- Who's ready to be blessed by the knowledge whale?
Here are 50 amazing facts to blow your mind.
There are tumors called limbal dermoids
that can grow on the eyeball.
They can contain things such as connective tissue,
skin, fat, hair, teeth, cartilage, and even bone.
We're starting off with the nightmares, excellent.
Giant anteaters don't have teeth, but they have tongues
that can grow to be two feet in length that are covered
in tiny spines that point to the back of their throat.
It's also coated with a thick, sticky saliva.
When they have an insect in their mouth, they crush them
against the upper palate to ease digestion.
In the 1970's, notorious serial killer Ted Bundy
once worked at a suicide hotline crisis center
with famous true crime author Anne Rule.
She actually wrote a book about it
called "The Stranger Beside Me."
Makes you kinda wonder about that weird guy
in the office, doesn't it?
According to the Guinness World Records,
on March 30th, 2003 in Bangalore, India, Siddaraju S Raju
husked a 2.3 ft round
10 lb coconut using only his teeth.
Scientists in Costa Rica have discovered a new frog
that they call Diane's bare-hearted glass frog that looks
exactly like Jim Henson's Muppet, Kermit the Frog.
This one can't sing though.
The mimosa pudica, or touch-me-not plant,
that is native to Central and South America,
plays dead when it feels threatened.
If it's touched by a predator its stems
release a chemical that causes leaves to shrivel up.
Once the danger has passed it comes back to life.
There is a Miss Klingon Empire beauty pageant
held in Atlanta, Georgia as part
of the annual tech tracks convention.
The contestants all dress up in Klingon attire and makeup
and are judged on "beauty," talent, and personality.
You like my face?
Vote for me.
The capital city of Bhutan, in the Himalayas, is the only
capital city in the world that does not have traffic lights.
Instead, policemen stand in little pavilions
and direct traffic with exaggerated hand motions.
You, thataway, you, thataway.
Lake Karachay in Russia is the most polluted place on Earth.
It was used by the Soviet Union as a nuclear dumping site,
and the radiation levels are so high that it can give
a lethal dose of radiation in just one hour of exposure.
A Burger King franchise in Queens, New York
covered their building with a huge, white drape
and turned itself into a ghost version
of a McDonald's as a Halloween prank.
The marquis out front read, "Boo!
"Just kidding, we still flame grill our burgers.
"Happy Halloween!"
Ooh, shade by the Burger King.
This is good, it's gonna be on Worldstar.
Akiyoshi Kabe of Waseda University in Japan has developed
the Jukusui-Kun, whose name translates to deep sleep.
It's a pillow bot in the shape of a polar bear
that can gauge snoring levels and will touch the snorer
to get them to roll their heads to help them stop snoring.
It monitors snoring with a built-in mic and a device
worn around the wrist that measures blood oxygen levels,
which happen to drop when the person starts snoring.
There's a Japanses artist called Keisuke Yamada
who creates amazing carvings out of bananas
using only a spoon and a toothpick.
Dutch designer Jeffrey Heiligers has created
posture garments to prevent hunched backs.
He worked with a physiotherapist to identify positions
that cause back, neck, and shoulder pain, and created
clothes that tighten slightly and become uncomfortable
when the wearer slumps their shoulders.
I'm not gonna lie, I could probably use this.
I'm like the hunchback all day.
Ancient Egyptians believed that mushrooms
were the plant of immortality.
In fact, the Pharaohs of Egypt decreed that mushrooms
were food for royalty and no commoner could even touch them.
Little did they know they were just a nasty fungus.
There's a website called Something Store
that for $10 will randomly select an item and send it to.
You only know what your $10 gets you
once the item has been delivered.
There are actually companies that exist
that will send a potato with a message
written on it for you to anyone you want.
For just $10, Potato Parcel in Canada
will print literally anything you want on it,
from "Congrats on the baby!" to "I still love you."
What better way to show your love that a potato, huh?
New Zealand has two national anthems of equal standing.
One is "God Defends New Zealand,"
and the other is "God Save the Queen."
"God Save the Queen" has been New Zealand's
official anthem all the way back to 1840,
but it's rarely actually sung in the country.
There is a bronze statue of a spider
by artist Louise Bourgeois called Maman
in front of the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa.
It cost a whopping $3.2 million,
measures 30 ft high, and weighs over 13,000 lbs,
and even comes with 26 white marble eggs
in a sack on its underbelly.
Burn it, destroy it, get rid of it now.
The common pygmy seahorse, or Bargibant's seahorse,
is one of the tiniest known vertebrates.
It's an expert at camouflage and has
a maximum length of just one inch.
♫ I'm a little seahorse, short and stout.
In 2016 the Chicago Cubs won the World Series
for the first time in 108 years.
Serial Killer John Wayne Gacy,
who killed 33 boys and young men in the 70's
was dubbed the killer clown because he used to perform
as someone called Pogo the Clown at children's events.
In fact, while in jail he even painted
several self portraits of himself as a clown,
and although most were destroyed,
some still exist and are quite valuable.
Lightning often strikes the same place repeatedly,
especially if it's a tall, pointy, isolated object.
The Empire State building is hit on average 23 times a year.
The sun is made up of 74% hydrogen, 24% helium,
and the remaining 2% includes trace amounts of iron,
nickel, oxygen, and all the other elements
that we have in our solar system.
The French bulldog actually originated in England.
It wasn't until he accompanied English lace makers
to France where he acquired his French moniker.
According to the World Health Organization
the only continent that doesn't have rabies
is the Antarctic, and 95% of human deaths
that occur in Africa and Asia are caused by rabies.
The first ever sewing needles were made of bone.
Developed about 35,000 year ago by early humans,
it's believed that bone needles were preferred over metal
as a sewing tool because metal tended to rust
and stain the fabric that it was used on.
Come here, Jeffrey, mother's got to make a sweater.
Break your finger off would you.
The bald eagle can live for up to 50 years.
According to research done by the Royal Society
for Public Health, the average UK commuter
consumes nearly 800 additional calories a week
while traveling to and from work,
a result mostly from consuming unhealthy snacks.
You can now buy Harry Potter-inspired makeup brushes.
The set of five brushes are modeled after the infamous wands
of Harry, Ron, Hermione, Dumbledore, and Lord Voldemort.
A group of kittens with the same mother is called a kindle.
The republic of Madagascar is the
fourth largest island in the world.
It's 364,745 miles.
The only larger islands are Borneo,
Greenland, and New Guinea.
Some salamanders have no lungs.
They survive because they breathe entirely
through their skin and the tissue lining their mouths.
Their skin and mouths must keep moist in order to respire,
so they are only found in damp areas.
Magician and escape artist Harry Houdini
was one of the world's first private pilots.
He actually crashed during his maiden flight in Germany,
but he continued practicing and eventually set his sights
on becoming the first man to pilot an airplane in Austria.
In China, if you're caught cheating on exams
you get banned from repeating the test for several years.
And if you're caught facilitating mass cheating
or paying someone to take the test for you,
you can be sent to jail for seven years.
California's state motto is Eureka, "I have found it."
It refers to the discovery of God
and appears on the state seal.
The average length of an umbilical cord is about 20 inches.
There is a mental disorder called walking corpse syndrome
or Cotard syndrome, where patients experience delusions
that they're dead, don't exist, are putrefying,
or have lost their vital organs.
I've lost my lungs, bury me somewhere nice!
According to the Guinness World Records,
the largest snail ever found weighed two pounds
and measured 15.5 inches from snout to tail.
It was found in Sierra Leone in 1976.
It's name was Gee Geronimo.
In November of 2016, the world's heaviest earthworm
was found in a man named Paul Rees's vegetable garden
in Cheshire County, England.
Paul's son named the worm Dave.
Dave was almost 16 inches long and weighed
nearly 29 grams, which is almost twice as heavy
as any other earthworm ever found.
The Suriname toad gives birth through holes in her back.
Oh God.
They develop eggs embedded in their backs,
and eventually they hatch and crawl out of the holes.
(dry heaves)
Moving on.
James Madison, the fourth President
of the United States, was the shortest President.
He was only 5.3 ft tall and weighed about 100 lbs.
The Pentagon was built with extra bathrooms
to accommodate racial segregation laws.
There is a rare condition called aquagenic urticaria
that causes sufferers to break out in hives
when their skin comes in contact with water.
The water can be any temperature,
and scientists are baffled as to what causes it.
In the 1920's inventor Thomas Edison
tried to invent a "spirit phone" to contact the dead.
Although much of the public thought he was joking,
he really did want to create an ethereal device
that would summon to the living the voices
of the dead and record them for posterity.
The world's oldest restaurant is the Sobrino de Botin.
Located in Madrid, it was founded in 1725
by French cook Jean Botin and his wife.
Peanuts can be used in the making of dynamite.
Peanut oil can be processed to produce glycerol,
which can be used to make nitroglycerin,
which is a liquid used in dynamite.
And you thought it was just a fun way
to make dogs look like they're talking.
Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin took communion on the moon.
His pastor consecrated a communion wafer
and a small vial of communion wine.
He read a verse from the gospel of John while there.
There is a very rare white zebra at Hawaii's
Three Ring Ranch animal sanctuary, name Zoe.
She has a condition known as amelanosis
that gives her light golden stripes and blue eyes.
On June 27th, 2016, Norway held the largest
bonfire ever, setting a new world record.
The massive bonfire measured 155 feet in the air.
Scientist Marie Curie, who discovered radium in 1898,
was the first woman to receive a PhD
from a French university, the first woman to be employed
as a professor at the University of Paris,
the first woman to win a Nobel Prize,
and also the first person ever to win the award twice
for two distinct scientific fields.
Well that makes me feel inadequate.
Excuse me while I go to school for 20 years.
Hey, thanks for watching, everyone!
Knowledge whale blesses you!
On the right you'll find two of my most recent videos
that you can press or click right now on your screen
if you want to watch some more.
And other than that, I will see you later.
Knowledge whale, out.
I hurt myself.