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Old 23rd March 2005, 11:55   #16
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All this elephant talk reminds me of wot i read once abt the similarities between indian bureaucracy and elephant mating:
1. Most of it happens at high levels
2. Its accompanied with a lot of noise.
3. Results are not known till 3 years after.

Reference: The Great Indian Novel by Shashi Tharoor

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Old 24th March 2005, 11:42   #17
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Did you know you share your birthday with at
least 9 other million people in the world?

The electric chair was invented by a dentist.

The human heart creates enough pressure when
it pumps out to the body to squirt blood 30 feet.

Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour.

"I am." is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.

The longest word in the English language is 1909
letters long and it refers to a distinct part of DNA.

It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

Feb 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.

You can't kill yourself by holding your breath.

Americans on the average eat 18 acres of pizza every day.

Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie.

Babies are born without knee caps. They don't appear until the child reaches 2-6 years of age.

The cruise liner, Queen Elizabeth II, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.

Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than
all of the Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined.

You know that you are more likely to be killed
by a champagne cork than by a poisonous spider.

If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days, you would
have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.
If you fart consistently for 6 years and 9 months, enough gas
is produced to create the energy of an atomic bomb.

Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds,
dogs only have about ten.

Our eyes are always the same size from birth,
but our nose and ears never stop growing

If Barbie were life-size her measurements would be
39-23-33. She would stand seven feet, two inches tall and
have a neck twice the length of a normal human's neck.

The Pentagon, in Arlington, Virginia,
has twice as many bathrooms as is necessary.
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Old 24th March 2005, 15:41   #18
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You guys are all nuts!!!!!!!!! Hehehe.... good stuff... keep it coming!
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Old 26th March 2005, 03:30   #19
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A few more.

Chewing on gum while cutting onions can help a person from producing tears.

Until babies are six months old, they can breathe and swallow at the same time.

Offered a new pen to write with, 97% of all people will write their own name.

Male mosquitoes are vegetarians. Only females bite.

The average person's field of vision encompasses a 200-degree wide angle.

To find out if a watermelon is ripe, knock it, and if it sounds hollow then it is ripe.

Canadians can send letters with personalised postage stamps showing their own photos on each stamp.

Babies' eyes do not produce tears until the baby is approximately six to eight weeks old.

It snowed in the Sahara Desert in February of 1979.

Plants watered with warm water grow larger and more quickly than plants watered with cold water.

Wearing headphones for just an hour will increase the bacteria in your ear by 700 times.

Grapes explode when you put them in the microwave.

Those stars and colours you see when you rub your eyes are called phosphenes.

Everyone's tongue print is different, like fingerprints.

Contrary to popular belief, a swallowed chewing gum doesn't stay in the gut. It will pass through the system and be excreted.

At 40° Centigrade a person loses about 14.4 calories per hour by breathing.

There is a hotel in Sweden built entirely out of ice; it is rebuilt every year.

Cats, camels and giraffes are the only animals in the world that walk right foot, right foot, left foot, left foot, rather than right
foot, left foot...

Onions help reduce cholesterol if eaten after a fatty meal.

The sound you hear when you crack your knuckles is actually the sound of nitrogen gas bubbles bursting.

In most watch advertisments the time displayed on the watch is 10:10 because then the arms frame the brand of the watch and make it look like it's smiling.

The color blue can have a calming affect on people. Depending upon the shade, the brain may send up to 11 tranquilizing chemicals to calm the body

Leonardo da Vinci could write with the one hand and draw with the other simultaneously.

Names of the three wise monkeys are: Mizaru (See no evil), Mikazaru (Hear no evil), and Mazaru (Speak no evil).

The only 2 animals that can see behind itself without turning it's head are the rabbit and parrot.

The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.

Babies are born without knee caps. They don't appear until the child reaches 2-6 years of age

The names of the continents all end with the same letter with which they start.

Electricity doesn't move through a wire but through a field around the wire.

All U.S. Presidents have worn glasses; some of them just didn't like to be seen wearing them in public.

No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, and purple.

A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.

A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.

