100 Weird Facts

rodents can't vomit according to a 2013 study in plos-1 this can be attributed to some missing brain circuitry that other mammals have what the researchers called an absent brainstem neurological component this unique physiology is part of why poison can be an effective way of dealing with mice and rats the little guys can't throw up the toxic materials which is good or bad news depending on your point of view hi I'm Erin McCarthy and on today's episode of the list show we're sharing 100 weird facts there's a lot of ground to cover so let's hit three more before the intro Michael J Fox's middle name is Andrew he chose the middle initial J as an homage to character actor Michael J Pollard and presumably to avoid confusion Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho was shot in black and white even though color films have become popular years earlier but the film pushed the medium forward in other ways it was the first American Studio film in the so-called code era a period of cinematic self-censorship under the haze code to show and present the sound of a flushing toilet blood curdling stuff and blood curdling isn't just an evocative phrase research shows that watching horror movies can increase a certain clotting protein in our blood the protein is known as factor 8 which is also a good name for a dystopian horror movie we've got much more to cover from dildo days to the great oyster craze let's get started there's a small area of Newfoundland known as dildo if you're interested in visiting I recommend the end of July 2023 when the local Service District will be hosting its annual dildo days celebration it includes a parade LED of course by Captain Dildo while the name's Origins are uncertain your mind shouldn't go too far into the gutter in 1995 the assistant postmistress told the independent I feel sure that we've been here a lot longer than artificial penises have been around that's almost definitely not true though numerous pieces of art from ancient Greece around 2000 years ago depict what appear to be artificial phalluses and by the 5th Century CE there may be records of something called an ALICE bakalix we could translate that as bread small local Service District in Newfoundland yes these purported sex toys are made out of bread as Peter James Nick Thorpe and ijthorpe wrote in their book ancient inventions they were easily made at home though perhaps an order was put in at the Bakers if you were holding an orgy I should say this theory is not universally accepted some experts think the would-be bread dildos might actually be phallus Birds but that's a story for another time Winston Churchill's mother lady Randolph Churchill was born in Brooklyn though we might think of the former prime minister as the personification of the United Kingdom the British Bulldog died an honorary American citizen in 1963 the U. S government granted him the honor making Churchill one of only eight people to have received that distinction in United States history Churchill's maternal grandfather Leonard Jerome once sat at a window of the New York Times offices perched behind a Gatling gun Jerome was a partial owner of the paper at the time and was concerned that the Civil War draft riots breaking out might make their way to the premises if that information made you say OMG you're part of a proud lineage of Churchills and the phrase OMG in fact the first documented instance of the initialism was sent from a British naval officer to Winston Churchill the letter was written by Lord John Fisher who wrote and then hilariously explained OMG oh my God in other notable letter news while we Whitman was the recipient of a particularly artmissive from a woman named Susan Garnett Smith really liked Leaves of Grass among other enthusiastic proclamations she wrote my womb is clean and pure it is ready for thy child my love Angels guard the vestibule until thou cometh to deposit our and the world's precious treasure Garnet Smith was in good company Bram Stoker who would one day write the novel Drcula also wrote Whitman an effusive fan letter it actually took him four years to work up the nerve to send his message which included lines like I only hope that sometime I may meet you face to face and perhaps shake hands with you if I ever do it will be one of the greatest pleasures of my life roughly the same amount of first-class mail was sent in the United States in 2022 and in 1972. the volume of such male peaked in the year 2001 and has been on the decline ever since One Missed opportunity for the U.

