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Random Facts Thread

MonkeyCatcher said:
The average person in a bookstore spends 8 seconds looking at the cover of a book and a further 15 seconds reading the back.
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Hmm. I'd say I spend about 2 seconds looking at the cover, about 20 second looking at the backcover and another 20 seconds reading a random page.

random fact:
If you put a raisin in a glass of champagne it will keep floating to the top and sinking to the bottom.
 
Gem said:
random fact:
If you put a raisin in a glass of champagne it will keep floating to the top and sinking to the bottom.
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Wow....I really really really want to try that now, but for the lack of both raisins AND champagne, I'll let someone else have the fun :p
 
Another gem from the Reader's Digest:

There are actually strict laws regarding the naming of new planets and the like, as dictated by the International Astronomical Union. For example, small craters on Mars must be named after a "villiage of the world with a population of less than 100,000". Craters on the moon in and around the crater Apollo must be named after "deceased American astronauts", while large ringed features on Catenae are to be named for "places from myths and folktales of cultures of the Far North". The small satellites of Uranus must be named after "heroines from Shakespeare and Pope".
 
There is a law in a United States city on the east coast that no unauthorized rats can step on land from a boat.
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I don't know how I missed this before, but that is possibly the weirdest thing I have ever heard in my life!!! LOL

So does this law that mean there are authorized rats that we import for some reason? Don't we have enough already?!

And what happens if a rat breaks this law?? Are they prosecuted? Given the death penalty, perhaps? Do they just have to pay a fine? Or are they considered illegal immigrants, so we ship them back to their own country? --But how can you determine a rat's nationality??? This raises so many important questions....
 
Okay, my source for most of these is the 'net, so I'm not sure how credible they are. Thought provoking, though:

According to German researchers, the risk of heart attack is higher on Monday than any other day of the week.
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Amen. I could have told you that.

It takes 17 muscles to smile and 43 to frown
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Does this mean that I have 43 particularly strong muscles and 17 not so hot ones? :)

The "save" icon on Microsoft Word shows a floppy disk, with the shutter on backwards.
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If you toss a penny 10,000 times, it will not be heads 5,000 times, but more like 4,950. The heads picture weighs more, so it ends up on the bottom
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111,111,111 x 111,111,111=12,345,678,987,654,321
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Awesome. Cool maths is fun.
 
In many Eastern European countries, they nod to say no and shake their head to say yes. (This has many useful qualities on how to confuse people! ;))

You use more water washing dishes by hand than you do in a dishwasher.

Thinly cut french fries will have more calories than an equal weight of thickly cut fries.

Iron roofs do not burn at all. Steel wool burns slightly. Nanoparticles of iron combust so quickly that anything in contact will instantly incinerate.

People who are afraid of needles are statistically at a higher risk for heart disease and cancer.

It is possible to be born with up to 6 X chromosomes. It is also possible to be born without a Y chromosome (meaning to only have 1 X chromosome) but it is impossible to be born without an X chromosome or 2 Y chromosomes.

Boys have a 67% higher chance of being born color-blind.

If a person died while inhaling, it is possible to force the air out to make a sound similar to the last words the person planned on saying! :eek:
 
Most of the electricity in America hums to the key of B flat, and my chorus actually uses it to find pitch on occasion.

This isn't important or anything, but my mother tells me that if you put goldfish in pink wine, they swim upside down animatedly for several minutes before they die. ...this was apparently before the days of PETA that she tried this.
 
Jumping rope is the most rigorous exercise you can do by yourself.

Every thirty minutes that you are "bored" your body slows down its endorphine production by 2%. Over a lifetime, the endorphine production can nearly cease.
 
Wow, no wonder I'm so miserable when I'm bored. Like yesterday. I was grounded from the computer and realized I had absolutely nothing to do but sit on my butt and watch TV all day until my brains rotted out.

David Bowie has a condition called heterochromatia, in which he has two different colored eyes. When he was younger, a head injury caused one eye to change from blue to brown, and he has some visual problems in that eye.
 
A typical used mattress may have anywhere from 100,000 to 10 million dust mites inside. (Ten percent of the weight of a two year old pillow can be composed of dead mites and their droppings.)
A favorite food of the dust mite is dander (both human and animal skin flakes).
Humans shed about 1/5 ounce of dander (dead skin) each week. About 80 percent of the material seen floating in a sunbeam is skin flakes.
 
David Bowie has a condition called heterochromatia, in which he has two different colored eyes.
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Oh my god! My eyes are different colours! Another piece of evdence that I was meant to marry David Bowie (or that I'm a possible love child...mmmmm)
 
Yes, I realise now that my post might be taken as an indication of some serious mental disturbances on my part. Maybe it's the eyes.

Making me loco :)
 
kuroc said:
Did you know that depending on how you make tea it can have more caffeine than coffee. :D
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On the subject of tea...

Did you know that tea has a substance called tannin in it which prevents the proper absoption of iron? This is one reason why elderly people often don't get enough iron. :eek:
 
Vespertilio91 said:
If a person died while inhaling, it is possible to force the air out to make a sound similar to the last words the person planned on saying! :eek:
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I can imagine some person somewhere, aware of this fact, sitting on the bedside of a dying patriach. After forcing out the air of the dead man, he goes, "He said 'I'll give you everything I own!'" when in fact the dead man actually said "Piss off and leave me alone!"

ds
 
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