The length from your wrist to your elbow is the same as the length of your foot.
Your heart beats 101,000 times a day. During your lifetime it will beat about 3 billion times and pump about 400 million litres (800 million pints) of blood.
It is impossible to lick your elbow. Well, for almost everyone… but a few can.
Your mouth produces 1 litre (1.8 pints) of saliva a day.
The human head contains 22 bones. More on the head and brains
On average, you breathe 23,000 times a day.
Breathing generates about 0.6g of CO2 every minute.
On average, people can hold their breath for about one minute. The world record is 21 minutes 29 seconds.
On average, you speak almost 5,000 words a day – although almost 80% of speaking is self-talk (talking to yourself).
Over the last 150 years the average height of people in industrialized nations increased by 10 cm (4 in).
A person can live without food for about a month, but only about a week without water.
You’ll drink about 75,000 litres (20,000 gallons) of water in your lifetime.
After a certain period of growth, hair becomes dormant. That means that it is attached to the hair follicle until replaced by new hair.
Hair on the head grows for between two and six years before being replaced. In the case of baldness, the dormant hair was not replaced with new hair.
Men loose about 40 hairs a day. Women loose about 70 hairs a day.
In the Middle Ages the length from the tip of the middle finger to the elbow was called an ell.
A person remains conscious for eight seconds after being decapitated.
On average, you blink 15 000 times a day. Women blink twice as much as men.
Not all our taste buds are on our tongue; about 10% are on the palette and the cheeks.
Unless food is mixed with saliva you cannot taste it.
The liver is the largest of the body’s internal organs. The skin is the body’s largest organ.
On average a hiccup lasts 5 minutes.
Fingernails grow nearly 4 times faster than toenails.
Your middle fingernail grows the fastest.
Your finger nails grow at 1 nanometre per second (0.000 000 001 m/s). Your hair grows at 4 nanometres per second (0.000 000 004 m/s).
It takes about 3 months for the transplanted hair to start growing again.
About 13% of people are left-handed. Up from 11% in the past.
In 1900, a person could expect to live to be 47. Today, the average life expectancy for men and women in developed countries is longer than 70 years.
A newborn baby’s head accounts for one-quarter of its weight.
King Henry I, who ruled in the England in the 12th century, standardized the yard as the distance from the thumb of his outstretched arm to his nose.
The bones in your body are not white – they range in color from beige to light brown. The bones you see in museums are white because they have been boiled and cleaned.
Our eyes are always the same size from birth.
Every person has a unique tongue print.
If all your DNA is stretched out, it would reach to the moon 6,000 times.
Approximately two-thirds of a person’s body weight is water. Blood is 92% water. The brain is 75% water and muscles are 75% water.
It is the fire of life. It can be kind but it can get angry. But it never throws its weight around. It is the sun. And although it is 330,000 more massive than earth and contains 99.8% of the mass in our solar system, it is small in comparison with some other stars.
The sun never cease to amaze us with its theatrics, its lava flares dancing across its surface in a ballet of nuclear fusion, sometimes leaping millions of miles into the air. And although the sun is big, its intense heat and light makes it difficult to capture good images with normal instruments. So NASA scientists use an Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager and an Atmospheric Imaging Assembly detector to view the ultra-violet (UV) and extreme ultra-violet lithography (EUV) wavelengths released by the sun. The resulting images are spectacular.
Full disk image of the sun. Ain’t it beautiful?!
Earth in comparison to the sun
Earth’s distance from the sun varies between 91.4 million miles – in January – and 94.4 million miles – in July. The average distance of 92,955,887.6 miles (149, 597, 870.7 kilometers) is called 1 astronomical unit (AU), a measurement that is used to report distances to other planets and stars as well. In short, it’s not a weekend drive.
NASA puts the size of earth to the sun in perspective like this: Suppose the radius of Earth were the width of an ordinary paper clip. The radius of the sun would be roughly the height of a desk, and the sun would be about 100 paces from earth.
Earth size in comparison to the sun and other planets:
(Hey, we’re small but we’re beautiful!)
