What Fact Shocked You The Most

[Captain_Ne-San]

The fact that flamethrowers are legal in the United States. Foom.

Yeah, my boyfriend's dad owns one. They market them as brush burners, watched him de-ice his porch with it this last winter. Scary, stupid moment.

Onto odd facts-

The average person has over 1,460 dreams a year.

Thomas Edison, the inventor of the lightbulb was afraid of the dark.

 

[Ignignoct]

that morphine, used frequently as a painkiller, is the pure form of heroin. seriously. also how would cocaine STOP your nose from bleeding? :S
also (more drug related stuff) why tobacco, known to cause lung, throat and mouth cancers is readily available in shops, but marajuana, a completely harmless substance, is an illegal drug. also alcohol... what the hell? that kills thousands of people a year (never stopped me though ). It turns out one of the main reasons marajuana was banned in the UK was because it wasn't easy to control its production, because it grows naturally in our climate. huh. (also the paranoia risk, but mainly the first reason)
Drug lecture over

Actually calling marijuana 'completely harmless' is total BS.
You're still inhaling smoke and addicting brain-altering chemicals.
Also, marijuana actually has more carcinogens than tobacco.

Vaporizer.

Well, now that I've defeated 2/3 points of yours, I'll take the "addicting brain-altering chemicals" part...

Alcohol, nicotine, CAFFEINE, Endorphines from exercising. All brain-altering, all addictive. People love altering their brains. Excessive giggling is not the worst side-effect I've seen in a drug.

Weed's legitimacy as a relatively harmless drug when used responsibly is something of a no-brainer when you cut through the scare tactics and propaganda.

 

[Zombie_Fish]

That Lord of the Rings wasn't a documentary.

That, and that Joy Division's singer killed himself.

 

[Cheesus333]

that morphine, used frequently as a painkiller, is the pure form of heroin. seriously. also how would cocaine STOP your nose from bleeding? :S
also (more drug related stuff) why tobacco, known to cause lung, throat and mouth cancers is readily available in shops, but marajuana, a completely harmless substance, is an illegal drug. also alcohol... what the hell? that kills thousands of people a year (never stopped me though ). It turns out one of the main reasons marajuana was banned in the UK was because it wasn't easy to control its production, because it grows naturally in our climate. huh. (also the paranoia risk, but mainly the first reason)
Drug lecture over

Cigarettes and tobacco are legal because it makes the government a fucktonne of cash. Seriously.

 

[Redingold]

I think it was said that on average 200 spiders crawl into your mouth and get eaten while your sleeping in your lifetime.

As it happens, you're mistaken. It's only about 10 spiders, and 80 bugs in total.

But anyway, I find it shocking that the speed of light is not constant (it's slower going through different mediums). I still don't know how that works. Also, Hitler won an Iron Cross, President Harry S. Truman's middle name was S., strawberries aren't berries, ants' brain are 3 times larger than ours relative to body mass, sharks have no bones, anteaters can grow to the size of a rugby forward, there are creatures called tardigrades that can survive being cooled to absolute zero, there are 1000 times (I think) more bacterial cells in your body than there are actual cells of yours, spider silk becomes 10 times stronger when you mix it with a certain metal (can't remember which one), every fifth species of animal is a beetle, there's a species of fungus that lives off jet fuel, the human brain can make more connections than there are positively charged particles in the visible universe, it is not possible to write down a googolplex (10^10^100) even if the entire universe consited of pen, ink and paper, mitochondrial Eve, the duck-billed platypus is poisonous, it is illegal to park a flying saucer in a French vineyard, if two trains approach each other at a crossing in Kansas, neither can proceed until the other has passed (legally), the fattest man alive weighs 87 stone, the first online game was chess in the 19th century, there's an asteroid that is officially named "Bonk"...

I could go on.

 

[Redingold]

Cigarettes and tobacco are legal because it makes the government a fucktonne of cash. Seriously.

I personally think that it's because people've been doing them for a long time. The first record of smoking was in 1556 (4 years before Walter Raleigh was born), and it wasn't confirmed that it was definitely harmful until, correct me if I'm wrong, the Surgeon General's report in 1964. I don't think that anybody would turn around and tell society to stop something that they've been doing for over 400 years.

