Funny Sunday; facts and pictures
1. Beetles taste like apples, wasps like pine nuts, and worms like fried bacon.
2. What is called a “French kiss” in the English speaking world is known as an “English kiss” in France.
3. “Almost” is the longest word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order.
4. In 1386, a pig in France was executed by public hanging for the murder of a child
5. You can’t kill yourself by holding your breath
6. There is a city called Rome on every continent.
7. Horatio Nelson, one of England’s most illustrious admirals was throughout his life, never able to find a cure for his sea-sickness.
8. The elephant is the only mammal that can’t jump!
9. Like fingerprints, everyone’s tongue print is different!
10. The first known transfusion of blood was performed as early as 1667, when Jean-Baptiste, transfused two pints of blood from a sheep to a young man
Random acts of kindness or weirdness?
Picture the scene: you’re walking down the street, minding your own business, and a person with a beaming smile accosts you, hands you a bottle of water and says to have a drink on them.
What’s your reaction? Gratitude or suspicion?
Well, if it was suspicion then you wouldn’t be alone, especially here in the UK where our aloofness has been known to breed abdject cynicism. And yes, I’d be one of those most unlikely to throw my arms around a complete stranger in gratitude for them handing me a bottle for fear that it’d most likely contain toilet rather than spring water, and well, quite frankly, it’s just weird.
Yet, standing on a street corner and handing out bottled water to complete strangers is one of a series of ‘random acts of kindness’; a minority movement gaining momentum all over the world and aimed solely at ‘spreading the love’ which also features ‘hugging’. Many artists have embraced this new practice by meeting fans in the open for a good old hugging session. Indeed, did you know that the 21st January is actually NATIONAL HUG DAY? It’s quite a popular thing now and, interestingly in the more cosmopolitan of places, hugs are dished out like hot dogs on street corners where you’d be the weird one for thinking it was weird. Yes, it appears that these days there’ a whole new breed of Matha Amrithanandamayi Ashram. Otherwise known as Amma of India, an elderly lady who travels the world embracing people. Last year she caused quite a stir right in our backyard during the leg of her ‘tour’ that saw her stop off at Alexandra Palace where literally thousands queued patiently to receive a hug.
Nauseous yet or would you like to read more?
You do have to ask what exactly might be missing from the lives of hug queuers that compels them to stand in line to receive a hug from a complete stranger. I guess it’s an acquired taste. Would you, could you, have you queued to receive a hug?
I’m reading this and I can hear my own cynism creeping in however I assure you that I am not that much of a cynic, I’m merely playing devil’s advocate for, believe it or not, and yes, as much as this is most certainly going to damage my stoical masculine demeanure, I’d like it known that I too am a hugaholic. There, “My name is Tony and I’m a hugaholic!” I’ve confessed. If something stands long enough, I’ll hug it but that generally relates to trees. Well, I do come from Italian heritage and they’re a very tactile bunch (as are most of the Mediterraneans) and I’ve unashamedly practised hugging for many years, generally on unsuspecting, stiff upper lipped, typically British friends. Needless to say, they, not unlike most humans, resisted at first but I believe, not unlike ‘The Borg’, that resistance is futile. Indeed, I can’t imagine any of my close friends (yes, I’m talking about the blokes here as you women don’t appear to have the same reservations) who would part company with me before dishing out a hug.
The power of ’the hug’ is clearly evidenced in the unmistakable scenario where, in the company of a distressed person, one feels compelled to throw one’s arms around them or (for the more spacially aware) ‘tap’ them on the back in a consolation gesture which more than often works at easing the anguish. The etherals would have us believe that this is due to ‘transferance’; the negative energy from the distressed/sad person is transferred from them to the donor in exchange for positive energy. And I could go along with that although the experts have a much more plausable (and yes) scientific explanation, it’s a hormone called Oxytocin. Oxytocin is made in the area of the brain called the hypothalamus and it makes us feel good when we’re ‘close’ to family and other loved ones, including pets. It does this by acting through what scientists call the dopamine reward system. Dopamine is a brain chemical that plays a crucial part in how we perceive pleasure. Many drugs of abuse act through this system. But Oxytocin does more than make us feel good, it lowers the levels of stress hormones in the body, reducing blood pressure, improving mood, increasing tolerance for pain and perhaps even speeding how fast wounds heal. It also seems to play an important role in our relationships. It’s been linked, for example, to how much we trust others. Researchers are still studying what part Oxytocin plays in feuding loved ones but one thing they can say with certainty is that physical contact affects oxytocin levels.
