14773. Science Facts

Occasionally, babies are born with a full set of teeth.

14774. Science Facts

In Chile, trains on the Arica-La Paz railway were at one time powered by burning llama faeces.

14775. Science Facts

Dermestid beetles are so good at stripping the flesh off dead animals that natural history museums use their larvae to clean up skeletons they are going to put on display.

14776. Science Facts

Some types of pitcher plant have long trailing stems which capture and digest small animals such as frogs.

14777. Science Facts

Malaria is a deadly disease spread by mosquitoes. It is caused by a tiny parasite that lives inside a person's blood cells. Malaria kills 1–3 million people a year.

14778. Science Facts

Early Indian surgeons used ants to hold the edges of wounds together. They would get an ant to bite through both sides of the wound, then twist off the ant's body and throw it away, leaving the head in place with the jaws acting as a stitch.

14779. Science Facts

Railway workers in France in the 1800s claimed to have freed a Pterodactyl trapped in rock.They said it flapped, squawked and died. Reports of frogs and other animals trapped in solid rock are quite common, but not scientifically proven.

14780. Science Facts

Snake venom is not normally poisonous if swallowed because stomach acid alters the chemicals in it.

14781. Science Facts

A toxin in the nectar of laurels and rhododendrons makes honey made from these plants poisonous. In 66 BCE, Roman troops were lured by their enemies into a grove where bees made honey from these flowers. The soldiers ate it and were slaughtered while sick.

14782. Science Facts

The scientific name for a fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth is arachibutyrophobia.

14783. Science Facts

If you fell into a black hole you would be stretched into an incredibly long, thin string in a process called ‘spaghettification'.

14784. Science Facts

Cells taken from the inside of baby teeth when they fall out have been grown and have reproduced in the laboratory. Put into the jaws of mice, they grow into soft teeth, with no hard enamel on the outside.

14785. Science Facts

Urine contains chemicals that we use in cleaning fluids and used to be used for cleaning things.

14786. Science Facts

Scientists investigating tumour growth added a gene from a firefly to make a glow-in-thedark tumour.The tumour is visible through the skin of a test animal, so scientists can see if it grows or shrinks.

14787. Science Facts

There are ‘banks' where the umbilical cords of new babies can be stored in case future medical developments make it possible to grow new organs or tissues from cells in them.

14788. Science Facts

A fear of worms is called scoleciphobia.

14789. Science Facts

There are over 20,000 road crashes involving kangaroos in Australia every year, so a robo-roo robotic test crash dummy like a kangaroo is used to test how badly cars will be damaged.

14790. Science Facts

In 1999, an artist in Chicago, USA, announced his plan to grow a glow-in-the-dark dog by adding a gene from jellyfish to it.

14791. Science Facts

Some animals respond to small amounts of poisonous gas and have been used as early warning systems. German soldiers kept cats in the trenches of the First World War to smell gas, and British miners kept budgies in cages because they died quickly if gas escaped into the mine.

14792. Science Facts

A person would need to weigh around 650 kilograms (1,433 pounds) to have enough fat to stop a bullet. Although their body would be bullet-proof, they could still be killed by a shot to the head.

14793. Science Facts

Scientists are working on a microscopic robotic tadpole to deliver medicines – the tadpole would ‘swim' through the patient's blood vessels to take the medicine where it's needed.

14794. Science Facts

Victorian children were often given their own salt cellar, which they were told was a sign of being grown up. In fact, the salt was mixed with bromide, which made them calmer and better behaved.

14795. Science Facts

Potatoes, aubergines, tomatoes and peppers all belong to the same family of plants as deadly nightshade!

14796. Science Facts

Not all dead bodies rot. In the right conditions, some of the fat can turn to a soap-like substance so that if the body is dug up, even years later, it can look much the same as when it was buried.

14797. Science Facts

Police scientists investigating a murder can work out how long a body has been dead by looking at the kinds of maggots, worms and insects that are eating it.

14798. Science Facts

Archaeologists find out about what people in the Stone Age ate by examining Stone Age faeces called coprolites.They have to be soaked in water for three days first to soften them.

14799. Science Facts

An unusual form of drug abuse is licking cane toads. They make a slime containing a drug which produces hallucinations (strange experiences or visions). People in some parts of Australia and the USA have started licking the toads to enjoy the drug.

