Row, Row, Row Your Boat...Quack

A duck waddles, paddles, dives, bobs and quacks. A man...waits.

photo credit pixabay.com

At the 1928 Olympics quarter-final , oarsman Henry Robert "Bobby" Pearce stopped to let a family of ducks cross his lane and still won with the fastest time of all 8 competitors in that round (and he didn't stop there). Not only did he win the gold medal, but he also set a new Olympic record.

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Tips for Single Women, 1938: Awkward Positions

Don't sit in awkward positions--and never look bored, even if you are. Be alert, and if you must chew gum (not advised), do it silently, mouth closed.

credit Mashable, Rretronaut

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Mothers

Every day, approximately nearly 830 women die from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth.

photo credit Johan Larsson

• 99% of all maternal deaths occur in developing countries.
• Maternal mortality is higher in women living in rural areas and among poorer communities.

[source: WHO]

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Colour(s) of Life

African-American women dealt not only with the sexism of being withheld the vote but also the racism of white suffragists.

The struggle for the vote did not end with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. In some Southern states, African American women were unable to freely exercise their right to vote up until the 1960s.

photo credit Egor Kraft

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Erotomania

Erotomania is a type of delusional disorder where the affected person believes that another person is in love with him or her.

photo credit Alexander Mueller

This belief is usually applied to someone with higher status or a famous person, but can also be applied to a complete stranger. 

[source: Wikipedia]

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Love Facts: Too much?

Our human brains also enable us to feel intensely. The culprit is not our heart, but rather, our brain.

The human amygdala, an almond-shaped region on the side of the head beneath the cortex, is more than twice the size of the amygdala in apes. This brain region plays a central role in generating fear, rage, aversion, and aggression; parts produce pleasure, too. With this brain capacity for generating strong, often violent emotions, we humans have the ability to link our drive to love with an enormous

collection of feelings.

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Can you remember this colour?

A study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General® found it's harder for people to recall certain hues because of the mechanism the brain uses to store colors. This is how it works.

Facts

Human brains categorize colors as basic language-driven hues.
Women are naturally better than men at noticing subtle differences between hues.

Colour Quizzes

• How well do you see color? FACT: 1 out of 255 women and 1 out of 12 men have some form of color vision deficiency. Take the online color challenge, based on the Farnsworth Munsell 100 Hue Test. 
• EnChroma Color Blindness Test 

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Have You Ever Eaten A Spider?

Does the Average Human Consume Four Spiders per Year While Sleeping?

No! In fact, it’s unlikely that a spider would let itself get swallowed by a person. To get swallowed, a spider would have to climb or fall into a person’s mouth. And a spider’s sense of self-preservation - its will to live - would keep it from climbing in. 

If a spider happened to crawl near a sleeping human’s mouth, the spider would hear breathing. To a spider, that’s the sound of an enemy. Its instinct would be to flee, not to climb in.

But could a spider fall into a sleeping person’s mouth? Not likely. Adult spiders just don’t fall that often. However - and maybe this is where the myth comes from - baby spiders do fall, or float, through the air when they hatch out of their egg sac.

In fact, when one spider egg sac hatches, hundreds of too-small-to-see baby spiders get thrown into the air. They “ride” the air current to wherever they land. Sure, some of these baby spiders might land in the mouth of a sleeping person. And they might get swallowed. But the chance of an egg sac happening to hatch near a sleeping person is pretty slim. 

And the chance of the sleeping person’s mouth being open and facing upward isn’t all that great either. 

So, while it’s possible, it’s highly unlikely that the average person swallows four spiders
per year.

[source: Does It Really Take Seven Years to Digest Swallowed Gum?: And Other Questions You've Always Wanted to Ask (Is That a Fact?)]

#second conditional

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Brain Power

In its first year, the human brain grows to 75% of its full size.

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1234567

1 in 10 passwords used on the Internet are either ‘Password’, or ‘123456’ or ‘12345678’.

[read more: NetworkWorld]

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Come Again?!

More Americans have died from guns in the United States since 1968 than on battlefields of all the wars in American history.

[source: punditfact]

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New Year On The Loose: Thieves, Unite!

More vehicles are stolen on New Year’s Day than any other holiday, statistics from the National Insurance Crime Bureau revealed.

photo credit pixabay.com

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Christmas Facts: The Giving Tree

Hanging presents on trees may come from the Druids who believed the tree was the giver of all good things.

photo credit pixabay.com

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Reindeer in Art

This group of petroglyphs in the Alta Fjord, near the Arctic Circle, bears the traces of a settlement dating from c. 4200 to 500 B.C. The thousands of paintings and engravings add to our understanding of the environment and human activities on the fringes of the Far North in prehistoric times.

photo credit Jos van Wunnik

The property is situated in the northernmost part of Norway, far north of the Arctic Circle at the head of the Alta Fjord. It contains thousands of rock carvings and paintings located at 45 sites in five different areas at the head of the Alta Fjord and has been turned into an open-air museum. 

More rock art made by hunter-gatherers is found in Alta than anywhere else in northern Europe. This seems to indicate that for thousands of years, from approximately 5000 B.C. to about the year 0, Alta was an important meeting place far north of the Arctic Circle. 

The wide variety of imagery shows a culture of hunter-gatherers that was able to control herds of reindeer, was adept at boat building and fishing and practised shamanistic rituals involving bear worship and other venerated animals.

[sources: Wikipedia & UNESCO]

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Christmas Facts: In Bulk

The Queen’s staff get to choose their own Christmas presents, which must be worth between £20 and £25.

photo credit pixabay.com

Anyone with more than 12 months' service is eligible for the Christmas gift. As a rule, the present is valued at around £20, but because the royal household buys in bulk  -  there are around 800 staff at the Palace  -  considerable savings can be achieved. 

[source: dailymail]

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Christmas Facts: What a Waste!

The waste produced at Christmas each year in Britain would fill 400,000 double-decker buses.

photo credit Curtis Cronn

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Christmas Facts: Last Minute Shopping

Every Christmas Day, 400,000 Britons go out to a shop to buy batteries.

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Hair On The Loose

An acersecomic is a person who has never had a haircut.

photo credit Solent News & Photo Agency

pronunciation: /ˈæs(ə)rˌsekɒmɪk/

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