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.

14851. Science Facts

The stinking corpse plant, or rafflesia, is a huge parasitic flower that smells like rotting meat.The flower is up to a metre (about 3 feet) across and is the largest flower in the world. It grows directly out of a creeping vine, from which it gains all its nourishment without ever growing leaves of its own.

14852. Science Facts

Scientists working on transplant techniques grew a human ear on the back of a mouse. The ear is moulded using human cartilage cells, and nourished by the mouse's blood as it grows.

14853. Science Facts

The average glass of London tap water has passed through nine people's bladders before it reaches your sink.

14854. Science Facts

Deodorants don't stop you sweating but they kill the bacteria that make sweat smell.

14855. Science Facts

The earliest study of brain damage was of railway worker Phineas Gage. In 1848, an explosion shot a thick iron rod through his head. Although he recovered physically, his character changed completely. His skull and the iron rod are on display in Harvard University, USA.

14856. Science Facts

A cure for whooping cough used in Yorkshire, England in the 1800s was to drink a bowl of soup with nine frogs hidden in it. You couldn't make it yourself – it only worked if you didn't know about the frogs. (And probably not then, either!)

14857. Science Facts

Romans dressed small wounds with spider webs soaked in vinegar.

14858. Science Facts

A Roman cure for epilepsy (having fits) was to bathe in the blood of a gladiator.

14859. Science Facts

People on the Pacific island of Chuuk use a love potion made from centipede's teeth and stingray tails.

14860. Science Facts

For centuries, it was illegal to cut up dead bodies, so surgeons and scientists had to pay criminals to steal the corpses of executed prisoners from the gallows in order to learn about anatomy.

14861. Science Facts

An old cure for tuberculosis consisted of cutting open a newly dead cow, pulling the folds of skin around your neck and breathing in deeply.

14862. Science Facts

A chemical extracted from leeches is used as a painkiller.

14863. Science Facts

Air conditioning systems are home to lots of nasty bacteria. And because they pump the same air around a building again and again, they are one of the best ways of spreading diseases to everyone in the building.

14864. Science Facts

Electric bug zappers splatter an aerosol of dead bugs around the room as the bugs explode.

14865. Science Facts

The Australian 1991 Inventor of the Year Award was won by the designer of a cockroach zapper. The roach is lured into a trap with food, then electrocuted.

14866. Science Facts

If you flush the toilet without putting the seat down, a fine aerosol spray of urine and faeces flies into the air of the bathroom – and some lands on your toothbrush.

14867. Science Facts

A stinging tree in Australia can cause intense pain and even death.Tiny hairs full of poison break off the leaves and stick to the skin, which can then heal over the injury, trapping the poison inside. Even standing near the tree can cause painful nosebleeds!

14868. Science Facts

A medieval cure for meningitis involved splitting a pigeon in two and laying the two halves, cut side down, on the patient's head.

14869. Science Facts

An old cure for a headache involved tying the rope used to hang a criminal around your temples.

14870. Science Facts

A common cure for all kinds of illnesses in the past was ‘bleeding' the patient. This could be done by the doctor making a small cut and putting a hot cup over the wound to suck out blood, or by putting blood-sucking leeches on the skin. Using leeches is being reintroduced by some western doctors.

Fact
Goodyear Rubber Company researched and concluded that shoes wear out faster on the right foot than the left.      .. More >>