A dragonfly has a life span of 24 hours.

A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.

A group of geese on the ground is a gaggle; a group of geese in the air is a skein.

A "jiffy" is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.

A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.

A snail can sleep for three years.

Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer

All 50 states are listed across the top of the Lincoln Memorial on the
back of the $5 bill.

All of the clocks in the movie "Pulp Fiction" are stuck on 4:20."

Almonds are a member of the peach family.

An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.

Babies are born without kneecaps. They don't appear until the child
reaches 2 to 6 years of age.

Butterflies taste with their feet.

Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds. Dogs only have about 10.

Did you know that crocodiles never outgrow the pool in which they live?

"Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt".

February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full
moon.

In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak.

In the last 4,000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.

If the population of China walked past you in single file, the line
would never end because of the rate of reproduction.

If you are an average American, in your whole life, you will spend an
average of 6 months waiting at a red light.

In most advertisements, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10

It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.

Los Angeles' full name is "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los
Angeles de Porciuncula"

Maine is the only state whose name is just one syllable.

Mr. Rogers was an ordained minister.

No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, or
purple.

On a Canadian two dollar bill, the flag flying over the Parliament
Building is an American flag. (The $2 bill is now a coin.)

Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears
never stop growing.

Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.

Pinocchio is Italian for "pine eye."

Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.

Shakespeare invented the word 'assassination' and 'bump'.

"Stewardesses" is the longest word typed with only the left hand,
"lollipop" with your right.

The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.

The average person's left hand does 56% of the typing.

The Bible does not say there were three wise men; it only says there
were three gifts.

The characters Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street were named after Bert the
cop and Ernie the taxi driver in Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life."

The cruise liner, QE2, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel
that it burns.

The giant squid has the largest eyes in the world.

The longest one-syllable word in the English language is "screeched."

The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and
a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.

The only 15-letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter
is "uncopyrightable".

The sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" uses every
letter of the alphabet.

The winter of 1932 was so cold that Niagara Falls froze completely
solid.

The words 'racecar' and 'kayak' and 'level' are the same whether they
are read left to right or right to left. (palindromes)

There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.

There are 336 dimples on a regulation golf ball.

There are more chickens than people in the world.

There are only four words in the English language which end in "dous":
tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.

There are two words in the English language that have all five vowels in
order: "abstemious" and "facetious."

There is a word in the English language with only one vowel, which
occurs five times: "indivisibility."

There's no Betty Rubble in the Flintstones Chewables.

Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.

Two-thirds of the world's eggplant is grown in New Jersey.

TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only
on one row of the keyboard.

Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance.

Women blink nearly twice as much as men.

Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks;
otherwise it will digest itself.


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Old 26th March 2005, 13:05   #20
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actually the continent thing is untrue: North America and South America...doesn't hold up to that...
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Old 28th March 2005, 15:01   #21
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CaliAtenza
actually the continent thing is untrue: North America and South America...doesn't hold up to that...
Guess i already mentioned that in post 13 in this thread..
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Old 15th April 2005, 10:57   #22
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Do you guys know that US govmnt released a postage stamp on pamela anderson.But then stopped issuing it .;-).People started licking the wrong side
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Old 16th April 2005, 01:25   #23
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!! Amazing facts about the human body !!

OK guys, I’m laying before you a few fundamental facts of the human body. Please take the time to go through this really really long post.

I'm sure, by the end you will be in awe of the marvelous body that God / Nature has blessed you with. And I hope you will endeavor to take good care of it.


FACTS ABOUT THE SKELETEAL SYSTEM.

Compact bones such as the thigh's femur can support more weight than granite or reinforced concrete. When pulled end to end - a test to see the tensile strength - bone endures forces of 10,000 to 20,000 pounds per square inch, about the same as pure iron. Squeezed in compression, bone withstands pressure up to 30,000 pounds per square inch. Yet, to keep from damaging the fragile human tissue it connects, bone must be lightweight. The skeleton of a 160-pound body weighs only about 29 pounds. The same framework in steel would be four or five times as heavy. The bones are composed of densely packed mixture of hard mineral crystals-chiefly calcium and phosphorous-and fibrous proteins called collagens. This carefully balanced recipe for bone permits the routine performance of what are in fact magnificent physical stunts. An everyday sit-up for instance burdens the lower spine with as much as pressure as deep-sea divers feel at 570 feet below water. A high jump may load the femur with some 20,000 pounds of stress upon landing; and the bones of the feet must suffer body's weight during each of the 19,000 steps an average person takes each day.

