Share an interesting random fact

[Belisarius^_^]

Americans eat nearly 100 acres of pizza every day. That's about 350 slices per second

 

[darkstarangel]

The Babylonians had a number system that was base 60, unlike ours which is base 10. This is why a minute consists of 60 seconds & an hour of 60 minutes.
They also believed their were 360 days in a year & this was the basis for the degrees in a circle. (this may have been true if earths orbit around the sun was a perfect circle)

Cardiac tissue contracts automatically on its own & the only control by the brain is the regulation of the beats. Also if two samples of living cardiac tissue are put together in a petri dish then their contractions will synchronise.
So if someone was capable of ripping your heart out of your chest it would still be beating in their hand.

And, the true freezing point of pure water without any dust particles or ions is -37 degrees celsius or 236 degrees kelvin.

 

[GirDraconis]

Okay, I get the 100% statistic and agree it makes perfect sense (except for the February 29th babies, then it's 367). I'm not getting the other two. 365 x 0.99 = 361.35. My brain says you'd need 362 (rounding up) people. Same for the 50% statistic. How do these last two statistics work?

an irrelevant equation.

Borg detected!

 

[ToMegaTherion]

Denmark and Sweden have fought more wars against each other than any other countries in the world.

Those damn danes. One day we will have our revenge for stockholms bloodbath.

On Topic. Gandhi hated black people and Anton Lavey(The black pope of the church of Satan) was a good friend with Walt Disney

 

[Arqus_Zed]

This:

Is an animal that actually exists.
It's a sea slug.

 

[Fusioncode9]

Santa Claus wasn't originally red and white. It was a marketing campaign by Coke, but it was so popular that everybody else just kind of ran with it.

 

[Krois]

No random fact to add, but may I ask what's that sea slug called? Looks pretty.

 

[Hasido]

snipity snip

its binary, where fingers down represent 0s and fingers up represent 1s. this means that the largest number you could represent with your hands in binary would be 1111111111(all fingers up), or 1023 in decimal.

 

[Derelict Frog]

90% of the cells in an average human are bacteria.

The Battle of Lake Peipus (1242) is the only battle in history to almost entirely have been fought on a frozen lake.

The Economist World Guide (and various other sources) only this year announced that Castilian Spanish has overtaken English to become the world's 2nd most native-spoken language (with Mandarin Chinese taking 1st place).

 

[cheese_wizington]

If you squeeze your left thumb (in the same fashion as making a fist that would break your thumb if you hit someone) you will have no gag reflex.

Try it, but I warn you, you may feel strange doing it.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

First, I should mention that anyone who doesn't actually bother to check up on their supposed "facts" should be forced to lick syrup off of sandpaper for the next ten years as far as I'm concerned.

It's the whole reason why we get stuff like...

EDIT: Also, a "brass monkey is the brass framework used to hold cannonballs in place on old naval vessels. And since brass contracts in the cold faster than iron, the brass framework would distort itself on very cold days causing the cannonballs to fall off and roll across the deck. This is the original source of the phrase: "Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey."

Completely untrue. It's nothing more than an urban myth.

What is a brass monkey? It's a little monkey figurine made from brass.

It's impossible to lick your own elbow

Absolute nonsense. There are people who can put both feet behind their head, do you seriously think it's technically impossible to lick your own elbow?

first off: you can't lick your own elbow because its one bone away. its basically a firm line. you can scratch your back with your arm because there are at least 2 joints you can use to bend your arms.same goes for putting your feet behind your back, you have at lest 2-3 joints that make this possible.
to make this happen you would have to dislocate your shoulder and have an abnormal long tounge.

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/cold%20enough%20to%20freeze%20the%20balls%20off%20a%20brass%20monkey.html

cannons were hold by brace framework in the past.the figurines came later.
you should check your own facts before posting anything at all. especially when you are accusing someone else having wrong facts. go educate yourself.

Actually it is fully possible to lick your own elbow, I've seen it done on two seperate occasions by two different people.

But hearsay doesn't really count as evidence on the internet, what we need is some sort of a video or filmed clip of the elbow licking happening. Luckily we are on the internet, and they have those in spades:

(skip to 1:15 for the elbow licking)

Here is a wet foreign girl doing it:

This girl tongues away like it's an icecream:

Now what was it you said? "you should check your own facts before posting anything at all. especially when you are accusing someone else having wrong facts. go educate yourself."
Ah. Poetic Justice.

