Did you know ?

Life insurance

More money is spent each year on alcohol and cigarettes than on Life insurance.

Pulp Fiction

All of the clocks in the movie "Pulp Fiction" are stuck on 4:20."

All seeing eye

The only 2 animals that can see behind itself without turning its head are the rabbit and the parrot.

Eiffel Tower

There are 1,792 steps to the top of the Eiffel Tower

Electrocutions

60% of electrocutions occur while talking on the telephone during a thunderstorm.

Frozen frogs

Certain frogs can be frozen solid then thawed, and continue living

Honey

Honey is the only food that does not spoil. Honey found in the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs has been tasted by archaeologists and found edible.

Microwave oven

The microwave oven was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket

Octopuses

Octopuses have three hearts

Passing gas

The world record for passing gas was set on Japanese television, 3,000 times in a row

Telephone calls

More than 50% of the people in the world have never made or received a telephone call.

Tongue color

Your tongue is germ free only if it is pink. If it is white there is a thin film of bacteria on it.

3D scanners

A 3D scanner is a device that analyzes a real object or environment and collects data on its appearance and shape. The data collected can be used to construct digital, three dimensional models useful for a wide variety of applications. These devices are used extensively by the entertainment industry in the production of video games and movies. Other applications of this technology include industrial design, quality control/inspection,reverse engineering and prototyping, documentation of cultural artifacts and orthotics and prosthetics.

Many different technologies can be used to build these 3D scanning devices; each technology comes with its own advantages, limitations and costs. It should be remembered that many limitations in the kind of objects that can be digitized are still present: for example optical technologies encounter many difficulties with shiny, mirroring or transparent objects.

There are however methods for scanning shiny objects, such as covering them with a thin layer of white powder that will help more light photons to reflect back to the scanner. Laser scanners can send trillions of light photons toward an object and only receive a small percentage of those photons back via the optics that they use. The reflectivity of an object is based upon the object's color or terrestrial albedo. A white surface will reflect lots of light and a black surface will reflect only a small amount of light. Transparent objects such as glass will only refract the light and give false three dimensional information.

Blood cells

Your body is creating and killing 15 million red blood cells per second!

Einstein

Einstein declined the presidency of the state of Israel when it was offered to him in 1952 by state leaders. The element einsteinium, discovered in 1952, was named in honor of Albert Einstein. Picture of Einstein sticking his tongue was taken on his 72nd birthday by annoying press photographer Arthur Sasse. Albert loved the photo so much that he cut his image out and send it to all his friends.

Kissing

The average person spends 2 weeks of its life kissing

Kneecaps

Babies are born without kneecaps. They appear when the child is 2-6 years of age.

GSM Security

In the old days of analog cellular and mobile phones, with the right type of radio scanner it was possible to eavesdrop on wireless phone conversations. This was a fairly big security vulnerability, as anyone could visit their local electronics shop where with $100 and no technical skills could start listening in on any private phone conversation.

Although the government passed laws to make this kind of snooping illegal and banned the sale of scanners, it was fairly easy to find old scanners or modify some models of post-ban scanners to access the designated cell phone frequencies. The vulnerability didn't go away until phone companies decided to switch over to digital technology, including some protocols like GSM which use encryption to secure conversations.

While it's possible to intercept and eavesdrop on digital cell phone conversations, the equipment to do so is quite costly and phone companies, government intelligence and law enforcement agencies, and perhaps some unethical corporations engaged in industrial espionage tend to be the only ones who have access to it.

This year a group of hackers presented an analysis of the A5 crypto spec used in GSM systems. Almost all GSM conversations in the US and Europe are encrypted using this standard. Basically, they were able to capture GSM traffic - the traffic most of our cell phones use - and decrypt that traffic. They reverse-engineered the encryption process and then used the FPGAs to increase the speed of the whole process by an amazing amount. I don't have the exact numbers, but let's just say it went from impossible to potentially done in 30 seconds.

Swans

When swans go on a date, they'll put their heads together. Then they stick together for life.

Cats and Dogs

Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds; dogs only have about ten.

Sex

Each day, there are over 120 million sexual intercourse taking place all over the world.

Natural Blonds

One in fourteen women in America is a natural blonde. Only one in sixteen men is.

Rigor mortis

After human death, post-mortem rigidity starts in the head and travels to the feet, and leaves the same way it came.

Super Bat

The Venezuelan brown bat can detect and dodge individual raindrops in mid-flight, arriving safely back at his cave completely dry.

Horny Rats

Male and female rats may have sex twenty times a day.

How long after the expiration date is it safe to drink milk?

The date you see on milk cartons isn't an expiration date. In other words, the milk doesn't necessarily go bad the next day. The date is placed there "to let stores know when to pull products from the shelf to maintain top quality," according to Judy Simon, a nutritionist with the University of Washington Medical Center. "You can still safely drink milk three to seven days after the date if the milk has been stored properly."

