Over 25 years ago, a cargo ship traveling from
Hong Kong to the United States accidentally lost a shipping crate in the
Pacific Ocean. Inside that crate were 28,000 rubber ducks unwittingly about to
embark on many long journeys across the globe. As rubber ducks continue to pop
up on shores around the world from Australia to Alaska, they’ve enlightened our
understanding of ocean currents. Some have made it all the way to the Atlantic
Ocean, while others have been found frozen in Arctic ice.
The inventor of the frisbee was turned into a frisbee after he died
“Steady Ed”
Headrick invented
the frisbee in the 1950s, then went on to invent the sport of disc
golf in the 1970s. “He lived for frisbee,” his wife said of the inventor of the
classic American toy. When he died in 2002, his final wish was to have his
ashes turned into, what else, but a frisbee. His son said it was his father’s
dream that they play with him after death and that he might even accidentally
end up on someone’s roof.
Roosters have built-in earplugs.
Considering
how a rooster’s call can get up to 140 decibels or louder, it might leave one
to wonder how the rooster himself keeps from going deaf when that noise is
coming right out of its beak. It turns out, the farm fowl have built-in
earplugs. Researchers
found that when a rooster opens its beak to crow, its external
auditory canals close off, preventing sound from coming in and serving as
earplugs.
The most requested funeral song in England is by Monty Python.
A survey of
funeral directors by Co-operative Funeralcare found that the most requested
song to play at funerals in the United Kingdom is “Always Look On the Bright
Side of Life” by Monty Python from their irreverent comedy classic Life of Brian. It beat
out Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.”
A sea lion once saved a man.
Attempting to
end his life by jumping of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, a man named
Kevin Hines survived but broke his back. While it seemed he would be not long
for this world, a sea lion came to the rescue, swimming beneath him and
keeping him afloat until the coast guard arrived.
Indians spend more than 10 hours a week reading, more than any other
country in the world
Social media
and digital consumption have become so overwhelmingly popular in most parts of
the world that it’s easy to forget that for some people, reading is still a
primary form of entertainment. According to a recent study, the average Indian spends
10 hours and 42 minutes per week reading. Compare that to America’s five hours
and 42 minutes per week. The other countries with the top five highest reading
times are Thailand, China, the Philippines, and Egypt.
Research shows that all blue-eyed people may be related
At least,
they may share the same distant ancestor. After studying the DNA of blue-eyed
individuals from Scandinavia, Turkey, Jordan, and India, Danish researchers
found that they all had identical gene sequences for eye color. They believe
this trait comes from a single individual, called the “founder,” whose
genes mutated between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago. Before that, everyone had
varying shades of brown eyes.
This punctuation mark ?! is called an interrobang
That’s right,
the combination question mark-exclamation mark that so many of us overuse in
text messages has a name. It was invented in the 1960s by an ad man named
Martin Speckter who wanted to lend typographical form to the messages behind
advertising campaigns that were both questions and exclamations. Think: “Got
milk?!” or “Can you hear me now?!” The interrobang originally looked like this, “‽” but nowadays most people
use its two root symbols instead.
Doritos are flammable and can be used as kindling
If you’re
ever in a bind, throw some Doritos on the grill and spark them up. Though you
can make kindling out of nearly anything, the flavored corn chips are
particularly handy because they’ll burn for a long time. In fact, most chips
will serve as good fire starters because they’re made of flammable
hydrocarbons soaked in oil, according to an investigation by The Star. The more covered in powder-flavoring
they are, the longer the fire will last!
The first written use of “OMG” was in a 1917 letter to Winston
Churchill
The days were
dark during World War I when Europe was at war and world powers like Britain
were mobilizing their forces. One celebrated British admiral of the Royal Navy
had retired by 1917 when he wrote to Winston Churchill to share his take on the
headlines of the day, some of which were so exciting, he wrote, “O.M.G. (Oh! My! God!). How
could he have known that the acronym he invented would go on to become one of
the most-used phrases in the world?
