A policeman who promised a waitress half his lottery winnings kept his word after the numbers they chose together were selected.

Robert Cunningham, a 30-year-old detective, was a regular customer at Sal's Pizzeria in Yonkers, New York. One Friday evening in 1984 he made an offer to his favorite waitress, Phyllis Penzo - they would each select three numbers, which he would use to purchase a lottery ticket across the street. Cunningham jokingly said that they would split the ticket 50/50. The following night Penzo had completely forgotten about the purchase, when Cunningham burst through the door...clutching the WINNING lottery ticket! The policeman was true to his word and gave half of the $6 million prize to the waitress.


Worker ants live for only 45-60 days, but queen ants have been known to live as long as 29 years!



If it wasn't obvious already, the worker ants do all the WORK in the ant colony. This means foraging for food, looking after the colony's young, and defending their home for unwanted intruders. One nest in South America has had up to 700,000 members, so as you can plainly see, worker ants are basically expendable.

The queen ant, on the other hand, has a unique job and therefore lives a significantly longer life than her workers. A queen of the species Lasius niger in Europe lived for 29 years in captivity! Queen ants lay all the eggs that grow into the colony's worker ants. A leafcutter ant queen in South America lived for 14 years and bred over 150 million worker ants in her lifetime!


In 1966 the World Cup trophy was stolen and later found by a dog days before the tournament began.



The Jules Rimet trophy, which is made of solid gold and valued at 30,000 euro, was swiped while on display at Central Hall in Westminster, London. The trophy is named after a French lawyer who began the World Cup soccer tournament in 1929. The thieves also left behind postage stamps worth 3 million euro!

Several days after the thievery, a dog named Pickles found the cup in south London while on a walk with his owner! England ended up winning the tournament and the recovered trophy, but in 1970 Brazil was permitted to keep the trophy forever after winning their third title. Thirteen years later, the cup was stolen again in Rio de Janeiro - it has never been recovered.

Gandhi once wrote a personal letter to Hitler.

This letter was the first of two attempts by Gandhi to preempt the onset of World War II. Sadly, the British government did not allow the letter to be delivered. Just over a month later, Germany invaded Poland, an event that many consider the beginning of the war.

The following is a transcript of Gandhi's letter:

"Dear friend,

Friends have been urging me to write to you for the sake of humanity. But I have resisted their request, because of the feeling that any letter from me would be an impertinence. Something tells me that I must not calculate and that I must make my appeal for whatever it may be worth.

It is quite clear that you are today the one person in the world who can prevent a war which may reduce humanity to a savage state. Must you pay that price for an object however worthy it may appear to you to be? Will you listen to the appeal of one who has deliberately shunned the method of war not without considerable success? Any way I anticipate your forgiveness, if I have erred in writing to you.

I remain,
Your sincere friend

M. K. Gandhi"

Game of Thrones



Game of Thrones Was Supposed To Be a Movie

The TV series "Game of Thrones" is based off of a series of novels, called "A Song of Ice and Fire." After the first book came out, entitled "A Game of Thrones," the author, George R.R. Martin, was immediately approached by producers looking to make the series a movie saga. Martin said no because of the amount of material they would have to remove, and insisted that it be made into a TV show.


Peter Dinklage Was the Perfect Fit

When producer David Benioff read "A Song of Ice and Fire," he pictured Peter Dinklage playing the role of Tyrion Lannister and contacted him immediately after getting the producing spot for the TV show. No one else auditioned or was even optioned for the role-- this was clearly a good move!


The Cast Members Don't Read the Books

In order to remain true to their characters at the moment of filming, many of the actors and actresses on the show do not read the books. The actors and actresses have said that they are worried that reading ahead in the series will interfere with how they portray their characters at the given time, and that knowing their fate might impact how well they act.


Peter Dinklage and Lena Headey are BFFs in Real Life

Peter Dinklage (Tyrion Lannister) and Lena Headey (Cersei Lannister) are best friends in real life! When HBO picked up Dinklage for his part in the show, he recommended Headey to the director and producers of the show, and she auditioned and landed the role.


Dothraki Has a Dictionary

The producers of the show realized that they would have to hire a language creator to write out a dictionary of Dothraki for the scripts. They hired a man named David Peterson, and he created over 3000 Dothraki words and rules of grammar for the language, all of which is employed in the show.


The Iron Throne Took Forever to Make

In the series, they say that the Iron Throne was made by dragons' fire and a thousand swords, but in real life, it was made by a prop maker named Gavin Jones. This stunning and terrifying piece took Jones two months to make, and is made of wood and heated swords. It stands a whopping 8 feet tall.


