- Prepare to learn some crazy things about this world,
because here are 50 amazing facts to blow your mind.
Researchers at Ohio State University
have discovered something that they're calling
experience talking,
it's where, while reading a book or story,
people actually change their behavior or thoughts
to match those of a fictional character in a book or story
that they can identify with.
They subconsciously become that character.
The life expectancy of people with down syndrome
has increased from 25 in 1983
to 60 today.
According to research done by Aric Prather,
assistant professor of psychiatry
at The University of California,
you are four times more likely to get a cold if you get less
than six hours of sleep per night.
Actor Tom Cruise is only 5.6 feet tall.
Biologists led by Koji Nishida
at The Osaka University in Japan
have discovered a new way to grow parts of the human eye,
like the retina, cornea, lens, et cetera,
just by using a small sample of adult skin.
According to a study done in 2013 by researchers
at The Harvard School of Public Health,
drinking several cups of coffee daily
appears to reduce the risk of suicide in men
and women by about 50%.
US politician, Henry Kissinger,
was the person who convinced Brazilian soccer great, Pele,
to play in The United States.
Some marine birds, like the penguin,
have a supraorbital gland located just above their eyes
that can remove sodium chloride from their blood stream.
It works just like our kidneys,
removing salt, which allows the penguin to survive
without access to fresh water.
The penguin excretes the salt byproduct
as brine through its bill.
In 2016, according to the brand management firm
Interbrand's annual ranking of the best global brands,
Apple was number one for the fourth year in a row,
with a brand value of 178 billion,
and Google was number two with a brand value of 133 billion.
Facebook, on the other hand, was the fastest-growing company
at a whopping 48%.
According to the Guinness World Records,
the largest mouth in the world
belonged to the bowhead whale.
It can measure up to 16 feet long, 13 feet high,
and eight feet wide.
Its tongue alone weighs almost 2,000 pounds.
The fastest recorded avalanche in history
was the volcanic explosion of Mount St. Helens
on May 18th, 1980.
The velocity reached was 250 miles per hour.
The Concorde jet, that had its last flight in 2003,
had a maximum speed of 1,350 miles per hour.
It could fly from London, England to New York City
in about three hours,
about half the time of other passenger planes.
Artist, Bart Jansen,
and the radio control helicopter expert,
Arjen Beltman, turned Bart's dead beloved pet cat, Orville,
into a remote-controlled helicopter.
They dubbed him the Orville Copter.
I dub him just creepy.
A study recently published
in the journal of Neurobiology of Aging
shows that the more flights of stairs a person climbs
and the more years of school a person completes,
the younger the brain physically looks.
Researcher, Jason Steffener,
a scientist at Concordia's PERFORM Centre,
found that the brain age decreases
by .95 years for each year of education,
and it decreases 0.58 years
for every daily flight of stairs climbed.
According to research done in 2012,
published in the journal of Chemosensory Perception,
people who scored high on a test for psychopathy
had more problems being able to tell different smells apart,
and also identifying smells.
In other words, if you have impaired smell,
you could be a psychopath.
San Francisco is the first major US city
to require that all new buildings
have solar panels installed on the roof.
According to a study done
by The University of New South Wales,
good manners go a long way.
The study found that going out of your way to say thank you
makes people see you as a person
with greater interpersonal warmth.
It can also make you a happier person.
If you were to drop a steel ball and a rubber ball
of the same size from the same height,
the steel ball will actually bounce higher
because it snaps back to its original shape
faster than the rubber ball.
The world's oldest lighthouse
is the Tower of Hercules in Spain.
It was erected in the first century
and is still operational.
Pakistan's parliament is the first parliament in the world
to be completely powered by solar energy.
President Calvin Coolidge had a pet raccoon named Rebecca.
She was originally supposed to be eaten
at their 1926 White House Thanksgiving dinner,
but the Coolidge family found her to be friendly and docile
and decided to keep her as a pet instead.
Both of those things are incredibly weird.
Dwayne The Rock Johnson played football
for the CFL's Calgary Stampeders back in 1995
before he went into wrestling and acting.
Bill Gates received an honorary knighthood
from Queen Elizabeth, but because he's American,
he cannot use the title, sir.
Lawn darts with pointy, elongated tips
are actually banned in Canada.
Steve Gerling, the master builder at LEGO
had never touched a single LEGO
before he started his job.
