Unbelievable Amazing Facts

[grace55]

1. A cough releases an explosive charge of air that moves at speeds up to 60 mph.
2. A fetus acquires fingerprints at the age of three months.
3. A fingernail or toenail takes about 6 months to grow from base to tip.
4. A healthy individual releases 3.5 oz. of gas in a single flatulent emission, or about 17 oz. in a day.
5. A human being loses an average of 40 to 100 strands of hair a day.
6. A person will die from total lack of sleep sooner than from starvation. Death will occur about 10 days without sleep, while starvation takes a few weeks.
7. A sneeze can exceed the speed of 100 mph.
8. According to German researchers, the risk of heart attack is higher on Monday than any other day of the week.
9. According to the Kinsey Institute, the biggest erect penis on record measures 13 inches. The smallest tops off at 1 3/4 inches.
10. After spending hours working at a computer display, look at a blank piece of white paper. It will probably appear pink.
11. An average human drinks about 16, 000 gallons of water in a lifetime.
12. An average human scalp has 100,000 hairs.
13. An average person uses the bathroom 6 times per day.
14. An individual blood cell takes about 60 seconds to make a complete circuit of the body.
15. Babies are born with 300 bones, but by adulthood we have only 206 in our bodies.
16. Beards are the fastest growing hairs on the human body. If the average man never trimmed his beard, it would grow to nearly 30 feet long in his lifetime.
17. Blondes have more hair than dark-haired people.

[grace55]

A Water Strider can stand on water surface and its legs are designed to support up to 15 times its body weight. But a single mosquito leg alone can support 23 times the mosquito's body weight.

[grace55]

A young coconut can be used as a substitute for blood plasma. It was done during World War II when blood supplies were low. Coconut water is identical to human blood plasma which makes it the universal donor. By drinking coconuts we give ourselves an instant blood transfusion.

[minisoji]

The Great Pyramid of Giza

Since the earliest of times the "Great Pyramid" of Giza (Arab. Al Jizah ) along with its 2 other main pyramids have been considered one of the wonders of the world. The Great Pyramid is still among the world's largest structures, standing almost as tall as a 50 story skyscraper. The 3 main pyramids were built as tombs for 3 Egyptian Pharaohs who were considered to be gods on earth. The first and largest pyramid, known as the Great Pyramid was a tomb for Pharaoh Khufu (Cheops to the Greeks), who ruled the 4th dynasty around 2575 BC, which would have been centuries before Abraham, the first Hebrew. But the real marvel of this Great Pyramid was its massive size.

Size and Description

The true pyramid exists only in Egypt, though the term has also been applied to similar structures in other countries. The Great Pyramid stands 480 feet tall with a base of 750 feet in each direction forming a square at the bottom. The pyramid contains around 2,300,000 individual blocks of stones each weighing over 2.5 tons on the average, with some weighing over 16 tons and the granite roof slabs of Khufu's burial chamber weigh over 50 tons. The stones form a giant staircase with each step being waist high. The foundation below the pyramid is solid rock. Today the city of Cairo is extended out very close to the pyramids but in ancient times it stood out in the desert. Originally the stones were incased in brilliant white polished limestone which gave it a glittering appearance.



What Archaeologists Have Found

Archaeologists have been trying to solve the puzzle of where the possibly 100,000 laborers who built the pyramids lived. Once they find the workers' living area, they can learn more about the workforce, their daily lives, and perhaps where they came from. Thus the settlement of the camps have been discovered, Bakeries have been found to feed the workers, as well as cemetaries, tools, hieroglyphical inscriptions, names of the craftsmen, overseers, inspectors, 25 unique new titles, and more. They even found 600 skeletons of Egyptians, some of which had emergency medical treatment having been injured while working on the pyramid. There is also evidence that these workers worked all year round, seeing that, according to their beliefs, they were assured a certain place in the afterlife. Their hard labor for their king and Pharaoh would also benefit the future and prosperity of Egypt as a whole.

[soorya3d]

ya i have heard and also learned abt great pyramid in many books and i was stunned by the energy that it produces and the drasticall changes it makes

The Great Pyramid of Giza

Since the earliest of times the "Great Pyramid" of Giza (Arab. Al Jizah ) along with its 2 other main pyramids have been considered one of the wonders of the world. The Great Pyramid is still among the world's largest structures, standing almost as tall as a 50 story skyscraper. The 3 main pyramids were built as tombs for 3 Egyptian Pharaohs who were considered to be gods on earth. The first and largest pyramid, known as the Great Pyramid was a tomb for Pharaoh Khufu (Cheops to the Greeks), who ruled the 4th dynasty around 2575 BC, which would have been centuries before Abraham, the first Hebrew. But the real marvel of this Great Pyramid was its massive size.