The Producers Know What's Going to Happen

Writer of "A Song of Ice and Fire," George R.R. Martin, is turning 65 in September of 2013. Reportedly, he's told the show's producers D.B. Weiss and David Benioff what he envisions happening to the characters, just in case he dies before he can finish the book series.

A matador's cape is red not to provoke the bull but to hide blood splatters!



Bullfighting is a Spain thing for the most part. It is also quite a violent and mean sport. The first thing most people think about is a bull charging the red cape held by the matador. The red cape is called a muleta and matador means killer for those who don't speak the Español.

It is a common mistake to think that the bull is charging at the red cape, because it is red. In all actuality, bulls are color blind. The cape is red so that it can hide the blood spatters later on when they spear the bull repeatedly and kill it. The bull is actually irritated by the movement of the cape.

The red cape is actually one of many capes used dutring the fight, and it's the last one used. Before, there are several other capes of different colors to taunt the bull into charging. The red one is brought out when they're really ready to spill some blood and kill it.


Continuum, a magazine focused on AIDS denialism, was shut down when all of its editors died from AIDS.

Exactly what you would expect to happen happened here. While it might seem a strange idea in the US, there are a lot of people out there who deny AIDS is real, deny HIV is real, or deny that HIV causes AIDS.

Still, there is a surprisingly large “denialist” movement to try and disprove the existence of AIDS. Continuum was a magazine written by denialists and focusing on denialism. At one point, Continuum offered a £1,000 reward to "the first person finding one scientific paper establishing actual isolation of HIV.” The challenge was quickly dismissed by various scientists.

So the year 2007 came around, and aidstruth.org sought to counter denialist claims. By this point, Continuum had already shut down. Aidstruth.org published a list of HIV/AIDS denialists who had died of AIDS or related causes. The editors of Continuum were included in the list. In each case, the death was due to secret drug use or stress related to being a denialist. The founder of the magazine, Jody Wells, died in 1995. The editors Tony Tompsett and Huw Christie Williams died in 1998 and 2001, respectively.


The Body Mass Index (BMI) was never intended to be an indicator of health.



You’re probably already familiar with the Body Mass Index. Maybe you’ve also heard how it’s not a good indicator of how healthy you are or what your ideal weight should be. Put simply, that’s because it’s true. The BMI wasn’t meant to be healthiness meter.

The main problem with the BMI is that it doesn’t measure the percentage of body fat. Moreover, it was never meant to. The BMI first came around in the mid 1800’s when Belgian polymath Adolphe Quetelet was developing “social physics.” He wasn’t developing anything geared to show a healthy weight for height. BMI actually defines a person’s body mass divided by the square of his or her height. It’s used more for medicinal purposes (determining dosage) than showing ideal weight.

As seen in its numerous variations, the BMI also isn’t universal. Back in 1998 when the US National Institutes of Health and the CDC aligned US definitions of health with those of the World Health Organization, the BMI’s “normal” was changed, making some people suddenly overweight. The problem is obviously that the BMI is highly subjective, and while 25 million people in the US were factually overweight before 1998, the BMI didn’t say so until after.

A man created a sport that combines boxing gloves with TASERS!

Mixed martial arts are the current king of the fighting hill. Michael Alexander decided it wasn’t interesting enough, however, and upped the ante. Michael designed fighting gloves that have 3 million volt tasers sewn into them. The new and improved sport is called “ShockFighting.”

It has the same rules as mixed martial arts with the punching, kicking, and grappling with the added benefit of being shocked. The fighting isn’t all that impressive to watch. The sound of the crackling electricity when they actually make contact and connect with a punch is slightly disturbing. Alexander calls the fight style the ultimate art of extreme fighting.

The sport is widely illegal and unpopular as it is pretty sick to jab someone with a taser over and over again. The fighters involved aren’t that great, either, since real fighters aren’t sick enough to want to taser their opponent to win. It isn’t he classiest form of fighting, let’s just say that.


Shawn Crawford gave the 2008 Olympic silver medal for the 200m dash to Churandy Martina, who’d been disqualified!

In the 2008 Olympics, there were major disputes over the 200m run. Initially, Churandy Martina of the Netherlands island in the Caribbean, Curacao, won silver. This was a major moment for him and his country. The win made him the the second athlete from his nation to win an Olympic medal. After being taken to the medals room, he was told to wait for a long time. Eventually the officials came in and told him he was disqualified.

