Fact #014

Recycling one glass jar saves enough energy to watch television for 3 hours.

So get recycling people!!!

Fact #013

The average person walks the equivalent of three times around the world in their lifetime.

Fact #012

Bullet proof vests, windshield wipers, laser printers and fire escapes were all invented by women.

🙂

Fact #011

Only 6 per cent of the autographs in circulation from members of the Beatles are believed to be genuine.

That means a massive 94% of the autographs said to be written by the Beatles have been faked!

Fact #010

We are all made of stardust.

It may sound like something from a child’s imagination, but this fact is actually completely true, when you look at it from a certain angle.

All naturally-occurring life that we know of is based on the element carbon. It is the foundation of life and life could simply not exist without it. Carbon is formed when a star dies and it explodes, unable to fuel itself and release light, the star collapses under it’s own weight. This process is called a supernova explosion, and carbon is one of the waste products of the procedure.

So that means that, because the human body is made of 18.5% carbon, which comes from supernova explosions, which are the death of stars, we are all made of stardust.

I found out about this fact on a documentary I was watching on television the other day called: Chemistry: A Volatile History. The power of the Elements. The way the presenter (Professor Jim Al-Khalili) described it made me smile and want to write this post. 😀

Fact #009

Decided to cancel Person this week, it just takes too much work. Might do it every so often, but don’t hold your breath!

Woolly mammoths were still around at the same time as the Egyptians were building the pyramids.

Apparently, Woolly Mammoths were still living on a small island named Wrangel Island at the same time as the Egyptians were building the Great Pyramid of Khufu, which is the oldest and biggest of all the Egyptian pyramids. This was around 2500 – 2000 BC and it is the most recent date that the Mammoths were known to be still extant.

Fact #008

If you weighed all of the people in America and all of the earthworms in America, the earthworms would weigh 55 times more.

Gees, that’s a lot of worms 🙂

Fact #007

Each king in a deck of cards represents a different king in history. The king of hearts is Charlemagne, the king of diamonds is Julius Caesar, the king of clubs is Alexander the Great, and the king of spades is King David.

Charlemagne: Also known as Charles the Great. King of the Franks from 768AD, King of Italy from 774AD, and founder of the Carolingian Empire, a large Frankish state. Also first emperor in Western Europe since the Collapse of the Western Roman Empire.

Julius Caesar: Roman general, contributed immensely to the rise of the Roman Empire and the downfall of the Roman Republic. Conducted the first invasion of Britain and ruled Rome alongside Crassus and Pompey from 60BC.

Alexander the Great: King of Greek Kingdom of Macedon from 336BC. Creator of one of the largest empires in the ancient world, stretching from Greece to Egypt, and into present-day Pakistan. Also known as Alexander III of Macedon.

King David: (According to the Hebrew Bible) Second King of the United Kingdom of Israel and Judah from 1002BC. Also, (according to the New Testament Gospels of Matthew and Luke) an ancestor of Jesus Christ.

 

Fact #006

Over 1,500 left handed people in the world die per year as a result of using products designed for right-handed people.

I’m not exactly convinced by this fact. 1,500 people?! At first when I heard this, I was thinking of products like pens, but I guess it’s more dangerous building equipment like saws and chainsaws and stuff. But it seems extremely unlikely to me that so many people die from this a year. Serious injury, I can believe, but with the medical services and stuff these days, you wouldn’t think these people would actually be reduced to death. To be fair, I did get this fact from a book which was published in 2004, so, it was 10 years ago.

Fact #005

Yay, facts day! One of my favs!

There is enough lead in the average pencil to draw a line 35 miles long…

…or write about 45,000 words. The world’s largest pencil is made of Malaysian wood and polymer, is a Castell 9000, and stands 65 feet tall. Just imagine how long a line you could write with that. 🙂