Believe it or not

Taken from www.lifetoday.com.au

Eating sausages was banned back in the 4th century (even though it was considered O.K. to work out in the nude). The ban was imposed by the Catholic Church because it considered eating sausages might make people lustful and trigger immoral behaviour due to their phallic shape.

The Chinese government is so desperate for water in some parched regions it has employed 37,000 peasants, some of whom are blasting clouds with rockets & 37mm anti-aircraft guns with shells containing silver iodide. The Chinese are also hopeful of ensuring the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games is rain free.

When communicating, the words we speak are believed to account for only 7% of the impression we make, whereas our voice tone accounts for around 38%, and our body language for the major part of 55%.

Albert Einstein never learnt how to drive a car.

It takes one gallon of burnt diesel fuel to move the Queen Elizabeth II six inches.

The Wright Brother’s first plane flight was less than the wingspan of a Boeing 747.

More people are killed each year by donkeys than in air crashes.

The brain of an ostrich is smaller than its eye.

Women blink almost twice as much as men.

Married men change their underwear around twice as often as single men do. Almost 4 per cent of women say they never wear underwear.

The world’s youngest parents lived in China and were aged 8 and 9 when their child was born around 1910.

The youngest Roman Catholic pope was only 11 years old.

3000 years ago the life expectancy was 30 years. Alexander the Great had conquered most of the known world by age 25.

A kiss can cause a massive transfer of over 500 types of bacteria.

1 in 25 fathers may be unknowingly raising a child that is not biologically theirs (Journal Epidemiology & Community Health).

In 2004 China carried out almost 90% of the world’s executions putting more than 5,000 people to death for crimes ranging from murder and rape to tax fraud and theft.

The Mona Lisa has no eyebrows. The fashion at the time of the Renaissance was to shave them away.

The human body creates and destroys 15 million red blood cells every second.

It takes 58,000 gallons of fuel to fill a Boeing 747.

The United States accounts for 25 per cent of the world’s prison population while having only 5 per cent of the world’s overall population.

There are 40,000 cab drivers in New York.

1 in 5 people on this planet (1.2 billion) survive on less than $1 dollar per day.

There are 200 million insects for every person on Earth.

A “jiffy” is an actual unit of time and denotes 1/100th of a second.

A dentist invented the first electric chair.

The hottest temperature ever recorded…58 degrees C (136 degrees F) in Libya, North Africa.

The last telegram was sent on January 27, 2006 ending an era lasting 161 years. The official announcement was made over the Internet.

The coldest temperature ever recorded was -89 degrees C (-129 degrees F) at Antarctica.

A recent report stated that 9 out of 10 bars and cafes in Sicily, Italy, pay protection money to the Mafia…it would appear that the price for not paying may be too high.

A British institute of neurological studies has found that “thrill-seekers” have more friends than cautious, conservative types. People are more attracted to those who like to “live dangerously” and give life a shake. It also found that optimistic Aids sufferers lived 9 months longer on average than who meekly accepted their fate.