There are 19 bones in each hand, 26 bones in each foot and 29 bones in the skull.

By the time you grow from infancy to adulthood, you will have about 144 fewer bones.

The body grows about a third of an inch every night but shrinks to its original size the next day. Gravity makes the difference. In bed, the cartilage disks of the spine are relieved of gravity's downward pull and expand, adding to body length. A prolonged absence of gravity such as that experienced in space can stretch an astronaut by an inch or two. In old age these Inter vertebral discs get dehydrated and decrease in height, that is what partially contributes to the overall loss of height of an old person.




FACTS ABOUT THE BRAIN, the most enigmatic organ of our body.

The brain reaches its maximum weight by age 20 - approx. 3 pounds and numbers about 100 billion nerve cells. Over the next 60 years, as billions of nerve cells die within the brain, it loses about 3 ounces.

The brain begins to develop after the third week following conception. It arises from a sheet of just 125,000 cells - the neural plate. There after, for remaining eight months of pregnancy 250,000 new neurons appear every minute.

The brain accounts for only 2% of the body weight. But it bathes in 15% of the blood at any given instant and consumes 20% of the nutrition and oxygen. It is the organ that can withstand lack of oxygen for the least amount of time - 3 to 4 minutes only. After this, permanent & usually irreversible damage starts taking place in it.

Messages travel along the nerves as electrical impulses. The largest nerve fibres carry signals at only about 200 miles per hour; others transmits signals slower than 55 miles per hour, at 'leisurely' pace compared to electrons moving at ten thousand miles per second.

The brain receives impulses for perception of pain from the whole body, while the trauma at brain is painless.

About a 100 different chemicals transmit information in the brain and along nerves.

The blood vessels inside the brain have a unique type of wall with cells tightly packed against one another (unlike elsewhere in the body). This is called the 'Blood Brain Barrier'. It protects the brain against the fluctuating composition of blood and minimizes the entry of potentially toxic compounds.

There are 45 miles of nerves in the skin of a human being.

One human brain generates more electrical impulses in a single day than all of the world's telephones put together. This gives a idea of the complex mechanisms by which it controls most of the functions of our body. That is why mental tension / stress can cause multiple disorders.

It is said that an average person uses only about 10% of his brain potential in his lifetime.



AMAZING HAIR FACTS

Hair is the fastest growing tissue (most of which is dead) in the body, second only to bone marrow.

35 meters of hair fibre is produced every day on the average adult scalp.

The average scalp has 100,000 hairs. Redheads have the least at 80,000; brown and black haired persons have about 100,000; and blondes have the most at 120,000.

90% of scalp hairs are growing and 10% are resting.

It is normal to lose 100 hairs per day from the scalp.

You must lose over 50% of your scalp hairs before it is apparent to anyone.

Over 50% of men by age 50 have male pattern hair loss.
40% of women by the time they reach menopause will have female pattern (hereditary) hair loss.



SOME FACTS ABOUT OUR SKIN.

Did you know that the skin is also an 'Organ' of our body, and a very sophisticated organ with numerable functions.

Skin is the largest & heaviest 'organ' of the body. The entire skin of an average adult can weigh upto 20 pounds and covers an area more than 18 sq. ft.

Skin is the interface of our body with the environment and serves many functions crucial to survival, including protection against the elements (including UV rays, mechanical & chemical injury, invasion by infectious agents & prevention of dehydration). The other critical function is thermoregulation, that is to maintain the temperature of the body within the functional range. It functions as a sensory receptor, monitoring diverse environmental stimuli, sends warning messages and takes preventive actions. It also plays and active role in immunological surveillance and excretion.