S Postal Service babies in the early 20th century the post office instituted parcel post but forgot to specify that you couldn't use it to male children and while rare stories did emerge of people doing precisely that like the tale of young Mary pierstroff who was shipped to her grandparents home for a tidy 53 cents that particular practice was soon banned for the record it's not like they slapped a stamp on her forehead and hoped for the best May traveled with a family member who worked on the mail trains people have been eating oysters and what is now the United States for at least nine thousand years when when harvesting technology improved in the 19th century the price of the bivalves dropped at one point to half the price of beef per pound as W. E Woodward wrote in the way our people lived no evening of pleasure was complete without oysters the country was swept up he declared in a great oyster craze the medical term for ice cream headaches or brain freeze is phenopalatine gangloneuralgia Johnny Cash's brother Tommy was also a musician in 1965 he released a song called I didn't walk the line in 1674 the women's petition against coffee claimed the beverage was turning British men into useless corpses and proposed a ban on it for anyone under the age of 60. there are 293 ways to make change for a US dollar let's see you've got four quarters 10 dimes three quarters two in the Eurozone incidentally the two cent coin UPS the possible combinations that add up to one Euro all the way to 4 563.

the proof is here and it's really quite simple to understand Punxsutawney Phil of groundhog they Fame lives in a library in addition to the company of literature Phil can enjoy the company of his wife Phyllis if you account for the fact that it crosses the 180th Meridian you can say that Alaska has both the easternmost and westernmost spots in the entire country personally this fact just annoys me but I guess I have to take it up with the participants of the international Meridian conference and unfortunately it took place in 1884 so they're all dead the shortest interval between two births from the same mother accepting twins triplets and the like is 208 days or six and a half months Jane Bleakley gave birth to a son on September 3rd 1999. she later gave birth to a daughter on March 30th 2000. scientists named a hormone in male Mouse pee that female mice find sexually attractive darson after pride and prejudices MrDarcy several scenes in Sophia couple as the beguiled were shot in Jennifer coolidge's New Orleans home Coolidge once told vulture that in her 20s she would lie her way into popular nightclubs the then struggling actress claimed to be related to literary icon Ernest Hemingway she had an incredible though evidently sometimes believed identity muffin Hemingway as anyone who's read a Movable Feast knows Hemingway rubs shoulders with a who's who of notable writers and artists from Ford Maddox Ford to Gertrude Stein and in one particularly odd moment presumably drawn from real life he assured F Scott Fitzgerald that his penis was perfectly fine Fitzgerald's uh not Hemingways when he wasn't hanging out with Hemingway Fitzgerald made time to work on the screenplay for 1939's Gone With the Wind The Great Gatsby author proposed cutting Scarlet's miscarriage from the film a suggestion that ultimately went unheeded though Vivian Lee ended up winning an Oscar for her performance she wasn't the only actress considered for the role of Scarlett Lucille Ball was among those who auditioned for the role according to an informal analysis by deloitte's director of research Duncan Stewart YouTube viewers likely watch more than 2 billion hours of videos combined every day that's over 200 000 cumulative years of content in 2019 a YouTube user named itzray commented on the music video for Gautier song Somebody That I Used to Know bruh who just randomly came back to this song like eight years later apparently 38 000 people did that's how many users have liked the comment as of the filming of this video Belgium waffles have been in the United States only seven years longer than the internet depending on how you define the internet that is the waffles have been Stateside since 1962 when Walter Clayman showcased them at the Century 21 Exposition in Seattle the first arpanet message which some would say launched the internet age was sent from UCLA to the Stanford Research Institute in 1969.

