your Cursor Will Follow (1)

As an editor I am a lover of information. Some might call it trivia - I like to think of it as assorted "Data Points" (that term is for my engineering friends - you know who your are!).

AND it's Friday and I get to post something just for the fun of it. This is totally off topic for the scope of our blog. BUT IT'S OK! Why? Because it's my blog and I think you should do something fun on Fridays! So here it is...

Curious and Useless Stuff

Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than for the US Treasury.

Men can read smaller print than women can; women can hear better.

Coca-Cola was originally green.

The state with the highest percentage of people who walk to work: Alaska

The percentage of Africa that is wilderness: 28% (now get this...) The percentage of North America that is wilderness: 38%

The cost of raising a medium-size dog to the age of eleven: $6,400

The average number of people airborne over the US any given hour: 61,000

Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.

The world's youngest parents were 8 and 9 and lived in China in 1910.

The youngest pope was 11 years old.

The first novel ever written on a typewriter: Tom Sawyer.

Those San Francisco Cable cars are the only mobile National Monuments.

111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, John Hancock and Charles Thomson. Most of the rest signed on August 2, but the last signature wasn't added until 5 years later.

Q. Half of all Americans live within 50 miles of what? A. Their birthplace

Q. Most boat owners name their boats. What is the most popular boat name? A. Obsession

Related posts

• It’s Friday and That Means… Week 12 (0)
• It’s Friday and That Means… Week 13 (1)
• It’s Friday and That Means… Week 18 (0)
• Get Wired Into Windows Vista With Vista Rewired (1)
• It’s Friday and That Means… Week 15 (2)