QUICK AND AMAZING FACTS TO FEED YOUR BRAIN
Here are 20 quirky facts we found that will most certainly feed your brain! Read, learn and wow your mom with your new-found knowledge.
- Pigs can't look up at the sky. Well, if they lie down they can but it's impossible for them to bend their necks upwards, which rules out romantic stargazing with Miss Piggy.
- “Q” is the only letter of the alphabet that does not appear in any U.S. territory or state name.
- Amelia Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt once sneaked out of a White House event, commandeered an aeroplane, and went on a joyride to Baltimore.
- During Prohibition, moonshiners would wear "cow shoes." The fancy footwear left hoofprints instead of footprints, helping distillers and smugglers evade police.
- Guinness estimates that 93,000 litres of beer are lost in facial hair each year in the UK alone.
- Tsundoku is the act of acquiring books and not reading them.
- Kea parrots warble together when they're in a good mood, making them the first known non-mammal species to communicate with infectious laughter.
- Melbourne gave some of its trees email addresses so residents could report problems. Instead, the trees received love letters.
- An estimated 1 million dogs in the U.S. have been named the primary beneficiary in their owners' wills.
- In Japan, letting a sumo wrestler make your baby cry is considered good luck.
- Sleep literally cleans your brain. During slumber, more cerebrospinal fluid flushes through the brain to wash away harmful proteins and toxins that build up during the day.
- The manchineel tree is nicknamed the "Tree of Death" for good reason: Touching it can leave chemical burns on your skin, its fruit is toxic, and its bark – when burned – can cause blindness.
- Russian cosmonauts used to pack a shotgun in case they landed in Siberia and had to fend off bears.
- Space has a distinct smell: a bouquet of diesel fumes, gunpowder, and barbecue. The aroma is mostly produced by dying stars.
- The annual number of worldwide shark bites is 10 times less than the number of people bitten by other people in New York.
- Ben & Jerry learned how to make ice cream by taking a $5 correspondence course offered by Penn State. (They decided to split one course.)
- After OutKast sang Shake it like a Polaroid picture, Polaroid released a statement: "Shaking or waving can actually damage the image."
- A solar eclipse helped end a six-year war in 585 BCE. When the sky suddenly darkened during a battle between the Lydians and the Medes in modern Turkey, soldiers took it as a sign to cease fighting.
- Dogs are capable of understanding up to 250 words and gestures. The average dog is as intelligent as a two-year-old child.
- After It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown aired, Charles Schulz was overwhelmed with candy shipments sent from kids who were concerned for Charlie, who got rocks instead of treats in his Halloween sack.