White bread was the original pencil eraser.

<--Eddie
Before erasers were invented, people used a rolled up piece of white bread to erase graphite. Some artists still use bread today to lighten charcoal or pastel marks. This changed when Edward Naime, an English engineer invented the eraser in 1770. The eraser is called a rubber in some places. The story is that Naime grabbed some rubber instead of bread on accident to erase something and realized its ability.
For this reason it received its name, because it could rub out pencil marks. It was the first practical application found for the substance. Rubber, like bread, was perishable and went bad over time. Charles Goodyear invented the process of vulcanization in 1839 and made rubber erasers common.
Then in 1858, Hymen Lipman patented attaching erasers to the ends of pencils. Later the patent was revoked since it combined two things already invented instead of inventing something new. Modern erasers come in all types of colors and shapes. They are now made of rubber, vinyl, plastic, gum, or other similar materials.


The New Zealand Toothbrush Fence, referenced in Flight of the Concords, is a real thing!


The fence was created by Laird McGillicuddy Graeme Cairns in Te Pahu, New Zealand. He’s wired the toothbrushes on a fence to rival an infamous bra fence located in Cardrona Valley, New Zealand. Cairns is certain that with just a few hundred more toothbrushes, tourists will come from all over the world to witness the unusual fence.
He got the idea from his own hoard of used toothbrushes he keeps. Apparently, people began putting their toothbrushes soon after he began his project and he’s gotten positive reviews. You too can have your toothbrush hanging from the fence. All you have to do is send the used toothbrush to: The Toothbrush Bucket 294 Limeworks Loop Road Te Pahu, R D 5 Hamilton New Zealand


There are fake bus stops that exist just to distract dementia patients in case they wander from their care home!

<-- not the bus stop
A known issue with Alzheimer's patients is that they sometimes wander off from the care facilities. A nursing home in Germany came up with an interesting solution to the issue. The problem is that the patients can wander really far and get hurt or feel scared and alone. The first place people go often is the bus stop. So, a nursing home decided to create a fake bus stop in front of it.
The idea was that when the patient would wander off, he or she would sit at the bus stop and wait for a bus. The staff would eventually see them out there. In the beginning, the neighbors thought it was a real bus stop. The staff had to go to the stop and explain to them all that it wasn’t real and explain its purpose. Since then, though, the fake bus stop has been a great idea. When people get really upset, sometimes the nursing staff will take the patients to the bus stop, because they are convinced they need to get home to their family. The staff sits with the patient until they calm down and forget what they are doing and then return to the nursing home. It has changed the entire atmosphere of the nursing home. Pretty cool idea!


Your spit contains a painkiller that can be 6 times more powerful than morphine


Human saliva contains a natural painkiller called opiorphin. Due to its powerful painkilling ability, scientists are trying to synthesize a new natural painkiller from opiorphin. It is great, because it doesn’t have the same addicting attributes that morphine does and would work better with the body.
In a study, 1 milligram of opiorphin gave the same results as 3 milligrams of morphine did. In another study, involving rats standing on pins, they needed 6 times more morphine than opiorphin to make them oblivious to the pain.
Opiorphin works in the nerve cells of the spine. It stops the usual destruction of natural pain killing opiates in the spine called enkephalins. It is such a simple molecule, that scientists believe it’ll be possible to synthesize it and produce large quantities of it without needing to isolate it from saliva. Another approach is to find a drug that will make the body produce more opiorphin to manage pain.


The Beatles wanted to star in a film version of the Lord of the Rings. They wanted Stanley Kubrick to direct

Kubrick, of course is one of the best movie directors that ever lived. Some of his best known movies are '2001: A Space Odyssey,' 'A Clockwork Orange,' and 'The Shining.' When the film rights to The Lord of the Rings were sold to United Artists, The Beatles tried to jump on the opportunity to make a film about it. The Lord of the Rings was a huge hit with the '60s liberation movement and it makes sense that The Beatles would take interest in a project like this.
However, Stanley Kubrick had to turn them down. For him, the stories were impossible to capture on film. Indeed, the only projects based on the property were some mediocre animated movies for a long time, until Peter Jackson made the early 2000 versions. Peter Jackson later said that Tolkien had been against the idea of The Beatles being involved with such a project. Indeed, Tolkien was very protective of his IP and reportedly set up a clause that prohibited Disney from being involved in creating a movie based on his works.