The U.S. made a big fuss over him stepping on the line during the race. The bronze medalist was also disqualified for the same reason. So, the fourth and fifth place runners, who were American, received silver and bronze medals. Shawn Crawford was the silver medalist. Crawford felt very wrong receiving the medal and decided to give it to Martina after all the media had left.

A week later before they ran in Zurich, Crawford left the medal and a note in a package for Martina at the hotel. Martina was shocked to get the silver medal and graciously took it. He doesn’t feel like it is his, though, and would rather Crawford have it. So, now no one seems to want the 2008 Olympic silver medal for the 200m run.


The oldest surviving gun was made in 1288!

It is made of pure bronze, and was discovered at a site in modern-day Acheng District Heilongjian, China where many battles were fought at the time. It has a 6.9 inch barrel of a 1 inch diameter, a 2.6 inch chamber for gunpowder and a socket for the firearm’s handle. But it’s by no means the first gun!

The earliest depiction of a firearm is a sculpture from a cave in Sichuan,-you guessed it-China. The sculpture dates back to the 12th century and has flames and a cannonball coming out of it. Some other fun firearms facts:

The name “Ku Klux Klan” was inspired by the sound of a rifle being cocked
A bullet fired from a gun parallel to the ground, and an identical bullet dropped from the same height at the same time, will both hit the ground at the same time.
High quality paper is referred to as cartridge paper because brass cartridges of gunpowder and a ball were wrapped in paper of high quality paper.

An island was formed naturally off the coast of Iceland in 1963 from a volcano eruption



An island named Surtsey just off the coast of Iceland finished forming in 1967 with a total surface of 2.7 km2 (1.0 sq mi). Since then, wind and wave erosion have caused the island to steadily diminish in size

As of 2002, its surface area was 1.4 km2 (0.54 sq mi). By the year 2100, the island should disappear completely. The island’s only human impact is a hut with a few bunk beds and a solar power source to drive an emergency radio and other key electronics.

All visitors check themselves and belongings to ensure no seeds are accidentally introduced by humans to this ecosystem. Scientists keep the growth of plants as natural as possible. For example, an improperly handled human defecation resulted in a tomato plant taking root which was immediately destroyed.


The Philippines celebrates the longest Christmas season in the world!

The Filipinos are known for starting the Christmas celebration in September and ending in early January. Schools and work places alike hold Christmas parties with singing, dancing, skits, and games.

They have abundant traditions and festivities throughout their holiday season to mark Christmas Day and its importance to them. The Philippines is one of only two Asian countries that is predominantly Catholic and celebrates Christmas.


Mario got his name from the Nintendo office’s landlord



Mario Segale rented a warehouse to the then budding videogame company, Nintendo as they were working on a videogame called ‘Donkey Kong’. Unfortunately, the starting up company was behind on its rent which awarded a visit from Segale.

After a promise from Nintendo’s president that the rent would be paid, Segale simply left. Legend has it that this encounter gave the developers an idea to rename the character ‘Jumpman’ as ‘Mario’ and the rest is history.


“Big Ben” is not as big as you think!



You might think that “Big Ben” is a tall tower in London, when actually what’s called Big Ben is the bell that rings inside of it.

The original bell was 16 tons and casted on August 6, 1856. The bell was transported to the tower on a trolley drawn by 16 horses!

The tower has had many malfunction like in New Year’s Eve 1962, the clock was delayed for 10 minutes due to ice and snow on the long hands!

nice read!

An old form of torture involved getting your feet licked by a goat.



This method dates back to medieval Europe. It’s a form of “tickle torture”, though it is actually more painful and gruesome than you would expect. The victim’s feet are soaked in salt water (or in some cases, sugar). Then a goat is brought in to lick the salt off the victim’s feet. What starts off as an annoying tickling feeling becomes increasingly painful. The intense licking causes the skin of the feet to get raw and blistered. This torture continues until the victim’s flesh starts wearing away.


A nutrition professor at KSU lost 27 on the “Twinkie Diet”.



Mark Haub was making a point about how much more important calorie intake is to your weight and overall health than nutritional value. For 10 weeks, Haub went on an 1800-calorie-per-day diet that consisted of junk food: chips, twinkies, donuts, cookies, etc. Since his calorie intake was less than his output, he lost weight. His BMI went from the “overweight” category (28.8) to “normal” (24.9). His body fat dropped from 33.4% to 24.9%. Surprisingly, even his cholesterol numbers improved. His “bad” cholesterol went down 20% and his “good” cholesterol went up 20%.


The man who discovered the 3D visual effect couldn't even see it because he was blind in one eye.



