Did you know?

Boy dolphins often try to impress girl dolphins by giving them a sponge as a gift.

Male Australian humpback dolphins present large marine sponges to their favourite females- sometimes getting so excited that they aggressively throw the sponges at their desired mate. They also work in pairs with other males, making them one of the only species besides humans that use ‘wingmen.’

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https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-13898-9

Watermelons used to taste awful.

The fruits, which are technically berries, originated in Africa, where they were only harvested for their water content. At that time, they had a nasty, bitter flavour, but centuries of selective breeding made them extra tasty.

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https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/08/150821-watermelon-fruit-history-agriculture/

Breaking eye contact makes you a better conversationalist.

Studies show people who are forced to maintain eye contact take longer to recall words than those who are allowed to take a break from the mental stimulation of staring into someone else’s eyes. Though maintaining eye contact is important for building emotional connections, looking away is key for having focused and productive conversations.

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https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0010027716302360?via%3Dihub

In 1930, a patent was issued to Helene Shelby for a giant, glowing-eyed skeleton that was designed to make criminals confess.

The idea was for police to scare suspects into telling all by sitting them in a dark room, raising a curtain to reveal the device, and questioning them through a megaphone in the skeleton’s skull - which contained a camera to record their statements for use in court.

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https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/criminal-confession-skeleton-patent

People who are genuinely happy in their relationships usually don’t post about it on social media.

Studies show that someone who’s always gushing about their partner on Facebook is tied to how insecure they are in their relationship - while those who are more secure spend time enjoying their relationships instead of trying to convince other people (and themselves) how happy they are.

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https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167214549944

When you think you can smell snow, you aren’t actually smelling anything.

It’s a sensory experience caused by colder weather, humidity, and the feeling of cold air. The cold slows down air molecules, humidity boosts your olfactory nerves, freezing air hits the nerve that transmits sensations from your face to your brain, and this creates the crisp ‘scent’ of snow.

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https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/520083/whats-really-happening-when-you-smell-snow

Studies show humblebragging comes off as insincere and makes people like you less than if you just shamelessly self-promote.

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https://time.com/5095144/humblebrag-bragging/

In the Titanic movie, the story of the old couple who died together in bed was based on real people.

Ida Straus gave up her spot on a lifeboat to stay with her husband of 41 years, Isidor. When he was offered a spot next to his wife, he refused to take it because there were still women and children aboard.

They put their maid on the lifeboat instead, wrapped her in Ida’s fur coat, and were last seen sitting together on the boat deck.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isidor_Straus#Death_on_the_Titanic

When Mt St Helens erupted, the blast was heard in British Columbia, Montana, Idaho, and California. However, the blast was not heard in Portland, Oregon only 50 miles away.

Early toxicity tests of penicillin were performed on live mice. Had the test been run on other animals at hand (Guinea Pigs), we might not be using the antibiotic today, because penicillin is toxic to Guinea Pigs.

All satellites orbiting earth must complete an orbit in less than seven months. Otherwise, they will fall out of earth orbit and orbit the sun instead.

Mothers pass tolerance to spicy food to babies through breastfeeding.

The "Body Mass Index" (BMI) was never intended to be applied to individuals but continues to be used as such because it is, "quicker, easier, and cheaper."

Hawaii's largest-ever earthquake occurred in 1868, and the aftershocks are still being observed.

A whale's skull is so thick that it requires a world war 2 anti-tank rifle to euthanize one that has beached it'self.

Singer Tom Waits has a song called " The Fall Of Troy", and post-hardcore band "The Fall Of Troy" has song called "Tom Waits."

Dogs bark more than wolves because dogs have evolved into the equivalent of overgrown wolf puppies.

In 1993 David Hasselhoff tried to re-ignite his music career by staging a pay per view performance. The event, however, was eclipsed by the live coverage of OJ Simpson fleeing from police. Hasselhoff's event took a $1.5 million loss.

There are two bands called "Impending Doom." One is an American Christian Metal band and the other is a German Satanic Metal band.

Steven Spielberg beat James Cameron to the film rights to "Jurassic Park" by a few hours and Cameron's version of the  movie would have been "nastier, much nastier."

America gets more oil from Canada and Mexico than the entire middle east.

Laughter can induce an asthma attack to more than half the people with the condition.

There is more bullying at religious private schools than public schools.

China gas mandatory animal testing for all international cosmetic brands.

While Eddie Van Halen was recording the guitar solo for Michael Jackson's " Beat It," the studio speakers literally caught on fire.

Wearing green on St Patrick's day is symbolic of Irish Catholics but Irish Protestants wear orange.