 

[Singularly Datarific]

Equines like Donkeys, cows and ponies also can't vomit.

Marsupials have unique genitals. The penis is double-pronged, like the letter Y, as in "why, God, why"?

Similarly, the female has two diametrically opposed vaginae, with a canal in the middle through which the babies are pushed.

Still think Koalas are cute?

Sort of, but now Yahtzee's favorite line now has a basis in reality...

 

[Starke]

Denmark and Sweden have fought more wars against each other than any other countries in the world.

Those damn danes. One day we will have our revenge for stockholms bloodbath.

On Topic. Gandhi hated black people and Anton Lavey(The black pope of the church of Satan) was a good friend with Walt Disney

Interestingly, Gandhi was also more of a nationalist, than a pacifist. The perception of him as loving and respecting all life, isn't exactly accurate. He wanted the British out of India, and realized that force of arms would not achieve that goal, so he looked for alternative means to do so. The schism between India and Pakistan was abhorrent to him.

Santa Claus wasn't originally red and white. It was a marketing campaign by Coke, but it was so popular that everybody else just kind of ran with it.

So what were the original colors?

Random Factoid: The single longest war (with ongoing hostilities) in the 20th century was fought between Iraq and Iran.

During this war, the US supported Iraq, selling weapons including chemical weapons to the Iraqis. When the US Government claimed it knew Iraq had had weapons of mass destruction, it is because, they had sold them to Iraq.

 

[dedem1315]

Giraffes bark.
I think.

 

[uhohimdead]

"Stewardesses" is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand.
"monopoly" and "lollipop" are the longest words typed with only the right hand
"typewriter" is the longest word typed with one row of keys on a keyboard.
"skepticism" is the longest word typed while alternating between your left and right hand

here's a fun video

 

[maddawg IAJI]

*Snipped due to size*

Buddy, it is possible to lick your elbow. Believe me, I was like you and thought the same thing, until I met a good friend of mine in high school and saw him do it with my own two eyes. Granted though, he is part of a very, very slim minority.


So to recap.

Is it impossible to lick your elbow? No, it is not impossible.
Can a lot of people lick their elbows? No, the majority of the world cannot lick their elbows.

 

[chadachada123]

Psychedelic shrooms are a very effective medicine for use against OCD and OCD-related depression. A single use put many people in a blind study into remission for a damn-long freaking time.

Yet it's still illegal to even use for study in the US because of its Class I status.

 

[4RM3D]

Santa Claus wasn't originally red and white. It was a marketing campaign by Coke, but it was so popular that everybody else just kind of ran with it.

So what were the original colors?

New fact: The most mentioned fact in this thread is that the colors of Santa Claus came from the Coca Cola ad campaign. Not only is this fact mentioned the most, it is also wrong. There was another campaign from another company, before Coca Cola started theirs. Coca Cola was just more popular.

Also, according to sources, the original Santa Claus was green.

And while on the subject of this thread...

The post below is the most disputed fact in this thread:

It's impossible to lick your own elbow

*snip* [In short: It's impossible to lick your own elbow]

The post below is the most quoted fact in this thread (because it is awesome):

The parasite cymothoa exigua kills the the tongue of its host and then replaces the organ by attaching itself to the stump. It's the only parasite that will replace an organ.

 

[vkola]

In Great Britain pregnant women can pee where ever they choose, including in policemens helmets..

 

[Daverson]

Santa Claus wasn't originally red and white. It was a marketing campaign by Coke, but it was so popular that everybody else just kind of ran with it.

So what were the original colors?

New fact: The most mentioned fact in this thread is that the colors of Santa Claus came from the Coca Cola ad campaign. Not only is this fact mentioned the most, it is also wrong. There was another campaign from another company, before Coca Cola started theirs. Coca Cola was just more popular.

Also, according to sources, the original Santa Claus was green.

AFAIK, red was the original colour for the Santa suit. The green version was more popular in the US when Coca Cola started their marketing campaign though.

On a Santa suit colour related fact I can actually verify, in the USSR Stalin personally ordered their version of Santa ("Ded Moroz") should wear a blue suit, so he didn't get confused with the Capitalist Santa.