16 facts so absurd that you will hardly believe they are true
Discovering new and unexpected facts (positive, of course) is always pleasant as it enriches our knowledge and clarifies some concepts that have been studied incorrectly, or that have been distorted over time.
In this article, you will find some facts that are as absurd as they are real and sometimes absolutely surprising. By the way, did you know them all?
Saudi Arabia buys camels from Australia.
How can it be that an Arab country, in which the use of camels has very ancient roots, purchases its camels from a country where the camel is not even an indigenous animal?
The explanation is found in the fact that in Saudi Arabia, camels are used both for personal transport and as food. However, those originating in Saudi Arabia, have a low-fat index, and therefore are not suitable for human consumption, unlike camels from Australia. It also seems that Saudi Arabia, as a country is almost forced to import camels because of the high demand from restaurants.
Diamonds fall on Jupiter and Saturn.
Diamonds are precious minerals on planet Earth, but elsewhere, particularly on Jupiter and Saturn, there are plenty of them and they fall down from the sky like water. No, it is not an exaggeration! These planets rain diamonds due to the weather conditions present there. The high pressure transforms the carbon soot present in the atmosphere into diamonds (the diamond is nothing more than an allotropic form of carbon). When the latter then fall downwards, towards areas where the temperature is very high, so high as to liquefy the diamonds. Here is how diamond rainfalls are formed!
Benjamin Franklin was never the President of the United States.
Often the faces of American presidents appear on American banknotes, but this is not always the case. In fact, Benjamin Franklin, for example, was a scientist and politician, but he was never elected president of the United States.
If it were possible to drill the Earth from one pole to the other, a person in free fall would take 42 minutes to reach the other side.
To be precise, it would take 42 minutes and 14 seconds.
In a room with 23 people, there is a 50% chance that two were born on the same day.
During the construction of the Pyramids of Giza, woolly mammoths still existed.
We are not crazy, but it is what happened centuries and centuries ago. Unfortunately, the study of history in "watertight chapters" does not allow us to have a clear vision of the succession of the epochs and the relative distance. So it seems absurd that woolly mammoths date back to the same period as the construction of the Pyramids.
The woolly mammoths in question are those of the Isle of Wrangel, in the Arctic Ocean, the last ones to have become extinct on planet Earth.
The skull of Neanderthals was larger than that of the modern Homo sapiens.
The size of a skull is not the only indicator of intelligence. To prove this concept is a study that was carried out by the University of Oxford, which has performed analyses on the cranial box of the Neanderthal man, finding a dimension significantly larger than that of modern man. However, this certainly does not indicate a more intelligent species, in the strictest sense of the term and experts justify this fact by relating a bigger skull to the need to control a body of major size.
Laziness is a hereditary trait.
It is not the first time that scientists discover that behavioral and character traits can be inherited from a person's parents. Among these, laziness seems to be included! In fact, the lack of the desire to perform physical activity and to engage in general in any activity is linked to a genetic mutation.
The construction of the Titanic ship cost 7.2 million dollars whereas the realization of the eponymous film cost 200 million dollars.
On Earth, 70% of the oxygen is produced by phytoplankton.
Prof. Gordon T. Taylor, Stony Brook University/Wikimedia
It is not trees that contribute most to the production of oxygen, but a group of microscopic creatures that we would never have thought to be so important, namely, phytoplankton! These are plant and aquatic organisms, which make up a larger collection called plankton.
Trees produce only 28% of the Earth's oxygen.
Human beings had figured out how to land on the moon long before inventing the trolley.
The moon landing took place on 20 July 1969 and the trolley was invented in 1987 by Robert Plath, an American pilot.
In Greece, Santa Claus is called Agios Vasilis.
More than to Christmas, this figure is linked to the New Year.
Making loud exclamations or swearing when something hurts allows for pain relief.
It also seems that the pain relief effect of swearing is amplified even more if the person does not normally use such language.
In the city of Longyearbyen, in Norway, one cannot die.
Longyearbyen, the most populated city in the Svalbard Islands, dying has been prohibited since the 1950s, after citizens discovered that bodies buried in their cemetery never decomposed! No, this is not a paranormal phenomenon, only extreme weather conditions that have preserved the bodies even for centuries, along with pathogens. Consequently, any unfreezing would spread old diseases that have been eradicated.
Nintendo was actually founded on 23 September 1889.
At the beginning, this Japanese company produced and distributed playing cards. "Nintendo" means "to leave fate to the heavens".
The national animal of Scotland is the unicorn.
Source: scotsman.com
