Global Language and World Culture
Scientific Curiosities

Scientific Curiosities

Scientific curiosities and cultural facts
Scientific curiosities and cultural facts

General Science

Indoor pollution is 10 times more toxic than outdoor pollution.

Medical

Many people choose to take methadone in place of heroin, which is less dangerous than injecting heroin “on the street”. Also, there is some sentiment for providing free heroin to opioid-dependent people, to make them more comfortable, reducing their criminal behavior, and helping them find places for treatment. Many of these people actually want help but can’t find it.

Human Body

The short-term memory capacity for most people is between five and nine items or digits. This is one reason that phone numbers were kept to seven digits (not including area code).

Human Body

You’re born with 300 bones, but when you get to be an adult, you only have 206!

Human Body

25% of your bones are located in your feet.

Human Body

Your heart beats over 100,000 times a day!

Human Body

Your hair grows faster in the morning than at any other time of day.

Human Body

The lens of the eye continues to grow throughout a person’s life.

Human Body

If you were to roll a lung from a human body and out flat it would be the size of a tennis court.

Human Body

If you unfolded your brain, it would cover an ironing board.

Human Body

It takes 17 muscles to smile, 43 to frown.

Human Body

The heart pumps about 1 million barrels of blood during an average lifetime!

Medical

The longest word is English language is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis – an inflammatory lung disease caused by the inhalation of fine silica dust.

Medical

Males, on average, think about sex every 7 seconds.

Medical

During 2008, 140 American soldiers committed suicide, breaking all previous suicide records in the military. In the first four months of 2009, 91 soldiers committed suicide. If this rate continues throughout 2009, by the end of the year more than 270 soldiers will have killed themselves, leading some scholars to claim there is a suicide epidemic in the military.

Medical

The level of a brain transmitter called serotonin is considered a possible predictor of suicide. Some researchers found that people with low levels of serotonin are six to 10 more times likely to commit suicide than are people with normal levels.

Medical

There are 2.5 trillion (give or take) of red blood cells in your body at any moment. To maintain this number, about two and a half million new ones need to be produced every second by your bone marrow. That’s like a new population of the city of Toronto every second.

Medical

Memories triggered by scent have a stronger emotional connection; therefore appear more intense than other memory triggers.

Computer

The first person to bicycle around the world was an American named Thomas Stevens, who left San Francisco in 1884 and returned aboard his bicycle in 1887.

Computer

The best example of an ancient Roman aqueduct stands near the French city of Nimes. The bridge that carried the aqueduct across the Gard River, called the Pont du Gard, can still be admired today, almost 2,000 Years after it was built!

Computer

The first graphical Web browser to become truly popular was Marc Andreessen and Jamie Zawinski’s NCSA Mosaic. It was the first browser made available for Windows, Mac and Unix X Windows System with the first version appearing in March 1993.

Computer

While it took the radio 38 years, and the television a short 13 years, it took the World Wide Web only 4 years to reach 50 million users.

Computer

The world’s first computer, called the Z1, was invented by Konrad Zuse in 1936. His next invention, the Z2 was finished in 1939 and was the first fully functioning electro-mechanical computer.

Food

Coffee drinkers have sex more frequently than non-coffee drinkers.

Environment

By recycling just one glass bottle, the amount of energy that is being saved is enough to light a 100 watt bulb for four hours.

Food

50% of U.S. pizzas are sold with pepperoni on them.

Invention

The Egyptians created the first organized navy in 2300 BC.

Invention

The Chinese invented eyeglasses. Marco Polo reported seeing many pairs worn by the Chinese as early as 1275, 500 years before lens grinding became an art in the West.

Invention

Shakespeare invented the word “assassination” and “bump.”

Invention

Nobel Prize resulted from a late change in the will of Alfred Nobel, who did not want to be remembered as a propagator of violence-he invented dynamite.

Physics

Hot water freezes quicker than cold water.

Physics

The Atlantic Ocean grows at about the same rate as your fingernails.

Physics

If Mount Everest were placed at the bottom of the deepest part of the ocean, its peak would still be a mile underwater.

Physics

The amount of water beneath our ground soil is 50 times as much as all the water in the rivers and lakes combined.

Physics

You can convert graphite into diamond by applying a temperature of 3000 Celsius and pressure of 100,000 atm.

Physics

The diameter of a proton is approximately 0.000000000001 mm (1/25,000,000,000,000 inch).

Physics

Chewing gum was invented by a dentist, named William Semple – as a way to exercise your jaws.

General Science

Nearly 50% of the world’s scientists are assigned to military projects.

General Science

If you are locked in a completely sealed room, you will die of carbon dioxide poisoning first before you will die of oxygen deprivation.

General Science

Forensic scientists can determine a person’s sex, age, and race by examining a single strand of hair.

General Science

If the chemical sodium is dropped into water it will immediately and violently explode.

General Science

Approximately 70 percent of the Earth is covered by water. Only 1 percent of this water is drinkable.

General Science

All humans Are 99.9% Genetically Identical and 98.4% of human genes are the same as the genes of a chimpanzee.

General Science

The biggest dictionary in the world is the Oxford English Dictionary, a 12-volume work that contains more than 415,000 words, with not only their meaning, but their complete history as well!

Tech

Kleenex tissues were originally used as filters in gas masks.

Medical

Many trace elements are excreted in sweat, an indication of their concentration is (although measurements can vary fifteenfold): zinc (0.4 mg/l), copper (0.3 – 0.8 mg/l), iron (1 mg/l), chromium (0.1 mg/l), nickel (0.05 mg/l), lead(0.05 mg/l).

Animals

A blue whale’s aorta (the main blood vessel) is large enough for a human to crawl through.

Animals

A blue whale’s heart is the size of a Volkswagen Beetle!

Animals

A mole can dig a hole 300 feet deep in one night.

Animals

A pig’s penis is shaped like a corkscrew.

Animals

All the swans in England are property of the Queen.

Animals

Americans spend more than 6.4 billion dollars on their pets each year.

Animals

An elephant trunk has no bone but 40,000 muscles.

Biology

There’s a copy of our entire DNA sequence in every cell of our body with one exception.

Biology

There’s an estimated 3 billion DNA bases in our genome.

Biology

Almost all the cells in our body have DNA with the exception of red blood cells.Salva

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