10 AMAZING AND CRAZY RANDOM FACTS ABOUT LIFE
10 Amazing And Crazy Random Facts About Life
Life is a funny old thing. In fact, life is many things. It can be trivial, brilliant, beautiful, ugly, boring, entertaining, enthralling, monotonous, hectic, crazy, stressful, calm, ordered, disordered, simple, complex – and downright amazing.
Far too often, we walk around with our eyes closed. We get up in the morning bleary-eyed, before trudging into work and getting through another long and arduous day. Then we return home, cook dinner, watch a bit of television, before doing it all again the next day.
We miss out on the amazing facts about life that are all around us. We miss out on the awe and wonder. If you’re just a little bit curious about life, let’s take a look at 10 of the most amazing and crazy facts about life.
France Was Still Killing People With The Guillotine By The Time Star Wars
The 20th century was an epoch in which the west put the nightmares of the past behind them. Nazi Germany was defeated, slavery in America was abolished, and the Berlin Wall was torn down.
People were living happily in their new consumerist societies, eating McDonald’s and watching Star Wars movies. Medieval practices, such as executing criminals with the guillotine, seemed a million miles away.
Well, except in France. When the first Star Wars movie was released to snake-like queues in America in 1977, across the pond the French were still gruesomely executing their criminals by lopping off their heads. It wasn’t abolished until 1981, although the last person to be guillotined was in September 1977.
Cockroaches Are Crazy
You’ve probably heard the urban myth about the headless cockroach that can live for days – weeks – until it finally crawls into a corner and dies.
It’s not a myth – it’s 100% true.
Yes sir, cockroaches can continue living if you chop their heads off. This is because they clot in a very different way to us human beings, and they basically lose very little blood – if any – if their head is lopped off.
As gruesome as it is, both the head and the body can continue living once they’re separated. The head, though, can only last for a few hours unless someone stores it in a refrigerator next to the milk and cheese. Um, not me.
Bull Ants Are Even Crazier
In his Horrors of Religion essay, the great German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer discusses our incredible will to live. Basically, when confronted with near-death, we summon an inner strength to do all we can to preserve our life. We’re desperate to keep on trucking.
To illustrate this will to live that is innate throughout the animal and insect kingdom, Schopenhauer uses the example of the tenacious bull ant. Like the cockroach, the bull ant can survive if the head is separated from the body.
Unlike the cockroach, this particularly aggressive insect doesn’t just carry on regardless; the head and the body actually start a fight to the death with one another.
Nintendo Was Founded Before Van Gogh Sold A Painting
Yup, you might like to believe that no one had a television, the Internet or video games back in 1889, but they obviously did have video games because that was the year Nintendo was founded! And Nintendo have always made video games, right?
Well, actually, Nintendo started life as a card company. They first produced a popular playing card game known as Hanafuda. In 1956, the Japanese company made their first official visit to the U.S, which at the time was home to the world’s number 1 playing card manufacturer.
In the sixties, Nintendo set up a taxi firm, as well as a hotel chain and a food company. Indeed, it wasn’t until the seventies when the company finally made a move into the fledgling video game industry, producing their first consoles in 1977.
The Milk Way Is Several Times Bigger Than The Sun
It’s really easy to take our sun for granted. To us, it’s just a tiny bright dot in the sky that can give us a tan, sun burn, or which can blind us if we stare into it for too long. Not cool.
But the sun can also alter our mood; when it appears, we feel happy and want to hit the beach. When it gets all shy and hides away, we get morose and can’t think of anything to do. We have to stay indoors.
The size of the sun is also something we take for granted. But what we take for granted much more is the size of the milk way galaxy .
See, if the sun was reduced to the size of of a white blood cell, the milk way would be as big as the United States of America. Wow.
There Are A Gazillion Stars In Outer Space
Okay, so “gazillion” isn’t really accurate or scientific. Basically, there are a LOT of stars in space.
Unfortunately, we can’t tell you how many exactly because nobody knows, but what scientists do know is that there are more stars than there are grains of sand. On. Every. Single. Sandy. White. Beach. On. The. Planet.
So, yeah. A LOT of stars. I just don’t want to land the job of counting ‘em. Hey, someone’s gotta do it.
There Are Lots of Ants Too
Ants seem to get everywhere, especially during the summer months. Whether you live in American suburbia or the Amazon rainforest, ants are just pests that are just constantly there.
There is, of course, a good reason for this.
You see, for every one human being there are 1.6million ants.
Think about that one for a second.
This means that if ants suddenly get much bigger, they would basically wipe us all out. Run for your lives!!
Potatoes And Butter Are All You Need
If you happen to love potato and butter but begrudgingly eat other foods because people tell you that you can’t survive off potato and butter alone, it’s time to get excited: You CAN survive off just potatoes and butter because they provide us with all the nutrients we’ll ever need. Win.
Celery Sticks Are So Good For Weight Loss
Celery sticks are basically the King of Vegetables when it comes to losing weight. They’re your best friend, your confidante, the one who will never bite you on the bum by sneaking in a few unlabelled calories.
Celery is in fact so pathetically devoid of calories and fat that it eating a stick of celery takes more calories than the stick actually has in it!
You Can’t Visit A Dutch Village In Your Car
That’s because the quaint Dutch village of Giethoorn doesn’t actually have any roads. It just has canals and footbridges. Old school.
from Beauty And Tips Magazine
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