14800. Science Facts

Fake mermaids made from bits of monkey and fish have been produced to fool scientists for years – most recently with one claimed to have been washed up by the tsunami in Asia in 2004. The oldest so-called mummified mermaid is 1,400 years old and from Japan.

14801. Science Facts

Australian Benjamin Drake Van Wissen invented machinery to mine guano on the Pacific island of Nauru and turn it into fertilizer.

14802. Science Facts

Green potatoes contain a poison, solanin, which can be deadly. It develops in old potatoes that are not kept in the dark. Eating 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) of green potatoes could be fatal.

14803. Science Facts

If you are trapped in snow in an avalanche, it's impossible to tell which way is up (and so which way to dig yourself out). Urinate and see which direction the yellow stain spreads – gravity will pull the urine down.

14804. Science Facts

In 1822, Dr. William Beaumont studied human digestion as it happened, through a hole in the side and stomach of a patient who had been shot. The hole did not heal, allowing Dr. Beaumont to study, but also allowing food and drink to ooze out if it was not covered up.

14805. Science Facts

Oil is made from the decayed bodies of animals and plants that died millions of years ago and have been squashed deep underground.

14806. Science Facts

In an attempt to kill malaria-carrying mosquitoes, an American scientist built towers to attract bats. He enticed them in with fabric covered with bat droppings, and played music near the bats' old homes to drive them out.After a few years, malaria infection dropped from 89 percent of the population to zero.

14807. Science Facts

If you cut spinach with an iron knife, both will go black as a chemical in the spinach reacts with the iron.

14808. Science Facts

During the First World War, goldfish were used to check whether all traces of poisonous gas had been washed out of gas masks. The mask was rinsed and filled with water, then a goldfish was dropped in. If it died, there was still gas left in it.

14809. Science Facts

The most poisonous metal in the world is arsenic. It used to be made into fly papers for killing flies, but it killed some people, too.

14810. Science Facts

People used to use white lead powder to make their skin look white and beautiful, but it gave them lead poisoning and slowly killed them. As their skin looked worse once the poison took effect, they used more white lead to cover up the damage.

14811. Science Facts

Around 1,400 years ago, the Chinese used to make gunpowder by boiling up and burning pig manure.To make sure it was ready, and not polluted with salt, they licked the crystals.

14812. Science Facts

It can take a hundred years for the body of a whale at the bottom of the sea to disappear completely, as it is slowly eaten away by different animals, plants and microbes.

14813. Science Facts

Early matches were made of poisonous chemicals and would sometimes burst into flames on their own if they got warm and damp. They poisoned the children employed to make them, and set fire to people's pockets unexpectedly!

14814. Science Facts

A small animal such as a mouse can be dropped 1,000 metres (3,280 feet) down a mineshaft and suffer no harm because the fastest speed it can fall it is not enough to crush its body.The larger an animal or object, the shorter the distance it can safely fall.

14815. Science Facts

Our blood is red because it uses an iron compound to carry oxygen – some spiders have blue blood because theirs uses a copper compound instead.

14816. Science Facts

John Haigh killed six people in London, UK, in the 1940s, dissolving their bodies in a bath of acid, hoping he could wash away all the evidence. However, on finding three human gallstones and a pair of dentures belonging to one of his victims in the sludge left behind, the police had enough evidence to convict him.

14817. Science Facts

Old cannonballs brought up from the seabed can explode and kill divers. Bacteria eat away part of the metal, producing gases that rapidly expand when the cannonballs come to the surface.

14818. Science Facts

Scraping mould off your food doesn't get rid of it – behind the fuzzy part you can see, strings extend into the food up to nine times the length of the visible part.

14819. Science Facts

If you draw pictures in the condensation on a window, the picture will reappear next time the window mists over as a layer of grease from your skin stays on the glass and repels the water.

14820. Science Facts

Earthworms bring 4 million kilograms (8.8 million pounds) of earth to the surface on every square kilometre (0.38 square miles) of open ground each year.

14821. Science Facts

In the 1600s, spiders rolled in butter were recommended as a cure for malaria.

14822. Science Facts

There have been several recorded cases of spontaneous human combustion (people who apparently burst into flames for no good reason). Sometimes, all that is left is a burnt patch and perhaps a foot or some singed clothing.

Fact
More than 10% of the world's salt is used to de-ice American roads.      .. More >>