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.

14823. Science Facts

A medieval cure for stammering was scalding the tongue with a red-hot iron. It didn't work...

14824. Science Facts

Rats trained to look for landmines are so light that they don't trigger the mechanism if they tread on one. Instead, they scratch and bite at the ground when they smell explosives, and the handler deals with the mine.

14825. Science Facts

If you fall off a very high cliff or building, the fastest speed you will ever fall at is around 200 kilometres (124 miles) per hour.This is called terminal velocity, and it's enough to make a nasty splat.

14826. Science Facts

Bird droppings are the main export of the island Nauru in the western Pacific Ocean.They're used for fertilizer, as they're rich in the chemical nitrogen.

14827. Science Facts

Horses killed in the First World War were recycled as explosives – their fat was removed and boiled down to be used in making TNT.

14828. Science Facts

Scientists believe that all vertebrates (animals with backbones) evolved from giant tadpoles, 6 centimetres (2.5 inches) long, that swam around 550 million years ago.

14829. Science Facts

Some wealthy people have their bodies cryopreserved (deep-frozen) when they die, in the hope that in the future someone will find a cure for their cause of death and resurrect them.The popular urban legend that Walt Disney was cryopreserved is false; he was cremated.

14830. Science Facts

If potatoes were discovered today, they would probably be banned under European Union regulations as too dangerous.

14831. Science Facts

The chemical phosphorous was discovered by German chemist Hening Brandt in 1669. He made it by leaving urine to rot and then heating it until the liquid evaporated.

14832. Science Facts

A man who experimented with feeding a Venus flytrap – a type of flesh-eating plant – with bits of his own flesh found the plant could digest it easily. He used bits of his toes that had rotted and dropped off as a result of athlete's foot.

14833. Science Facts

It is so cold in space, that urine flushed out of a space craft instantly freezes into a stream of yellow crystals.

14834. Science Facts

There are 100 million times more insects than people on earth and their total weight is 12 times the total weight of people.

14835. Science Facts

In an emergency, coconut milk can be used as substitute for the watery part of blood in a blood transfusion.

14836. Science Facts

Japanese scientists have managed to grow tadpole eyes from scratch in the laboratory. They transplanted the eyes into tadpoles. The eyes worked even after the tadpoles changed into frogs.

14837. Science Facts

The average bed is home to 6 million dust mites.

14838. Science Facts

Lined up neatly, 10,000 bacteria would stretch across your thumbnail.

14839. Science Facts

Ergot is fungus that grows on rye and causes people to act as though mad if they eat it. Some historians think that people accused of witchcraft who said they could fly, or those who accused others of strange, magical behaviour, may have had ergot poisoning.

14840. Science Facts

The Masai tribe in Africa drink cow or bull urine as a sedative (drug to calm people down or make them sleepy).

14841. Science Facts

There is a cockroach museum in Plano,Texas.

14842. Science Facts

The largest living thing in the world is a fungus in Washington state, USA, which covers 6.5 square kilometres (2.5 square miles) and has been growing for hundreds of years.

14843. Science Facts

The germs present in faeces can pass through 10 layers of toilet paper – that's why you need to wash your hands!

14844. Science Facts

Some people – most of them in the USA – claim that they have been abducted by aliens from space while they slept, had their bodies experimented on and sometimes their minds changed, and were then returned to Earth.

14845. Science Facts

A will-o'-the-wisp is a flame of burning marsh gas that appears in boggy areas at night. It has lured many travellers to a muddy death when they have left the path to follow it, believing it to be someone with a light.

14846. Science Facts

The castor bean plant contains the most deadly poison in the natural world, ricin. Just 70 micrograms (2-millionths of an ounce) could kill an adult human. It is 12,000 times more poisonous than rattle snake venom!

14847. Science Facts

Bacteria – tiny living things that we also call germs – divide in two every 20 minutes. So, starting with one (it doesn't need a girlfriend/boyfriend), you can have over 130 million in just 9 hours!

14848. Science Facts

It's said that dead Americans rot much more slowly than they used to – because they eat so many preservatives in their foods.

14849. Science Facts

Some scientists think that being too clean might make us ill – some studies suggest that people need to eat a small amount of dirt in order to kick start their immune systems. Not learning to fight infections can lead to asthma and other allergic problems.

14850. Science Facts

One possible way of controlling cockroaches being explored in the USA is to release parasitic worms which will kill the roaches but don't harm people.

Fact
Pure electricity, when photographed, shows up as a brightly glowing liquid droplet flowing inside a tiny crystal.      .. More >>