 

[Redingold]

Pope Pius XII was a Nazi supporter, he signed an agreement with the Germans in 1933.
This treaty is still in effect in Germany today.

I thought that that treaty was that Hitler would not attack the Catholic Church. He still did.

 

[Toners]

Spoiler

that morphine, used frequently as a painkiller, is the pure form of heroin. seriously. also how would cocaine STOP your nose from bleeding? :S
also (more drug related stuff) why tobacco, known to cause lung, throat and mouth cancers is readily available in shops, but marajuana, a completely harmless substance, is an illegal drug. also alcohol... what the hell? that kills thousands of people a year (never stopped me though ). It turns out one of the main reasons marajuana was banned in the UK was because it wasn't easy to control its production, because it grows naturally in our climate. huh. (also the paranoia risk, but mainly the first reason)
Drug lecture over

Cigarettes and tobacco are legal because it makes the government a fucktonne of cash. Seriously.

yeah, seems most governments are QUESTIONABLY moral :\ "yeah, we'll let you smoke these so long as you give us loads of money tot do so. Also, it's addictive, so you'll have to KEEP giving us money"
Fortunately, I don't have an addictive personality (bar perhaps the use of computers, I get bored easily) and the odd smoke here and there is yet to make me REALLY need them. I do, however, spend far too much money on alcohol, probably the government's biggest revenue from myself. I've seen the systems they use to control taxing, and they're REALLY hard to evade :S my local's owner let me have a look at the cellars one time, and they're pretty fascinating, if you're into that kinda thing.

 

[WittyName]

Pope Jean Paul II played football as a child.

 

[eelel]

Hitlers mom almost had an abortion.

man that would have been weared

 

[FluffX]

Violin strings were once made from cat guts.

 

[johnman]

If a shell landed right where he had been standing, moving to the left would not have saved him. Especially since the other men he was with must have been farther away from the shell than him.

Besides, where the hell would someone have heard about that? If Hitler never told anyone that then it can't be true, and if he did say it then it would be widely known as a fact.

And I'm pretty sure Hitler didn't have one testicle. And I never heard the mom almost having an abortion thing, but I suppose it could be true.

And while we're all spouting off facts about Hitler (most of which probably aren't true) I was surprised to find out that Hitler was wounded in either the thigh or groin in World War 1. And that's true.

That groin injury removed his testicle. When the russians found his semi-burned corpse they used this fact to identify the body.
And the english soldiers sang "Hitler's only got one ball!" for a reason.

 

[johnman]

Sharks for all we fear them hate the taste of human. They will spit it out if they take a chunk from us. Sadly they take large chunks and most likly orgins that we need to you know survive.

I knew this. Most reasons for shark attack are that we are mistaken for seals, and whe nsharks get a mouthfull of scrawy bones instead of nice blubber they just spit it out but the blood then drives them crazy.
But yes they do take quite large mouthfulls.

 

[Captain Pancake]

That Iain M. Banks has been writing sci-fi since the eighties.
seriously, i thought he was a noughties writer, but he's only done 2 books this decade (well, sci-fi anyway...)

 

[vxicepickxv]

A narwhal horn used to pass all of the tests to be determined a valid Unicorn's horn.
A wolf's stomach can hold approximately 20 pounds of meat.
It's not the voltage that will kill you, it's the current, but most people don't understand this, so the signs say danger, high voltage.


That's 3 facts, plus this one over here.

 

[wwjdftw]

If you have spider web as thick as a pencil, length ways not width, it can bring a 747 at top speed to a dead stop.

This cant be true, can it?

it is spider silk is the strongest substance known to man. Im just going off the top of my head but it you had a 1 inch thick cable made out of spider silk, you would need a 10 inch thick steel cable to be as strong

 

[Lukeje]

Violin strings were once made from cat guts.

Violin strings were never made from cat guts. Sheep guts, yes. But never cat guts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catgut

 

[Simalacrum]

I think it was said that on average 200 spiders crawl into your mouth and get eaten while your sleeping in your lifetime.

no no, more than that... 8 a day on average