Real Facts

[AnAnYa]

[AnAnYa]

Cracking your knuckles does not actually hurt your bones or cause arthritis. The sound you hear is just gas bubbles bursting.

Cracking your knuckles (or any of your joints) can have therapeutic benefits. When you crack one of your joints you are pulling the bones that are connected at the joint apart from each other. This process stimulates your tendons, relaxes your muscles, and loosens your joints. Chiropractors do this for spinal joints when your back is sore and stiff, but you can do this on your own for your knuckles, toes, knees, neck, etc.

Unfortunately, there can be too much of a good thing. Cracking your knuckles will never lead to arthritis (despite what your mom keeps telling you), but scientists have discovered that it can cause tissue damage in the affected joints. Knuckle-cracking pulls your finger bones apart which stretches your ligaments. Too much stretching of your ligaments will cause damage to your fingers akin to the arm injuries sustained by a baseball pitcher who throws too many pitches. In addition to making your hand really sore, this ligament damage can also result in reduced grip strength.

How does this work? Your joints, the places in your body where you can bend, are where your bones intersect and are held together by ligaments. These joints are surrounded by a liquid called synovial fluid. When you stretch your ligaments by pulling the bones apart to crack your knuckles a gas in the synovial fluid escapes and turns into a bubble. This process is called cavitation. Cavitation ends when the bubble eventually bursts, producing that popping sound we know and love. After that, your joints won't be able to crack for another 25-30 minutes while the gas gets reabsorbed into the synovial fluid.

[AnAnYa]

Crossing your fingers for luck is actually a Christian symbol for invoking protection by emulating the shape of a cross!

Crossing your fingers is a hand gesture commonly used to superstitiously wish for good luck. The gesture is referred to by the common expression "keeping one's fingers crossed" or just "fingers crossed," meaning "let’s hope for a positive result".

The gesture has also been historically used in order to allow believers to recognize one another during times of persecution. Some people, mostly children, also use the gesture to excuse their telling of a lie. It may have it's roots in the belief that the power of the Christian cross might save one from being sent to hell for telling a lie.

A similar belief is that crossing one's fingers invalidates a promise being made. The gesture is also used to express two people being close friends with the accompanying phrase, "They are like this." In 16th century England, people crossed their fingers to ward off evil. They also did it when someone sneezed or coughed.

[AnAnYa]

50 million years ago there was an animal with the body like a gorilla and the head like a horse!

The Chalicotheres were a group of herbivorous mammals spread throughout North America, Europe, Asia and Africa approximately 55 million years ago. Fossils show long forelimbs and short hind limbs, which leads scientists to conclude that they walked with most of their weight on their hind legs.

Their front legs had long, curved claws which indicate that they walked on their knuckles, much like gorillas do. Chalicotheres had horse-like faces, and in fact, evolved 40 million years ago into smaller forest animals that were similar to early horses.

[AnAnYa]

Four is the only number that has the same amount of letters as its actual value.

F = 1 ,
O = 2 ,
U = 3 ,
R = 4

[AnAnYa]

The opposite sides of dice always add up to seven.

As you can see in the picture, the 1 is on the opposite side of the 6, the 2 is on the opposite side of the 5, and the 3 is on the opposite side of the 4. Also, there are three different ways to get to 7 when you roll 2 dice, which means that a 7 is the most common outcome when you roll 2 dice.

[AnAnYa]

An elephant can die from a broken heart.

It turns out that elephants are highly emotional animals. They form close-knit relationships with one another and mourn the loss of loved ones. At times, if a fellow elephant dies, the others in the herd will gather around and pay their respects as if at a funeral.

If a baby elephant loses its mother, it will grieve. The elephant will often become withdrawn and emaciated. Other members of the herd will gather around and nurse the orphan back to life. Elephants can form deep attachments with humans too.

In one case, an elephant handler raised a baby elephant. She had to go away for a brief time to attend her daughter’s wedding. When she returned, she found that the baby elephant had died of a broken heart at her absence.

[AnAnYa]

Thomas CRAPPER popularized the toilet.

He didn't invent the toilet, but his company, Crapper & Co, was a popular plumbing company in the late 1800s. In the 1880s Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey all had Crapper brand products. Crapper also patented a lot of toilet innovations, including the flushing mechanism that is still being used today.

