Fascinating Facts and Trivia

The Japanese giant hornet has venom that’s so powerful, it can dissolve human tissue.

Astronaut Michael Collins took a picture of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in the Lunar Module, with Earth in the background, meaning he took a picture at the time of every human who ever lived, except for himself.

It was a little known and largely forgotten BRITISH inventor that first achieved the world's first ever flight in a triplane-his name was Percy Pilcher and way ahead of anyone else in powered flight. His invention should have been recognised BEFORE the Wright Brothers a few years later - he unfortunately died and his name was largely forgotten-had that not been the case he would have been recognised as the true 'father' of flight.

Britain also played its part in the space race - the British Interplanetary Society or BIS for short drew up plans for a space rocket and also created the astronautical spacesuit long before NASA. The only reason it never got off the ground was the Second World War and the resources were limited-we came out of that the worse whilst the Americans did a bit better and of course sent men into space and then onto the Moon. However a man called Francis Bacon invented a special fuel tank that included oxygen and hydrogen(which when meeting in the middle would provide pure water) and it was so ingenius that NASA employed him to build it and it helped Neil Armstrong and Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin to land on the afore-mentioned Moon.

Bacon's invention was the fuel cell. Using Oxygen and Hydrogen it produces electricity with water as a by product.

Couple of music-based ones.
I was listening to a George Michael spng(I must admit to not knowing it) called Too Funky and right at the end you can here an old woman shouting " are you still on that radio of yours" immediately I recognised it as a sound bite taken Tony Hancock's radio series'Hancock's Half Hour; in this case an episode called 'The Radio Ham'

If you remember a pop group called The Beloved (Sweet Harmony) then you might remember the video that went with it, memorable for having the lead singer naked(cross-legged) and surrounded by equally naked models-look closely at those models and you might just spot a very lovely blonde-a young Tess Daly, who now co-hosts Strictly Come Dancing.

When you disconnect with someone on social media, you might say that you've "unfriended" them.

The now-common word was even the New Oxford American Dictionary Word of the Year in 2009. But it turns out that "unfriend" is much older than you might expect.

According to The Globe and Mail, the word "unbefriended" is cited several times in the Oxford English Dictionary beginning in 1629.

But it wasn't until 1659 that Thomas Fuller used the word as we know it today. In his book The Appeal of Injured Innocence, Fuller wrote, "I hope, sir, that we are not mutually Unfriended by this Difference which hath happened betwixt us."

If you were to write out every number (one, two, three, etc.), you wouldn't use the letter "b" until you reached one billion.

If you were whisked back in time to Medieval Europe and someone asked you if you had a free moment, you'd better be sure that you had 90 seconds available before saying yes.

That's because, as late as the early 19th century, a moment was exactly 1/40th of an hour long.

When you watch 1985's Back to the Future, you'll see that the main character, Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) travels back to the '50s in a DeLorean car that's been turned into a time machine. And while the DeLorean became a signature part of the film, we have to wonder what the movie would have been like if the producers had gone with their original concept, which was to make the time machine an old refrigerator.

Ultimately, it was determined that it probably was not a good idea to use a refrigerator in such a manner as kids might want to re-enact the scene. Parents everywhere are grateful.

We all know that caterpillars create a cocoon in which they transform into beautiful butterflies, but what actually goes on inside that cocoon is pretty gross.

The insect actually digests itself, releasing enzymes to dissolve all of its tissues.

Once it's fully disintegrated (excluding some "imaginal discs"), it then begins "the rapid cell division required to form the wings, antennae, legs, eyes, genitals, and all the other features of an adult butterfly or moth."