A cat’s whiskers are normally as long as the cat is wide, helping it determine if it can fit into certain spaces!


Cats have whiskers in more places than just their cheeks, though that is the most common place. They also have them on their chins, eyebrows, and legs. The whiskers on their cheeks are the longest and most noticeable with 8-12 on each cheek. Occasionally whiskers will fall out and they are completely replaced within 2-3 months.
The whiskers grow to the length of the widest part of the cat’s body, normally their shoulder or hip span. They use their whiskers to gauge if they’ll be able to fit through openings. When a cat ducks its head into a space, it is actually seeing whether it’ll fit its body through the space by seeing how much space its whiskers have. If the whiskers bend or move, then the cat knows it won’t be able to fit through the space. They can also feel air movement flow through their whiskers. This helps them gauge distances and changes in air flow so they don’t run into things.


Lyndon B. Johnson nicknamed his penis 'Jumbo' and showed it to his colleagues at the US Capitol!


Lyndon B. Johnson was famous for his gusto, ego, and energy. He wanted to be the best President in the history of the U.S. despite his crass ways. The man was unpredictable at times. Once, in a Spanish restaurant, he jumped up on the table and proceeded to stomp and do flamenco dancing. He was a skilled storyteller who used his facial expressions to bring his stories to life.
Johnson said that he kept himself on a leash. It was a very loose leash, however. He would pee in the House Office building parking lot when he felt the need to go. When a colleague would enter the bathroom as Johnson was using a stall, he would turn around and show it to him! He called his penis “Jumbo” and asked if anyone had seen one so big. He’d even stand in the doorway of his office bathroom while making his assistants dictate what he was saying. Even when he was on the floor of the House and the Senate, he’d openly rummage around in his groin.


Ang Lee almost retired after the Hulk. His father persuaded him not to. He won the Best Director Oscar the next year!


Ang Lee is a Taiwanese-born American film director. He’s directed Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Sense and Sensibility, and Hulk. Lee has spent much time filming Asian genres. In 2003, he returned to direct Hulk. It was his first big-budget film. The movie received mixed reviews, but was ultimately moderately successful. Lee thought about retiring due to the setback, but his father encouraged him to stick with making movies.
Lee then took on a low-profile and independent film based on a Pulitzer Prize finalist short story by Annie Proulx. The film, Brokeback Mountain, showcased Lee’s ability to probe the depths of the human heart. The film caught the public’s attention and became a cultural phenomenon and a major box-office hit. It was critically acclaimed at numerous international film festivals and he received numerous Best Director and Best Picture awards worldwide. He was the first Asian to ever win the Best Director award at the Oscars.

In 1971, a 17 year old German girl was the sole survivor of a plane crash in the Amazon surviving 10 days on her own!


Juliane Koepcke was the daughter of two famous Zoologists who ran a research station in the Amazonian Jungles of Peru. She was on a flight with her mother going from Lima, Peru to Pucallpa, Peru in the Amazon jungle. The flight would take less than an hour. They were flying to spend Christmas with Juliane’s father. The flight went fine until halfway through it. A lightning bolt hit a fuel tank and ripped the right wing off.
Presents were flying around the cabin and then Juliane was sucked out of the airplane as it spiraled to the ground. She was still attached to a row of chairs. She fell two miles before she landed in the jungle among thick foliage. She knew about the Amazon and how to survive, because her father had taught her. She had a broken collarbone and one eye was swollen shut.
She had major lacerations on her arms and legs. She found a creek and began walking through it to find a stream that would lead her to a river and civilization. She survived crocodiles, piranhas, and devils rays. She walked for 10 days before she found a boat and a hut. She was starving and had maggots infesting her wounds. She stayed in the hut for the night and the next day Peruvian lumberjacks found her and brought her to a nearby town.


