11 Aircraft Factories We’re Camouflaged to Look Like Towns in Ww2
During World War 2 aircraft factories in the United States we’re made to look like small towns to avoid being bombed by the Japanese. They used camouflage netting and props to make the factory buildings look like a small town from the air. This was accomplished especially well at the Lockheed Burbank Aircraft Plant.
12 Nenana Alaska Has a Spring Prediction Lottery
The town of Nenana in Alaska has an annual lottery for its residents worth $300,000. To win they must predict the exact moment the onset of spring will cause the ice on the frozen Tanana River to begin to break. The 2012 jackpot prize was a record $350,000.
13 Golf Was Banned in Scotland
Probably the most famous of all bat (or club) and ball games has to be the Scottish game of golf. It is a game that the people of Scotland are proud to call their own. But would you believe it was actually outlawed in Scotland by James II of Scotland in 1452. The reason golf was banned in Scotland was because it was interfering with the kings subjects archery practice.
14 In 1954 India Accepted Dead Rats As Payment for Tax
In 1954 the Finance Minister of India decided to allow the people of Bombay, current day Mumbai, to pay their taxes with dead rats. Now I know what you are thinking. Firstly, that’s disgusting. Secondly, how can a dead rat be worth anything? Well there was a method to his madness, and it was ingenious.
During 1954 the city of Bombay was in the grip of a rat plague. It was by all accounts horrendous. If people thought it was bad in the city, the docks were even worse, due to the fact that grain supplies were offloaded there from cargo ships. They had infested nearly every corner of the city and something had to be done. Enter the finance Minister.
The finance Minister decided to try and reduce the rat plague by allowing people to pay their taxes with dead rats. Rat hunters were paid a flat rate for each dead rat they presented. By all accounts the scheme paid off too.
Allowing people to pay their taxes with dead rats is not a new thing. Paying people to eradicate an invasive pest has been an effective way at reducing the social and economic cost that allowing the pest to continue to breed unabated would eventually cost the wider economy. Many countries have adopted this form of eradication in one form or another. More often than not it is paid as a bounty directly to the bounty hunter as cash.
15 Only One Primate Has No Pigment on the Palms of Their Hands
Throughout schooling we are taught about evolution and how we as humans are genetically related to monkeys. As primates we share a significant proportion of similar genetic material, and if we go far enough back we are apparently able to have a singly related ancestor. But apart from our highly advanced intellect we have at least one other thing vastly different from every other primate on the face of this very Earth. Our hands, specifically our palms. Humans are the only primates with no pigment on their hands.
Time for a simple little experiment. Look at the palm of your hand. What do you see? I’m guessing that it will have no pigment. Do you know what? This is unique to humans, and no other primate is like us. Even people with dark complexions have pale palms
Did you know that nearly all primates hands have a pigment on them? All except one. Humans are the only primates without pigment on the palm of their hands. All other primates such as apes, chimpanzees and gorillas have coloring on the palms of their hands. That being said, if a primate has a genetic deformation such as being albino, that is the only case in which a primates palms will have no skin pigmentation.
16 Buzz Aldrin Mother’s Maiden Name Was Moon
Some may say it was fate, pre-destined or a sign of what was to come. The second man to walk on the moon, one of only a dozen humans to date to have had the privileged opportunity to be an alien on another celestial body, had a weird connection with the moon even before he was born. That’s because Buzz Aldrin mother’s maiden name Was Moon.
You didn’t misread that at all. Buzz Aldrin mother’s maiden name Was Moon. Seriously it was. That is an absolutely amazing coincidence, or was it just a sign of his destiny?
Buzz Aldrin graduated from West Point third in his class with a BS in mechanical engineering. He joined the Air Force and flew 66 missions during the Korean War for which he was decorated with the Distinguished Flying Cross.
Following his service in Korea he completed a tour of duty in Germany where he flew F100s. Following the tour of duty in Germany he returned to the US and completed his Doctorate of Science in Astronautics at MIT. He was selected by NASA in 1963 into the third group of astronauts, being the only one with a doctorate.
Apart from being the second person to touch the surface of the moon, he was also quite the innovator at NASA. He came up with the idea to train under water to simulate weightlessness, and the docking and rendezvous techniques he made for spacecraft were critical in the Apollo and Gemini programs. Many of his techniques are still in use by NASA today
17 Land is Rising in Alaska Due to the Ice Age
Did you know that land is rising in Alaska due to the last ice age? It is true, and it also affects other countries and regions too.
All countries that are affected by land mass rising from the last ice age are in the northern hemisphere. Apart from affecting Canada other regions and countries affected are northern Europe, Siberia, Antarctica, Canada and parts of the US. This natural phenomenon is called a Post-glacial rebound. Lets talk about how it happens.
During the last ice age much of the northern hemisphere was covered with ice sheets that were up to three kilometres thick. This weight caused the Earths crust to deform and warp downwards. When this happened it caused the molten mantle to flow away from the region compressed. As the ice melted the weight on the surface of the Earths crust eased, and the mantle began to flow back again. When this happened it caused a slow rebound in the land. This rebound is an extremely slow process. Due to the extreme viscosity of the mantle it will take thousands of years for the surface to reach an equilibrium level.
Most rises in the land are about 1 cm or less per year. It has been estimated that the process will continue for another 10,000 years. If the land continued to rise at the maximum rate of 1cm a year over the period of 10,000 years, the land would be 1 kilometre higher than it is now.
