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hearken the facts - viii

A few facts that you might never come across, but your life will be incomplete without:

  • Henry Ford, father of the Automobile, is also the father of the charcoal briquette.
  • Whales can never focus both their eyes on the same object at once.
  • The gecko’s eyes are open all the time.
  • An individual blood cell takes about 60 seconds to make a complete circuit of the body.
  • A dragonfly has a lifespan of 24 hours.
  • George Washington’s salary a year was $25,000.
  • Bulls are colour-blind, therefore will usually charge at a matador’s waving cape no matter what colour it is – be it red or neon or yellow.
  • Denmark has more than 600 castles and manor houses.
  • You can use pinecones to forecast the weather – the scales will close when rain is on the way.
  • The webbed feet of the stormy petrel enable it to walk on water. It spends almost its entire life over the ocean and only comes to land to breed. If a storm arises, they can’t walk on water and are forced to remain in the air all day and night.
  • American Indians were the first to grow corns. They called it maize.
  • More money is spent on gardening than on any other hobby!
  • Racehorses can wear out new horse shoes in one race.
  • Babies’ eyes do not produce tears until the baby is approximately six to eight weeks old.
  • A mother hen turns over her egg about 50 times a day.
  • Most people blink about 17,000 times a day.
  • Turtles can breathe through their butts.
  • Oysters can change from one gender to another and back again.
  • A pineapple is a berry.
  • The shortest English word that contains the letters A, B, C, D, E and F is feedback.
  • US scientists calculated that Santa would have to visit 822 homes a second to deliver all the world’s presents on Christmas Eve, travelling at 650 miles a second.
  • When the Titanic sank, 2228 people were on it. Only 706 survived.
  • The first CD pressed in the US was Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA.
  • Alaska’s name comes from the Eskimo world Alakshak, meaning great lands or peninsula.
  • Electricity doesn’t move through a wire but through a field around the wire.
  • Research indicates that plants grow healthier when they are stroked.
  • Americans spend about 90% of their time indoors.
  • Saudi diplomats have 367 outstanding parking fines in Britain.
  • To human taste buds, Zima is virtually indistinguishable from zebra urine.
  • Seven Devils’ Peaks has Heaven’s Gate Lookout where you can see into four states

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