Listen, Listen, Listen, Listen, Listen, Listen, Listen, Listen





Inside Abraham Lincoln’s pocket watch is a long hidden message!


Lincoln wore clothes that didn’t quite fit him and had messy hair. He didn’t really seem to take stalk in how he looked. He did, however, take the time to buy a gold pocket watch that was very tell-tale of success in that time period from a Springfield, Illinois jeweler. His great-grandson, Lincoln, Isham donated the pocket watch to the Smithsonian in 1958.
On April 13, 1861, Confederate forces first attacked Fort Sumter and began the Civil War that changed the U.S. forever. On that day, and Irish immigrant and watchmaker, Jonathan Dillon was working on President Lincoln’s gold pocket watch at M.W. Galt and Co. jewelers in Washington D.C. Forty-five years later, Dillon told the New York Times that he was screwing the dial on the watch when his boss announced the shot had been fired and the war was beginning.
Dillon unscrewed the dial and with a sharp instrument he said he wrote “The first gun is fired. Slavery is dead. Thank God we have a President that at least will try.” After the Smithsonian received the pocket watch, they received a phone call from the great-great grandson of Jonathan Dillon telling them to open the pocket watch and see the hidden message.
The story had been passed down through his family. Amazingly, they decided to check and lo and behold, there was a message inscribed by Dillon, but not precisely what he’d said he wrote. The inscription read " The first gun is fired. Slavery is dead. Thank God we have a President who at least will try." Lincoln never knew he was carrying around the message.

A man underwent surgery to get a second heart!



This rare surgery adds an additional heart into the right side of the chest, because the one heart was too weak to keep his blood flowing properly. The patient, Tyson Smith, couldn't have simply gotten a heart transplant because the lungs would have resisted the blood flow from the new heart, and the heart would have failed.


A man's wallet was found 40 years after he lost it.




Back in 1970, Rudolph Resta worked as an art director in the promotion department of The New York Times. One otherwise ordinary day, he went to fetch his wallet from his coat in an unattended closet and found that it had been stolen! Four decades hence, his wallet has been replaced and the incident was all but a distant memory...that is, until he met José Cisneros.
Cisneros is a security guard who works in the former Times headquarters, now called the Times building. He found Resta's old billfold last fall, discarded inside an old unused window frame! A few months later, Cisneros was able to track down its former owner thanks to ID cards that remained inside the wallet. Nothing had been taken from the wallet other than cash - Resta recovered 40-year-old pictures of his wife and kids, a photograph of his deceased father, and an American Express card from when their colors used to be purple and white!



Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson was Tim Burton's second choice for the role of Willy Wonka in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Professional wrestler John Cena has granted more Make-A-Wish foundation wishes than any other person. Over 300!


Best known for his 19 WWE championships, professional wrestler John Cena is much more than meets the eye. Born in Massachusets, Cena originally attempted to make a living in body building, yet in 2000 started training to become a professional wrestler, and since that time has become one of the most famous in the business.
Besides dominating the wrestling world, Cena has dabbled in other projects ranging from rapping to acting in both television and film. Since becoming famous and receiving many endorsements, Cena has decided to give back to the community and those that are less fortunate. Finding a special place in his heart for children with life threatening illnesses, Cena has personally granted over 300 different children’s wishes, making him the largest wish granter in Make-A-Wish history!



The Arabic numerals were invented by Indian mathematicians!

You’ll probably be even more mind-blown by what exactly Arabic numerals are. They’re the 10 digits (0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9), which we use on a daily basis. So-called Arabic numerals are part of the Hindu-Arabic numeral system developed by Indian mathematicians.
The numerals were adopted by the Persian and Arabic mathematicians in India, who later passed it onto the Arabs further west. The numerals spread to Europe in the Middle Ages and European books, trade, and colonialism brought them to the rest of the world. The Europeans did not know that the digits were originally created by Indians; they thought that the digits came from the North African Arabs who introduced them to Europe.
Therefore, they named them “Arabic numerals.” The Arabs on the other hand, rightly called them “Indian numerals.”


