Leprosy is the world’s oldest disease with documented cases dating back to 1350 B.C. Leprosy is now 100 per cent curable.
The oldest authenticated pair of female twins was Kim Narita and Gin Kanie of Japan. They were born on 1 August 1892. Kim died of heart failure in January 2000 at 107 years of age.
The longest living triplets were Faith, Hope, and Charity who were born in Elm Mott, Texas on 18 May 1899. Faith was the first to die at age 95 in October 1994.
The world’s oldest quadruplets were the Ottman siblings. Adolf, Anne-Marie, Emma, and Elisabeth. They were born on 5 May 1912. Adolf died first at age 79 in March 1992.
The man with the oldest know individual ancestor is British Professor Adrian Targett. DNA tests matched Professor Targett’s with that of a 9,000-year-old skeleton found in Cheddar, England.
Does lightning strike a human twice? The only human to be struck seven times by lightning was Roy Sullivan, a park ranger from the U.S. state of Virginia. The strikes occurred between 1942 and 1977. Ironically, having survived these strikes, “the human lightning rod” took his own life in 1983, reputedly over a failed romance.
Strictly speaking, nobody is “buried” in Grant’s Tomb. President Ulysses S. Grant and Mrs. Grant are “entombed” in New York City. A body is “buried” only when it is placed in the ground and covered with dirt.
Cathisophobia is the fear of sitting down.
Who imprisons the largest percentage of its people? This dubious distinction goes to the U.S. As of June 2006, the U.S. prison population numbered over 2 million. If you add those on parole or probation, the total comes to more than 7 million. This makes the U.S. the nation with the largest proportion of its population “under the jurisdiction of the legal system”. [Source David Lotto, THE JOURNAL OF PSYCHOHISTORY Summer 2006].
Who are the most generous people on earth? This is hard to tell. But we do have some insight into the answer. According to THE CHRONICLE OF PHILANTHROPY (Washington, D.C.) the residents of Detroit give the largest portion of their incomes to charity compared with all other major U.S. cities.
According to the World Health Organization (Geneva), measles ranks as the number one disease world wide that kills children and that also can be prevented through vaccination. In 2001, some 745,000 children died from measles. The cost of vaccinating all of these children is estimated to have been $558,750.
According to Popcorn Industry Fact Sheet, the U.S. consumes 17 billion quarts of popped popcorn annually. This is 54 quarts for every man, woman, and child. At two dollars per quart, the U.S. spends $34 billion on popcorn each year.
According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Geneva, a human being alive today has a 1 in 318 chance of being a refugee.
According to Amnesty International in New York City, statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau reveal that there are an estimated 1,000 foreign human rights violators living in the United States.
According to John Eichenseher of the School of Business of University of Wisconsin at Madison, when University of Wisconsin accounting students were given a take home tests regarding the ethics of the Enron scandal, more than half (40 out of 78) cheated on the test.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 46 per cent of U.S. married couples are raising children. 41 per cent of U.S. unmarried, cohabiting couples are raising children. A major multi-national chocolate company’s new anti-obesity campaign awards a free basketball in exchange for 90 candy bar wrappers.
According to Dr. Samantha Heller of the New York University Medical Center, 100 hours of playing basketball are required for an 85 pound child to burn off the calories from eating the 90 candy bars.
According to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, between 1900 and 1993, the U.S. sent troops to 14 nations for the purpose of establishing democracy. Ten years after the withdrawal of those troops, 4 nations were democracies.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (Washington, D.C.), 30 U.S. states have revoked helmet requirements for adult motorcycle riders since 1975.
According to Mothers Against Drunk Driving (Irving, Texas), there are 3 U.S. states where it is legal to drive while drinking.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (Washington, D.C.), in 18 per cent of fatal traffic accidents involving a pedestrian, the driver was drinking. In 37 per cent of fatal traffic accidents involving a pedestrian, the pedestrian was drinking.
According to THE WASHINGTON POST/ABC NEWS POLL in June of 2003, 56 per cent of people in the U.S. approved of the U.S. military attacking Iran to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
According to a CBS NEWS POLL in July of 2003, 58 percent of people in the U.S. disapproved of the U.S. military attacking any country in a preemptive strike.
The most fetuses found in a human body is 15. This included 10 girls and 5 boys. They were four months old when they were removed from the womb of an Italian housewife in July 1971. The woman had been taking a fertility drug.
For roughly six to seven months after birth, an infant can breathe and swallow at the same time. This ability was beneficial before the infant was born when it lived in a water environment of the mother’s womb.
It has been estimated that if you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee. It has been estimated that if you broke wind continuously for 6 years and 9 months, enough gas would be produced to create the energy of an atomic bomb about the size of those first developed.
The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the body to squirt blood 30 feet. A human’s orgasm lasts a mere matter of seconds. A pig’s orgasm lasts up to 30 minutes.
A human dies almost immediately once its head is severed. A cockroach will live nine days without its head before it starves to death.
Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories in one hour.
The human male often “loses his head” in the emotional and physical ecstasy of mating. By contrast, the male praying mantis often cannot mate while its head is attached to its body. The female may initiate mating by ripping the male’s head off or she may end mating by doing the same. Occasionally, the male escapes with his head intact.
The flea can jump 350 times its body length. If a human could do this, it would be the equivalent of a 6 foot man jumping the length of about 6 football fields.
The average human may have as many as 10,000 taste buds. The catfish has over 27,000 taste buds.
A human male may mate perhaps 6 times a day. Some lions mate over 50 times a day.
A human tastes with their tongue. Butterflies taste with their feet. The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue.
Right-handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people.
A human can standing jump perhaps twice his or her height. An elephant is the only animal that cannot jump.
A cat’s urine glows under a black light. A human’s urine doesn’t glow under any light.
The average newborn’s eyeball is about 18 millimeters in diameter, from front to back (axial length). It grows slightly to a length of approximately 19.5 millimeters as an infant. It continues to grow gradually to a length of about 24-25 millimeters (about one inch) in adulthood. A ping-pong ball is about 1.5 inch in diameter. This makes the average adult eyeball about two-thirds the size of a ping-pong ball. The eyeball is set in a protective cone-shaped cavity in the skull called the “orbit” or “socket”.
Perhaps 13 per cent of humans are left-handed.All polar bears are left-pawed.
Humans and dolphins are the only species that have sex for pleasure. According to the research firm Ipsos MORI of London, 40 per cent of Britons say they would give up sex in order to live to be 100.
According to the BBC News, 70 per cent of British fertility clinics have an insufficient supply of sperm.
According to research by Dr. Juliet Richters at the National Centre in HIV Social Research at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, 69 per cent of women who have had sex with a man have had an orgasm during sex with a man, 76 per cent of women have who have had sex with a woman have had an orgasm during sex with a woman.