In 1 square inch of skin there are about 4 yards of nerve fibers, 1300 nerve cells, 100 sweat glands, 3 million cells, twenty feet of blood vessels AND about 20 million bacteria !!

The skin wrinkles if submerged in water for too long because water leaking into the softer cell layer causes them to buckle.

The skin that we actually touch is dead. Cells rise from the bottom of each layer of skin to replace those lost at the top as dead cells are rubbed off or washed away.

The skin is elastic. It stretches to accommodate weight gain and shrinks to your new size as you become slimmer.

Both black and white people have equal numbers of pigment producing cells. It is the genes that determine the rate at which these cells produce pigment.

There are limits to the amount of skin loss through burns that the body can tolerate. Age also affects our capacity to survive major burns. Up to 35 years of age the loss of 75 percent is generally fatal. In the middle age, death is likely to occur after a loss of 50 percent. In old age survival is always doubtful, but a 25 percent loss will probably prove fatal.

The skin cannot lie. Lie detectors, or polygraphs work on the principle that under stress or threat the skin undergoes certain measurable changes caused by hormonal activity.



AMAZING FACTS ON REPRODUCTION

At the moment of ejaculation some 350 million spermatozoa will be deposited around the cervix, yet something less than 100 will ever get near the female egg, of which only 1 is required for pregnancy. .
The female egg is 85000 times bigger than the male sperm.
As many as 50 percent of the total number of spermatozoa will carry some sort of abnormality. The cervix amazingly recognises this fact and rejects them, thus successfully preventing their access to the fertile egg.

Human beings are neither totally male nor female. Each male carries some level of female hormones, and females have a similar male hormone content.



EAR FACTS.

The ear is the organ we not only use for hearing, but more importantly for balance (the primary function). Our world would be disastrous without constant monitoring of our orientation and equilibrium. People with 'vertigo' will vouch for that. The ear consists of three quite separate systems.

The outer ear is the part we all are familiar with- the whorled flap that we call the ear. This exposed part of the ear helps to amplify sound and to assist with the location of the sounds. If a sound is directed at you, you automatically turn your head in order to locate it accurately. This happens because the plotting function of the ear cannot operate if both ears receive the same sound at exactly the same moment. The effectiveness of this function depends on the ability of the brain to measure this minute difference in time. Even with the eyes closed, a person can locate the source of sound to within 3 degrees of the direction: for comparison, an owl can locate sound to within one degree !

The outer ear deflects the sounds into a canal that leads on down to the eardrum, which reacts to sound by vibrating. These vibrations are transmitted to the middle ear where the three tiniest bones in the body are located. Their job is to convert the sound into shorter, more powerful vibrations.

These vibrations enter the inner ear, the cochlea, a coiled chamber partially filled with fluid. Deep inside the cochlea is the organ of corti, sometimes called the real organ of hearing & balance. When stimulated, the hair cells of this organ send impulses directly to the brain & a sound is registered.

Seasickness (or other motion sickness) is caused by the brain misinterpreting the movement of the fluid in the cochlea. This fluid moves constantly in response to the movement of the boat even if you remain perfectly still. The brain thinks that the movement is yours and tries to stabilise the body. The effect and the confusion that follows results in nausea and dizziness.

The Sound energy is converted into mechanical energy when it strikes the eardrum and the bones. This mechanical energy then is tranferred to the fluid of the cochlea where it becomes hydraulic energy. The ripples in the fluid stimulate the hair cells, which on mechanical stimulation, generate numerous electric impulses (electrical energy). These are transmitted via the auditory nerve to the hearing centre in the brain. And finally we perceive sound ! By the way, for transmission of these impulses from a nerve cell to another, some very complex chemical reactions take place. Also there are millions of hair cells but each one deals with only one type of frequency.

Exposure to noise for prolonged periods can harm almost every system in the body.

There are many stories, which would suggest that babies hear and remember sounds they have heard in the womb.



TRULY AMAZING FACTS ABOUT CELLS – the smallest and most fundamental unit of our body.

Every human, i.e. each of us, has spent about half an hour as a single cell in the uterus.