Dr. Carl Pulfrich was an early pioneer in the design of sterescopes, images that appear to be three-dimensional that are composed of two separate two-dimensional images. (like a View-Master toy). He’s well-known for observing and documenting what is now known as the “Pulfrich effect”.

The Pulfrich effect is the illusion of depth created by our brains when viewing an object with a dark filter applied to one eye. This effect is the basis behind the 3-D movies that we can see today in theaters. In Pulfrich’s own words: “I have never been able to observe these effects myself, for I have been blind in the left eye for 16 years.”

Freddie Mercury had a vocal range twice as wide as the average untrained person. He never had any vocal training!

< dat bulu..........

His range was 4 octaves, which is pretty impressive for any singer. However, what's more impressive about Freddie's range is that he never had any formal vocal training before becoming as famous as he did. He was the frontman for the British band "Queen," which launched his career to the proverbial stratosphere. He later had a successful career as a solo artist.

His talents were many; Mercury played piano, sang, and wrote songs. His legacy is pretty big. Mercury was mentioned in Kurt Cobain’s suicide note, and “Queen” is still popular to this day, having some songs considered among the best rock songs in history.


There is a rare virus your Pokémon can catch that’s been around since Gold and Silver!



Pokerús is a microscopic life-form that can attach to the Pokémon. It first appeared in the Generation II games. The infected Pokémon can pass it on if it's being held next to another non-infected Pokémon in your party. It’s actually easiest to spread if the Pokémon is in the main party after a battle.

What does it do? Pokérus is actually good for your Pokémon! When a Pokémon has caught the Pokérus, it will gain double the effort values for battling. Because of this, players have found ways to delay the amount of time that a Pokémon is infected.

After the Pokémon fights off the virus and becomes immune, it can’t spread the virus any more. It's extremely rare to find a Pokémon in the wild infected with Pokérus. In fact, some say that the chances are 1/3 of the changes of finding a shiny Pokémon. What's more, because there's no visual sign that a Pokémon is infected, chances are, the player probably defeats or runs away from infected Pokémon.


An allergist has spent 60 years cracking ONLY his left-hand knuckles to prove it's not bad for you!

The original fact on cracking your knuckles is one of our most popular of all time. Basically, it said that cracking your knuckles is not bad for you, no matter what the old wives' tales may say.

However, probably the most convincing study on this comes from a man who just won an "Ig Nobel" for his self-study on knuckle-cracking.

Dr. Donald Unger has spent the better part of the last 60 years cracking the knucles of his left hand. He started because he wanted to prove his mom wrong when she told him he would have health problems if he kept doing it.

Since he started, he has NEVER cracked the knuckles on his right hand. This means that, if it's true that cracking your knuckles was bad for your fingers, then his left-hand fingers would have a horrible arthritis while his right-hand fingers would be ok.

Well, the doctor, now 83, says "there is not the slightest sign of arthritis in either hand." His research has won him an "Ig Nobel," which is a tongue-in-cheek parody of the real Nobel awards.

Freddie Mercury

There are actually 6 degrees of burns!



You've probably heard a lot about 3rd degree burns. They're the ones you hear about the most on news reports. The reason for this is that 3rd degree burns are the most severe types of burn that do not result in loss of life if treated in time. What are the other kinds of burns? Read on to find out, but fair warning, descriptions can be a little gruesome to read.

People who suffer 4th degree burns damage not just their skin, but also their muscles, ligaments and tendons. They're usually due to fire or severe electric shock. Although mortality is high, if a victim survives, they will need to undergo skin grafting as part of the procedure.

5th degree burns are the ones in which everything up to the bone is burnt. This means all skin, muscle ligaments, and tendons are damaged. The bone might even be damaged. Although these are almost impossible to survive, the only treatment for survivors is amputation.

6th degree burns are usually diagnosed at the time of autopsy. In these burns, even the bone is charred. It's considered impossible for humans to suffer these burns, death is inevitable.


Dogs use their wet nose to sense the direction that smells are coming from.



It’s likely that you know how vital a dog’s sense of smell is. Some would say smell is a dog’s most important sense, even exceeding vision and hearing. So well developed are the olfactory receptors (the smell receivers) in dogs that it is estimated that they are forty times bigger than than those of humans. The sense of smell is what dominates a dog’s brain, like how the sense of sight is what dominates the human brain.