Among some of his less successful patents was an early version of an automatic flushing mechanism.

[AnAnYa]

A crocodile can't stick out its tongue.

The crocodile's tongue is attached to the bottom of its mouth by a membrane. A crocodile may not be able to stick out its tongue at you, but it isn't entirely useless. The crocodile's tongue has salt glands, which means that a crocodile's tongue performs the same function for a crocodile that kidneys perform for us: excreting salt. Crocodiles have less efficient kidneys and have thick, salt-resistant skin, which means that they have a hard time releasing salt through their skin. They have to use their tongue to get rid of salt and keep from getting dehydrated.

[AnAnYa]

Giraffes can't yawn.

Pretty much all warm-blooded and cold-blooded animals yawn. Birds, fish, mammals, and of course, people. An average human will yawn 250,000 times in one lifetime, and animals have been photographed yawning all the time. However, neither giraffes nor whales have ever been caught yawning.

[AnAnYa]

The Niagara Falls freezes. In 1848 it stopped flowing altogether.

In March of 1848, so much ice had flown into the the Niagara Falls that the falls literally stopped moving. As reported in the Buffalo Express: "The Falls of Niagara can be compared to nothing but a mere mill dam this morning. In the memory of the oldest inhabitants, never was there so little water running over Niagara's awful precipice, as at this moment!"

Despite what you hear from chain mail, the Niagara Falls rarely freezes over completely. Photographs have captured various times when parts of the Niagara Falls became frozen. In 1912, much of the Niagara River froze. The ice formed a bridge over the falls, but then collapsed, killing three people.

[AnAnYa]

Squirrels plant trees. ON ACCIDENT.

Despite the fact that they've yet to learn to look both ways before crossing the street, squirrels are actually pretty smart. They have an elaborate system for preserving their food. This includes burying nuts and acorns underground so that they can get to them much later. Sometimes if they don't get around to eating their buried treasure, the nuts grow into trees. This is actually really important because it allows for trees to grow farther away from other trees so that forests can spread.

Squirrels know exactly how well the nuts and acorns they find can stay preserved, which means that when they find nuts they know which ones to bury at which time and where. They also have a process to make acorns last longer: taking out the embryo!

They're also really sneaky. Give a squirrel some nuts and he'll dig several "dummy" holes for each actual nut that he buries. This throws off other animals watching them who would try to steal their food. Sometimes they even pretend to bury nuts to send their competition on a wild goose chase.

[AnAnYa]

A hippo can open its mouth wide enough to fit a 4 foot tall child inside. Also, contrary to popular belief, hippos are ill-tempered and aggressive toward humans.

A hippo can open its mouth wide enough to fit a 4 foot tall child inside. Also, contrary to popular belief, hippos are ill-tempered and aggressive toward humans.

Hippos have mouths that can open 150 degrees wide to be four feet high, revealing teeth that are 20 inches tall!

Hippos are very aggressive. Male hippos use their big teeth for fighting and when threatened they snort, roar, lunge and chase enemies. Female hippos are also highly protective of their young, and act very aggressively to intruders. If a hippo feels threatened by a person, the hippo can kill a person.

[AnAnYa]

Amazing Bridge

The Boston University Bridge is the only spot in America where a boat can sail under a train driving under a car driving under an airplane.

[AnAnYa]

Facts About Cats

Cats that fall from higher than 7 stories get fewer injuries than those that fall from lower levels.

A formal study on the effects of falling from building on cats has never been done (could you imagine scientists chucking cats off of a building, in the name of science?) However, a report in the Journal of American Veterinary Medical Association assembled data about cats that have seen vets in New York City after falling from buildings, and the findings are remarkable. Not only did the cats have a 90% survival rate, but the cats that fell from the 7th floor or higher had less injuries than those that fell from lower floors. This phenomenon could be because cats have what is known as a "righting reflex". When cats fall, they shift their bodies in mid-air automatically to land on their feet. The cats that fell from higher floors had more time to shift their bodies and land on their feet.

Now, before everyone starts throwing their cats off of skyscrapers, there's an alternate theory. The 132 cats in the survey were cats that already survived their falls long enough to go visit a vet. It's possible that cats that fell off higher floors were clearly dead, so their owners didn't bother taking them to the vet, so they were never counted.