just a few months after the Apollo 11 moon landing the men on board that historic lunar Mission drank a great deal of what amounted to space seltzer the drinking water the three astronauts had access to had hydrogen bubbles in it which helped produce gas in the men aboard the spacecraft it resulted in what Michael Collins later called a not so subtle and pervasive Aroma which reminds me of a mixture of wet dog and Marsh Grass high altitude is actually associated with flatulence mountain climbers and airplane passengers are both subject to a phenomenon known as high altitude flatus expulsion according to a letter from DrPaul Auerbach printed in the western Journal of Medicine this condition is known to veteran Backpackers as Rocky Mountain barking spiders up until 1987 Louisiana state law mandated that if students were taught Evolution they also had to be taught creationism that year a Supreme Court ruling banned the practice of making such instruction mandatory for public school students in the 1960s through the 1980s alcohol was sometimes administered to pregnant women to prevent premature births by the time helium was first observed and documented by a human being the United States Civil War was already over Pierre Jewel cesare Sean sen first saw helium in 1868. during a solar eclipse jealousen looked at the sun with a spectroscope a tool that disperses light into measurable wavelengths as Smithsonian Magazine wrote there he observed the previously unidentified element helium the same stuff you can fill up a balloon with at Party City today those students here in the United States probably learned that the Treaty of Paris ended the Revolutionary War you assuredly did not learn what the treaty that ended the Civil War was called that's because there was none though Robert E Lee surrendered in his capacity as a military General at Appomattox Courthouse the confederate government never officially did had it tried it's doubtful the U. S would have accepted it because doing so could have been seen as legitimizing the secessionist Confederacy around the same time baseball was supplanting its rival claimant to the title of the United States national pastime the other Contender Cricket of course it was hugely popular Stateside before the Civil War some sports historians say it was the war that ended Cricket's popularity in the United States but most seem to agree cricket was already on the decline perhaps due to its slower Pace or the relatively high level of upkeep required of the fields a 1939 cricket match between England and South Africa lasted 12 days including a few rest days and even then only ended because the England team had to catch a train based on a mean heart rate of 115 beats per minute in line with averages found in a 2017 study measuring player heart rates in one day cricket matches versus multi-day Affairs the average player's heart would have beat about 300 000 times over the course of the marathon match at their shortest Saturn's rings are only about two-thirds as tall as the Hollywood sign the gas Giant's main rings can be as short as around 10 meters while the iconic sign clocks in at around 15.

there are more unique ways to order a deck of 52 playing cards than there are atoms comprising planet Earth 52 factorial gives you a total of eight with 67 zeros behind it I don't even know what that number is called but it's really big it's much trickier to estimate how many atoms make up our home planet but since we have good estimates of Earth's mass volume and chemical composition we can ballpark the total number of atoms at many orders of magnitude below our possible playing card permutations speaking of large numbers that might have you reconsidering some things human feet contain more than a hundred thousand sweat glands each on average each foot can produce around half a pint of sweat per day think about that the next time you consider putting on an old pair of socks to avoid doing laundry before he became Pope Francis Jorge bergoglio once worked as a bouncer at an Argentinian nightclub bergolia wasn't the only future Pope to work an odd job before entering the Catholic church in the early 19th century Pope Gregory the 16th then known as Mario capillary made and sold chocolate with fellow members of the Kamal de lis order selling chocolate isn't the first thing you might think of when it comes to men of the cloth but other Pope shot right past quirky and into the realm of disturbing one example is Pope Stephen VI who put his predecessor for Moses on trial that wouldn't be so bizarre if it weren't for the fact that formosas had been dead for nine months the prior pontiff's body was exhumed and propped up on a throne for questioning a deacon answered in his stead if you can believe it the dead man was found guilty among his punishments some fingers were chopped off at least it didn't hurt every musical theater fan and history buff knows that Alexander Hamilton participated in a fatal duel but plenty of other historical figures also engaged in the now outdated practice among them our composer George Frederick Handel author Miguel Cervantes and painter Edward Manet in manet's case the weapon of choice with swords and the inciting incident was a bruised ego after the artist received a terse review from Louis Durante a man he considered a friend the two had it out in a forest outside of Paris no one died and the two reportedly rekindled their friendship in the aftermath the lesson there's absolutely no lesson to glean from this incident another historical beef or boof pitted Voltaire again Jean-Jacques Rousseau the Epic enmity between the two men included an incident in which