Dogs have typically anywhere from 125 million to 225 million olfactory receptors, depending on breed, size, and brain size. Bloodhounds are the record holders for having the most olfactory receptors, though, at a much higher 300 million receptors. Dogs have a sense of smell that ranges from 100,000 to 1,000,000 times better than humans. With bloodhounds, it can be as high as 100,000,000 times better. Then there is the wet nose. Have you ever actually wondered why dogs often have wet noses? It’s not a defect or, like the common urban legend goes, an indicator of whether they are sick or healthy.

The wet nose is used to help determine what direction a particular smell is coming from. Because dogs can smell hundreds of different scents at one time, it’s an important device to help them pick out one particular smell. This is also why dogs typically tilt their snouts upward when trying to detect a smell. If it doesn’t make much sense to you, think of it like how we sometimes lick our fingers to try and detect which way the wind is blowing. The moisture helps to identify currents in the air.


Starting a space colony? Make sure you take this many people so you can prevent inbreeding!



The minimum amount of people needed to populate a space colony with minimum inbreeding would be 160. A space colony, or a moon or Mars colony, might sound like something pretty cool, until you consider the small available gene pool after a few generations.

Sure, in theory you could just Adam and Eve it up there, starting with only two people. But obviously that introduces problems once you reach generation two. While, according to geneticists, Adam and Eve (or Y Chromosomal Adam and Mitochondrial Eve, as they’re called) had the genetic information to produce all the humans on the earth, it wouldn’t be possible to replicate that.

The number, according to geneticists, comes to 160 people- 80 men and 80 women. This of course depends on the variance in genes, so these people would all need to be as distantly related as possible. While some animals are all genetically the same, humans need a pretty big gene pool to not turn out abnormally.

In a colony started of only 2 people, inbreeding would create numerous health problems and likely lead to an extinction of the colonists after enough time. So remember kids: inbreeding bad, large gene pools good.

Native Americans weren't considered US Citizens until 1924!



It seems ironic that a group of people that had been occuping the land that is now the United States were not considered citizens of that land until the Snyder Act, or the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, but it's true. Native Americans numbers had fallen considerably by this time, and there were only about 300,000 indigenous people in the US at the time.

Interestingly, the Snyder Act only affected 125,000 out of those 300,000. The rest had already received citizenship through other means: entering armed forces, giving up tribal affiliations and assimilating into mainstream American life. So this act really applied to those individuals that still lived in tribal lands and did not want to give that up to be considered 'American.' Despite the fact that all Native Americans were made citizens at that point, they did not have full voting rights until 1948, because several states refused to grant them voting rights.


There’s a condition where blind people don’t realize they are blind.



It’s called Anton-Babinski syndrome, and is very rare. It results from brain damage that occurs in the occipital lobe. Those who suffer from it are officially blind, but believe beyond the shadow of a doubt that they are capable of seeing- even when they are faced with clear evidence that they cannot see. It is mostly seen following a stroke, but can also follow a very bad head injury.

As described by neurologist Macdonald Critchley, the patient often behaves and talks like he or she can still see, but will walk around bumping into objects that are plainly visible nonetheless. He or she will also start to describe people and objects that are around him or her, or more accurately, what he or she THINKS is around him or her. This is where the confusion, or confabulation, sets in. These people believe they can see because they think they are seeing people and objects around them, even though what is truly surrounding them is something completely different. Think of it like watching a movie and thinking what is happening in the movie is what is actually around you. People affected by this think they know what is around them, but are really completely wrong.


There was a phantom island off the coast of Ireland called Hy-Brasil, which was not discounted until 1865, seven years before its last sighting.



Hy-Brasil was known about for hundreds of years, yet for almost 150 years it’s been known not to exist. Maps from 1623 clearly depict the island as well as several others that were all later proved not to exist. These are what are called “phantom islands.” Like many of these phantom islands, Hy-Brasil was based on a combination of legend, faulty observation, and wishful thinking.

Its earliest appearance on a map dates from 1325. In 1497, a Spanish diplomat reported to have made a journey to the island, the first known of many who claimed to see it. Another of these was John Nisbet, a captain who in 1674 claimed to have anchored on the island and sent four men ashore. They allegedly met an Irish monk who gave them gold and silver.

For years, it was rumored to be obscured by mist except for one day every seven years. Other captains also visited the island and confirmed what Nisbet said. The last appearance of the island was in 1872, seven years after it was officially removed from nautical charts. TJ Westropp, who had twice seen the island, brought a party of witnesses to see the island with him. They all claimed to see the island appear, and then disappear forever. What do you make of all of this?

Ministry Of Education gonna rage

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This post has been edited by CeDhhVss: Aug 14 2013, 09:42 AM

damn.

time to move to finland