Do You Know? Astronauts’ Genes, Chicken Soup and Avoid Free Weights!

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Welcome to our Do You Know series, we have plenty of facts for you to share with all your friends and family! You can also find more here.

You’re One in a Billion!

1. If you want to learn about monsters and ghouls in real life, you can get a PhD in Parapsychology at the University of Edinburgh.
2. All galaxies rotate once every billion years, regardless of size.
3. In 1916, an amendment to the U.S. Constitution proposed that all acts of war needed a national vote. Anyone voting “yes” had to register as a volunteer for service in the army.
4. Spinraza, a drug for spinal muscular atrophy, has a list price of $750,000.
5. A Dutch IKEA had to cancel their 1 Euro breakfast special because it was too popular and caused traffic jams on nearby roads.

A Floral Fade-Out

6. All Bran is only 87% bran.
7. General Electric is the only company remaining from the original Dow Jones index of 1896.
8. As global temperatures rise, flowers are emitting less scent.
9. After just under a year in space, astronaut Scott Kelly’s gene expression changed significantly and it’s different to his identical twin brother’s DNA.
10. By the end of 2019, Facebook had offices in 70 cities worldwide.

Not So Safety Powder

11. One of the late Stephen Hawking’s widely accepted theories is that black holes aren’t black.
12. Amazon’s largest warehouse is the size of 17 American football fields.
13. A single human being’s DNA contains as much information as 50 novels.
14. Ukraine’s national anthem goes: “The glory and the freedom of Ukraine has not yet perished”.
15. Dynamite was originally going to be called “Nobel’s Safety Powder”.

A Forgetful First Encounter

16. While filming The Wizard of Oz, 16-year-old Judy Garland was put on a diet of chicken soup, coffee, and 80 cigarettes a day.
17. A report found that the free weights at the gym have 362 times more bacteria than a toilet seat.
18. 1.9 million people were working for McDonald’s in 2019 and its franchisees around the world.
19. When you first meet people it is common to forget their names – a phenomenon called the “next-in-line” effect. This is because people are too worried about themselves, and what they’ll say next, to focus on remembering the names of people they’re introduced to.
20. Google.org is the charitable arm of Google, committing about US$100 million in investments and grants to non-profits annually.

Making Your Brain Look 10 Years Younger

21. In the late Middle Ages, books were so valuable that libraries would chain them to the bookcase. This was widely practiced until the 18th century.
22. A cyberchondriac is someone who scours the internet looking for details of their illnesses.
23. A study using MRI scans showed that the brains of people who exercise moderately look 10 years younger than those who don’t.
24. 90% of Korea’s shamans are women.
25. Scientists at the University of Alberta spent seven years working out that human urine contains 3,079 different chemical compounds.