Assorted Facts 14
The best place to hide during a lightning strike is inside your car because it acts like a Faraday cage. If that cannot be done you should crouch down into a ball with your bottom in the air. Trees explode from lightning strikes and splinters fly all over the place.
Men are 6 times more likely than women to be struck by lightning. Also, lightning strikes the Earth 17 million times a day. 3-6 people in the UK are killed by lightning every year, in America, the figure is 400. A park ranger called Roy Sullivan was struck by lightning 7 times in his life, although he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Horses were used to catch electric eels, by waiting for the eels to discharge all their electricity in the horses and then the rider would catch them normally. The electric eels are not actually eels, but actually a knifefish.
In 1903, Thomas Edison released a film called Electrocuting An Elephant which showed how electricity could be very dangerous. He used the film as propaganda against his rival George Westinghouse.
Electrons move along wires at a drift velocity of a mere 0.03 mph. They travel by wave movements. You could use the electric current from a lasagne to make a gherkin glow via a connection by a cable.
The difference between a ship and a boat in Naval terms is that all ships float on the surface of the water, while all boats are submarines.
The animal that creates the most methane in the world is the termite and not the cow as was previously thought. Cows burp methane, not fart it. Soldier termites act as suicide bombers, releasing a sticky secretion by rupturing a gland near the skin in their neck producing a tar baby effect in defense against ants. Known as autothysis.
Thousands of Americans ring 911 on Christmas Day, because it is the only number that they can ring with their new mobile phone before it is activated, if they received one as a present.
In the Rhubarb Triangle, a triangle made up of the 3 cities of Leeds, Bradford & Wakefield in West Yorkshire, rhubarb grows so quickly, you can hear it grow.
Rhubarb leaves are poisonous. Rhubarb acts as a mild laxative. During the First Opium War, Lin Zexu threatened Queen Victoria that China would refuse to send rhubarb, claiming they would kill everyone by mass constipation.
Corn flakes were originally used to discourage masturbation. John Harvey Kellogg was deeply against the practice.
If you eat nothing but rabbit, you would die of malnutrition, because rabbit meat contains very little oil and therefore by eating only rabbit, your body would run out of other nutrients.
If you eat a rabbit affected with Myxomatosis, it would have no affect on you. Louis XVIII claimed that he could tell from which part of France a rabbit came from by smelling rabbit stew. Theoretically, two rabbits could produce 33 million offspring in 3 years, but 90% of baby rabbits are killed by predators.
Whilst rabbits were introduced to Britain by Normans in the 12th century, they did not become wild until the 19th century.
The first animals to be herded for food were snails in the year 10,700 BC. Snails are hermaphrodite and have a love dart, which may harm the partner when mating, but also increases the chance of pregnancy.
Stomach ulcers are caused by a bacteria called Helicobacter pylori. One of the two men who discovered that stomach ulcers were caused by this bacteria, Barry Marshall, drank some of the bacteria to prove that it was the cause, and as a result won the Nobel Prize.
The green vegetable that contains 10 times more iron on average is thyme, and not spinach as most people wrongly believe.
A tyrannosaurus rex, would taste like chicken, because the chicken is a descendant of the T rex.
When the Pilgrim Fathers first arrived in America, the first thing that the Native Americans said to them was Could I have some beer?.
Most of the Native Americans learnt their English from Squanto, a Native who travelled across the Atlantic Ocean 6 times. He was kidnapped to England, then brought back to America, he was kidnapped again and sold to slavery in Spain, before escaping to Cupers Cove, Newfoundland, but he found it took too long to walk back, so he took a boat back to Ireland before returning to New England.
The quickest way to get from the Eiffel Tower to The Louvre, without seeing a Frenchman is to go through the sewers, because they are lined up exactly the same as the streets of Paris.
If a crewman in outer space went mad, the course of action to take would be to bind his/her wrists and ankles with duct tape, tie him/her down with a bungee cord and inject tranquilizers into him/her.
The first two words spoken on the surface of the Moon were Contact Light, spoken by Buzz Aldrin. Aldrins sister gave him the nickname Buzz, short for Buzzer, because she could not say Brother.
The only animal that can moonwalk is the manakin bird, which can also sing using its wings.
The first person to put 2 feet on Mount Everest was Radhanath Sikdar, a mathematician from Bengal, who measured the peak as 29,000 feet, but because he thought people would think he just rounded upto 29,000 feet, he added 2 feet to make it 29,002 feet, the measurement of Everest up until 1955, when it became 29,028 feet.
Las Vegas sells more adult nappies than baby nappies, because gamblers do not want stop gambling. A casino in Melbourne had to change the carpet after a week because people urinated on the floor rather than stop gambling.
Baarle-Hertog in Belgium and Baarle-Nassau in the Netherlands, due to the Maastricht Treaty, has 5,732 parcels of land which are split between French-Belgium and Dutch-Belgium. Many of these enclaves are split in the middle between the two countries, so many buildings have doors that lead from one side to the other. In pubs, the Dutch side closes earlier, so half the tables are cut off and everyone has to move to the other side.
The Dutch also have a large sex shop next to the Belgium side.
Belgium is named after the Belgae tribe, most of which originated from Winchester.
No females of any species are allowed on Mount Athos in Greece. Prince Philip once visited the Mount, and the Queen has to stay in a boat 500 yards from the shore. They do however, allow hens because they use the egg yolks for icon paintings.
