1. Did the Flintstones live here?
This is the Casa do Penedo in the Fafe Mountains in Portugal. Tourists visit this amazing house made from four boulders because they think that it might well have been where the Flintstones lived! Disappointing to know that it was actually built in 1974.
2. Snap your fingers
Maybe you can snap your fingers twice in a second? Bobby Badfingers has established a world record in that he can snap his fingers 30 times in one second.
3. Elvis Presley was blond
Elvis was naturally blond but started dying his hair black while in high school. He then decided to keep it like that.
4. Elvis Presley impersonators
Incredibly, there are about 50,000 people worldwide who make a living by impersonating ‘The King.’ “There have been a lotta tough guys. There have been pretenders. And there have been contenders. But there is only one king.” – Bruce Springsteen
5. Stone Age tunnels
Stone Age builders constructed a network of tunnels that stretch from Scotland to Turkey. While they are not all linked up, the fact that they have survived 12,000 years is amazing.
6. Suicide statistics
Worldwide, there is one suicide every 40 seconds. North Korea has one of the highest suicide rates in the world.
7. Johnny Cash
Johnny Cash wrote a science fiction novel in 1953 called “The Holografik Danser.” It is about America being taken over by the Soviets, and English being replaced by a language that looks strangely like Facebook comments.
8. Nutella’s humble beginnings
So you think Nutella is a rather extravagant and fattening type of treat? Strange to think it was invented because of a shortage of chocolate during WWII! It was Mr. Pietro Ferrero who, desperate because of the cocoa shortage, decided to use local hazelnuts to make the chocolate mix go further.
9. Super brain
10. Captain Cook’s youngest crew member
One of the crew on the first New Zealand voyage (1769–1770) was a lad called Nicholas Young. Yes, he was very young – he was only 12 years of age.
11. Tiny computers
In the 1940s, computers occupied a whole room and used an enormous amount of electricity. I remember even in the 1970s, my boss and a colleague discussing which room they could use to house a revolutionary new computer that would store student enrollment data. Today’s computers are absolutely tiny in comparison.
12. Charles Dickens was very poor
Charles Dickens’ family was so debt ridden that he spent most of his time in a debtor’s prison, along with his father and the rest of his family. Now you know why all his books describe poverty so vividly.
13. The smallest bone in your body
We all know that the biggest bone is the femur (thigh), but what about the smallest one? It is called the stapes. It is situated in the inner ear. Size? Just like a grain of rice.
14. A narrow escape
George Orwell was almost killed twice while serving in the Spanish Civil War. If he had not survived, we would never have had “Animal Farm” or “1984.”
15. Think before you eat that chocolate bar
Fancy a chocolate snack? A typical one contains about 500 calories. In order to burn all those calories, you will have to play tennis for an hour and a half.
16. The dancing house in Prague
Look at this house. Not surprising that it is also called the “Fred and Ginger House.” It is situated in Prague in the Czech Republic. It was designed by Vlado Milunic and Frank Gehry and completed in 1996.
17. Body miles
Just think about how it might take some time to travel around the 100,000 miles of blood vessels that run through the average adult body. That is the equivalent of going round the world four times.
18. The strongest muscle in your body
You might think that the arm or leg muscles are the strongest as they do a lot of heavy lifting and running. Actually, the heart is the hardest working muscle of all as it pumps out two ounces of blood every time it beats. It is going to do that about three billion times during a person’s life. But the strongest muscle of all, given its actual size, is the jaw muscle known as the masseter. It can close the teeth with a force that ranges from 55 pounds to 200 pounds. Next time you clench your teeth, think about that.
19. A photo a day
Imagine taking a Polaroid photo every day for 18 years? That is just what Jamie Livingston did until he died on October 25, 1997. His project was called Photo of the Day.
20. Building a road by hand
You may not have heard about an Indian man called Dashrath Manjhi. His wife died tragically because the nearest doctor was 40 miles away. He was determined that this should never happen to anyone else in his village. He started building a road by hand, which took him 22 years. The result is that the distance to the nearest medical treatment is now only nine miles.
21. Shakespeare’s Jessica
Shakespeare invented the name Jessica for his play, “The Merchant of Venice.”
22. A crowded planet
Maybe you think that there are far too many people on this planet. Just think about the ant population. For every human being, there are about 1.6 million ants.
23. Astonishing air crash survival
A plane carrying 92 people, including Juliane Koepcke and her mother, crashed in the Peruvian jungle 1971. Juliane was 17 at the time and incredibly, she survived a two mile fall from the disintegrating aircraft into the rainforest, still strapped to her seat! She was the sole survivor. Although she had a broken collar bone, she survived on the airplane’s supply of candy and was rescued by lumberjacks nine days later. Her eyes were so bloodshot that people fled in panic as they thought she was a forest demon.
24. A Gothic cathedral above a gorge
Visit Las Lajas Sanctuary and you will be amazed. This revival Gothic cathedral has been constructed over a canyon in the Guaitara River in Colombia. It rises 330 feet from the bottom and is connected by a bridge to the other side of the canyon. The Virgin Mary is said to have cured two people there so it became a place of pilgrimage.
25. Trapped
Imagine being trapped under your car after an accident. This happened to a passenger of a Chevy Trailblazer in 2008. A Florida firefighter called Chris Hickman saved this person by lifting the car with his bare hands.
26. Try running without a shirt in the Arctic
Wim Hof uses Tantric practices to turn his body energy into heat. He is so successful at this that he was able to run a marathon in the Arctic without a shirt. The temperature at the time was 20 degrees Fahrenheit (-29 degrees Celsius).
27. Isaac Asimov
This writer was particularly prolific. If you decided just to read one of his books or stories every week, it would take you nine years to finish the whole lot.
28. Marry your first cousin?
If you think that this was always taboo, just reflect on the fact that Albert Einstein, Saddam Hussein, Charles Darwin, and Edgar Allan Poe all married their first cousins. Roughly 30 States in the US still prohibit first cousin marriages because of the risk of genetic disorders. But 20% of marriages worldwide are between first cousins.
29. A book a day
If you become President of the United States, you might find that you are too busy to read a book a day. But Theodore Roosevelt managed to do just that, including the time when he was President.
30. Bible facts
It took 1,600 years to write the Bible. It is still the most widely read book of all time. Five billion copies were printed between 1865 and 1975.
31. Swimming pools
The next time you go swimming, think about this fact. You will produce enough saliva during your lifetime to fill two swimming pools.
32. Skin cells
The human body sheds about one million skin cells a day, which is equivalent to about 8 lbs a year.
33. One million pound banknote
Imagine coming across a banknote worth one million pounds. The Bank of England issued a few of these in 1948 to fulfill financial conditions set out by the Marshall Plan. There were very few of them in circulation. One of them turned up in 2008 and the lucky owner sold it at an auction for $120,000.
34. The world’s longest pregnancy
Normally, as everyone knows, babies take about nine months to arrive (280 days). Imagine how Beulah Hunter felt as she waited for her baby to arrive which took a whole year (365 days). This was a very unusual case, due to the fact that the foetus developed extremely slowly.
35. Skin galore
Everyone knows that the skin is the largest organ in the human body. But what if you were to stretch it all out? You would be easily be able to make it cover 20 square feet.
36. Nicholas Cage
Nicholas Cage has a fondness for strange animals and it is said that he has spent well over $275,000 on their purchase and upkeep. Apart from two king cobras, there is the famous pet octopus, which Cage claims has helped him in his acting. An octopus is ideal for lending a hand or an arm! Featured photo credit: Flipped-Upside Down Houses/San via flickr.com
