10 Amazing Facts You Won’t Believe Are True!
#10.
“Fight or Flight”- Humans have an obsession with Sharks, these “doll-eyed” denizens
of the deep have frightened and fascinated us for ages.
However, sharks get a bad-rap as being cold-hearted killers always looking for the next human
shaped morsel to chow down on.
Shark attacks on humans are extremely infrequent despite a lot of media portrayal, they also
are seldom looking to eat people when they do.
Nevertheless, there are a lot of theories on how to survive a shark attack that are
severely flawed or outdated.
One thing you should never do when approached by shark in the water is try to outswim it--Sharks
are made for water, humans are not, it will most likely catch you.
Most of the time the reason a shark attack occurs in the first place is because the animal
has mistaken a person for its prey.
Flailing about or splashing while you try to flee will only encourage the shark’s
interest in sampling a bite of you.
You should also not play dead as some have theorized, not only is it hard to do while
in the water, but sharks operate based on fear-- if you are dead they will not be afraid
of you.
Rather than play dead, experts suggest you look the shark in the eyes and never turn
your back to them, this show of strength can intimidate the shark into looking somewhere
else for lunch.
One of the most common ways people suggest in dealing with a shark attack is punching
the creature in the nose.
But what lies right below a shark’s nose?
The mouth.
And have you ever tried to punch underwater?
It’s very difficult.
Experts say that rather than the nose punch, try an eye gouge or try to injure the shark’s
gills, this will be easier, more effective and you won’t have to get as close to the
mouth.
#9.
“Human Hibernation”- Every year when winter comes round people think of how nice it would
be to curl up in a nice warm den and just sleep away the entire snowy season.
Many animals from mammals like bears and bats, insects such as bees to several species of
snakes all participate in their own form of hibernation, so why not us?
The question has recently seen new light from scientists, especially those interested in
achieving long distance space-travel.
Some of the research has shown that there may be some latent ability for humans to survive
in sleep mode for long periods of time.
There are also a few instances of humans having done so naturally.
One specific instance was that of 35-year-old Japanese man who, in 2006, survived in freezing
temperatures for 24 days.
Stuck on a mountainside, the man’s body shut itself down until he was rescued.
His metabolism all but turned off and his body temperature fell 27 degrees below normal
and rested at 71 enabling him to live without food or water and avoid hypothermia.
This case and others might just be flukes where the variables had to be just right,
but some scientists theorize that our DNA might contain survival abilities that have
laid dormant since our evolutionary beginnings as bacteria.
Such bacteria can live without oxygen and even flip their metabolism on and off when
it benefits life.
Though we may never be able to harness this ability on command, researchers are hard at
work devising ways for people to survive in suspended animation.
This manufactured hibernation could be the key to interplanetary travel and even our
ability to cure disease.
#8.
“Headless Hen”-Almost everyone knows the idiom “running around like a chicken with
your head cut-off”and you may also know that chickens can survive for a few seconds
after death, but did you know that one chicken actually lived for 18 months after losing
its head?
In 1945 in Fruita, Colorado Clara and Lloyd Olsen were finishing the cycle of raising
fryer chickens by taking them one by one and decapitating them.
Once they had finished the batch of 40 or so chickens and they noticed something unusual,
one of the chickens was still alive and walking around--without his head!
They placed the chicken in a box on their porch to let it die but were even more surprised
when they looked in the box the next morning and found it was still alive.
The chicken which they named Mike, went on to live for over a year, living off water
and liquid food that they dripped into his throat and even took him on tour with a sideshow.
Sadly or perhaps mercifully, Mike died one night while they were on tour via suffocation.
But how is this possible?
Well it turns out that a chicken’s brain lies farther back in the skull than one would
normally think.
It almost appears to be in the neck region of the bird.
So one can chop what looks like the head, a.k.a.
the eyes and beak, off and the bird can still survive.
However, what still puzzles scientists is how the bird didn’t bleed to death.
#7.
“The Almighty Coke”- In the tiny town of San Juan Chamula in Mexico, there is a
church called the Coca-Cola church.
No, the Coca-Cola company isn’t sponsoring them, it is called this because of the parishioners
belief that burping expels evil spirits, and what better way to do it than drinking lots
of Coke.
The soft-drink has become a major feature in the everyday worship of the Chamulans and
on days that services are held every person inside the church can be found holding a glass
bottle of Coke and drinking it out of shot glasses as if it were medicine, then progressing
to belch and spit their various sins away.
Their religion is a unique blend of Mesoamerican rituals and Catholic practices which are lead
by a shaman who swears by his methods of gas and fluid expulsion.
It’s also not surprising that the richest man in town is the Coca-Cola salesman.
The Coca-Cola company is very fond of this little town as well, as they often craft special
billboards just for them that can be seen as you enter the town.
If you’ve ever seen the movie These Gods Must Be Crazy you now know that maybe the
plot wasn’t so farfetched after all.
#6.
“Nosing Off”- Have you ever heard a song in a dream and then awoke to find that it
was playing on the radio?
This has probably happened to every one of us at one point in time.
How about smelling something and then awakening to find that very thing nearby?
No?
Well turns out this is impossible, as our sense of smell turns off while we are asleep.
Yes, certain people can have dream in which it feels like they are smelling something
but this is due to internal stimuli.