Rousseau began a letter to his adversary I do not like you sir point for clarity at least that inconspicuous beginning actually wasn't as bad as later on in the message when he said translated into English I hate you Voltaire went on to play the Pusha T to Rousseau's Drke a phrase I somehow always knew I would say outing his enemy as an alleged deadbeat dad to be clear despite the diss track Pusha T's claims against Drke were never validated but voltaire's claims were Russo had indeed left five children at an orphanage after all that talk of pitiless popes and deadbeat philosophers let's cleanse the palette with an inspiring story of a priest and an orphanage specifically that of Sergio Benitez a Catholic priest who helped support the activities of an orphanage he founded in a creative way Benitez became a Lucha Libre wrestler who performed under the name Frey tormenta or Friar storm when he retired one of the boys who had lived at the orphanage took up the mantle fighting under the name Frey tormenta Jr if this all sounds familiar it may be because the real life story inspired the film Nacho Libre starring Jack Black the largest crowd ever assembled to watch a wrestling event was in Pyongyang North Korea back in 1995. an estimated 300 000 plus people attended the two-day event but that probably wasn't because of some latent love for sports entertainment in the isolated Nation as professional wrestler Scott Norton told Sports Illustrated his limo driver clued the Americans in on what made the event so popular nobody really wants to come the driver reportedly said it's forced attendance if they don't show up they get a bullet in the head and Norton went all right then speaking of bullets and obstensibly violent free contact alongside the 1908 Olympics in London dueling was an event it wasn't exactly a Bloodsport combatants used wax bullets and were protective armor unlike competitors the event didn't survive beyond that Year's games since it was an exhibition event no medals were awarded another discontinued Olympic event was solo synchronized swimming that competition which seems more like a Zen cone than a legitimate sporting event was evidently about synchronizing one's movements with the music not with an imaginary friend it didn't last long either appearing in just three Olympic Games at the 1994 World Cup Opening Ceremony a famous American attempted a penalty kick the kick went wide of the goal which embarrassingly proceeded to come apart at the seams following through in a planned stunt That was supposed to mimic the force of the ball destroying the target the striker for that ill-fated attempt Diana Ross of course Ross's daughter Tracy Ellis Ross once told Jimmy Kimmel that she was born after her father said boo to her mom I mean that's supposedly what inside of the labor itself other things had to happen prior to that in 1988 Angela Lansbury released a workout video she was in her early 60s at the time it was called Angela Lansbury's positive moves a personal plan for fitness and well-being at any age hell yeah perhaps most amazing of all Lansbury would live for almost 35 more years after releasing the exercise routine apparently her plan worked according to a study published in the journal Nature women who lived to at least age 100 were four times more likely to have had children while in their 40s than women who survived only to age 73. the researchers speculated that the ability to have a child at a relatively older age could be an indicator of silver aging one centenarian Edith Atkinson Wiley suggested that her longevity might be due to good genes but didn't rule out a dietary regimen that included bourbon water and Cheetos artist Grant Wood was basically a sugar addict he poured copious amounts of it into his morning coffee and even sprinkled it onto lettuce maybe all that Sugar paid off wood modeled the farmer in American Gothic on his dentist Byron mckibean M.

C hammer got his stage name with help from Milwaukee Brewers second baseman Pedro Garcia the future you can't touch this rapper was a bad boy for the Oakland A's and Garcia thought he looked like hammer and Hank Aaron Hank oddly enough was associated with the name John in medieval England Han was short for Johan hence the John connection while Kim was a diminutive in Middle English so Henkin was kind of like Johnny or Little John dead bodies sometimes develop a soap-like coating that's been called grave wax technically known as adipocier this odd phenomenon is the result of body fat decaying the so-called soap lady at Philadelphia's motor museum demonstrates this process the Guinness world record for highest IQ ever recorded was given to Marilyn vos Savant I guess it was good fortune that her name wasn't Marilyn Von dummy the record has since been retired by Guinness because IQ tests were deemed too unreliable somewhere on the other end of the intelligent Spectrum we have the story of a Tucson man who got himself stuck in his home's chimney back in 2016. after locking his keys in the house the would-be southwestern Santa decided he'd get back in via the fireplace firefighters had to extricate the man from the chimney's two tight quarters but it could have been worse a rabbit hunter in Doncaster England was found dead in a rabbit hole sadly the man had gotten stuck and suffocated he was discovered when someone walked by and saw half a body sticking out of the ground in a very minor Silver Lining the man's dog was found alive tied to a nearby tree perhaps an even more unfortunate place to meet one's end is on the set of the Dick Cavett Show that's the Fate the befell Jerome rodale a man who extolled the virtues of Clean