Once an Icelandic horse leaves Iceland it can never return. This is to protect against foreign diseases.

In 2009, Jonathon Lee Riches sued the Guinness Book Of World Records when he heard they were about to name him as " the most litigious man in the world."

The Adak National Forest in the Aleutian Islands, Alaska, is the smallest national forest in America, with only 33 trees.

French queen Marie Antoinette had a fully functional peasant village built on the grounds of Versailles. She loved strolling the village in a simple shepherdess garb pretending to live a simple life milking cows or sheep, which were carefully maintained and cleaned by the servants.

A cave goat that went extinct approx. 5,000 years ago is the first known mammal to have become cold-blooded. Their bone growth rate is unlike any other mammal and more similar to crocodiles in showing slow and adaptive rates to environmental temperature.

In 1969, a musician named Jim Sullivan recorded an album called " U.F.O.", which featured strange lyrics about leaving his family and being abducted by aliens. Sullivan disappeared six years later without a trace, with the only piece of evidence being his abandoned car found on a desert road.

Boris Yeltsin's faith in communism was shattered after a trip to a grocery store in a Houston suburb in 1989.

Puerto Rico is the tip of an enormous ancient mountain that descends more than 30,000 feet to the floor of the Caribbean sea, taller than even Mount Everest.

In 1946, a local chicken farmer offered 100 chicks for each homer the Nashua Dodgers hit. Newcomer Roy Campanella hit 14 in his first season and sent all 1,400 to his father who used them to start a thriving poultry farm. He also went on to become one of the first black major league players.

If you watch lectures, speeches, interviews or presentations on YouTube, you can often increase the playback speed by .25 or .50 and still understand what the speaker is saying while saving a significant amount of time.

If someone is mad at you, give them enough time to calm down before trying to talk with them. People often don’t think logically when they are upset so trying to solve a situation while they are still mad can make matters worse quickly.

Never sign into any of your accounts by clicking a link in an email. Even if you’re fairly sure it’s a legitimate email. Instead, load up a new page and go to the website yourself to log in. Anything that you would be asked to do via email you will be able to find on the main site and it means that you don’t risk being caught out by a scam email.

Make it a habit to delete your account from applications before uninstalling them from your phone. If you stopped using app or website make it a habit to delete your account from their platform before leaving, will let you avoid a lot of spam, security risks and privacy concerns.

Before using your credit card or debit card in ANY machine, make it a HABIT to tug on the card reader with good force. You’ll reduce the chances of your card being skimmed…by a lot.

When considering a financial advisor, ask if they are a fiduciary. Fiduciaries are required by law to act in YOUR best interest. This could potentially save you hundreds of thousands of dollars by retirement.

You can recall sent emails in Gmail up to 30 seconds after you’ve sent them. Change the time from the default 5 seconds in Settings>Undo Send. The option to recall the email will be in the bottom left corner.

After a bad break up, do 10 things that your ex would never do with you. You’ll feel better and realize how much of yourself was being held back.

According to some 40-million-year-old bones that were found in Antarctica, penguins used to be over 6 feet tall and weighed more than 250 pounds.

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https://phys.org/news/2014-08-klekowskii-penguin-size-title-emperor.html

Almost all mammals take about 21 seconds to empty their bladders.

Scientists conducted in-depth studies of different mammals peeing and   discovered that an animal’s mass, bladder pressure, and urethra size all work together in harmony with the gravitational pull and create the 21-second ‘law of urination.’

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https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24425-universal-law-of-urination-found-in-mammals/

Bananas are curved because they grow against the pull of gravity. They start off hanging downwards, but as they get bigger, they start trying to grow upwards to get more sun and end up having a curved shape.

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http://www.dole.eu/dole-earth/farmtour/bananito/hotspot/banana-curved.html

An Israeli army unit specifically recruits teens with autism. "Unit 9900", a selective intelligence squad, where heightened perceptual skills are considered an asset.

In 1996, after a rash of unexplained payphone thefts in Malaysia, authorities discovered that the fishermen were using them as bait.

Fishermen would cut off the handsets, connect them to high power batteries and lower them into the water. The electricity passing through the microphones produced a high-pitched sound that attracted fish into their nets.

One giant container ship can emit almost the same amount of asthma-causing chemicals as 50 million cars.

Betfair forumites that post in excess of 5000 times a year are sad,deluded,lonely, full of their own self importance, have no money, friends and haven't had sex with another human this side of 2010...you know who you are. X
Much love

eh?