Apollo 16 astronaut, Charles Duke,
who, at that time, was the youngest human in history,
at 36, to walk on the moon,
left behind a photo of his family with the inscription,
"This is the family of astronaut, Charlie Duke,
"from the planet earth, who landed on the moon
"on April 20th, 1972."
The picture is still there to this day.
A small bat was seen clinging
to the orange external fuel tank
of the Space Shuttle Discovery
during its March 15th, 2009 launch.
According to the Guinness World Records,
the first human cannonball was a woman
named Rosa Zazel Richter in 1877.
She was shot at a distance of about 20 feet
at Westminster Aquarium in London, England.
Rockefeller Center receives an average of 470,000 visitors
on any given weekday,
and almost 800,000 during the holiday season.
The warehouse scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark
was actually a matte painting created
by artist, Michael Pangrazio.
It took him three months to create,
was painted on glass,
and the live action shots were actually done
through a hole in it.
Robert Behnke, a Wisconsin dairy farmer
owns the queen cow of milk production.
His cow, Gigi, has produced more milk in one year
than any other cow, at 8,700 gallons.
That's three times the national average for a dairy cow
to produce in a year.
Since 2003, the Japanese town of Kamikatsu
has been trying to become the country's first
zero-waste community by the year 2020.
They already recycle 80% of their waste
and currently have 34 different recycling categories.
A giant granite ball in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg
was painted to look like a giant Pokeball.
According to Professor Charles P Gerba
of The University of Arizona's Department
of Soil, Water, and Environmental Science,
20% of office coffee mugs carry fecal bacteria.
You're drinking poop.
47% of the world's mail volume
is handled by the United States Postal Service.
Scientists estimate that a single ragweed plant
can release one-billion grains of pollen
over the course of a single season
and can travel hundreds of miles on a gentle breeze.
The great white shark is an example of an apex predator,
which means, as an adult, it has no natural predators
in its ecosystem.
In 2003, professional wrestler, Macho Man Randy Savage,
made a rap album called Be A Man.
According to researchers at the Donald O Perelman
Department of Dermatology
at The New York University School of Medicine,
the higher up you are in altitude,
the higher your risk of getting sunburned,
and it's quite a bit more, approximately 60% higher.
During the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games,
the procession is always led by the Greek team,
followed by the other teams in alphabetical order,
and the last team is always the team of the hosting country.
There's an isopod called the Cymothoa exigua
that eats fish tongues and then becomes the fish's tongue.
Researchers at McGill University in Montreal, Canada
raised a fish called the Polypterus.
It can breathe air and walk on land using its front fins.
When lobsters fight or flirt with each other,
they actually squirt urine at each other's faces
from little urine release nozzles under their eyes.
"I'm going to pee on you."
In 2006, the Hao Sheng Hospital in Japan
decorated their maternity ward
with all Hello Kitty-themed murals
and items to help calm anxious mothers.
The cartoon image is on everything,
from walls to newborn baby blankets.
A giant Hello Kitty figure is dressed
in a pink doctor's uniform
that even greets visitors in the lobby.
Pike County farmer and loyal democrat, Valentine Tapley,
vowed to never trim his beard again
if Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860,
and he kept his word.
His beard grew to 12.5 feet long.
According to a study done by NASA,
an astronaut's heart becomes more spherical
and loses muscle mass while in space.
Once they're back on earth, however,
the shape returns to normal.
In 1964, a pair of Australian scientists,
Isabel Joy Bear and RG Thomas,
did a study to determine what causes
that powerful, wonderful scent of fresh rain.
They determined that it's a mixture of plant oils
that are secreted by some plants after an arid period,
bacterial spores, and ozone.
On March 29th, 1867, The United States bought
586,412 square miles of land
at the northwestern tip of the North American continent,
which is the current state of Alaska, from Russia.
They paid 7.2-million dollars,
which amounted to about two cents per acre.
Disney Parks can actually refuse you access to their parks
if they find that you have an objectionable tattoo.
Cats can actually get something called whisker stress
from eating or drinking out of a bowl
that's too small.
Whiskers are very sensitive to pressure,
and any time they come close to something,
it triggers a sensation in your cat.
If you see your cat trying to scoop out food with their paw,
it might mean that they have whisker stress.
And now you're just a little bit smarter,
but, as always, thank you guys so much for coming by today.
Remember to come back on Monday and every weekday
at exactly three PM, Eastern Standard Time,
because I'm gonna have a brand new video for you.
Enjoy your weekend, and I'll see you then.