Fun facts

2 Amazing Facts About Your Brain

1. You have a nite amount of willpower each day because to exercise your willpower you need energy in the form of oxygen and glucose. That’s why it’s harder to say ‘no’ when you are tired or not feeling yourself.
   You can arti cially boost your willpower by drinking an energy drink packed with sugar and caffeine, but a good night’s rest is a much more useful and healthy option. Well, that and also having enough awareness not to put yourself into situation where you will need lots of willpower when you know your resources will be low.
   In other words if you’re trying to quit drinking, avoid bars. If you are wanting to lose weight, don’t drive down fast food alley every day and if you want to stop smoking, avoid people (wherever reasonably possible) who do smoke.
2. A thought is a physical pathway in the brain. The more you have that thought, the more you groove and strengthen that path and the easier it is to have it again and again.
   That’s why having the thought “Why do I suck?” is never a great idea because you start to create a self ful lling prophecy as it becomes harder and harder to shake the belief that you suck.
   Your brain hates holding two contradictory opinions at once because it creates cognitive dissonance, so when you tell yourself you suck, your brain seeks out information to back up what you are saying. And trust me, it will nd it and ignore contrary evidence.!
   The most dangerous animal in the world is the common housefly. Because of their habits of visiting animal waste, they transmit more diseases than any other animal.
   Snakes are true carnivorous because they eat nothing but other animals. They do not eat any type of plant material.
   The world's largest amphibian is the giant salamander. It can grow up to 5 ft. in length.
   100 years ago: The first virus was found in both plants and animals.
   90 years ago: The Grand Canyon became a national monument & Cellophane is invented.
   80 years ago: The food mixer and the domestic refrigerator were invented.
   70 years ago: The teletype and PVC (polyvinyl-chloride) were invented.
   60 years ago: Otto Hahn discovered nuclear fission by splitting uranium, Teflon was invented.
   50 years ago: Velcro was invented.
   40 years ago: An all-female population of lizards was discovered in Armenia.
   30 years ago: The computer mouse was invented.
   20 years ago: First test-tube baby born in England, Pluto’s moon, Charon, discovered.
   10 years ago: First patent for a genetically-engineered mouse was issued to Harvard Medical School.
   5 years ago: The first successful cloning of human embryo
   The smallest bone in the human body is the stapes or stirrup bone located in the middle ear. It is approximately .11 inches (.28 cm) long.
   The longest cells in the human body are the motor neurons. They can be up to 4.5 feet (1.37 meters) long and run from the lower spinal cord to the big toe.
   There are no poisonous snakes in Maine.
   The blue whale can produce sounds up to 188 decibels. This is the loudest sound produced by a living animal and has been detected as far away as 530 miles.
   The largest man-made lake in the U.S. is Lake Mead, created by Hoover Dam.
   The poison arrow frogs of South and Central America are the most poisonous animals in the world.
   A new born blue whale measures 20-26 feet (6.0 - 7.9 meters) long and weighs up to 6,614 pounds (3003 kg).
   The first coast-to-coast telephone line was established in 1914.
   The Virginia opossum has a gestation period of only 12-13 days.
   The Stegosaurus dinosaur measured up to 30 feet (9.1 meters) long but had a brain the size of a walnut.
   The largest meteorite crater in the world is in Winslow, Arizona. It is 4,150 feet across and 150 feet deep.
   The human eye blinks an average of 4,200,000 times a year.
   Skylab, the first American space station, fell to the earth in thousands of pieces in 1979. Thankfully most over the ocean.
   It takes approximately 12 hours for food to entirely digest.
   Human jaw muscles can generate a force of 200 pounds (90.8 kilograms) on the molars.
   The Skylab astronauts grew 1.5 - 2.25 inches (3.8 - 5.7 centimeters) due to spinal lengthening and straightening as a result of zero gravity.
   An inch (2.5 centimeters) of rain water is equivalent to 15 inches (38.1 centimeters) of dry, powdery snow.
   Tremendous erosion at the base of Niagara Falls (USA) undermines the shale cliffs and as a result the falls have receded approximately 7 miles over the last 10,000 years.
   40 to 50 percent of body heat can be lost through the head (no hat) as a result of its extensive circulatory network.
   A large swarm of desert locusts (Schistocerca gregaria) can consume 20,000 tons (18,160,000 kilograms) of vegetation a day.
   The largest telescope in the world is currently being constructed in northern Chile. The telescope will utilize four - 26 ft. 8 in. (8.13 meters) mirrors which will gather as much light as a single 52 ft. 6 in. (16 meters) mirror.
   The Hubble Space Telescope weighs 12 tons (10,896 kilograms), is 43 feet (13.1 meters) long, and cost $2.1 billion to originally build.
   The longest living cells in the body are brain cells which can live an entire lifetime.
   The largest flying animal was the pterosaur which lived 70 million years ago. This reptile had a wing span of 36-39 feet (11-11.9 meters) and weighed 190-250 pounds (86-113.5 kilograms).If you could drive to the sun -- at 55 miles per hour -- it would take about 193 years
   The moon is one million times drier than the Gobi Desert.
   Just twenty seconds worth of fuel remained when Apollo 11's lunar module landed on the moon.
   A Boeing 707 uses four thousand gallons of fuel in its take-off climb.
   The planet Saturn has a density lower than water. So, if placed in water it would float.
   Since 1959, more than 6,000 pieces of 'space junk' (abandoned rocket and satellite parts) have fallen out of orbit - many of these have hit the earth's surface.
   It takes 70% less energy to produce a ton of paper from recycled paper than from trees.
   Every year in the US, 625 people are struck by lightning.
   Hawaii is moving toward Japan 4 inches every year.
   The rocket engine has to supply its own oxygen so it can burn its fuel in outer space.
   The North Atlantic gets 1 inch wider every year.
   Oxygen is the most abundant element in the Earth’s crust, waters, and atmosphere (about 49.5%)
   A stroke of lightning discharges from 10 to 100 million volts & 30,000 amperes of electricity.
   A bolt of lightning is about 54,000°F (30,000°C); six times hotter than the Sun.
   Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the Universe (75%).
   The average distance between the Earth & the Moon is 238,857 miles (384,392 km).
   The moon is 27% the size of the Earth.
   The Earth weighs 6.6 sextillion tons, or 5.97 x 1024 kg.
   The center of the Sun is about 27 million degrees Fahrenheit (15 million °C).
   Sunlight takes about 8 minutes & 20 seconds to reach the Earth at 186,282 miles/sec (299,792 Km/sec).
   The highest temperature on Earth was 136°F (58°C) in Libya in 1922.
   The lowest temperature on Earth was -128.6°F (-89.6°C) in Antarctica in 1983.
   Sunlight can penetrate clean ocean water to a depth of 240 feet.
   The average ocean floor is 12,000 feet.
   The temperature can be determined by counting the number of cricket chirps in fourteen seconds and adding 40.
   House flies have a lifespan of two weeks.
   Chimps are the only animals that can recognize themselves in a mirror.
   Starfish don't have brains.
   The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.
   Shrimp's hearts are in their heads.
   Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie.
   The longest recorded flight of a chicken is thirteen seconds
   Emus and kangaroos cannot walk backwards.
   Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about ten.
   Porcupines float in water.
   An ostrich's eye is bigger that its brain.
   An iguana can stay under water for twenty-eight minutes.
   The common goldfish is the only animal that can see both infra-red and ultra-violet light.