Whether Marco actually travelled to China is unclear. No Chinese record mentions him. His accounts of the trip never mention the great wall, Chinese characters, chopsticks, or footbinding.

The oldest perfume factory in the world was unearthed in Cyprus in 2004-05. It dated back to the bronze age, around four thousand years ago, and it covered an estimated surface area of over 4,000M2, indicating that their perfume manufacturing was on an indrustrial scale.

There was a reverse underground railroad that kidnapped freed slaves and returned them to slavery in the south.

Prince is the sole credit on his first album. He sang all the parts and played all the instruments, including acoustic and electric guitars. acoustic piano and Fender Rhodes piano, synth bass, various keyboard synths by Oberheim, Moog and arp, orchestra bells, drums, percussion and bass guitar.

Coal and Petroleum like compounds have been found in space. The results suggest that complex organic compounds are not the sole of life but can be made naturally by stars.

In Denmark, it is illegal to burn foreign flags, but not illegal to burn the Danish flag.

In February 2014, snipers attacked a Californian power station, took out seventeen transformers after cutting phone lines. They disappeared one minute before the police arrived, never to be caught or identified.

There is a Haitian martial art called fencing.

In WWII, rationing laws prohibited the sale of freshly-baked bread because "the tastiness of just-baked bread is likely to encourage people to eat it immoderately". The bread had to be at least 24hrs old before it was sold.

It took 23.5 tons of ancient, buried plants to produce 1 litre of petrol.

Jupiter's moon Europa has more water than Earth's surface oceans. Its subsurface ocean plus ice layer could range from 80 to 170 kilometers in average depth.

The Gingko Biloba species of tree is 270 million years old. It rarely suffers disease or insect attack and was one of the only living things to survive the Hiroshima nuclear bombing. The trees healed quickly and are still alive today.

There is a bog in Florida that was an ancient burial pond and contains human remains that were buried 2000 years before the first pyramids. The skeletal remains are preserved so well that they have managed to collect soft brain tissue from the skulls.

Richard Marsh is a rare survivor of locked-in syndrome, a condition where a patient can only move his or her eye muscles. During his coma, Richard watched his beg doctors not to take him off life support and witnessed his own rough handling by the nighttime staff.

1960's counterculture singer Phil Ochs would go on paranoid drunken rants about the FBI watching him. After hanging himself in his sisters home, it was revealed the FBI had a 500-page file on him.

It’s so hard to understand the words to The Kingsmen’s famous rendition of “Louie Louie” that kids used to make up their own versions of the lyrics and pass them around in notes.

There were so many suspicious parents reporting it for being obscene that the FBI began an investigation. They spent over 2.5 years playing the song backwards, forwards, and every which way they could think of, but they eventually gave up after determining the words were “indecipherable at any speed.”

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https://vault.fbi.gov/louie-louie-the-song/louie-louie-the-song/view

Putting hydrogen peroxide on a cut does more harm than good. Though it does kill the bacteria, it also kills healthy cells - and that slows down the healing process.

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https://www.discoveryuk.com/#curiosity-301

Benjamin Franklin designed America’s very first one-cent coin, which was engraved with the caption: “Mind your business.”

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugio_cent

In 2006, NASA found a strange cosmic noise that boomed six times louder than expected. NASA scientists have yet to explain it's source.

They named it the "space roar."

In 1989 a Los Angeles woman received a phone call from her brother-in-law saying that her ex-husband was coming over to kill her. She dialled 911 but was told nothing could be done unless he showed up at the house. Within 15 minutes he arrived, killing her and four others.

In an attempt to attract publicity, Badminton  New Zealand chose "black ****" as a nickname for their national teams in 2004.

Should have known. Black C*cks.

Nelson Mandela's wife Winnie was found personally responsible for a campaign of kidnapping, torture, and murder by the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

All through the 20th century, and up to 2007, parts of Lower Manhatten were still wired up with and using Edison's original 110V DC.

Tibet had an incredibly large empire that fell because Buddism caused a civil war.

If you want to know whether a diamond is real, breathe on it.

Diamonds are very efficient heat conductors, so the fog from your breath will disappear almost immediately if it is real.

If the fog sticks around a few seconds before clearing up, the rock is probably a fake.

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https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-tell-if-a-diamond-is-fake-or-real-2015-1?r=US&IR=T

Women of all ages are more likely to survive in times of crisis.

A study of the last 250 years shows that women have longer life spans during famine or disease epidemics, and female survival rates are especially higher during infancy.

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https://www.scarymommy.com/study-life-expectancy-crisis-women/

Being forgetful is not only normal, it makes you smarter. The main function of memory is to improve decision making, and forgetting irrelevant details helps you to be more intelligent and make informed decisions.

