From my favorite magazine, Mental Floss, comes several interesting facts:
Separated into categories for my convenience:
Teeth
*The cotton candy machine was invented by a dentist.
*35% of people are born without wisdom teeth, and as we continue to evolve, scientists believe fewer and fewer humans will be born with wisdom teeth, or appendixes, or little toes.
Caffeine
*The APA's DSM-V handbook classifies caffeine withdrawal as a mental disorder.
*Colgate-Palmolive has a patent on a toothbrush that can administer caffeine.
Music
*Recent neuroscience research shows that your musical preferences are established by the time you turn 14.
*After analyzing Billboard archives, researchers found that songs about love stay on the charts for an average of 9.4 weeks and songs that don't involve love last 11.4 weeks.
Left-handedness
*Left-handed people see better underwater than righties.
*Although left-handed people make up only 10% of the population, 20% of all schizophrenics are left-handed.
Interesting foreign country facts
*In 1879, a Belgian village attempted to train a fleet of 37 official mail cats to deliver letters.
*The most common toilet paper color in France is pink.
*Japan and Russia still haven't signed a treaty to officially end World War 2.
*In 2011, the Bombay High Court ruled that astrology was a "trusted science," putting it on the same level as physics and chemistry.
*Bhutan has never been conquered or governed by an outside power. Their government uses Gross National Happiness as a way to measure quality of life.
*The national animal of Scotland is the unicorn.
Famous People
*Nobel prize winner Niels Bohr was given a perpetual supply of beer piped into his house.
*According to Stephen Hawking, if the world population increases at its current rate, by 2600 we will be standing shoulder to shoulder and we would consume so much energy that the Earth would glow red-hot.
*"Hello" wasn't a common greeting until the invention of the telephone. Thomas Edison convinced the printers of the first phone books to make it the sanctioned greeting. Alexander Graham Bell disagreed, and pushed for "Ahoy!"
*Teddy Roosevelt was famously given his own floor at a Washington hospital- not because he was the president, but because he was snoring so loudly.
*Jackie Chan claims he was in his mother's womb for 12 months.
Marriage
*The best man's original purpose was to serve as an accomplice in case the bride needed to be kidnapped from disapproving parents.
*The bridesmaid tradition started because people believed that dressing everyone in the same clothes would confuse evil spirits.
*In 2006, a Sudanese man made international news when he was forced to marry a goat- her name was Rose.
Random
*The most shoplifted food item in the US is candy, in Europe- cheese, and in Latin America- meat.
*The 1967 Outer Space Treaty forbids any nation from trying to own the moon.
*The Monopoly tokens that have been replaced are: the iron, the lantern, the rocking horse, the elephant, and the purse.
*Women with higher-pitched voices tend to be more fertile.
*Sea otters hold hands when they sleep so they don't drift apart.
*Male caimans dance to impress potential mates.
*Tug-of-war, live pigeon shooting, and painting used to be Olympic events.
*Ancient Romans used an herb called silphium as birth control; it was so popular that the herb went extinct.
*Yawning is so contagious that it can spread to dogs and monkeys.
*In 1726, an Englishwoman named Mary Toft convinced a number of prominent British doctors that she was giving birth to rabbits.
*In the 1960s, the CIA launched Project Acoustic Kitty, a furtive attempt to equip cats with recording devices to spy on Soviet embassies. After $20 million was spent on the project, the prototype feline was hit by a taxicab.
Feel free to renew my subscription, anyone!!!! Best magazine ever!!!!
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