Amazing facts website


Amazing Facts archive


Entries Comments



Category: M

metric

  • The metric system was to blame for the loss of the Mars Climate orbiter.

Mexico

  • The Mayans had a weapon called the “hornet bomb” which was an actual hornet’s nest thrown at enemies
  • In ancient Mexico (Tenochtitlan), a ritual ball game known as tlachtli was often played in which the losers were sacrificied to the Gods
  • Many English words came from the Mexicans: tomatoes, chocolate and avocado
  • Mexico introduced chocolate, corn and chilli to the world. The Aztecs loved chocholate
  • The Chihuahua was named after a Mexican state
  • Texas was actually once a Mexican state
  • The official name of Mexico is Estados Unidos Mexicanos (United Mexican States

Michelangelo

  • Michelangelo hated bathing. On his deathbed, his clothes were stuck onto the scud on his skin that they had to be peeled away
  • Michelangelo lived two times longer than most people from his era.
  • He was in a fraud when his statue; the Cupid was almost passed off as a Roman antiquity. He had buried it to make it look old.
  • Michelangelo was rich but lived in a squalor
  • His father was outraged when, at age 13, Michelangelo announced his apprenticeship to famed artist Domenico Ghirlandaio. In a very unusual act Ghirlandaio, the master, paid student Michelangelo’s father.
  • Michelangelo’s statue; David, was 5′ 4″ but was carved from a 19′ block of marble
  • At the end of his life, Michelangelo destroyed many of his sketches
  • Most of his more famous sculptures were completed before he turned 30.
  • His final masterpiece at St Peter’s Basilica was only completed after his death
  • Michelangelo carved his signature into only one statue, the ‘Rome Pieta’ and was in response that the statue was not his creation

Microsoft

  • The “save” icon on Microsoft Word shows a floppy disk, with the shutter on backwards. Thanx Gwynovere C.
  • Some Microsoft programmers who left the company went on to become a cattle rancher, the creator of the Cabbage Patch Dolls, a “professional volunteer” and the founder of a software company

microwave

  • The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket
  • As much as 80% of microwaves from mobile phones are absorbed by YOUR HEAD!

Milky Way

  • The Milky Way is currently devouring a smaller galaxy known as the Sagittarius dwarf elliptical galaxy
  • In turn, the larger neighbouring Andromeda galaxy will absorb the Milky Way in about 2 billion years

millipede

  • Millipedes that smell of almond can secrete a toxin similar to cyanide when threatened
  • Millipedes can have up to 700 legs
  • The milipede Polyxenus Fasciculatus, when attacked, will brush off tiny hook-like bristles in defence. There tiny hooks then snag on the assailant and start to entangle as the assailant tries to brush them off. Eventually, their feet and face would get tied up, and they are left to die.

mirror

  • You can test for a two way mirror by putting your fingernail on the surface, if there’s space between the tip and the image, then its a normal mirror, if not, its two way
  • Only 6 animals in the world can recognize its own reflection

missletoe

  • The kissing under the missletoe tradition originated from the Druids.Thanx Shawna

Moby Dick

  • During his entire lifetime, Herman Melville’s timeless classic of the sea, ‘Moby Dick’, only sold 50 copies.