Here’s our June collection of weird and wonderful facts

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Go and impress your mates with our June collection of all things weird and wonderful:

“Cause You Are Gold, Gold!”

1. Injecting gold into the body can help fight cancer.
2. Xanthophobia is the fear of the colour yellow.
3. It takes a single one-page form and about four minutes to apply to become an official presidential candidate in the US.
4. Guinness Breweries originally published the Guinness Book of Records as a reference for settling bar arguments.
5. A Charlie Hebdo shooting survivor sued a TV station for giving away his location during the shooting.

Crayola Crayon Candle – What a Mouthful

6. A Crayola crayon can be used as a candle in an emergency.
7. James Capone, Al Capone’s older brother, was a federal prohibition agent.
8. Leonardo Da Vinci signed his initials on the right pupil of the Mona Lisa.
9. Crocodiles’ faces are 10 times more sensitive than human fingertips.
10. Urea, the main ingredient in urine, is added to cigarettes to enhance their flavour.

123 DIAMONDS!

11. Louis XIV of France had a coat with 123 diamond buttons on it.
12. Barack Obama was the first sitting US president to visit Hiroshima, 71 years after the atomic bomb.
13. Pandas walk with their front paws turned inward.
14. Rounded corners on rectangular electronic devices have been patented in the US by Apple.
15. Parrots can live for up to 80 years.

Taking a Big Slide Into Work – How Fun!

16. Dogs can tell when people are untrustworthy and will stop listening to a person if they prove unreliable.
17. The Pentagon runs a staggering 234 golf courses around the world.
18. At YouTube’s headquarters, employees can take the lift, stairs or a big slide.
19. Google handles over 2 trillion searches per year. That’s about 270 searches per person on Earth.
20. By law, only dead people can appear on US currency.

When Lightning Strikes

21. Flight attendant Vesna Vulovic fell 33,333 ft (10,160 m) from an aeroplane that had broken up mid-flight. She survived and this is a world record for the highest fall without a parachute.
22. Astronauts often lose their fingernails after conducting spacewalks.
23. Manhole covers are round so that they don’t fall into the opening.
24. Bill Gates once said that he always gives the laziest people the most challenging jobs because they’ll find the easiest way to do it.
25. A fulgurite is a type of mineral formation that only occurs in nature when lightning strikes sandy soil.

Sky (City)’s the Limit

26. The earliest known intelligible recording of a human voice was made in 1860.
27. Daylight Saving Time costs the US an estimated US$434 million in lost productivity and decreased health.
28. Jimi Hendrix was the highest-paid performer at Woodstock, making US$18,000 at the festival. That’s US$114,624 today.
29. China’s “SkyCity”, planned in 2013 to be the tallest building in the world with a record-breaking construction time of just 90 days, is now a massive fishpond.
30. Julian Lennon had to buy the letters he wrote to his father because Yoko Ono wouldn’t give them to him.

Holey Moley!

31. During WW2, the US Air Force dropped more than 5 million leaflets warning Japanese civilians to evacuate cities that were going to be bombed.
32. Trypophobia is the fear of objects with small holes.
33. The Moon is now about 18 times further away from Earth than when it was formed 4.5 billion years ago.
34. Multiplying 21,978 by 4 reverses the order of the numbers to 87,912.
35. Covering nearly 40 square miles, Walt Disney World Resort in Florida is about the size of San Francisco or two Manhattan islands.

Parasites, Parasites and More Parasites

31. Parasites can get parasites, called hyperparasites, and they can get their own parasites too.
32. Elvis Presley’s last words were, “I’m going to the bathroom to read.”

Thank you for reading ‘Our June collection of weird and wonderful facts’. For more of our Do You Know series, click here.