So, could Oxytocin be responsible for the other practice of hugging complete strangers or the selflessness in executing a ‘random act of kindness’? There appears to be a link with that belief that whilst we’re thinking about the problems of others we’re forgetting about our own. In other words, doing good makes us in turn feel good (there goes the Oxytocin theory again). The RAOK (as it’s affectionately known) is becoming more and more popular these days, and it’s wondered if its a reaction to what many now believe is a cynical and perhaps somewhat jaded world, where we’re terrified of letting our children play outside the security of our homes, unsupervised, where hitch hiking is a self imposed death sentence, where parents need a form signed in triplicate to take pictures of their own children, and where we’re terrified of drinking out of the same bottle of our friends for fear of catching some kind of disease (see my previous blog post; over 30? Congratulations, you survived!) that some humans are reverting ‘back to nature’ in an effort to rediscover humanity not as it is but as it was, free from neurosis, obsessive compulsive disorders, self absorption, narcissism, materialism (yes, I could be here a while) to rediscover that warm and fussy feeling also known as the ‘milk of human kindness’.
So, if you’re interested in performing some ‘random acts’ yourself, there are a series of websites dedicated to precisely that. That’s right, if you wake up one day with a warmth spread over your body (that doesn’t involve urine) and feel like sharing the love, there’s a veritable banquet of suggestions going free at www.randomactsofkindness.org or you could check out 29 ways to carry out random acts of kindness, and there’s even a group founded by the actor, Misha Collins, of whom my niece is a MASSIVE FAN, http://www.therandomact.org/wordpress/ (yep, I’m sure she’d appreciate a twitter mention Misha as a thanks for the pingback to your blog) 
Better still, take a look at the list and then ask yourself how many of those acts have you personally conducted over the past year?
There’s no mistaking that we’re living in a whole new world and, whatever your thoughts, sickly or cynically they are determined by your own perspective of it. The Americans call it ‘pay it forward’; a good deed be repaid by having it done to others instead. The richest reward is not often what we get from others but what we do for them and the effect it ultimately has in turn on us. The following video illustrates precisely that so if you have 3 minutes, I highly recommend you take a look, it’ll make you feel good, I promise.
Happy hugging!
20 ‘interesting’ facts
- The longest one-syllable word in the English language is “screeched.”
- “Dreamt” is the only English word that ends in the letters “mt”
- Almonds are members of the peach family.
- The symbol on the “pound” key (#) is called an octothorpe.
- The dot over the letter ‘i’ is called a tittle.
- Ingrown toenails are hereditary.
- The word “set” has more definitions than any other word in the English language.
- “Underground” is the only word in the English language that begins and ends with the letters “und.”
- There are only four words in the English language which end in “-dous”: tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.
- The longest word in the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.
- The only other word with the same amount of letters is its plural: pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosesl.
- The longest place-name still in use isTaumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwe-nuakit natahu, a New Zealand hill.
- Los Angeles’s full name is “El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reinade los Angeles de Porciuncula” and can be abbreviated to 3.63% of its size,L.A.
- 14. An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain.
- Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.
- Alfred Hitchcock didn’t have a belly button. It was eliminated when he was sewn up after surgery.
- Telly Savalas and Louis Armstrong died on their birthdays.
- The muzzle of a lion is like a fingerprint – no two lions have the same pattern of whiskers.
- A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.
- 23. There is a seven-letter word in the English language that contains ten words without rearranging any of its letters, “therein”: the,there, he, in, rein, her, here, ere, therein, herein.
Friday’s 10 ‘interesting’ facts
- Antarctica is the only continent without reptiles or snakes.
- An eagle can kill a young deer and fly away with it.
- In the Caribbean there are oysters that can climb trees.
- Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.
- The world’s youngest parents were 8 and 9 and lived in China in 1910.
- When George Lucas was mixing the American Graffiti soundtrack, he numbered the reels of film starting with an R and numbered the dialog starting with a D. Sound designer Walter Murch asked George for Reel 2, Dialog 2 by saying “R2D2″. George liked the way that sounded so much he integrated that into another project he was working on.
- The youngest pope was 11 years old.
- Proportional to their weight, men are stronger than horses.
- They have square watermelons in Japan – they stack better.
- Heinz Ketchup leaving the bottle travels at 25 miles per year.
10 ‘interesting’ facts. Know any?
1. In London, the tube route from Leicester Square to Covenant Garden is the most popular tube route for tourists despite the fact that it is actually
quicker to cover this distance on foot!
2. SOS may be an international distress signal but it is not an acronym or abbreviation but a morse (as in morse code) procedural sign. The letters were chosen because they are easily transmitted in morse code.
3. The pupil of the eye expands as much as 45 percent when a person looks at something pleasing.
4. The English are tea addicts; an Englishman drinks more tea than any person of any other nation (over twenty times more than Americans!
5. The reason honey is so easy to digest is that it’s already been digested by a bee.
6. Google (or googol) is actually the common name for a number with a million zeros
7. Colgate faced big obstacle marketing toothpaste in Spanish speaking countries. Colgate translates into the command “go hang yourself.”
