Sometimes we are told things that we simply cannot believe – but our world is a strange place isn’t it! Some, but not all, of these items have been verified by this blogger!

 

There are more atoms in a teaspoon of water than teaspoons of water in all the oceans

The World’s oldest creature, a five hundred year old clam from the Icelandic coast, was reportedly killed by marine scientists trying to establish its age 7 years ago (denied though).

A fruit stored away in permafrost by an Arctic ground squirrel 32,000 years ago has been revived by scientists to become a flowering plant.

The largest organism in the World is a giant fungus; found in the American Blue Mountains woods, it is at least two and a half thousand years old and is four square miles in size.

We can tell you that one human brain contains more cells then there are human brains in the World.

When a male bee has sex it dies,

The human brain is the largest in mammals in relation to body size.

There more fake flamingos in the World than real ones.

The World’s deepest mine is two and a half miles down (the Tau Ton, a gold mine in South Africa).

In Japan sleeping on the job is viewed as ‘exhaustion’ from working hard, so some people fake it to look as being committed to their job.

Most deserts are 85% rocks and gravel – not just sand.

The Basenji dog is the only dog that is not able to bark.

Wales’ hearts are the size o f a car
engine and their arteries are wide enough to swim in.

A full-grown bear can run as fast as a horse.

The largest cells discovered can be 39 feet long (giant squid nerve cells).

All the gold mined so far in the World would fit into a 20m sized cube

Our Earth is NOT actually round; it is flattened at the top and bottom.

A human heart beats two and a half billion times during an average 66 year lifetime.

In passing through doors to enter a room we forget why we went in there, because this creates an ‘event boundary’ causing the brain to stop what we were just thinking about.

The Blue Whale, a marine mammal, is the largest animal to ever had existed; nearly a hundred feet long and weighing nearly two hundred tons.

Half of the human population have died of malaria

Harris Rosen, a self-made millionaire adopted a Florida neighborhood (Tangelo Park), cut the crime rate by half, increased the High School graduation rate from 25% to 100% –  by giving everyone free daycare and giving scholarships to all High School graduates.

Alcohol is a performance enhancing drug in shooting.

China is building a city for 80,000 residents, car-free, and using 48% less energy and 58% less water than a normal city of the same size; it will also produce 89% less landfill waste and generate 60% less carbon dioxide.

The fastest reading speed is twenty five thousand words a minute (Howard Berg).

Charlie Chaplin came third in a completion for Charlie Chaplin look alikes

A cheetah is the fast animal; it can run at 75 miles an hour and can accelerate from zero to 60 mph in under 3 seconds; it gets tired after a minute’s run. (Humans can only reach 45 mph – sprinter Bolt).

A shuffled deck of cards will be in an order never seen before.

There are a million earthquakes a year.

Adolf Hitler was nominated for the Peace prize in 1939.

The human brain has a hundred billion neurons giving it a processing power greater than any current computer.

Half of all people reaching 65 are still alive.

Fold a piece of paper 42 times and it will reach the moon.

54 million live people will be dead in the next year.

The founders of the renowned competitive sports good producers ADIDAS and PUMA were brothers.

The smallest flying bird is the 2 inch Bee Hummingbird (hovering in mid-air with a wing flapping rate of up to 80 times a second).

We don’t know who invented the fire hydrant, because its patent was burned in a fire.

The fastest speed travelled by man was twenty five thousand mph (Apollo 10) – over 30 times the speed of sound, but infinitesimally small compared to the speed of light)

Fingers pruning underwater is caused by the brain trying to enhance the grip of your fingers in water and not because of them absorbing water or oil being washed away.

In ancient Athens, the oldest democracy, they had a process called ostracism, where once a year the people could vote on the one politician they thought was most destructive to the democratic process – to be banished from Athens for 10 years. (No charge or defence involved!). Six thousand anti-votes were required.

Every cell in your body is replaced within 7 years.

All human beings in the World would fit into a one cube of a mile size

Search and rescue dogs working in New York after 9/11 found very few people alive; it caused them great stress as they thought they had failed! Handlers and other rescue workers had to regularly hide in the rubble in order to give the rescue dogs a successful find, and keep up their spirits.

If there was no space between atoms, the Earth would be the size of a baseball.

When the Queen bee gets old or diseased, the worker bees cluster tightly around her body until she dies from overheating (“cuddle death”).

One gram of DNA holds as much information as 600 billion CDs.

Richard Norris Williams, a Swiss American tennis player, survived the Titanic sinking, but spent so much time submerged in the icy Atlantic that doctors wanted to amputate both his legs on his rescue ship Carpathia, but he refused the amputations; he recovered and went on to win the U.S. Tennis Doubles Championship that very same 1912 year (later going on to also win single championships  and Olympics gold medal (1924).

A pencil can draw a 38 mile long line.

In forty years only 200 people in the UK have passed the Master Sommelier Diploma exam – theory, service, blind tasting (you need to know ALL about wine AND other drinks!) – it makes it the hardest test in the world.

Lighters were invented before matches (1823 compared with 1826 for the friction match).

The Irish population is still 2million less than 160 years ago, caused by the potato famine.

People forget their dreams shortly after waking up. The famous poem Kubla Khan was writen by Samuel Coleridge following a dream, but he got interupted, and by then had forgot the rest of his dream – so he wasn’t able to complete the poem!
The first person in space was Russian Yuri Gagarin in 1961 (Vostok 1).

Korean Samsung, best known for its electronic consumer goods, is also a major weapons manufacturer (including tanks, fighter aircraft, guns, and missiles).

The Giant Teratorn was the largest ever flying bird, four feet long with a 23 feet wingspan, now sadly extinct. The current largest living bird’s wingspan is twelve feet (the sea bird, the Wandering Albatross|).

Vending machines kill 4 times the people as sharks; they are top heavy and can topple on people, crushing them, when trying to steal or get out their goods or change on malfunction.

 

[There are many other weird little things in our modest globe!]

Kubla Khan
By Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772–1834
Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:
And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean;
And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.