Size and Description

The true pyramid exists only in Egypt, though the term has also been applied to similar structures in other countries. The Great Pyramid stands 480 feet tall with a base of 750 feet in each direction forming a square at the bottom. The pyramid contains around 2,300,000 individual blocks of stones each weighing over 2.5 tons on the average, with some weighing over 16 tons and the granite roof slabs of Khufu's burial chamber weigh over 50 tons. The stones form a giant staircase with each step being waist high. The foundation below the pyramid is solid rock. Today the city of Cairo is extended out very close to the pyramids but in ancient times it stood out in the desert. Originally the stones were incased in brilliant white polished limestone which gave it a glittering appearance.



What Archaeologists Have Found

Archaeologists have been trying to solve the puzzle of where the possibly 100,000 laborers who built the pyramids lived. Once they find the workers' living area, they can learn more about the workforce, their daily lives, and perhaps where they came from. Thus the settlement of the camps have been discovered, Bakeries have been found to feed the workers, as well as cemetaries, tools, hieroglyphical inscriptions, names of the craftsmen, overseers, inspectors, 25 unique new titles, and more. They even found 600 skeletons of Egyptians, some of which had emergency medical treatment having been injured while working on the pyramid. There is also evidence that these workers worked all year round, seeing that, according to their beliefs, they were assured a certain place in the afterlife. Their hard labor for their king and Pharaoh would also benefit the future and prosperity of Egypt as a whole.

[gkorm879]

Fishes cannot live in the Dead Sea because the water has too much salt in it.

Like duh.... there are only few kind of organisms that can live there ><"... and it's so hot there....

[dsmtuning]

wow, good facts, thanks guys.

[Friendz]

Amazing Facts About the Human Body

The nasal bones are especially structured so that the air inhaled can go to the lungs only after circulating several times in the nose and thus warming up.

The thighbone can bear a weight weighing a ton when perpendicular.

When an athlete pole-vaults and he lands on the ground, every square centimeter of his pelvis is exposed to a pressure of 1,400 kilograms.

Even for a faint smile, 17 muscles have to work together at the same time.

A liver cell is specialized enough to perform more than 500 operations at a time.

The heart connects the 100 trillions cells in the human body one by one.

The heart beats approximately 100,000 times a day.

The human body has resistance to approximately 600 rads of radiation, whereas the tolerance of scorpions rises as high as 40-150 thousand rads.

A normal human body has about 5 billion capillaries whose total length, if stretched out, is about 950 kilometers.

Special secretion in the nasal mucous retains and sweeps out about 80-90of the micro-organisms that gain entry to the respiratory system directly or through dust.

One B cell can pump out more than 10 million antibody molecules an hour.

Our heart pumps about 43,000 liters of blood per day.

The simplest cells have roughly 2,000 different types of proteins.

If the information in DNA were put in the form of a book, these books put on top of each other would reach 70 meters high.

The DNA of a single cell contains the design of 206 bones, 600 muscles, a network of 10,000 auditory muscles, a network of 2 million optic nerves, 100 billion nerve cells, and 100 trillion cells in the body.

The probability of the amino acid sequence of a protein made up of 500 amino acids being in the correct order is 1 in 10950.

A brain cell is in constant interaction with others numbering up to 10,000. This communication network is far more complex than all the switchboards in the world.

The nucleus of each of the trillions of cells making up the human body includes a data bank big enough to fill a 900-volume encyclopedia.

The human eye works by some 40 different parts functioning together.

The retinal membrane at the back of the eye is made up of 11 different layers.

Each red cell can carry 300 million hemoglobin molecules.

When we inhale, oxygen floods into about 300 million tiny chambers in our lungs.

If water were only slightly more viscous, it would be impossible for blood to be transported through the body's capillary system.

Water makes up about 70 percent of the human body.

Immune system elements that the baby needs, such as antibodies or defense cells, are given to the baby ready-made in the mother�s milk.

There is 5 liters of blood in the body of a human weighing 60 kilograms.

Due to their incredible flexibility, red cells, with a diameter of about 7.5 micrometers, can squeeze through capillaries which are normally four to five micrometers in diameter.

A single brain can process work equivalent to that of 4.5 million transistors on a modern microprocessor.

The human kidneys filter about 140 liters of blood every day through one million small filtering units.

The lifespan of a red blood cell is about 120 days.

[burakadak]

really unbelievable

[Friendz]

40 Amazing Facts about Sleep


1. The record for the longest period without sleep is 18 days, 21 hours, 40 minutes during a rocking chair marathon. The record holder reported hallucinations, paranoia, blurred vision, slurred speech and memory and concentration lapses.

2. It's impossible to tell if someone is really awake without close medical supervision. People can take cat naps with their eyes open without even being aware of it.

3. Anything less than five minutes to fall asleep at night means you're sleep deprived. The ideal is between 10 and 15 minutes, meaning you're still tired enough to sleep deeply, but not so exhausted you feel sleepy by day.

4. A new baby typically results in 400-750 hours lost sleep for parents in the first year

5. One of the best predictors of insomnia later in life is the development of bad habits from having sleep disturbed by young children.

6. The continuous brain recordings that led to the discovery of REM (rapid eye-movement) sleep were not done until 1953, partly because the scientists involved were concerned about wasting paper.

