Do You Know That We Have a Collection of Weird and Wonderful Facts for You?

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Here’s our April collection of weird and wonderful facts to impress your mates:

Do You Wear Your Heart on Your Sleeve?

1. Many believe the X symbol became synonymous with the kiss in medieval times. People who couldn’t write their names, signed in front of a witness with an X. The X was then kissed to show their sincerity.
2. In the Middle Ages, young men and women drew names from a bowl to see who their Valentine would be. They would wear this name pinned onto their sleeves for one week for everyone to see. This was the origin of the expression “to wear your heart on your sleeve”.
3. Physicians in the 1800s commonly advised their patients to eat chocolate to calm their pining for lost love.
4. Richard Cadbury produced the first box of chocolates for Valentine’s Day in the late 1800s.
5. More than 35 million heart-shaped boxes of chocolate are sold for Valentine’s Day.

*Achoo* – God Bless You

6. A crocodile can’t stick its tongue out.
7. If you try to suppress a sneeze, you can rupture a blood vessel in your head or neck and die.
8. A shrimp’s heart is in its head.
9. Two symptoms of the plague were coughing and sneezing and it is believed that Pope Gregory I (Gregory the Great) suggested saying “God bless you” after a person sneezed in hopes that this would protect them from an otherwise certain death.
10. Like fingerprints, everyone’s tongue print is different.

Money Doesn’t Grow on Trees

11. Money notes are not made from paper, they are made mostly from a special blend of cotton and linen. In 1932, when a shortage of cash occurred in Tenino, Washington, USA, notes were made out of wood for a brief period.
12. Sound travels 15 times faster through steel than through the air.
13. Guinea pigs and rabbits can’t sweat.
14. A group of 12 or more cows is called a flink.
15. Cats often rub up against people and furniture to lay their scent and mark their territory. They do it this way, as opposed to the way dogs do it, because they have scent glands in their faces.

Elephants Can’t Jump!

16. The 57 on Heinz ketchup bottle represents the varieties of pickle the company once had.
17. Leonardo Da Vinci invented scissors.
18. Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.
19. The elephant is the only mammal that can’t jump.
20. Fingernails grow nearly four times faster than toenails.

How Do You Sleep?

21. The Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia has twice as many bathrooms as is necessary. When it was built in the 1940s, the state of Virginia still had segregation laws requiring separate toilet facilities for blacks and whites.
22. During World War II, condoms were used to cover rifle barrels from being damaged by salt water as the soldiers swam to shore.
23. One barrel of petroleum holds 42 gallons.
24. In 1936, the first practical helicopter was invented. It was the German Focke-Wulf Fw 61
25. Dolphins sleep with one eye open.

69 Years of Hiccups? – That’s 25,185 Days!

26. A cockroach will live nine days without its head before it starves to death.
27. The male praying mantis cannot copulate while its head is attached to its body. The female initiates sex by ripping the male’s head off.
28. A man named Charles Osborne had the hiccups for 69 years.
29. The position of a donkey’s eyes in its head means it can see all four hooves at the same time.

Thank you for reading our ‘Weird and Wonderful Facts’. For more in our Do You Know series, click here.