Marijuana and Dysentery

The Chinese, in olden days, used marijuana only as a remedy for dysentery.

Quad Armadillos

Armadillos have four babies at a time, always all the same sex. They are perfect quadruplets, the fertilized cell split into quarters, resulting in four identical armadillos.

Impotence and divorce

Impotence is legal grounds for divorce in 24 American states.

Killer Bees

More people are killed each year from bees than from snakes.

The Scooter

When Voyager 2 visited Neptune it saw a small irregular white cloud that zips around Neptune every sixteen hours or so now known as "The Scooter".

Skin Dust

Most dust particles in your house are made from dead skin.

Fish Memory

A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.

Blood donation

Less than 7% of the population donates blood

Orthodontists

An orthodontist needs four years of college, four years of dental school, and two years of postgraduate study in orthodontics before they can practice orthodontics.

All orthodontists are also board certified dentists

Dr Charles Tweed was the first certified orthodontist in the US.

The first "braces" were constructed by Pierre Fauchard in 1728. Fauchard's "braces" consisted of a flat strip of metal, which was connected to teeth by pieces of thread.

Bands were invented by Schange in 1841. The first bands consisted of an strip of metal, with a screw to adjust their size.

Orthodontic Brackets were invented by Edward Angle in 1915. The brackets consisted of little hooks of metal, which were attached to bands which went around your teeth.

Dr Angle modified his design, producing the edgewise bracket in 1928. If you or your parents got braces before 1970, they probably got braces similar to those invented by Dr Angle

Snoring

If the roof of your mouth is narrow, you are more prone to snore since you are not getting enough oxygen through your nose.

Chewing

If you are right handed, you will tend to chew your food on your right side. If you are left handed, you will tend to chew your food on your left side.

How many people are alive?

5.8 percent of all human beings ever born are alive at this very moment.

Blood

It takes about 20 seconds for a red blood cell to circle the whole body.

Cancer rates

Cancer may affect people at all ages, even fetuses, but the risk for most varieties increases with age. Cancer causes about 13% of all deaths. According to the American Cancer Society, 7.6 million people died from cancer in the world during 2007. Cancers can affect all animals.

Cornea

The only part of the body that has no blood supply is the cornea in the eye. It takes in oxygen directly from the air.

Knuckle cracking

The sound you hear when you crack your knuckles is actually the sound of nitrogen gas bubbles bursting.

Eyebrow

There are approx. 550 hairs in the eyebrow.

What is chemotherapy?

Chemotherapy, in its most general sense, refers to treatment of disease by chemicals that kill cells, specifically those of micro-organisms or cancer. In popular usage, it will usually refer to antineoplastic drugs used to treat cancer or the combination of these drugs into a standardized treatment regimen.

Heart pumping

The human heart creates enough pressure while pumping to squirt blood 10 meters in the air.

Height

We are about 1 cm taller in the morning than in the evening. Layers of cartilage in the joints gets compressed during the day

After death

Human hair and fingernails continue to grow after death.

What is ionizing radiation

Ionizing radiation consists of highly-energetic particles or waves that can detach (ionize) at least one electron from an atom or molecule. Ionizing ability depends on the energy of the impinging individual particles or waves, and not on their number. A large flood of particles or waves generally will not cause ionization if these particles or waves do not carry enough energy to be ionizing.

Titanic

It cost 7 million dollars to build the Titanic and 200 million to make a film about it.

Why is the sky blue?

When sunlight travels through the atmosphere, it collides with gas molecules. These molecules scatter the light. The shorter the wavelength of light, the more it is scattered by the atmosphere. Because it has a shorter wavelength than the other colours, blue light is scattered more, ten times more than red light, for instance. That is why the sky is blue.

Alergic to cats?

People that are allergic to cats will be able to pet them without sneezing and scratching. Genetically engineered cats will be produced to help people with allergies enjoy their sneeze-free kitties Allerca, Inc., a biotechnology firm in San Diego, California, says it has bred Hypoallergenic Cats and is now taking orders from customers in the United States.

Blinking

Women blink twice as many times as men do.

Laughing

Laughing lowers levels of stress hormones and strengthens the immune system. Six-year-olds laugh an average of 300 times a day. Adults only laugh 15 to 100 times a day.

What is radiation therapy?

Radiation therapy (or radiotherapy) is the medical use of ionizing radiation as part of cancer treatment to control malignant cells (not to be confused with radiology, the use of radiation in medical imaging and diagnosis). Radiotherapy may be used for curative or adjuvant cancer treatment. It is used as palliative treatment (where cure is not possible and the aim is for local disease control or symptomatic relief) or as therapeutic treatment (where the therapy has survival benefit and it can be curative)

Inteligence and hair

Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair