There are around 60,000 miles of blood vessels in the human body.
If you took them all out and laid them end to end, they'd stretch around the world more than twice.
20180801
Blood Vessels
There are around 60,000 miles of blood vessels in the human body.
If you took them all out and laid them end to end, they'd stretch around the world more than twice.
20180731
Your Brain
There is virtually no limit to the amount of information you can remember
Given how much we seem to forget on a daily basis, it may seem strange but it’s completely true that our brains have an essentially unlimited ‘storage capacity’ for learning.
So if we have a virtually unlimited storage capacity, why do we still forget so much? That’s a huge topic certainly worthy of it’s own post, but a lot of evidence suggests that we’re more likely to remember something if we make an active effort to understand it, and if we encounter it regularly – as this strengthens the connections between neurons in the brain and makes information easier to recall.
But we can only remember a handful of things in our ‘short term’ memory
A large part of the reason we seem to forget so much may well be that, whilst our long term memory is virtually limitless, our short term, or ‘working’ memory has a much, much smaller capacity. The original research into short term memory says we can only remember 5 to 9 pieces of information there at any given time, though more recent experiments suggest it may even be as low as 4!
Being able to access information quickly (i.e. on the Internet) makes you less likely to remember it
It’s great being able to access almost any piece of information in a few seconds, and resources such as Google, Wikipedia and YouTube have clearly been major parts of a revolution in how we find information.
But studies suggest there is an interesting flip-side to being able to access information so conveniently: if the brain knows it can just access it again so easily, it’s less likely to bother remembering the information itself!
20180730
Cockroaches
A cockroach can hold its breath for 40 minutes, and can even survive being submerged under water for half an hour. They hold their breath often to help regulate their loss of water.
Cockroaches can run up to three miles in an hour, which means they can spread germs and bacteria throughout a home very quickly.
Newborn German cockroaches become adults in as little as 36 days. In fact, the German cockroach is the most common of the cockroaches and has been implicated in outbreaks of illness and allergic reactions in many people.
A one-day-old baby cockroach, which is about the size of a speck of dust, can run almost as fast as its parents.
The American cockroach has shown a marked attraction to alcoholic beverages, especially beer. They are most likely attracted by the alcohol mixed with hops and sugar.
The world's largest roach (which lives in South America) is six inches long with a one-foot wingspan. Average cockroaches can vary in size from ½"- 2" long.
Cockroaches are believed to have originated more than 280 million years ago, in the Carboniferous era.
There are more than 4,000 species of cockroaches worldwide, including the most common species, the German cockroach, in addition to other common species, the brownbanded cockroach and American cockroach.
Because they are cold-blooded insects, cockroaches can live without food for one month, but will only survive one week without water.
These facts prove that cockroaches are some of the most adaptable creatures on earth, which makes controlling and eliminating a cockroach infestation all the more difficult.
To get rid of cockroaches in your home, experts suggest keeping food sealed and stored properly, particularly in the kitchen, which should be cleaned daily to prevent crumbs and trash from building up.
Garbage should be disposed of regularly and stored in sealed containers.
Homeowners should seek out and seal all cracks and holes in homes, including entry points for utilities and pipes, as these can serve as entrance ways for the pest. In addition, basements and crawl spaces should be kept well ventilated and dry.
20180729
Hero or Villain? Why Thousands Mourned a Bank Robber
He may have been one of America’s best-loved bank robbers: tens of thousands of people paid their respects at Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd’s funeral after he was shot down by G-men on this day, Oct. 22, in 1934.
The FBI agents, however, were not among the mourners.
Earlier in the year, the agency had declared him Public Enemy No. 1 for his alleged role in the 1933 Kansas City Massacre, when machine-gunners mowed down three policemen and one FBI agent as they attempted to return an escaped federal prisoner to the U.S. Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kans.
Floyd was named as one of the shooters; he’d hoped, the FBI said, to free his incarcerated friend, who was killed in the crossfire. In a story published the day of his death, TIME called Floyd “a murderously cool shot, [whose] trigger finger has already accounted for at least six deaths.”
The public remembered He couldn’t hide in the hills forever, though. FBI agents got their shot at him in Ohio after Floyd crashed his getaway car into a telephone pole.
They chased him down in a cornfield and fired on him while he ran. But his story didn’t end there; five years after Floyd’s death, Woody Guthrie memorialized him in song. “Pretty Boy Floyd” remembers the fugitive fondly, with the lyrics:
But many a starvin’ farmer
The same old story told
How the outlaw paid their mortgage
And saved their little homes…
The same old story told
How the outlaw paid their mortgage
And saved their little homes…
Yes, as through this world I’ve wandered
I’ve seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.