Canada is implementing a new glow in the dark quarter with a dinosaur on it!


Sound strange? In a series of several new currency alterations, Canada has decided to remove their penny from circulation while also implementing a new glow in the dark quarter with a dinosaur on it! While this sounds like a completely random move, it actually has some significance.
Canada decided to mint this coin with a dinosaur on it because the Pachyrhinosaurus lacustai, which is the creature depicted, was the first dinosaur found in the Alberta region, which led to the discovery of a plethora of other dinosaur remains. To make the coin even more alluring scientists added a new design that is infused with a photo-luminescent element that allows the dinosaur’s skeleton to glow in the dark! If you plan on acquiring one of these coins we suggest you do it quickly because only 25,000 will be minted and will cost around 30 dollars each!


Penguins used to be as tall as humans!


Scientists recently found what appears to be the tallest penguin ever! Two new fossilized species have been found in New Zealand and one, the Kairuku grebneffi, is almost five feet tall! The skeletons were found nearly twenty years ago and have since been studied by a group of scientists from North Carolina State University.
Over fifty different species of extinct penguins have been found, yet scientists are so astonished at the stunning size of the Kairuku, which translates to “food diver.” The species dates back around 27 million years and it looks nothing like any other penguins seen, either alive or dead.
This species was slim, had long flippers and strong rear limbs, and although they have been intensely studied, scientists remain stumped as to the reason behind their incredible size.

There was a rebel youth group in Nazi Germany called The Edelweiss Pirates!


It consisted mostly of people aged 14 to 17 who were willing and eager to defy the tyranny of the Nazi Party. In many ways it was the opposite of Hitler Youth. Most of these kids were old enough to quit school (which was allowed at 14) and young enough to avoid conscription (which was only compulsory from the age of 17).
While Hitler Youth was established by the state, at the expense of leisure activities previously enjoyed by young people, Edelweiss offered young people a large amount of freedom. They were allowed to express themselves and interact with the opposite sex (Hitler Youth was sex segregated). In fact, casual meetings even offered German teens an opportunity for sexual experimentation with the opposite sex.
They also engaged in hiking and camping trips, which kept them away from the regime. But they weren’t completely passive. They actually ambushed the Hitler Youth patrols and often beat them up. One of their main slogans were; “Eternal War on the Hitler Youth.”


Serial killer Richard Chase attempted to enter the home of a woman but, finding that her doors were locked, walked away because it made him feel like he wasn’t welcome.


Richard Chase was a schizophrenic serial killer from Sacramento, California. He was nicknamed the Vampire of Sacramento because drank the blood of his victims and ate them. He killed six people all within one month. The first murder was on 29, 1977, which he committed by drive by shooting. Two weeks after, he tried to get into a woman’s house, but he found her doors were locked, so he walked away.
He told detectives later that he took locked doors as a sign that he wasn’t welcome. On the contrary, unlocked doors were an invitation to come inside according to him. His next victim was Teresa Wallin, who was three months pregnant. Four days after her, Chase murdered four people all in one house before eating some of the corpses.
He was caught on that murder and was sentenced to die by gas chamber (in California, gas chamber execution is a rarely used secondary method of execution). On December 26, 1980, while Chase was on death row, he committed suicide.


Google's "I'm feeling lucky" button loses them $110 million a year!

How could a simple button on their search page lose them money? The answer is actually quite simple. The “I’m feeling lucky” button allows users to be taken directly to the first search result, which means the user completely skips all other search engine results and pages.
How could this lose them money? According to statistics around 1% of all searches done on Google use this button, completely skipping all possible advertising, resulting in the company loosing around $110 million dollars in potential profits!
So why does the company keep an option that looses them a massive amount of profit? Simply because people like it and it keeps them coming back!
Recently, however, Google featured their Nexus 7 tablet on their homepage, making it the first time any advertising has been featured on their homepage.