The size of the sun in comparison
Our sun is one of billions in the entire universe. It also is fairly small in comparison with other big stars. In fact, our sun is classified as a G2 dwarf star. Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, is twice as massive as the sun and 25 times more luminous. And Sirius is dwarfed by Pollux, which is eight times the radius of the sun. And Pollux is dwarfed by Arcturus, which is almost 26 times the size of the sun.
It’s a big, big universe
But there are bigger stars yet. When compared to Antares, our handsome sun is a mere pixel on a map. And Antares is not even the biggest star. That title is thought to belong to a star called VY Canus Majoris. It is about 2,000 times the size of the sun, or more than twice the size of Antares.
Sun in comparison to Antares:
Note that it VY Canus Majoris is the biggest in size but not mass. The currently known most massive star is thought to be WR 102ka – known as Peony Nebula Star – at about 175 times the mass of the sun.
How big is the universe?
The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe calculated the age of the known universe at 13.7 billion years old, based on its radius of 13.7 billion light years. And it is growing bigger every day, at a speed of 71 km/s/Mpc. The size of the whole universe is estimated to be 78 billion light years. If you start traveling today at 60 miles per hour (100km/h) you’ll get to the end of your first coffee stop, the end of one light year, in nine trillion years. Then you just keep going for another 77.999 999 billion light years. Or you could stay here, look after our beautiful planet… and enjoy the sun.
The muscle that lets your eye blink is the fastest muscle in your body. It allows you to blink 5 times a second. On average, you blink 15 000 times a day. That’s about 10 times per minute, or more than five million times a year. Women blink more than men.
Animals blink too, of course. Some bird species, usually flightless birds, have only a lower eyelid, whereas pigeons use upper and lower lids to blink. Fish and insects do not have eyelids – their eyes are protected by a hardened lens.
To care for your eyes, eat carrots. They really do make you see better. Vitamin A is known to prevent “night blindness,” and carrots are loaded with Vitamin A. Deficiency of Vitamin A actually is a significant world problem, comparable to that of protein deficiency and second only to caloric deficiency.
Carrots also contain fiber, potassium, vitamin C, and beta-carotene, which may reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer. Carrots have zero fat content. One carrot provides more than 200% of recommended daily intake of Vitamin A.
Carrots were first cultivated in 500 BC in the Mediterranean regions. The first carrots were purple, white, and yellow. They were introduced in Europe in the 1600s. Orange carrots – the ones we know today – were first grown in Japan in the 17th century, and later made popular by the Dutch.
Well, it is thought to be Johann Vaaler. Drawings of his design date to early 1899, but since Norway had no patent law at the time he had to seek patent rights in Germany and the US in the following years.
Johann Vaaler was born on 15 March 1866 in Aurskog, Norway. Known as an innovator in his youth, he graduated in electronics, science and mathematics. He was employed by the owner of an invention office when he invented the paper clip in 1899.
Several designs followed the original. Only a few remain, such as the Ideal, Non-Skid, Owl and Gem. The first double-oval clip, the Gem, was launched in early-1900 by Gem Manufacturing Ltd of England. The paper clip remains as one of the most-used items of all time.
The doors in public buildings open outward to allow a large number of people quick exit in case of danger, such as fire. If the doors opened inward, people might pile up at the exit as everyone pushed to get through at once instead of stepping back to allow space for the door to be opened.
The front doors of private homes mostly open inwards because they sometimes have to be removed from the hinges in to allow furniture to be moved in. If the hinges were on the outside, burglars could remove them easily. Since there are fewer people in a home, there’s no danger of a pileup at the door in case of fire.
Even Alexander Graham Bell, who was awarded the patent for the invention of the telephone, disliked telephones so much that he refused to have one in his office. But that should not come as a surprise because both his mother and wife was deaf and perhaps Bell – who also was a speech teacher to the deaf – was only considering them.
When Bell passed away in 1922, every telephone served by the Bell system in the USA and Canada was silent for one minute.
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| Bell speaking into prototype model of the telephone |
Heart disease is the number 1 killer for both males and females. It kills a lot more people than ALL forms of cancer tumors put together. In fact, it kills more people than war or accidents. Cardiovascular diseases and ischemic heart disease cause more than 40% of all deaths, according to the World Health Organization.
And it is an equal opportunity destroyer. Everyone, everywhere, every time can have a cardiac arrest
Words of Wisdom
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