8. The human heart creates enough pressure while pumping to squirt blood 30 feet.
9. The attachment of the human skin to muscles is what causes dimples.
10. If you stop getting thirsty, you need to drink more water. For when a human body is dehydrated, its thirst mechanism shuts off
Friday’s 10 ‘interesting’ facts. Know any?
1. Penguins can convert salt water into fresh water
2. Streets in Japan do not have names.
3. Pearlescence lipstick contains fish scales.
4. Your home is ten times more likely to have a fire than be burgled.
5. Only 55% of Americans know that the sun is a star. Did you?
6. A group of kangaroos is called a mob
7. Whispering is more wearing on your voice than a normal speaking tone.
8. Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously.
9. A woodpecker can peck twenty times a second.
10. Domestic cats hate lemons or other citrus scents.
Safari park sign
10 ‘interesting’ facts
1. A lot of lovemaking can unblock a stuffy nose. Sex is a natural antihistamine. It can help combat asthma and hay fever.
2. A jiffy is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second. Thus the saying, “I’ll be there in a jiffy..”
3. Children grow faster in the springtime than any other season during the year.
4. UK pig farmers are required, by law, to provide toys for their pigs.
5. In France, it’s legal to marry a dead person whilst in India, people are legally allowed to marry a dog.
6. Apple seeds are poisonous; they produce cyanide.
7. In Holland, you can be fined for not using a shopping basket in a grocery store.
8. Frozen lobsters can come back to life when thawed!
9. On average people fear spiders more than they do death.
10. Only one other book has been distributed more than the bible; the IKEA catalogue.
…and the results from yesterday’s Tokyo underground picture. I asked if you could guess what exactly the underground managers were trying to tell you with that picture. Is it simply an X-rated mistake? If you haven’t seen the picture, browse away now if you don’t want to know the answers! Otherwise, from left to right: Underground managers would like you to give up your seat for : person with injured arm, person holding a child, pregnant woman, person with injured leg. Did you guess correctly?
10 ‘interesting’ facts
1. Half of all identity thieves are relatives, friends, or neighbours of their victims.
2. Most burglaries occur during the day.
3. The sound you hear when you crack your knuckles is actually the sound of nitrogen gas bubbles bursting.
4. English sailors were referred to as “limeys” because sailors added lime juice to their diet to combat scurvy.
5. To find out if a watermelon is ripe, knock it, and if it sounds hollow then it is ripe.
6. Natural gas has no smell. The odour is artificially added so that people will be able to identify leaks.
7. Coconuts kill more people in the world than sharks. Approximately 150 people are killed each year by coconuts.
8. A car operates at maximum economy, fuel-wise, at speeds between 25 and 35 miles per hour.
9. People who are lying to you tend to look up and to the left (their left).
10. If a surgeon in Ancient Egypt lost a patient while performing an operation, his hands were cut off.
10 ‘interesting’ facts
1. By partially filling saucers with vinegar and distributing these around a room, you can eliminate odours.
2. On average, a movie makes about 5 times more from its DVD sales than ticket takings.
3. By the age of 60, most people have lost 50% of their taste buds.
4. Seaweed is used to thicken ice cream.
5. During the filming of ‘Apocalypse Now’, director Francis Ford Coppola threatened suicide several times and lost 100 pounds.
6. A rat can fall from a five story building without injury.
7. You can’t create a folder called ‘con’ in Microsoft Windows.
8. The first patented condom was meant to be reused!
9. Cranberries are sorted for ripeness by bouncing them; a fully ripened cranberry can be dribbled like a football.
10. 1/3 of Taiwanese funeral processions include a stripper!
More interesting facts next week! Subscribe
10 ‘interesting’ facts
1. It is an act of treason to place a postage stamp bearing the British king or queen’s image upside-down. “Oops!”
2. In the UK, a pregnant woman can legally relieve herself anywhere she wants, including in a policeman’s helmet. “Good to know.”
3. A male doctor in Bahrain can only examine the genitals of a woman in the reflection of a mirror. “I guess that would settle the lawsuits.”
4. Humans are the only species on earth who have face to face sex. “No comment.”
5. If you lick a stamp you are consuming 1/10 of a calorie. “If only I’d learned that sooner!”
6. There are no words in the English language that rhyme with purple and orange.
7. Generally, women hear better than men! “Is that a fact?”
8. Sloths move so slow, algae grows on them. “I can hear it already…what did you say I have growing on me?”
9. It is physically impossible to lick your own elbow. “You just had to try, didn’t you?”
10. “And now will y’all stand and be recognised,” said Gib Lewis—Texas Speaker of The House to a group of people in wheelchairs. “Trust an American!”
And if you simply can’t get enough of these factoids then stay tuned as this is the first of a weekly series of blog posts. And, of course, if you like, hate or simply have a fact you’d like featured, leave a comment or send an email.
