TC’s Amazin’ Stuff – Part I
So, every week, Darcy and/or I search for a freeware pick or site pick to feature in our weekly newsletter. Yeah, it’s basically a non-technical technical newsletter for non-technical people who use Windows. We feature computer tips, how-tos, freeware picks, computer advice, and a lot of other stuff, as most of our subscribers know.
What? Are you not a subscriber? Let’s fix that!
This week, I (TC), decided to take the bull by the horns – so to speak – do something different, and create my own “Site of the Week”. Well, mabye more accurately “Page of the week”.
So, while Darcy is off (again!) with her crew of young men on her luxury yacht “The Bellerophon” sailing the sunny, warm Caribbean, good, ol’ TC put his shoulder to the wheel, his nose to the grindstone, and his fingers on the keyboard, and came up with something different for you.
We hope you enjoy Part #1 of “TC’s Amazin’ Stuff.”
- The “Last Execution” by guillotine in France happened the same year Star Wars came out (1977). Most people think of the guillotine as an 18th-century relic, but it remained the official method of execution in France until the death penalty was abolished in 1981.
- Ancient Romans used urine as mouthwash. The ammonia in the urine acted as a cleaning agent. It was so valuable that the government actually taxed the collection of urine from public restrooms.
- There is an “immortal” jellyfish. Turritopsis dohrnii can physically revert its cells back to their earliest stage of life when it is injured or starving, effectively restarting its life cycle indefinitely.
- Reindeer eyes change color. They are gold in the summer to help reflect the constant Arctic sun, but they turn deep blue in the winter to capture more light during the months of darkness.
- There is a planet made of “Burning Ice.” Exoplanet Gliese 436b is so close to its star that its temperature is 800°F, but the gravity is so intense that it keeps the water compressed into a solid, burning block of ice.
- The Moon is “rusting.” Recent data shows that Earth’s oxygen is being blown onto the Moon by solar winds, reacting with lunar iron to create hematite (rust).
- If two pieces of the same metal touch in space, they fuse forever. This is called “cold welding.” On Earth, oxygen creates a layer of oxidation that prevents this, but in a vacuum, the atoms have no way of knowing they are separate pieces.
- A dog’s sense of smell is 100,000 times stronger than ours. To put that in perspective, if we can smell a teaspoon of sugar in a cup of coffee, a dog can smell a teaspoon of sugar in two Olympic-sized swimming pools.
- The human brain cleans itself while you sleep. A system called the “glymphatic system” literally flushes out metabolic waste (toxins) from your brain cells using cerebrospinal fluid.
- Chainsaws were originally invented for childbirth. Before C-sections were safe, two doctors in the 1780s designed a hand-cranked chainsaw to help remove bone and cartilage during difficult deliveries.
- A “Great Emu War” actually happened. In 1932, the Australian military deployed soldiers with machine guns to stop a “nuisance” population of 20,000 emus. The emus proved so fast and elusive that the military eventually withdrew—the emus won.
- A blue whale’s heart is the size of a bumper car. You could comfortably swim through its primary arteries.
- Octopuses have three hearts and blue blood. Two hearts pump blood to the gills, while the third circulates it to the rest of the body.
- Cleopatra lived closer to the moon landing than to the building of the Great Pyramid. The pyramids were built around 2560 BC; Cleopatra died in 30 BC; and the Apollo 11 landing was in 1969.
- Oxford University is older than the Aztec Empire. Teaching existed at Oxford as early as 1096, while the Aztec Empire is traditionally dated to have begun in 1325.
- Fingerprints are not unique to humans. Koalas have fingerprints that are so similar to ours that they have occasionally been confused at crime scenes.
- There are more trees on Earth than stars in the Milky Way. Earth has roughly 3 trillion trees; our galaxy has an estimated 100 to 400 billion stars.
- There is enough gold in the Earth’s core to coat the entire surface in 1.5 feet of it. Most of our planet’s gold sank to the center during its formation.
- Bananas are berries, but strawberries are not. Botanically speaking, a berry must come from a single ovary with multiple seeds; strawberries come from a flower with many ovaries.
- You are part banana! Humans share 50% of their DNA with bananas. We share 98% with chimpanzees, but even at 50%, we have a surprising amount of genetic instructions in common with fruit.
- The lighter was invented before the match. The first “Dobereiner’s lamp” was created in 1823, three years before the friction match.
- A bolt of lightning is five times hotter than the surface of the sun. While the sun’s surface is about 10,000°F, lightning can reach 50,000°F.
- The Beatles’ “Yesterday” is the most covered song in history. It has been recorded by over 2,200 different artists.
- Cats have 32 muscles in each ear. This allows them to rotate their ears 180 degrees independently to pinpoint the exact location of a sound.
- Emily Dickinson wrote nearly 1,800 poems, but fewer than a dozen were published in her lifetime. Most of her work was found in hand-bound notebooks after she passed away.
We hope you’ve enjoyed TC’s Amazing Stuff – Part 1! Thanks for reading and sharing!