It also may seem that the smell of our morning coffee has pulled us from dreamland but this
is can be attributed to already being partially awake.
Scientists have done numerous studies testing whether certain smells affect people whilst
in slumber and found that even the strongest smells give no results.
One of the speculative reasons behind this is that our brains have been trained to register
seemingly more important senses such as sight and hearing, so the more marginal sense of
smell falls by the wayside when we are at rest.
This is the most likely answer to the question of why people don’t awaken to the smell
of smoke from house fires and solidifies the importance of having smoke detectors in your
home.
#5.
“Fungus Humungous”- If you try to think of the biggest living things on Earth you
might picture a Blue Whale, an Elephant or perhaps the giant redwoods of northern California,
but in truth compared to the true largest living organism on Earth these are tiny.
It turns out that the largest living thing on Earth is actually easily missed, it is
the Armillaria solidipes a fungus which stretches over 2.4 miles in Oregon’s Blue Mountains.
Known commonly as the Honey Fungus, this giant interconnected mushroom field is calculated
as being between 2 and 9 millenia old.
Like many fungi, the Honey Fungus is parasitic and feeds off the roots of trees and other
plant life and most of the Fungus can’t be seen as it dwells underground.
The Armillaria solidipes is not the only one of it’s kind either, as many of these and
similar fungi are found throughout the Northwestern United States.
Though it may not be easy to cultivate the land where this giant lives it turns out the
fungus is actually very tasty and can be used in many recipes!
#4.
“First-Class Kids”- Have you ever wished that instead of having to buy a plane-ticket
and dealing with T.S.A. that you could just put a stamp on yourself and let the post office
deal with the rest?
Well it just so happens that up until 1920 people actually delivered their children to
relatives this way.
When the Post Office began delivering packages in 1913 they apparently had very few rules
and many parents who could not afford train tickets for their youngsters to visit Grandma,
took advantage and mailed their children.
The amazing thing is that the mail-carriers complied, that is, as long as they were under
the 11-pound weight limit.
There are several instances where this occurred, most famously in 1914 when four-year-old Charlotte
May Pierstoff was mailed 73 miles to her grandparent’s from her home in Grangeville, Idaho.
Finally, perhaps after the increasing cases of people mailing their children, the postmaster
general declared that live animals (apart from bugs), could no longer be transported
through the mail.
In the defense of these seemingly negligent practices of a bygone era, most of the people
who mailed their children were from rural areas and were much closer and trusting of
their mailman than we are today.
That said, it still probably wasn’t a very good idea.
#3.
“Diamond Drizzle”- When thinking of rain it is natural to only think of it being in
the form of water, but the reality is that there are many types of rain in the Universe
that can be made up of all kinds of elements.
Scientists are finding that one of the most common types of rain in the galaxy might be
in the form of diamonds falling from the sky.
This occurs in our solar system on the planets Jupiter, Saturn and likely others.
Diamond rain forms when methane, turned to soot from lightning storms, crystallizes into
graphite and then hardens into diamonds.
The scientists estimate that 1,000 tons of diamonds are produced in this strange precipitation
every year on Saturn, enough to make the richest of us blush.
Though still not proven beyond reasonable doubt these extremely extravagant weather
patterns are considered highly probable due to carbon being the fourth most abundant elements
in the universe and many planets that have atmospheres made of the even more abundant
hydrogen and helium which would be conducive to turning the carbon into diamond.
#2.
“Spy-Cats”- During the Cold War of the 1960s the KGB and CIA both tried to gain even
the smallest advantage in espionage through many strange and often outlandish experiments,
but one of the most bizarre experiments the CIA ever tried was trying to turn trained
housecats into discrete field agents in order to listen in on their enemies.
The project was titled Acoustic Kitty and would have been lambasted by PETA, animal
rights activists and anyone with a heart today.
Secretly, the CIA hired surgeons to implant a microphone into the cat’s ear along with
a battery-powered radio transmitter and an antenna in the cat’s tail.
The project cost around ten million dollars and quickly backfired--When the cat was released
on its inaugural mission, to surveil the Soviet Embassy, before it could make it across the
street the cat was hit by a taxi-cab.
Despite this initial setback it took some time before the CIA gave up citing that it
was impractical to train cats as spies...Right, we could’ve told you that from the beginning.
#1.
“Tired of Sleep”- There have been times in everyone’s life in which sleep seems
like a chore, ’if we only didn’t have to sleep, we could get so much more done’.
For one Hungarian man, this life was a reality.
Paul Kern, a Government official for his native land fought in World War I in the Eastern
Front.
On the battlefield fighting the Russians in 1915, Kern was shot in the head rendering
him unconscious.
After he was treated at a nearby medical facility having the bullet removed along with parts
of his frontal lobe, he amazingly survived and regained consciousness.
From that moment on, until the end of his life forty years later, he did not sleep.
Not only did he not desire to, his body wouldn’t allow him to.
Nervous system and brain specialists throughout Europe were unable to pinpoint any cause of
his bizarre condition.
Kern never suffered from the symptoms of sleep deprivation and his cognition remained the
same as it ever had.
Near the end of his life Kern did lay down for a few hours at a time to rest his brain,
though he was always awake and aware.
Scientists say that doing this allowed his brain to rest enough to keep him going the
rest of the day, but as for why he never needed real sleep they are still baffled.