Strange Facts – May 2021

written by Adam Howarth, Editor 30/05/2021

Do You Know? Strange Facts – May 2021: Here’s the latest collection of weird and wonderful facts to win friends and influence people:

British and Japanese soldiers reportedly used coconut water intravenous drips during World War II. You can use coconut water as an emergency substitute for blood plasma to rehydrate a patient.
Honey can last 3,000 years.
Alaska has a sand desert with dunes over 150 feet (45m) high.
Some cats are allergic to humans (see main image).
Half the cars in the World in 1924 were Fords.
Dolphins recognise and admire themselves in mirrors.

All blue-eyed people can trace themselves back to one person who lived near the Black Sea almost 10,000 years ago.
Elvis Presley is the best-selling individual artist of all time with over 500 million records sold.
One billion hours of video are watched on YouTube every day.
The first YouTube video featured its co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo in April 2005.
Bolivia has 37 official languages.

The Sun formed about 4.6 billion years ago from the collapse of part of a giant molecular cloud that consisted mainly of hydrogen and helium.
Cats have 32 muscles that control the outer ear, while humans have only six.
Coffee is the World’s second most valuable traded commodity after petroleum.
A strawberry isn’t an actual berry, but a banana is.
The World’s most popular fruit is the tomato.

Covering nearly 40 square miles, Walt Disney World Resort in Florida is about the size of San Francisco or two Manhattan islands.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final novel in the series, sold 11 million copies in the first 24 hours of release!
Hawaii’s largest-ever earthquake occurred in 1868, but there are still aftershocks even now.
The Ancient Roman civilisation began on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC.
Life expectancy in Ancient Rome was from 20 to 30 years.

Leo Fender, inventor of the Telecaster and Stratocaster, could not play the guitar.
The Sun is only classed as an average-size star even though the Earth could fit inside it 1.3 million times!
In 1974, the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis published a paper titled “The Unsuccessful Self-Treatment of a Case of ‘Writer’s Block”. It contained a total of zero words.
Guinness estimates that 93,000 litres of beer are lost in facial hair each year in the UK alone.
Anne Frank’s father survived Auschwitz and died of lung cancer in 1980.

Listening to music while working out improves physical performance.
During Prohibition, moonshiners would wear “cow shoes”. The fancy footwear left hoofprints instead of footprints, helping distillers and smugglers evade police.
Since founding the Imagination Library in 1995, Dolly Parton has donated 100 million books to children.
Benjamin Franklin never patented any of his inventions. He reasoned that “we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously”.
Queen Elizabeth II is a trained mechanic.
Many fish species change sex during their lives.

We hope you enjoyed reading “Strange Facts – May 2021“. Click here for more from our Do You Know? series.