The war hero "Black Hawk Down" is based on is now serving a sentence for rape!


Black Hawk Down is one of the most famous war movies of all time, yet it is a little known fact that the man who inspired the book and subsequent movie is currently serving a 30-year prison sentence for rape and child molestation. In fact, the government was so worried about the bad publicity when the movie was made that the Pentagon contacted producers and pressured them to change the main characters name.
In the movie Ranger John Grimes is called into battle and heroically braves the terrors of Somalia, which is mostly true. John “Stebby” Stebbins, the actual man, received one of the nations highest honors, the Silver Star, for his bravery, yet his ex-wife’s words speak for themselves in telling the truth that was later revealed. “They are going to make millions off this film in which my ex-husband is portrayed as an All-American hero when the truth is he is not."
On June eighth of 2000 Stebbins was court martialled and sentenced for “sodomy with a child under 12 and rape.”


Any South Korean male who wins an Olympic medal avoids the country’s mandatory two-year military service.


South Korea, like many countries, has a mandatory military service period for males between the ages of 18 and 35. You may remember last year when South Korean singer, actor, and model Rain made news upon giving his mandatory service. The period is about two years, but varies for the particular military branch. Army and Marine Corps enlistees serve a 21 month minimum, Navy enlistees serve 23 months, and Air Force enlistees serve a full 2 years.
Generally speaking, there isn’t much that would get someone out of serving- except for a gold medal. Sports athletes who win gold medals in the Olympic Games, the Asiad, or other notable sporting events are exempt and only have to complete four weeks of training. The Asiad is a multi-sport event similar to the Olympics held every four years in Asia. Officially, the games are organized by the Olympic Council of Asia and recognized by the International Olympic Committee. Behind the Olympics, these games make up the largest multi-sport event in the world.


Alexander the Great said in his will he wanted Asians and Europeans to cross-breed!


Alexander the Great expressed in his last will and testament the desire to see "transplant of populations from Asia to Europe and in the opposite direction from Europe to Asia, in order to bring the largest continent to common unity and to friendship by means of intermarriage and family ties."
Alexander the Great, or Alexander III of Macedon, was a king of Macedon in the fourth century BC. By thirty years old, he was responsible for one of the largest empires of the ancient world. To this day he is considered one of history’s most successful commanders. Before his death, he had given detailed written instructions as his last will.
Though Craterus, his successor, started to carry them out, the following kings didn’t. Included were things like the construction of a tomb for his father large enough to match the pyramids of Egypt, the erection of massive temples in Delos, Delphi, Dium, and more, and the erection of a temple to Athena at Troy. Also detailed was the conquest of Arabia and the Mediterranean Basin, circumnavigation of Africa, and of course the development of cities and movement of populations across Asia and Europe to bring better unity to the landmass.

Frodo wasn't the real hero of Lord of the Rings… Sam was!


JRR Tolkien considered Sam Gamgee the "chief hero" of The Lord of the Rings. If you’re unfamiliar with The Lord of the Rings, it is a world famous story of the struggle of a group of people to destroy a powerful ring before it results in the resurrection of the evil Sauron. The “main character” of the story is Frodo Baggins, a hobbit (a person with large hairy feet and in short stature).
Frodo is tasked with taking the ring to Mordor, the place where it can be destroyed. Frodo is joined by his gardener, Samwise Gamgee. Throughout the course of the story, it might seem obvious that the main character and carrier of the ring is the story’s hero. J. R. R. Tolkien, the author, saw things differently though. Tolkien claimed that Sam was the true hero of the story.
To be fair, the claim holds some merit. Sam did beat a man eating giant spider in single combat, storm a tower full of orcs on his own, resist the temptation of the ring, and carry Frodo up the side of a volcano essentially carrying the fate of the world on his back- all while suffering from starvation and dehydration. So it seems to stand to reason.


Arnold Schwarzenegger never accepted pay for being governor.