I’ve seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.
And some differently: as an Oklahoma tenant farmer beaten down by financial hardship and forced into a life of crime — but always looking out for the little guy. Rumors circulated that he had destroyed mortgage notes when he robbed banks, freeing struggling farmers from foreclosure.
There may have been at least a kernel of truth to the legend, based on his reputation for generosity to the “hill people” who helped him hide from the law in the foothills of the Ozarks, according to Jeffery S. King’s book, The Life and Death of Pretty Boy Floyd. King claims Floyd was paying to feed a dozen families who might have otherwise gone hungry.
20180728
20180726
Portland
Portland was named by a coin flip.
Had the coin landed the other way, the city would be Boston, Oregon.
20180725
Dancing Plague' of 1518, the bizarre dance that killed dozens
In July of 1518, a woman referred to as Frau Troffea stepped into a narrow street in Strasbourg, France and began a fervent dancing vigil that lasted between four and six days. By the end of the week, 34 others had joined her and, within a month, the crowd of dancing, hopping and leaping individuals had swelled to 400.
Authorities prescribed "more dancing" to cure the tormented movers but, by summer's end, dozens in the Alsatian city had died of heart attacks, strokes and sheer exhaustion due to nonstop dancing.
If that sounds weird, Frau Troffea should have been dead through dehydration after three days, max. Six days, and she was already dead, just still dancing, according to theory.
That sort of physical exertion isn’t naturally maintainable. Even marathon runners wouldn’t be able to do it.
20180724
20180723
Nebraska
Drivers in the country at night were required to stop every 150 yards, send up a skyrocket, then wait eight minutes for the road to clear before proceeding cautiously, all the while blowing their horn and shooting off flares.
20180722
Reindeer's wartime submarine trip
Historians at the Royal Navy Submarine Museum in Gosport are remembering one of the more unusual moments of World War II.
In 1941, the crew of HMS Trident were given a reindeer as a gift by the USSR navy.
The 56 crewmen spent six weeks sharing their already confined living accommodation with the fully-grown reindeer nicknamed Pollyanna
Wartime tale
While on operations, fighting German forces in the Arctic Circle in 1941, the British crew of the T-class HMS Trident were given a gift of a reindeer by a Soviet naval admiral.
Bill Sainsbury from the Royal Navy Submarine Museum said: "The Russians were so grateful to the British especially at the time when no-one else was helping them - and this was all they had to give.
"The story goes that the British captain had mentioned his wife had trouble pushing her pram through the snow in England - and the Russian admiral said 'what you need is a reindeer!'. And I suppose because it was a gift, they didn't want to seem rude by refusing it."
On board
Living with a reindeer underwater in wartime conditions inevitably posed challenges for the crew. A barrel of moss given by the Russians soon run out and Pollyanna lived on scraps from the galley. She also developed a taste for wartime favourite, Carnation condensed milk.
Pollyanna was originally lowered into the submarine through a torpedo tube of the sub and it was hoped she could sleep in the torpedo and food store. However she apparently had more refined tastes and insisted on sleeping under the captain's bed.
Bill Sainsbury said: "There are lots of funny stories - apparently when the submarine surfaced for air, she would barge her way through the narrow corridors to the main hatch to get some fresh air before returning to the officers' mess."
Despite Pollyanna eating a navigation chart, the crew made it back to the UK where HMS Trident landed at Blyth in Northumberland.
However as the reindeer had over-indulged on condensed milk, she had actually put on weight and could not be fitted out through the torpedo tube.
Dry land
A dockside winch, with some assistance from a crewman with a broom, finally managed to get Pollyanna squeezed out of the submarine and onto dry land.
Pollyanna died five years later, ironically within a week of her old ship, HMS Trident, being decommissioned and scrapped in 1947.She was given to Regents Park Zoo (now London Zoo) where she lived out the rest of the war - although whenever she heard a loudspeaker or siren she was said to have ducked down as if she was still on the submarine.
HMS Trident would have been a regular visitor to Portsmouth, the UK's main base for submarines during World War II. Gosport's Royal Navy Submarine Museum has HMS Alliance, a similar World War II era sub to HMS Trident, on permanent display.
As part of a festive weekend at the start of December 2009, the museum offered children the chance to visit Santa inside the sub, and although no reindeer was be squeezed down the torpedo tube, a barrel of moss was left in the torpedo store in recognition of one of the Royal Navy's most unusual passengers during World War II.
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