7. REM sleep occurs in bursts totalling about 2 hours a night, usually beginning about 90 minutes after falling asleep.

8. Dreams, once thought to occur only during REM sleep, also occur (but to a lesser extent) in non-REM sleep phases. It's possible there may not be a single moment of our sleep when we are actually dreamless.

9. REM dreams are characterised by bizarre plots, but non-REM dreams are repetitive and thought-like, with little imagery obsessively returning to a suspicion you left your mobile phone somewhere, for example.

10. Certain types of eye movements during REM sleep correspond to specific movements in dreams, suggesting at least part of the dreaming process is analagous to watching a film

11. No-one knows for sure if other species dream but some do have sleep cycles similar to humans.

12. Elephants sleep standing up during non-REM sleep, but lie down for REM sleep.

13. Some scientists believe we dream to fix experiences in long-term memory, that is, we dream about things worth remembering. Others reckon we dream about things worth forgetting to eliminate overlapping memories that would otherwise clog up our brains.

14. Dreams may not serve any purpose at all but be merely a meaningless byproduct of two evolutionary adaptations sleep and consciousness.

15. REM sleep may help developing brains mature. Premature babies have 75 per cent REM sleep, 10 per cent more than full-term bubs. Similarly, a newborn kitten puppy rat or hampster experiences only REM sleep, while a newborn guinea pig (which is much more developed at birth) has almost no REM sleep at all.


16. Scientists have not been able to explain a 1998 study showing a bright light shone on the backs of human knees can reset the brain's sleep-wake clock.

17. British Ministry of Defence researchers have been able to reset soldiers' body clocks so they can go without sleep for up to 36 hrs. Tiny optical fibres embedded in special spectacles project a ring of bright white light (with a spectrum identical to a sunrise) around the edge of soldiers' retinas, fooling them into thinking they have just woken up. The system was first used on US pilots during the bombing of Kosovo.

18. Seventeen hours of sustained wakefulness leads to a decrease in performance equivalent to a blood alcohol-level of 0.05%.

19. The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska, the Challenger space shuttle disaster and the Chernobyl nuclear accident have all been attributed to human errors in which sleep-deprivation played a role.

20. The NRMA estimates fatigue is involved in one in 6 fatal road accidents.

21. Exposure to noise at night can suppress immune function even if the sleeper doesn’t wake. Unfamiliar noise, and noise during the first and last two hours of sleep, has the greatest disruptive effect on the sleep cycle.

22. The "natural alarm clock" which enables some people to wake up more or less when they want to is caused by a burst of the stress hormone adrenocorticotropin. Researchers say this reflects an unconscious anticipation of the stress of waking up.

23. Some sleeping tablets, such as barbiturates suppress REM sleep, which can be harmful over a long period.

24. In insomnia following bereavement, sleeping pills can disrupt grieving.

25. Tiny luminous rays from a digital alarm clock can be enough to disrupt the sleep cycle even if you do not fully wake. The light turns off a "neural switch" in the brain, causing levels of a key sleep chemical to decline within minutes.

26. To drop off we must cool off; body temperature and the brain's sleep-wake cycle are closely linked. That's why hot summer nights can cause a restless sleep. The blood flow mechanism that transfers core body heat to the skin works best between 18 and 30 degrees. But later in life, the comfort zone shrinks to between 23 and 25 degrees one reason why older people have more sleep disorders.

27. A night on the grog will help you get to sleep but it will be a light slumber and you won't dream much.

28. After five nights of partial sleep deprivation, three drinks will have the same effect on your body as six would when you've slept enough.

29. Humans sleep on average around three hours less than other primates like chimps, rhesus monkeys, squirrel monkeys and baboons, all of whom sleep for 10 hours.

30. Ducks at risk of attack by predators are able to balance the need for sleep and survival, keeping one half of the brain awake while the other slips into sleep mode.

31. Ten per cent of snorers have sleep apnoea, a disorder which causes sufferers to stop breathing up to 300 times a night and significantly increases the risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke.

32. Snoring occurs only in non-REM sleep


33. Teenagers need as much sleep as small children (about 10 hrs) while those over 65 need the least of all (about six hours). For the average adult aged 25-55, eight hours is considered optimal

34. Some studies suggest women need up to an hour's extra sleep a night compared to men, and not getting it may be one reason women are much more susceptible to depression than men.

35. Feeling tired can feel normal after a short time. Those deliberately deprived of sleep for research initially noticed greatly the effects on their alertness, mood and physical performance, but the awareness dropped off after the first few days.

36. Diaries from the pre-electric-light-globe Victorian era show adults slept nine to 10 hours a night with periods of rest changing with the seasons in line with sunrise and sunsets.

37. Most of what we know about sleep we've learned in the past 25 years.

38. As a group, 18 to 24 year-olds deprived of sleep suffer more from impaired performance than older adults.

39. Experts say one of the most alluring sleep distractions is the 24-hour accessibility of the internet.

40. The extra-hour of sleep received when clocks are put back at the start of daylight in Canada has been found to coincide with a fall in the number of road accidents.