Fascinating Facts and Trivia

Violet Jessop, aka Miss Unsinkable, survived the sinking of the Titanic, a collision on the RMS Olympic, and the sinking of the Britannic.

People jerk themselves awake while sleeping because their body thinks they’re dead – it’s their brain’s way of making sure they’re still alive, since their heart rate is so slow.

Roald Dahl was a friend of Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond novels and later he wrote the screenplay for You Only Live Twice and also came up with the three girl concept where one girl would fall for Bond and end up with him. One would befriend him and either betray him or end up dead, the other would be the femme fatale who would fall for Bond but then meet a sticky end.

Arabic numerals are not really Arabic; they were created in India.

The February of 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.

There is actually no danger in swimming right after you eat, though it may feel uncomfortable.

The cruise liner Queen Elizabeth II moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.

More than 50% of the people in the world have never made or received a telephone call.

The Greenland Shark has the longest lifespan of all known vertebrates, living an average of 272 years, and some of them can live to be around 500 years old.

A Mantis Shrimp can punch with the force of a 22-caliber bullet.

It's so fast that the punch can't be seen with the human eye. It can break through glass, and is used for hunting down prey.

Mantis Shrimps have other incredible properties. They see color like nothing else in the animal kingdom, with 12 different photo receptor types.

The US Air Force lost a nuclear bomb somewhere off the coast of Georgia.

No one knows where it is! An Air Force pilot dropped the bomb into the water outside of Savannah, Georgia, after colliding with another plane in 1958 during a training mission.

The US Navy searched for the bomb for months, but never found it.

Today, the US Military advises that it stays in its resting place.

If it's undisturbed, the bomb poses no risk, the Air Force said in a 2001 report.

(12-01-2020 18:30 )billyboy1963 Wrote:  A Mantis Shrimp can punch with the force of a 22-caliber bullet.

It's so fast that the punch can't be seen with the human eye. It can break through glass, and is used for hunting down prey.

Mantis Shrimps have other incredible properties. They see color like nothing else in the animal kingdom, with 12 different photo receptor types.

Not sure where I saw this I am pretty sure I read somewhere that if the world's best boxer was put up against that shrimp, it would out-punch him for speed. And in a programme on BBC1 once(might have been an Attenborough show) it showed a shrimp punching a glass container as well as a type of octopus squeezing through the tightest hole of an object.

If you were to remove all of the empty space from the atoms that make up every human on earth, the entire world population could fit into an apple.

A BBC News program broadcast in 1957 ended claiming that spaghetti grew on trees on a farm in Switzerland. Many viewers believed the report and called the BBC asking how to grow their own trees. Their response: “Place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best.”