Real Facts

[AnAnYa]

"The Sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick" has the Guiness World Record for toughest tongue twister.

[AnAnYa]

CHESS Fact

"Checkmate" in chess is actually "Shah Mat," Persian for "the king is defeated" or the "king is helpless".

Chess is a REALLY OLD GAME. The earliest evidence of chess dates back to the year 600 AD in Persia. "Shah" is the title of the royal Persian monarch, so naturally the King in chess was called the Shah. To win chess, you have to defeat the King, by attacking it and making it unable to move. This is called the "Checkmate" or "Shah Mat", literally, "The King is defeated". Mat is a Persian word for "defeated", "helpless", or "at a loss", all pretty good descriptions for a checkmated king.

Millions of chess enthusiasts wrongly assume that "Checkmate" actually means "The King is dead". Chess made its way from Persia to Europe through Arabia and "mat" is an Arab word for dead, so this is a likely source of the confusion. The King in chess can't be "killed" anyway, so "defeated" makes a lot more sense.

[AnAnYa]

Humans don't just shrink with age. They shrink EVERY DAY.

Humans shrink and regain height daily, sometimes as much as 3/4 of an inch in one day. When we move throughout the day, the fluid disks in in our spinal column compress and we shrink. When we rest at night our backbones reabsorb the fluid and our height comes back.

As our bodies degenerate over time, our ability to grow back our height diminishes over time. This contributes to the loss of height that occurs as we age. It's not uncommon to lose two whole inches by the time we hit 60 years old.

[AnAnYa]

China pays its citizens for choosing to be buried at sea!

China has a real cemetery problem. With 1.35 billion citizens, a rapid growing economy, and surging real estate prices, the cost of burying a person underground is getting really expensive and scarce.

Some cities in China are trying to incentivize people to choose to be buried at sea instead. They will pay their families up to $1,300 and an all-expenses paid boat trip for people to scatter their deceased loved one’s ashes at sea.

If this seems like a lot of money, it’s not as much as the cost of a grave. In Beijing, even a cheap grave can cost up to $16,000 to bury someone’s ashes. This is a real problem that they want to solve, as their death toll is expected to reach 20 million in just a few years.

[AnAnYa]

Warsaw radio mast was the tallest structure in the world until it's collapse

The Warsaw radio collapsed in August 1991. Before this, it was the tallest structure in the world. The mast was designed by Jan Polak and stood at 2,120 feet tall.

It was completed in 1974 in Poland and was used by the Warsaw Radio-Television for longwave radio broadcasting.

On August 8, 1991, an error was made while changing the guy-wires on the highest stock and the mast collapsed. The mast bent and then snapped about in half. An investigation determined that blame lay with the company that built the mast, Mostostal Zabrze.

The construction coordinator and the chief of the division that built the mast were sentenced to 2.5 years and 2 years in prison respectively.

[AnAnYa]

Greenland has the highest suicide rate in the world. It’s almost twice as high as Japan’s!

Japan is a country notorious for it's high suicide rate. It’s estimated that almost 50 in 100,000 people commit suicide each year. However, that is comparatively small compared to Greenland’s 100 per 100,000 rate.

Another sobering difference between most countries and Greenland is that in the island, most people who commit suicide are teens and young adults. In most other countries it’s elderly people who lead the statistic.

This is a relatively new development. The rate started growing since the 1970s. Although there is speculation that the reason for this high rate is alcoholism and poverty and incest rates, there are no firm studies that show why it’s such a big problem.

[AnAnYa]

Tea is the most popular drink in the world!

Other than water, of course, we're talking about manufactured drinks. Tea plants are native to East and South Asia. According to The Story of Tea, tea drinking began in modern day Yunnan province during the Shang Dynasty as a medical drink. From there, the drink spread to Sichuan, where the tea evolved from a medicine to a comforting beverage.

Since then, tea has spread across the world. In 2003, the world tea production was 3.21 million tons annually. In 2010, tea production reached over 4.52 million tons. The largest producers of tea are India, Kenya, Sri Lanka, and of course, the United Republic of China.

[AnAnYa]

Only 20% of the Sahara is covered with sand!

When you think the Sahara, you probably think of endless sand dunes with the occasional oasis thrown in. However, that is not close to the truth. In reality, only about 20% of the Sahara is covered with shifting sand dunes.

The desert, which covers 8.5 million sq km is formed not just of sand dunes, but also of bare gravel plains, stony plains, mountains and salt covered plains. In the driest parts of the Sahara, the annual rainfall doesn’t exceed 25mm. In places where it does rain, the water evaporates rather than soaking into the ground.

[AnAnYa]

When a Jumping Ant queen dies, workers fight it out until one wins and develops into a new queen!

