Random facts for today

If you read last weeks facts you will know they were on the more gruesome side but this week I have found some more light-heated ones for us:

• Glass takes 1million years to decompose, which means it never wears out and can be recycled an infinite amount of times 
• Gold is the only metal that doesn't rust, even if it is buried in the ground for thousands of years
• Your tongue is the only muscle in your body that is attached at only one end
• If you stop getting thirsty you need to drink more water.  When a human is dehydrated its thirst mechanism shuts off
• Zero is the only number that cannot be represented by Roman numerals
• Kites were used in the American Civil War to deliver letters and newspapers
• The song, Auld Lang Syne, is sung at the stroke of midnight in almost every English speaking country in the world to bring in the new year.
• Drinking water after eating reduces the acid in your mouth by 61%
• Peanut oil is used for cooking in submarines because it doesn't smoke unless it is heated above 450F
• The roar that we hear when we place a seashell next to our ear is not the ocean (surprisingly...duh) but rather the sound of blood surging through the veins in the ear
• Nine out of every ten living things lives in the ocean
• The banana cannot reproduce itself.  It can be propaged only by the hand of man (go on admit it you had a visual too)
• Airports at higher altitude require a longer airstrip due to lower air density
• The State of Alaska spands four time zones
• The tooth is the only part of the human body that cannot heal itself
• In Ancient Greece tossing an apple to a girl was a traditional proposal of marriage.  Catching it meant she accepted. (and I thought Gypsy courting rituals were strange)
• Warner Communications paid $28m for the copyright to the song Happy Birthday
• Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair

 So there you have it, interesting facts.....but some sound like fiction

Random facts of the day

As you know last week I shared some random facts from my daily calendar.  Here are this weeks selection:

• Though treatable today through medical advancements, impotence has been considered grounds for divorce in many different cultures for centuries
• Herman Mudgett, also known as Dr Henry Howard Holmes, was America's first serial killer.  He built a massive mansion in Chicago complete with trap doors, secret passageways, hidden staircases, fake walls, and rooms lined with asbestos that could be turned into gas chambers.  When caught in 1894 he confessed to 27 murders but researchers believed there could be more.
• In the US at least 7 fatalities and numerous severe injuries have been reported among bungee jumpers using a hot air balloon as a platform.  In 2 instances, no-one noticed the balloon lost altitute making the jump cord too long and the jumpers hit the ground.
• If you urinate when swimming in a South American river you might encouter the candiru, a tiny fish that will follow the stream of urine to its source, enter the body and flare its barbed fins requiring surgical removal.
• Bottled drinking water has been marketed as clearner and more pure than tap water but, in a recent study, a 1/3 of bottled water showed significant chemical or bacterial contamination.
• A 998 storm pelted Quebec in Canada with freezing rain and enveloped the city in a layer of cement-like ice, causing 30 deaths and weeks of electric power outages for millions of Canadians.

After reading these facts which, as you can see, are not light-hearted facts I have already decided to return to a funny daily calendar next year.