Amazing Facts archive

• The word anagram has no anagram

• Hans Christian Anderson, the creater of fairy tales, was actually word-blind. He was never able to spell correctly. His publishers had to correct his errors. Much like this website.

It is an interesting fact that in olden times, people were so superstitious and gullible that animals were often used to cure ailments and fix problems:

• after a fall, one had to drink the blood from a cat’s tail that had been chopped off
• a bad chest was cured by drinking blood from a cat’s ear mixed with red wine
• A field full of weed could be fixed by burying a dead cat in it
• in the middle ages, quacks believed that animals spoke in Latin and that their cries had significance
• a person with scarlet fever was cured by taking hair from the patient and feeding it to an ass, which was to contract the fever and thus curing the patient
• children with measles were treated by plucking hair from the nape of their necks and feeding it to dogs
• patients with rickets would be passed over the back and under the belly of an ass (donkey) nine times without uttering the word by successive numbers
• if you had fits, every morning you will need to chew on some grass and feed it to a jay. Once the bird died, you would be cured
• In Europe, epilepsy was cured by cutting the nose off a mole and letting 9 drops of blood fall on a cube of sugar which was then eaten by the patient
• In Shropshire, a toothache was treated by simply applying the amputated foot of a poor mole
• a person bitten by a dog was to eat the hair from the same dog
• eels were placed in the ears of deaf people to cure them

• Penguins only live in Antartica (South) and not in the Artic (North).
• Australia’s Mawson station is the oldest building in the Antartic
• 1 or 2 priests live in Antartica, in an Orthodox Church at the Russian station
• The first person born in Antartica was an Argentinian
• The South pole is colder than the North Pole
• Over 7 countries want to claim Antartica territorially

• Ants retain the scent of insects they have fought with, enabling the whole colony to collectively know their enemy
• Ants make up 1/10 of the total world animal tissue, and some can survive for up to two days underwater (African army ant)
• The animal with the largest brain in proportion to its size is the ant
• Ants dont sleep. Thanx teepo (apparently noone can be sure since they don’t have eyelids, they also have no need for sleep)
• Ants taste like sweet tarts. (from experience..)Thanx RiffSingr
• There are one million ants to every human in the world

• All of NASA’s first 3 Apollo astronauts were killed in a fire during training because of faulty wiring
• There was only 30 seconds of fuel remaining, when Apollo 11′s lunar module landed on the moon
• During Armstrong’s liftoff from the moon, their launch control broke. Armstrong had to jam a pen into the controls in order to activate the launch
• As a traditional sign of peace, Buzz Aldrin planned to leave on the Moon a small gold olive branch, along with an Apollo 1 patch and two Russian cosmonaut medallions in honor of those killed in the space race. He forgot about this until the very last moment, and in haste simply tossed them unceremoniously onto the surface on his way back up the ladder. The astronauts also chucked out their moonboots, backpacks, a sack of garbage and their urine bags
• The astronauts had a lot of trouble planting the American flag in the hard lunar soil. Despite their effots, during the lift-off, Buzz watched as the Stars and Stripes indeed “toppled into the dust”
• During liftoff, Apollo 12 lost all its contols after being struck by lightning
• In Apollo 14, pilot Edgar Mitchell conducted his own extra-sensory perception experiment. The results? The number of correct guesses were reportedly less than would have been obtained by random chance.

• Apples are scientifically known as M. Communis
• In olden times, ripe apples were used as a laxative while raw apples were used as an anti-diarrheal medication. This is due to Pectin in the apple which soaks up water and stimulates the gut
• Gases emitted from a banana or an apple can help an orange ripen. (Not sure which fruits are concerned)
• The bark of the apple tree was also once used to bring down fevers

• Macquariums are aquariams made from old macintosh computers
• Apple Inc is richer than the United States of America

• Armadillos always give birth to four identical babies. All four develop from the same egg, like quadruplets
• The shell of a baby armadillo is as soft as a human fingernail. As they grow, bone gets deposited under the skin to harden it.
• After sex, an armadillo can delay impregnation for up to 2 years
• Armadillos like to swim and can even dive underwater. They can hold their breath for over 5 minutes.
• They can also climb up fences and trees
• Not all armadillos can curl into a ball. Only the 3 banded armadillo can do it.
• The USA has the only species of Armadillo that live outside of Latin America.
• Armadillos sleep up to 16 hours a day
• The word Armadillo in Spanish means “little armoured one”
• Armadillos have poor eyesight and so can be easily startled while foraging.
• A pound of Armadillo meat contain 780 calories

• You have to be at least 58.5 inches tall to be an astronaut
• Astronauts grow taller (height) in space
• The Apollo astronauts were not given life insurance before their flights
• Astronaut Neil Armstrong first stepped on the moon with his left foot
• Neil Armstrong almost died during a training exercise while controlling the landing module
• Armstrong’s quote “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” was said 6 1/2 hours after landing. Armstrong claimed he said “a man” which was inaudible due to static
• Buzz Aldrin was the first man to pee on the moon. He used his relief tube live on TV with 1/5 of the world watching
• Buzz Aldrin took holy communion on the moon
• Buzz Aldrin’s mother’s maiden name was “Moon”
• While in quarantine after the Apollo mission, Buzz Aldrin filled out a government expense account report and was reimbursed $33.31
• In December 1972, U.S. astronaut Eugene Cernan became the last person to set foot on the moon.
• For Muslim astronauts, without special dispensation, they will have to pray 80 times in 24 hours. However, Malaysian religious bodies have said that they will only need to pray five times a day and that the times should follow the location of the spacecraft’s launch