Archive for the ‘Health’ Category
Now that the holidays are behind us, it’s time to get rolling with trivia for 2022. I decided to restock my archives with some new and exciting trivia. I’ve been trolling the web and found 6 additional books with highly interesting, weird and strange trivia items. Let’s start with these fifteen to get this year’s started.
- The German submarine, U-1206, sank in 1945 when it’s toilet was operated improperly.
- Around 1 million gladiators lost their lives in the arena.
- Nearly 1,500 different types of insects are eaten around the world.
- Surgeons were drilling holes in people’s skulls in 6,000 B.C.
- U.S. magician, Dorothy Dietrich, is the only woman to catch a fired bullet between her teeth.
- The Bombardier beetle pelts enemies with a boiling, foul smelling liquid.
- A Siamese cat in Russia weighed an astonishing 50 lbs. – the average weight of a 7-year-old girl.
- In 1894, a shower of jellyfish fell on the city of Bath in England.
- The last witch was burned in England in 1712.
- Every day you shed around 500 million skin scales, 10 million of which carry bacteria.
- Male vampire moths drill a feeding tube into human skin in order to suck up blood.
- An earthworm excretes the equivalent of its body weight every day.
- Three cyclists have died while competing in the Tour De France.
- Tonsilloliths are small, yellow, foul smelling “stones” that live around the tonsils and cause bad breath.
- Most people pass around 600 ml of gas a day in 14 farts.
I took it easy on you with these items. A have a host of others which are a bit more disgusting. I’ll send them along at a later date. Here’s an item concerning political correctness at its very best:
Roman Emperor Claudius (10 BC to AD 54) was said to have been so worried about people politely holding in their farts and being poisoned by them that he passed a law legalizing farting at feasts.
GOTTA LOVE THEM ROMANS
As I’ve mentioned many times in the past, one of my favorite books to read is called Number Freaking. It is a mass of statistics relating to odd and unusual information which I find fascinating. Today’s posting concerns the worldwide population as seen from a different perspective. I find it interesting, and I hope you do as well.
For a sense of how fast the global population grows, according to the US Bureau of the Census, in one hour between 5:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. on May 2, 2005, the net growth in the global population was 8,470. Now, if we imagine the entire global population as a village of precisely 200 people, here are some things we would observe.
97 would be women (at birth), 103 would be men (at birth), 34 would be left-handed, 60 would be under 15 years of age, 14 would be over 65 years of age, 38 would come from the more developed countries, 162 would come from the less-developed countries, there would be 122 Asians (including 38 from China, 34 from India, and six from Indonesia), and there would be 24 Europeans.
There would be 28 Africans (including 22 who live in the sub-Sahara), 18 from South America and the Caribbean, 10 from North America (including nine Americans), one from Oceania, 120 would live within 62 miles of a coastline, 96 would-be urban dwellers, 50 would be homeless or live in substandard housing, 96 would lack access to basic sanitation, 32 would lack access to safe drinking water, and 28 would suffer from malnutrition.
32 would be unable to read or write, 58 would believe in witchcraft, nine would get drunk each day, and one would eat at McDonald’s each day. FYI, the global infant mortality rate is 55 per 1000 births.
I’m not entirely sure who the individuals are who spend their time researching and creating these statistics, but I’m glad they’re out there. There are times when the numbers of global anything are so large it’s hard to grasp them for most people. That’s true with all statistics in general but when you’re talking global it’s mind-bending. I find the statistics from this book much easier to understand when put into statistics that I can wrap my head around. I’m still reading the book but as I find more little tidbits, I’ll be sure to pass them along because they are interesting if not a little depressing.
HAPPY NEW YEAR
I’ve never been a person plagued with any major allergies except for ragweed in the summer. Prior to puberty I was haunted by any number of allergies, but they went away at about age 14. Jump forward a few decades and all of a sudden, my allergies have returned with a bang. It appears that I’ve been around just long enough to go back through puberty in the opposite direction. That being said it’s a given that I’m sneezing a lot more than I’ve ever sneezed in my life. There are many reasons for sneezing and I’m not about to try and list them all. Let’s just agree, sneezing is sneezing, everybody does it, and that’s that. Since I come from a German background all I’ve ever heard when there was a sneeze going on was the German word gesundheit. It’s an automatic response meaning “good health”. I honestly never had any idea what it meant and only found out just recently.
I decided to check out a few other cultures to see if there was anything unusual about their responses to sneezing.
- In many Muslim countries it translates out to “May Allah have mercy on you.”. Pretty cool but way too long.
- In Serbia, they use the term pis maco, with children, which means “Go away, kitten”. Cute, I guess.
- In Vietnam, cơm muối, is offered and means “rice with salt.” Thats a real puzzler.
- Latin America’s is a little more interesting. The first sneeze earns a response of “health,” the second “money,” and the third “love.” I like this one the best.
- A common story holds that around the year 750, Pope Gregory believed that a sneeze was an early sign of the contraction of the bubonic plague. Saying “God bless you” was a sort of deathbed prayer: ‘May God see your worth and help you, because you’re definitely about to die.” Isn’t that just heartwarming?
- And “God bless you” seems to be very popular response with many cultures but of course not for those pesky atheists. They’re a little touchy about the “GOD” word.
So much for my sneezing trivia. Now that I’ll be housebound for the next four winter months breathing all of this unhealthy stale air, I suppose I’ll be hearing “Gesundheit” way too many times for the foreseeable future.
9 MORE SHOPPING DAYS LEFT
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