The German disease, the French disease, the Polish disease, the Portuguese disease and the English disease are all the same disease - Syphilis. It was common to name it after your enemy. Mercury was once used to cure it, but it would make the patients teeth turn green. Oscar Wilde covered his green teeth with his hand during his trial for being homosexual, but it counted against him as it was seen as effeminate. A later cure was to give the patient malaria.
The highest mountain in Europe is Mount Elbrus, in the Caucasus and not Mont Blanc, Eiger or Mount Etna as many would believe. In 1997, a Land Rover Defender climbed up Mount Elbrus.
One-eighth of the people who attempt to climb Mount Everest die.
The average graphite pencil can write for thirty-five miles.
The steam engine was invented by Hero of Alexandria, and was named the aeolipile. The railway was invented seven hundred years earlier by Periander of Corinth. The modern steam engine was invented by Richard Trevithick. When Stephensons Rocket was introduced, people were concerned that travelling at such high speeds could cause irreparable brain damage.
The best way to escape from a polar bear is to remove ones clothing, leaving items of clothing on the ground while backing away.
An alligator can be rendered helpless by placing a rubber band over its jaws.
Brides do not walk down the aisle of a church, they walk down the central passageway.
The earliest known soup is made from hippopotamus.
The Great Wall of China cannot be seen from the Moon, nor can any man-made object. Even the Earths continents are difficult to make out from the Moon. The Great Wall of China covers more than 1/20th of the Earths circumference.
In ancient China people committed suicide by eating a pound of salt.
The longest animal is a Lions mane jellyfish, as described in the Sherlock Holmes story, The Adventure of the Lions Mane.
Blue Whales have small throats and can swallow nothing larger than a grapefruit. Their diet consists of eating 3 tonnes of krill every day.
An octopus can be taught to unscrew the lids of jars and bottles.
The continent of Antarctica has six seas and no bees.
Over fifty percent of the worlds oxygen is provided by algae, not by trees as is commonly thought to be the case.
The most boring place in Great Britain is a field outside Ousefleet, near Scunthorpe, according to the Ordnance Survey map. It is the blankest square kilometre in the country, with only part of an electricity pylon in it.
King Henry VIII had either 3 or 4 wives. His marriage to Anne of Cleves was annulled, the Pope declared his marriage with Anne Boleyn void as he was still married to Catherine of Aragon, and the marriage to Catherine of Aragon was declared void by Henry himself as it was illegal to marry the widow of ones brother (Catherine had been married to his brother Arthur).
All diamonds are created beneath the Earths surface, and brought to the surface in volcanoes. Diamonds and graphite are both made of pure carbon, but appear at opposite ends of the Mohs scale of mineral hardness.
When travelling through sodium at -270 degrees, light slows to 38 miles per hour. The speed of light is only constant in a vacuum.
A chameleon changes colour depending on its mood. Their eyes can swivel independently, and it was once believed that they lived on air. They do not change colour to match surroundings.
Gerber baby food was so poorly marketed in Africa that it lead customers to believe that it contained babies. The tins bore a picture of the baby Ann Turner Cook.
The Toyota MR2 provoked much amusement in France, as MR2 sounds like merde. The Ford Pinto is equally amusing to Brazilians, as pinto is Brazilian slang for a small penis.
Barbara Cartland holds the record for the most novels written in one year. (The amount is 23.) She was buried in a cardboard coffin beneath an oak tree planted by Queen Elizabeth I.
The French word for custard is cr?me Anglaise, because they dont believe it exists.
As well as being able to sing, the New Guinea Singing Dog (a type of canine), can climb up trees.
The inventor of the pie chart was Florence Nightingale.
Most tigers in the world are in private hands in the United States.
The Isle of Wight was the last place in Britain to convert to Christianity in 686AD.
Custard can support a person walking on top of it because it is a non-Newtonian fluid.
There is no evidence that any Christians were thrown to the lions in a colosseum.
In the Middle Ages, most people thought the world was spherical, although Christopher Columbus believed the world to be pear shaped.
There were seven sheep on Noahs Ark, because there were seven of every type of clean animal onboard the Ark, with two of each unclean animal.
Cummingtonite is a mineral discovered at Cummington, Massachusetts. Other comedy compounds include Penguinone, Arsole and Moronic acid.
According to one survey, the age people would most like to be is 17. From a mans point of view, a womans perfect age is said to be half his own plus seven.
Contrary to popular belief, if you cut an earthworm in two it becomes two halves of a dead worm.
Three-quarters of the people accused of witchcraft in England were acquitted.
Rolls-Royce test their aircraft engines for the effects of bird strike with chickens fired from a cannon.
The crew of the RMS Titanic had their wages stopped as soon as the ship started sinking.
The Coconut crab cant swim or float in water, they can be the size of a small dog, can shin up trees, have claws that can open tin cans and can carry a load that is greater than the luggage allowance on an international flight.
When the Greek army wear kilts, they have 400 pleats in them, because there was 400 years of Turkish segregation.
The difference between phobias & fears are that phobia are irrational and fears are rational.
The second actor to portray James Bond was Bob Holness.
Examples of berries are the banana, tomato, orange, lemon, grapefruit, watermelon, kiwifruit, cucumber, grape, passion fruit, papaya and pomegranate. The only fruits that end in berry are the gooseberry and the blueberry.
The longest animal in the world is the Bootlace worm.
Swimming through treacle is similar to swimming in water, because even though its hard to use your arms, the legs are pushing on a harder surface, so you get a big spring from it, so the speed is virtually the same.
The first President of America was Peyton Randolph, the first President of the Continental Congress. The second was John Hancock, whose name became an American term for a signature. George Washington was the first president of the independent United States.
The origin of the name America comes from the Welshman Richard Amerike.