Do You Know? Snakes with Two Heads and Other Strange Facts…

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

3… 2… 1.. Blast Off!

1. London’s “Big Ben” is not the tower. It’s only the bell inside it. The tower is officially known as the “Elizabeth Tower” and was completed in 1859.
2. Nasa astronauts have to clear Customs and Immigration when returning from outer space.
3. Between 40% and 80% of the population of Classical Athens were slaves.
4. China has treatment camps for internet addicts.
5. There’s high-speed internet on the way up to Mount Everest.

Designed by Lightning

6. In 1986, a volcanic lake in Cameroon, Africa, expelled a CO2 gas cloud that killed 1,746 people in a few minutes flat.
7. The weird bright dots you see floating when you look at the sky are your white blood cells.
8. Being hit by lightning causes strange skin designs called “Lichtenberg figures”.
9. A cat has been the mayor of Talkeetna, Alaska for 15 years.
10. Dead people can get goosebumps.

What’s Watching You?

11. You have taste receptors in the stomach, intestines, pancreas, lungs, anus, testicles and the brain.
12. Viagra can keep cut flowers standing up straight for up to a week longer than normal.
13. Anatidaephobia is the weird fear that somewhere, somehow, a duck or goose is watching you.
14. In 1945, a rooster named Mike lived 18 months without a head.
15. Leeches have 32 brains.

What Happened in 2005?!

16. A snail has about 25,600 “teeth”.
17. Humans can inflate balloons with their ears.
18. If you inhale a pea, it can sprout and grow in your lungs.
19. During the 18th century, you could pay for an admission ticket to the zoo in London by bringing a cat or a dog to feed to the lions.
20. A baby was born in 2005 with a conjoined head that had no body. The head could blink and smile.

It’s Raining… Fish?

21. Sound waves can be used to make objects levitate.
22. Like all living things, humans are bioluminescent, ie we glow.
23. “La lluvia de peces” is an annual weather event in which hundreds of fish rain from the sky onto the city of Yoro, Honduras.
24. There are beers made from fossils.  
25. Many expensive perfumes contain whale faeces.

Two Heads for the Price of One Body

26. Snakes can have two heads and fight each other for food.
27. Because of its high sugar content, diabetics’ urine can be made into whisky.
28. Galileo’s middle finger is on display at a museum in Florence, Italy.
29. A slug’s anus is on its head.
30. Male Capuchin monkeys urinate on themselves to attract a mate.

Flamingos Aren’t Always Pretty in Pink

31. In 1971, Argentina’s former President Juan Perón had his ex-wife Evita Perón’s dead body flown to Spain, where he was in exile. He and his new wife kept the corpse in their dining room.
32. Dogs defecate in alignment with Earth’s magnetic field.
33. Human saliva contains a painkiller called opiorphin which is six times more powerful than morphine.
34. As soon as tiger shark embryos develop teeth, they attack and eat each other in the womb.
35. In older versions of Little Red Riding Hood, the girl and the wolf eat grandma together.
36. Venom from the sub-Saharan snake called the boomslang causes you to bleed from all holes of your body.
37. Flamingos are born grey or white, but become red or pink due to pigments found in the algae and invertebrates that they eat.

Finally, thank you for reading ‘Do You Know? Snakes with Two Heads and Other Strange Facts…’ For more in our Do You Know series, click here.