Eating among other things he believed diet and not vaccines could prevent polio the legendary host discussed rodale's plan to live to 100 years of age in a segment for the show but his guest actually didn't make it to the end of the taping after having a heart attack rodel died and the episode never aired David Lynch director of Eraserhead and Mulholland Drve once kicked a roommate out of their apartment supposedly the guy was too weird if you're blowing out birthday candles and stumped about what to wish for consider survival the so-called birthday effect says that you have a higher chance of dying on or around your birthday than random chance would dictate a Swiss study says analyzing deaths between 1969 and 2008 found that people were 14 more likely to die on their birthday than any other day explanations offered for this odd fact include greater risk-taking Behavior engaged in on birthdays people holding on to get to the next year were just errors in record keeping that assign death dates that don't correspond with reality whether the phenomenon will stand up to more scrutiny or not some famous people who have died on their birthdays include Ingrid Bergman and Betty Friedan neither of those famous women died from a skydiving accident I haven't researched this but it feels like a safe guess 15 people in the United States did die in skydiving accident in 2019 sadly but that number is actually dwarfed by the roughly 100 North American deaths attributed to scuba diving accidents each year you won't catch me doing either a 1938 article in the New York Times discussed The Whimsy of California restaurants including an apparently newfangled offering the cheeseburger a few years later the paper of Records suggested that the combination of beef with cheese and tomatoes may seem bizarre but pronounce that if you reflect a bit you'll understand the combination is sound gastronomically thank goodness I was worried it just tasted good according to a survey conducted by wallet Hub more than 20 percent of Americans consider the newest iPhone worth going into debt for in 2008 the word nomophobia was going to describe the fear of being without one's phone there are actually more smartphone subscriptions on Earth today than there were human beings in the year 2002 living people at least according to an analysis by our world and data more than a hundred billion people have died over the last 200 000 years the average person spends about three hours and 15 minutes every day on their phone over the course of 60 years that works out to almost 3 000 days spent looking at your phone that's about 25 times more than you'll spend having sex if the result of an international survey conducted by Reebok are to be believed the pH meter was originally developed to measure the acidity of citrus fruit like lemons Viagra was originally developed as a treatment for hypertension and other symptoms of heart disease test subjects reported A peculiar side effect that has made Pfizer a lot of money in the year since and Plato was originally sold as a way to clean wallpaper safely there was a fight for the patent behind feather dusters it pitted Susan Hibbert against her husband George the flax plant provides key ingredients for oil paints linoleum flooring and linen Fabrics linseed oil is key to those first two products while the fibers of the flax plant can be spun into linen research from Oxford University's Charles Spence and others suggests some unlikely things can affect our perception of taste food consumed off of heavier plates tends to be rated more highly for example and eating off of white plates leads to a more sweet taste than black plates even when what's being eaten is functionally the same most everyone watching this video at some point has or had two biological parents four grandparents eight great-grandparents and so on I say most everyone because I don't know exactly what people in your family two generations back were getting up to it's possible for example that a great grandfather on one side of your family is the same person as a great grandfather on other side either way the amount of people over the years who had to procreate for you to end up existing is truly dizzying if you go back 40 Generations somewhere around the 9th century CE your direct descendants likely climb into the millions and of course if we go far enough back it's basically a statistical certainty that all living human beings share an ancestor with one another what might be surprising is how far or not you have to go to find that common ancestor according to a probabilistic analysis by researchers at Yale University you likely only have to go back a few thousand years to find the common human ancestor for today's population so think twice about telling someone off in traffic that's your distant cousin you're yelling at some interesting demographic facts there are around the same number of Christians in India as there are in England and Wales combined and there are more Jewish people in New York City than in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem combined as a headline for Radio New Zealand's website announced sheep outnumbered new zealanders by just five to one that's in contrast to the estimated 22 to 1 sheep to human ratio in the country back in the early 80s according to an analysis done by Bill Rankin for the website radical cartography almost 88 of humans live in the Northern Hemisphere and almost 82 percent live in the Eastern hemisphere they're about half a billion pounds of hair on human heads across the planet okay admittedly this one is based on some very speculative math but stick with me up is for healthline.