- Hello fellow knowledge whales!
Let's get to the facts!
(hooting)
Here are 50 amazing facts to blow your mind.
(snoring)
(explosion)
According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention,
in 2014 the number of people who died
from alcohol-induced causes was higher
than the amount of people who died from overdosing
on prescription pain killers and heroin combined,
more than 30,700 Americans.
China is the largest manufacturer
and exporter of fireworks in the world.
90% of all fireworks come from China.
During the Tudor era, people would very rarely take baths.
They thought that they would contract the Plague
through opened pores, because they believed
they disease was airborne.
The Niagara Falls suspension bridge was the world's
first working railway suspension bride.
It existed from 1855 to 1897 across the Niagara River.
It spanned 251.5 meters and stood over four kilometers.
There's a woman from Perth named Joy Milne
who can smell Parkinson's disease.
She first noticed the odor on her husband
after he was diagnosed.
She mentioned this to Dr. Tilo Kunath
from the School of Biological Sciences
at Edinburgh University.
So he tested her ability, and she was able
to detect Parkinson's 100% of the time.
William Shockley, who invented the transistor
and was a Nobel Prize laureate,
once suggested that people with IQs lower than 100
should be paid to be voluntarily sterilized.
Within weeks of the death of their 15 year old son,
Leland Stanford and his wife decided that,
because they could no longer do anything for their son,
that they would do something to memorialize him.
So they founded Stanford University, where they said
the children of California shall be our children.
Writer H.P. Lovecraft, who is famous
for his fantastical horror stories,
once wrote an entire essay on why he believed
that cats were better than dogs.
At one point in time, white mineral spar, or gypsum,
could be harvested from the Niagara riverbed,
and some people would actually sell it to tourists,
convincing them that it was pieces
of petrified mist from Niagara Falls.
Babies can see as soon as they're born,
but their vision is blurry and fuzzy.
Most newborns are also cross-eyed because of extra
folds of skin in their inner corners of their eyes.
But it goes away within the third month.
A Harvard study found that 80%
of Donald Trump press coverage was negative
during the first 100 days in office.
Antarctica's ice sheet is more than
79 kilometers thick in some places.
And if it were to melt, the world's oceans
would rise by almost 60 meters.
In 2014, Taylor Swift accidentally released
a song called Track 3 due to a glitch
in the iTunes store in Canada.
The song was only eight seconds of static
and managed to immediately reach the top of the charts.
In 2012, researchers from Rutgers University
and the Monell Chemical Sense Center
discovered that the reason that wine and steak
taste so good together is because they're at
the opposite ends of the culinary sensory spectrum,
which is pleasing to your palate.
In 2013, a programmer named Patrick McConlogue
offered a homeless man named Leo Grand
a choice between $100 or 16 coding lessons.
Grand actually chose the coding lessons
and later released an app called Trees for Cars.
The app is meant to increase carpooling
to reduce the number of cars on the road
and therefore decrease CO2 emissions.
For the past decade, rapper Nelly has been secretly
sending two kids to college every year.
The name jaguar originates from the Native American word
yaguar, meaning he who kills with one leap.
In 2000, a group of researchers from four universities,
including John Hopkins, discovered that
snowflakes falling on water creates
an extremely loud noise for marine animals.
They found this through analyzing recordings
done underwater during winter storms.
Mount Everest was named after British
surveyor George Everest in 1856.
The peak was originally called Chomolungma by the Tibetans
and Sargamatha by the Nepalese, but the British
decided to name it after Colonel George Everest,
who was the head of the survey that confirmed
that the mountain was the highest summit in the world.
In 2015, 19 year old Adam Armstrong
mistakenly had an incorrect surname
on his Ryansir airline ticket, so he decided
to change his name, because it would be cheaper
than to fix the name on the ticket.
To change the ticket it would have cost him 220 pounds
in admin fees, while changing his name was free
and just 103 pounds for a new passport.
Marcus Licinius Crassus created the first ever
Roman fire brigade, made up of 500 men.
They would arrive at a burning building,
and before they would put the fire out,
they would bargain with the property owner
over how much they would be paid.
If Crassus thought the price wasn't high enough,
he would simply let the building burn down
and then offer to buy it back for a fraction of its value.
The sensation of getting goose bumps and shivering
as an emotional response is called frisson.
While filming Super Mario Bros. the movie,
lead actors John Leguizamo and Bob Hoskins
would get drunk between scenes
because the shooting was so laborious.
Liam Hemsworth revealed that whenever
he had to kiss his costar Jennifer Lawrence
while filming The Hunger Games: Mockingjay,
Lawrence would purposefully eat something gross
beforehand, such as garlic or tuna.
Because of EU rules, Stilton cheese
cannot be made in the village of Stilton.
The protected designation of origin
based on British government guidelines
says that the name can only be used in the English counties
of Leicestershire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire.
When Blockbuster Video stores were in their prime in 2000,
they earned almost $800 million in late fees,
accounting for 16% of their revenue.
For 85 years the letters Q, W and X were illegal in Turkey.
The letters violated the law of November 1st, 1928
on adoption and application of Turkish letters.
It was meant to change the writing system of Turkish
from the Arabic-based system of the Ottomans
to the Roman-based system.
On May 3rd, 1972, guitarist for the band Stone of Crows,
Les Harvey, got electrocuted on stage
while tuning up for a show and died
in front of a thousand fans in Swansea, Wales.
John Joseph Merlin was the first recorded person
to invent roller skates, in the 1760s in London, England.
But Merlin was not actually good at skating.
He once wore a pair of his new skates to a masquerade party
at Carlyle House in London and crashed
into a large mirror and severely injured himself.
Musician Eric Clapton grew up thinking that his mother
was his sister and his grandmother was his mother.
This was because Clapton's mother was 16 and unmarried
when she had him, so her parents stepped in
as surrogate parents and raised Eric as their own.
The term checkmate originates from the Arabic phrase
shah mat, which means the king is dead.
In 2012, a customer and London's Playboy Club
dropped and shattered a $77,615
bottle of cognac from 1788.
The band Blink-182's original name was Duct Tape.
The Q in Q-tips stands for quality.
They were originally names Q-tips Baby Gays,
but later the Baby Gays was dropped.
In 2016, California had such a surplus of solar power
that they were actually paying Arizona to take some.
In New Jersey, it's illegal to wear a bullet proof vest
while committing a violent crime.
Walruses can stay away for up to 84 hours straight.
Thomas Jefferson helped popularize
french fries in the United States.
After being in France, he brought back a recipe
for pommes de terre frites a cru en petites tranches,
meaning potato deep-fried while raw in small cuttings.
They didn't really take off in popularity until the 1900s,
but his handwritten recipe predates
cookbook french fry recipes by half a century.
In 2003, Marcelo Sanchez Villagra
of the University of Tübingen and his team found a skeleton
of the world's largest ever rodent, in Venezuela.
The creature was essentially a guinea pig the size of a cow.
It weighed 700 kilograms, was three meters long
and 1.3 meters tall and lived eight million years ago.
In Hong Kong about 80% of people flush their toilets
with seawater because of a separate water
distribution system that was created in the 1950s.
This helps protect marine life, as seawater
is less toxic than freshwater for some marine animals.
Thailand has a law dating back to 1935
called the Playing Cards Act, which prohibits people
from possessing more than 120 playing cards.
Thailand has strict anti-gambling laws.
In fact, almost all forms of gambling are prohibited.
In 2002, Neil Evenhuis published the existence
of an extinct fly species that he named
after model-actress Carmen Electra,
called the Carmenelectra shechisme.
A law was passed in December of 2012
that gives all former U.S. Presidents
who served after January 1st, 1997,
as well as their spouses, protection
from the Secret Service for their entire lives.
The law even gives their children
protection until they're 16.
The feeling of being pulled or the urge to jump
while you're standing at a high place
is called the call of the void, or l'appel du vide.
Part of the reason that Kit Kat bars are so popular in Japan
is that coincidentally the name Kit Kat
sounds like the Japanese phrase kitto katsu,
meaning you will surely win.
This causes people to believe that the candy is good luck.
Over 95% of all people are naturally immune the leprosy.
About 25% of all the blood in your heart
goes into your kidneys.
49 year old Stefaan Engels from Belgium
set a world record for running a marathon
every day for 365 days in 2010.
He began in Belgium and ran 15,000 kilometers
across seven countries, ending in Barcelona.
According to the United States National Library of Medicine,
12% of people dream only in black and white.
People 25 and younger almost never dream in black and white,
and people 55 and older claim to dream in color
only about 75% of the time.
The food chain Subway has more
than 38 million sandwich combinations.
And that's all for this time, my fellow knowledge whales.
(hooting)
I hope you guys enjoyed this,
and don't forget I have a podcast, yes, a podcast.
If you didn't know I had that, go in the description
and go subscribe to whatever platform you want.
I think you're going to enjoy it.
And I'll see yo guys next time, bye now.