Ant colonies are interesting in that they revolve around the queen ant. She lays the eggs while the other ants do the work to keep the colony going. However, a recent study found that the queen ant, despite her physical difference, is not genetically the same as the rest of the ants.

This makes it possible to replace the queen should she die. If that happens, one of the worker ants will assume the role of "pseudoqueen." Once it takes on the role, the ant will swell to a larger size and begin laying eggs. The new queen will also live longer than it would have if it remained a mere worker.

[AnAnYa]

You absorb more egg proteins if they’re cooked than if they’re raw!

You probably have the mental image of Rocky trying to bulk up by eating raw eggs. It’s a rather nasty image no? The reason for doing it that way is that some nutrients get lost after cooking.

An egg contains about 6 grams of protein, and when you eat them raw, you absorb roughly 50% of the protein. That means that 3 grams go to waste! Studies have found that when you cook eggs, the protein is absorbed at the rate of 91%.

The reason for the higher absorption percentage is that heat changes the molecular structural of protein. Not only that, but eating cooked eggs reduces other health risks, like salmonella.

[AnAnYa]

Hydrogen in Saturn gets so dense towards the core that it turns into metal.

It's sometime hard to believe that the same elements that exist on our little blue home are also present in the giant, magestic, cosmic beast that is Saturn.

Saturn is classified as a gas giant because the exterior is predominately composed of gas and lacks a definite surface. However, it does have a solid core.

The planet primarily consists of hydrogen. The density of the hydrogen reached at the radius is 99.9% of Saturn's mass. The temperature, pressure, and desnity inside the planet all rise steadily towards the core which, in the deeper layers of the planet, cause hydrogen to morph into a metal.

[AnAnYa]

Deaf babies learn sign language on the same timetable as hearing babies do spoken language!

For a long time it was believed that speech was a key component to learning language. Universal studies have been done and seemed to link baby babble happening at the same age with language learning. Dr. Laura Ann Petitto did extensive studies on the issue throughout her career. She totally busted the theory that hearing and speech were key in language acquisition. She found again and again that deaf infants who learned American Sign Language were at an equal level of language learning as hearing children were. She studied infants 0 to 48 months old primarily.

Today, it is very popular to teach infants various American Sign Language signs. Studies now show that infants exposed to ASL are able to develop their language centers in the brains more rapidly, because they can sign before they are able to verbally communicate. The studies show that infants exposed to ASL have higher IQ’s not because they are that much more intelligent than other infants, but simply because the language center in their brains was able to begin developing sooner.

[AnAnYa]

The word Apron used to be Napron. Why did it change?

Language can be a funny thing. It changes and evolves because it's a living code that we all share. In this case, the word Napron suffered something called metanalysis, a process by which a word is broken down in ways that were not original to it. In this case, the phrase "A Napron" had the N move to the article and it changed into "An Apron."

Another example of metanalysis is the name of a species of snake: a nadder became an adder. There are other types of metanalysis. For example, people took part of the word foremost and have attached the 'most' part to other terms like rightmost, uppermost. Clipping words is also a for of metanalysis, for example, calling it a copter instead of a helicopter.

[AnAnYa]

There is no synonym for synonym!

A synonym is a word with the same or similar meaning of another word. An example of this would be the words “buy” and “purchase.” Considering the word synonym, blogger Phil Plait says it well writing, “The antonym of ‘synonym’ is ‘antonym’, and the antonym of ‘antonym’ is ‘synonym’…but ‘synonym’ has no synonym.”’

This is strange because the word alludes to another word with the same definition, yet there is no other word with the same definition as synonym! Just to clarify, there are actually hardly any words that are completely synonyms. Usually, if two words are generally considered synonyms there is always an instance where they could be used differently and destroy the definition. Yet nonetheless, the irony that synonym has no synonym is still hilarious!

[AnAnYa]

A female dude is a dudine, not a dudette!

The Merriam-Webster dictionary is as official as it gets. It says dude can mean several things. First, it can mean a man extremely fastidious in dress and manner. It also means a city dweller unfamiliar with life on the range. Are many people familiar with the range these days? It also simply refers to a guy or a fellow. It was first seen in literature in 1883 making fun of fashion saying “dude” instead of “dud”. It is thought to be of Scottish origin.

The female version of dude is often said to be dudette and often used as so. Again, Merriam-Webster has the real answer, though. The fine dictionary says that the female version of a dude is actually a dudine. Your world is shaken at this point, and I understand why. Don’t worry, though. Dude is used as slang, and dudette is known and used in a slang manner, too. So, rest assured you can still say dudette and no one will get confused. Wow people at sophisticated parties and tell them the female version of dude is actually dudine. It’ll really impress the crowds.