Our cells produce over five tons of protein in a lifetime.

50,000,000 of the cells in your body will die and be replaced with new cells, all while you have been reading this sentence !!!

300 million cells die in the body every minute, but the number of cells remains fairly constant throughout our life. Dead cells are replaced immediately

That means every day more than 300 billion cells die, this consequently means that every day an adult produces 300 billion cells. In childhood (growing age) even more are produced to contribute to the growth of various organs.

Macrophages (white blood cells) in the body consume these billions of dying cells each day.

A neutrophil (a type of white blood cell) can kill 25 bacteria before being killed by its own digestive juices and the accumulated toxins of the bacteria.

In one second, 3 million red blood cells die; the very same number are simultaneously produced. Totally there are about 30 trillion of them circulating in the body.

Stacked one on top of the other, red blood cells obtained from one human being would reach 31,000 miles into the sky.

In just one second, the human body completes about 500 trillion faultless copies of haemoglobin, a protein containing more than 570 amino acids in addition to iron and other components. This is contained in the red blood cell.

More than a trillion platelets patrol the bloodstream repairing rents and tears on the walls of blood vessels to ensure smooth uninterrupted blood flow. Platelets live for only 10 days.

DNA - the molecule that contains the blueprint of our body - can be stretched to 6 feet but lies coiled in a nucleus that is barely 1/2500th of an inch in diameter.

The whole body is made up of small cells. It is like a nation of 100 trillion or so individual cells. Each cell in its turn contains smaller units called as organelles. These cells are busy building the fundamental chemical stuff. The work is previously programmed by the genetic codes present in them. This genetic code is situated within the forty-six tightly packed DNA. It is made up of three billion possible chemical combinations, fifty thousand genes. This is the blue print for reproducing any one of body's two hundred odd different types of specialised cells. All these activities are predestined like that of a programme and are carried out by the cells themselves without direct commands from the brain.

Almost all cells are constantly moving, pulsating and dividing.
Every cell in the body contains enough information to reproduce any other cell in the body & do whatever its specialised function may be. But heart cells only reproduce heart cells, liver cells reproduce only liver cells etc. Cells simply fail to recognise any set of instructions other than the ones necessary to reproduce themselves



Isn't our body marvellous ?! Scientists too date, have not been able to 'produce' a single fully functional cell. All they have been able to do is to 'coax' some cells to divide &/or differentiate into a different type. And they are jubilant about it !!! That is what life is all about.
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Old 16th April 2005, 01:28   #24
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Oh yes, another one that I came across recently.

There is no letter 'a' in any number from 'zero' to 'nine hundred ninety nine' !!!

Found it hard to believe but it's true
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Old 17th April 2005, 03:49   #25
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bikefreak
Oh yes, another one that I came across recently.

There is no letter 'a' in any number from 'zero' to 'nine hundred ninety nine' !!!

Found it hard to believe but it's true


after reading that i actually tried a few lol .nice one !!


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Old 2nd March 2010, 15:44   #26
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Quote:
Originally Posted by moralfibre View Post
...
OWEN'S LAW
As soon as you sit down to a cup of hot coffee, your boss will ask you
to do something which will last until the coffee is cold.

HOWDEN'S LAW
You remember you have to mail a letter only when you're near the
mailbox.
...
Most hilarious post i have seen
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Old 2nd March 2010, 16:49   #27
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read more similar things here

Murphy Laws Site - Murphy Laws
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Old 2nd March 2010, 16:53   #28
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Well heres something- A condom company in Russia had to change their brand name as the name went in to lot of controversies and was later banned by government.
Brand name: Putin.
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Old 2nd March 2010, 18:19   #29
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India is the only country in the world to have both tigers and lions in the wild.
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Old 2nd March 2010, 18:29   #30
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bikefreak View Post
Oh yes, another one that I came across recently.

There is no letter 'a' in any number from 'zero' to 'nine hundred ninety nine' !!!

Found it hard to believe but it's true
Actually that is true for the letters 'b' and 'c' as well. 'd' occurs for the first time in one hundred.
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