18 Death Due to Laughing
Have you ever heard of death due to laughing? Well it has happened, and this is despite the common saying that laughter is the best medicine. To be more precise, deaths due to laughter have occurred nine times throughout history.
The vast majority of laughing deaths have a rather sketchy past, and verifying the truth now would be practically impossible. Of the nine, four happened in Ancient Greece, with the most famous being Greek fortune teller, Calchas.
As time progresses, the ability to verify the truth improved. There were three recorded deaths between 1550 and 1800, although proving the cause of their demise was still rather difficult. The finals two laughing tragedies happened in the modern era, in 1975 and 1989, and the entertainment industry can be thanked for the outcome.
In 1975, Mr and Mrs Mitchell were watching “The Goodies”, which happened to be their favourite television show. During one scene, Mr Mitchell found one scene so funny he laughed uncontrollably for thirty minutes, until he suffered a heart attack and died. Mrs Mitchell even wrote to The Goodies thanking them for making her husbands final moments full of laughter.
The final death from laughter happened in 1989 when a Danish audiologist was watching A Fish Called Wanda when he found one scene with John Cleese so funny he laughed to the point that his heart rate rose to between 200 and 500 beats per minute. He eventually succumb to the comedy.
19 Biggest Mountain on Mars is the Biggest in the Solar System
One of our nearest neighbors in the solar system that we live in has a record that we might envy. The biggest mountain on Mars is also the biggest in the solar system. Out of the four rock planets, Mars poses the mountain that surpasses all others.
While planet Earth has a few very high mountains, such as Everest and Chimborazo (which actually stretches further into space than Everest), none on Earth even come close to the behemoth on Mars. The mountain on Mars is so massive in size, it would dwarf anything we threw at it. In fact, not only does it stretch far beyond anything we could ever imagine here on Earth, once you have reached the summit you could go for a leisurely stroll. Why you ask? The summit isn’t a clear and defined peak as with many mountains here on Earth. It is a massive, vast area that you could even spend over an hour driving around at highway speeds.
The biggest mountain on Mars is Olympus Mons. This massive mountain is about 24 kilometres (15 miles) high, and at its summit it is 72 kilometres (45 miles) across. That is over 3 times as high as mount Everest, making it the undisputed champion of mountains in our solar system.
20 Rats Laugh when Tickled
It has been a constant question thrown up by the scientific community. Do other animals experience emotions? The evidence is starting to point to a yes answer. A study has shown that rats laugh when tickled. But the study didn’t only show that rats laugh, but also chimps and dogs exhibit a form of laughter while they are being tickled or horsing around. By watching the video below you will see rats being tickled on their tummy, and the response to the tickling appears to be rat laughter. But is the laughter while being tickled a panic response as it is in humans?
A rats laugh consists of high frequency chirps that are too high for humans to hear. For the study, Dr. Panksepp, who conducted the study, used special audio equipment to capture their laughs. But how do they know that the rats are laughing and not chirping in distress? Dr. Panksepp studied the rats brain, specifically the reward section, and it showed heightened activity when being tickled. Additionally, when he stopped tickling the rats they usually chased the hand searching for more tickles.
The main reason behind the study to see if rats laugh when tickled is to try and discover new antidepressants. Laughter has been studied in apes, but there has been far more neuro-scientific work conducted on rats than most other animals.
21 We Need Saliva to Taste
You may have just read about the amazing volume of saliva that humans can produce over our lifetime, but do you know why we have saliva? It’s relatively important for us to be able to distinguish taste.
Have you heard that without saliva you can’t taste anything? In other words, do we need saliva to taste? This is partly true. A lot of the taste buds on your tongue need saliva or a liquid to be able to reach them. That’s what saliva can help do. Saliva will partly liquefy the food allowing it to touch the receptors. If you are unfortunate enough to be able to produce saliva for some reason or another, there’s still a way to savor the taste senses. By consuming other liquids, such as water, or even wines that compliment many meals, you will also be able to experience amazing tastes.
But there’s more to saliva in aiding the taste senses than just helping the flavors reach the receptors. The chemicals in saliva, the way it’s composed, also aid in the taste of some foods. This is because certain foods require saliva to bring out their flavor.
So we can all be thankful that we have the ability to produce saliva, even though some people find it rather disgusting, and a subject not worth talking about.
22 Albert Einstein Would Charge for Autographs
Arguably one of the greatest minds in all of human history would be that of Albert Einstein. Albert Einstein was a theoretical physicist of the early to mid twentieth century who is most famously known for his general theory of relativity and the equation of E=mc2 . He became one of the most famous scientists to ever live, gaining celebrity status in his own time. Albert Einstein was also smart enough to use his celebrity.
When people approached him for an autograph he would ask them to pay for it. He would ask anywhere between $1 for an ordinary autograph and up to $5 for a signed piece of memorabilia. But he didn’t keep the money he made from signing autographs. He would donate every cent he made to charities.
But he didn’t stop only with autographs. As he was a celebrity scientist, and one of the brightest people in the world, many organisations and people wanted him to speak publicly. It has been reported that he could earn up to $1000 per speech, which would have been a lot of money in the first half of the twentieth century. Einstein would also donate the money he made from speaking publicly to charity.
He truly had a brilliant and beautiful mind
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