It’s something that every now and then is worth sitting down and taking a minute to think about: Arnold Schwarzenegger, The Terminator, was the Governor of California. Though his term was generally considered to be unremarkable, what is remarkable is that he never took a cent in payment for playing the role of Governator. Why? Well it should be fairly obvious.
He’s made such a fortune from acting that he didn’t need any of the money. In 2004 alone he made 17 million. Most of that income is from investments, real estate, and royalties from his movies. But that’s really only scratching the surface. Back when he first started as governor, his worth was estimated to be somewhere around $100 million. Now that he’s been out of office for two years, he’s had his share of controversies with the revelation of his secret son, and has seen a successful return to film most notably with The Expendables 2.


There is a "good" mosquito!


Good may be a relative word, but in the case of mosquitos the only “good” way to describe them is not around. So what would “good” mosquitos be? They’re called Toxorhynchites, or elephant mosquitos, and they’re a type of mosquito that survives by eating the larvae of other mosquitos!
The larvae of the elephant mosquito prey on other larvae and similar other pests. They are different from blood sucking mosquitos in that they don’t suck blood, but rather eat carbohydrate-rich materials like honeydew and other plants.
They live primarily in forests and jungles, yet scientists have considered spreading them to other areas of the world to deal with problems such as malaria and other insect transmitted diseases. Would you consider these to be “good?”

keep posting ts, nice tered

thanks man, sometimes feel unmotivated to post, but i will keep posting.

This post has been edited by iceypain: Jan 18 2013, 12:29 AM

too add to this, iinm, Sam's character was meant to be somewhat of Frodo's batman. (No, not THAT Batman.).

In the British Army, a batman was an orderly who acted as the personal servant of an officer. It was a role with which Tolkien (who served as an Army officer in the First World War) would have been extremely familiar.

Tolkien confirmed this theory in a private letter that says:

"My Sam Gamgee is indeed a reflexion of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognized as so far superior to myself.".

i'm with ya bro. always checking this thread when there's a new post.

MOAR

tered subscribed so bumping for great justice!

hdd-corrupted


During the Apollo 13 Moon mission, astronaut Jack Swigert did NOT say, "Houston, we have a problem."


After one of their oxygen tanks blew up, the crew of Apollo 13 was in major trouble because they were still about 200,000 miles from Earth! Contrary to the famous line from the 1995 Ron Howard film, Jack Swigert did not say, "Houston, we have a problem." Swigert instead uttered the phrase, "Houston, we've had a problem here." It may be splitting hairs a bit, but you can't rewrite history.


The first winner of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? did not need to use any of his lifelines.

On the million-dollar question, John Carpenter used the 'Phone A Friend' lifeline to call his father...but it wasn't for help determining the answer! Carpenter already knew the correct response, he just wanted to tell his dad that he was about to win a million dollars. What a badass.


A dog has been trained to sniff out cancer with 98% accuracy.


A black lab named Marine has been trained by Japanese scientists to detect colorectal cancer. She can detect cancer by sniffing a patient's breath. The dog sniffing test has been shown to be accurate 98% of the time. That's more accurate than more conventional tests, like the fecal occult test, which is only accurate 10% of the time.


The word "unfriend" has been added to the dictionary.


Not only that, the New Oxford American Dictionary voted it 2009's "word of the year"! In a tight race, the social networking term beat out other technological words such as "netbook," "sexting," and "hashtag" (the # thing used on Twitter posts to help them be found more easily). After the selection, several critics argued that the proper term is "defriend" and not unfriend. Oxford's researchers claim that unfriend is the more commonly used of the two.


Johnny Depp refuses to watch his own films.


Depp is so uncomfortable with the idea of watching himself on film that he says he would rather "swallow a bag of ticks." At least one person is extremely happy with this aversion - his frequent director, Tim Burton. Burton enjoys that Depp is not like a lot of other actors and does not need to playback his performances between takes. Johnny went on to say that it would probably take a few bottles of wine to ever get him to view any of his films!

CeDhhVss thanks bro

Sex Edition...

u wear glasses, sure a reject

thanks bro, but i do believe someof it are not correct, i think got some of it debunked in v1.