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https://edition.cnn.com/2017/06/30/health/poor-memory-smarter-study-partner/index.html

The eight-hour workday was devised so that workers could easily divide 24 hours between: "eight hours' labour, eight hours' recreation, eight hours' rest."

In 2006, a prisoner named Richard Lee Mcnair got himself a job in prison repairing mail bags, and he climbed inside one and mailed himself out of prison.

In 2011, The RIAA sued Limewire for 72 trillion dollars, which is more than the GDP of the entire world.

The National Academy of Sciences provides a free ‘science hotline’ for filmmakers in order to encourage more scientifically accurate movies. The service is free to both professional and amateur films, as well as TV and video game projects.

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http://scienceandentertainmentexchange.org/about/

When your eyes move, your eardrums do, too. Nobody knows exactly why, but it does indicate that the information we take in through sight and sound has a much closer relationship than previously thought.

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https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/01/when-your-eyes-move-so-do-your-eardrums/551237/

Monkeys can learn to use money.

Capuchins that were taught to exchange silver discs for treats began budgeting for foods they liked, buying more of something when the price dropped and started gambling. Eventually, there was an incident where ‘money’ was stolen, and the rich monkeys even figured out they could pay each other for sex.

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http://flash.lakeheadu.ca/~kyu/E2017/Monkey.pdf

1 in 5 people can ‘hear’ flashes of light.

This is a form of synesthesia, where 2 or more sensory experiences are cross-wired, much like seeing colours when you hear certain musical notes or hearing notes when you see flashing lights. It’s also more common in trained musicians and might account for the appeal of having strobe lights at raves.

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https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jan/17/listen-with-your-eyes-one-in-five-of-us-may-hear-flashes-of-light-synaesthesia

According to legend, there was once a widowed father who was so poor, he feared his daughters could never marry and would have to resort to prostitution to get by.

Wanting to help, St. Nicholas slid down their chimney one night, saw the girls’ laundered stockings hanging by the fire, and filled them with gold. This act of charity saved the girls from becoming hookers, and that’s why we hang stockings at Christmas.

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https://www.livescience.com/32906-hang-stockings-for-christmas.html

There are 10 times more bacteria in your body than there are human cells.

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https://commonfund.nih.gov/hmp

Scientists say the best way to convey sarcasm in your text messages is to use a winky face.

Without it, your jokes are often completely misinterpreted.

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https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1080/17470218.2015.1106566

Kids who are rejected by their dads are more likely to have social anxiety.

Studies show children with heterosexual parents face increased loneliness when they’re rejected by either parent, but only rejection by their fathers leads to lasting social anxiety and difficulty forming friendships.

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https://www.scarymommy.com/study-finds-father-rejection-impacts-social-anxiety/

“Schnapsidee” is the German word for a ridiculous idea that only sounds good when you’re drunk.

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https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Schnapsidee

In 2013, more Americans were killed by toddlers than terrorists.

According to a Chinese legend, music was invented in 2697 B.C., when the emperor Huan Ti send Ling Lun to cut bamboo poles that would produce a sound matching the call of a Phoenix bird.

The first Sherlock Holmes book " A Study In Scarlet" was the first work of fiction to mention a magnifying glass being used as an investigative tool and the reason we still connect this item with detectives today.

The average white, fluffy cloud weighs about 1.1 million pounds.

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https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/49786/how-much-does-cloud-weigh

If you try not to “catch” someone’s yawn, the urge gets even stronger and you’ll probably just end up yawning anyhow.

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https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(17)30966-1

Hot chocolate tastes better in an orange cup.

The colour of the container you’re drinking from highly influences the way you think your drink tastes or how strong it is. Studies show people prefer hot chocolate when they drink it from cups that are orange or cream coloured compared to drinking out of red or white cups, and the colour of your cup can also influence how strong you think your coffee is.

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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130103073238.htm

After a snowfall, people used to say it ‘snew.’ Today, most people say it ‘snowed,’ but both are technically correct.

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https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/snew

During a 2004 interview of Stephen Hawking, a reporter asked him how he manages to keep his spirits up and stay cheerful.

He said, ‘Life would be tragic if it weren’t funny. My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus.’

In 1996, hundreds gathered to
protest a KKK rally in Michigan.
They chased down a white man
wearing a confederate flag t-shirt,
knocked him down, and started
hitting and kicking him. He was
saved by a black teenager named
Keshia Thomas, who threw herself
on top of him to protect him
from the angry mob