These are 10 of the most interesting facts hand picked from ‘The Book of General Ignorance’,
written by John Lloyd, and forwarded by English broadcaster and
entertainer, Stephen Fry. The human brain is, by far, the most complex
single object in the cosmos, having more neurological connections within
it than there are positively charged particles in the entire universe.
With this astonishing level of computing power, there’s only one thing
to do with it; use it.
10. Henry VIII
How many wives did Henry VIII have?
The answer? Two, not six. Henry’s fourth marriage to Anne was
annulled, as the marriage was never consummated, in other words it was
seen to that the marriage technically never took place, also Anne
happened to be betrothed to Francis, Duke of Lorraine. At the time
‘betrothal’ would bar the individual from marriage. So that leaves 5
wives. Henry’s second marriage to Anne Boleyn was declared illegal by
the pope, because the king was still married to his first wife,
Catherine of Aragon. Henry, as the head of the church of England,
declared himself that his first marriage was invalid on the grounds that
a man cannot sleep with his brother’s widow. He did the same with his
fifth wife, Catherine Howard, bringing us down to two wives.
9 Huge!
What’s the largest living organism?
The elephant? The blue whale? The T-Rex? No. The largest ever living
organism is a mushroom. And not even a particularly rare one. The
Armillaria ostoyae or ‘Honey fungus’ is very common, and is probably in
your garden as we speak. However, lets hope it doesn’t grow as large as
the largest ever recorded specimen, in Malheur National forest, in
Oregon. It covers 2,200 acres (890 hectares)!! And is between 2,000 and
8,000 years old!! The majority of the organism is under ground, in the
form of a massive mat of tentacle-like mycelia (the mushroom’s
equivalent of roots). The giant honey fungus was originally thought to
grow in different clusters around the forest, but researches have
confirmed it is in fact one very, very large single organism!
8 Chameleons
Why do chameleons change their skin color?
Not to blend into their background, never have, never will. They
change their color depending on a number of emotional states, they
change often, and so it’s no wonder that eventually they will match
their backgrounds, but only until the next change. They change color
when frightened, when mating, when fighting another chameleon etc. A
chameleon would have little use for blending in, their main prey,
insects, tend to have eyesight unfit to spot them when they are still
anyway, and being an apex predator, chameleons don’t tend to have any
natural predators.
7 Matter
How many states of matter are there?
Three surely? Solid, liquid and Gas? Actually, it’s more like
fifteen. Although the list grows almost daily, some examples are: Solid,
amorphous solid, liquid, gas, plasma, super-fluid, supersolid,
degenerate matter, neutronium, strongly symmetric matter, weakly
symmetric matter, quark-gluon plasma fermionic condensate (pictured
above), Bose-Einstein condensate and ‘strange matter’. The most
interesting is possibly Bose-Einstein condensate, or ‘bec’. which occurs
when you cool a specific substance down to a fraction below absolute
zero (-273 degrees), at this point, things get peculiar. For example if
you put a ‘bec’ in a beaker, and keep the beaker at the correct
temperature, the bec will actually climb the sides of the beaker. If you
don’t believe me: YouTube. This happens because behavior only before
observed at atomic levels are observed at greater levels. Some
scientists believe the behavior is a result of the bec trying to “reduce
it’s own energy”.
6 Number of the Beast
What is the number of the Devil?
616. For 2000 years, 666 has been the number of the dreaded
anti-Christ. An unlucky number for many, even the European parliament
leaves seat number 666 vacant. The number is from the book of
Revelation, the last book of the Christian Bible. However, in 2005, a
translation of the very earliest known copy of the book of revelation
clearly shows it to be 616, not 666! The 1,700 year old copy was
recovered from the city of Oxyrhynchus, in Egypt, and deciphered by a
palaeographical research team from the University Of Birmingham, UK. The
team was led by Professor David Parker.
5 Golden Skies
What color was the sky in ancient Greece?
Bronze! There was no word for blue in the ancient Greek language. The
nearest words to blue – glaukos and kyanos are more like expressions of
relative light intensity than descriptions of color. So when the Greek
referred to the sky as ‘bronze’, they meant that it was dazzlingly
bright, like the sheen of a bronze shield, rather than actually
bronze-colored. It seems the ancient Greeks described things based on
other qualities, so when a word is used that, to us, seems to indicate
‘yellow’ or ‘light green’ really just means fluid, living and fresh, and
was therefore used to describe flowers, blood, the sea and sheep. It
would appear to us that the Greeks were referring to all of these things
as yellow colored, but that’s because of the way we describe things.
Interestingly, in Russia, there are two words for blue: goluboi and
sinii, one word referring to light blue, the other dark, which to
Russians are two different, distinct colors, not shades of the same
color, much like other cultures perceive pink to be a shade of red,
rather than a color in it’s own right.
4 Senses
How many senses do you have?
At least nine. The five we all know about: Sight, hearing, taste,
smell and touch, were first proposed by Aristotle, but there are now
four more which are agreed among scientists to be official senses, these
are:
1. Thermoception – the sense of heat (or it’s absence) on our skin,
2. Equilibrioception – our sense of balance, which is determined by the fluid filled cavities in our inner ear.
3. Nociception – Pain.
4. Proprioception – or ‘body awareness’. This is the conscious knowledge
of where our body parts are without having to look, for example, close
your eyes and waggle your big toe, you still know where it is in
relation to the rest of you.
Some neurologists also argue that there are even more than 9. What about hunger? Or thirst? It’s certainly a grey area.
3 Over the Edge
What shape did medieval people believe the earth was?
Wrong again. Since around the fourth century BC, almost no-one, anywhere has believed the earth to be flat.
This misconception that people where ignorant of the shape of the earth
comes from the partially fictional text ‘The Life And Voyages Of
Christopher Columbus’ (1828), which incorrectly stated that Columbus set
out to prove the earth was round. Truth is, nobody would have disputed
the theory. Evidence shows that almost all cultures of the world worked
out, through mathematics or just observation, the spherical nature of the Earth.
2. Moth to a Flame
How does a moth react to a light?
They are not attracted to them, but disorientated by them. The reason
being that moths use natural light sources, i.e. the sun and moon, to
navigate. The insects use the location of the light source from the Sun
or moon to determine what direction they should be facing (i.e. what
direction is up!) and how to fly in a straight line. When people come
along with artificial suns and moons in their bedrooms, it confuses the
insect, making it think it’s somehow moving in a curved path, because
the direction of the light source has suddenly changed, to rectify this,
moths try to straighten their trajectory, but the light source being so
close, the only way to do this is to fly around in circles. And moths
don’t eat cloths, their caterpillars do.
1 Arid Land
Where is the driest place on earth?
The Sahara desert? Nevada? Actually, it’s Antarctica. Some parts of
the continent hasn’t seen any rain for two million years! A desert is
technically defined as an area of land that receives less than 254mm (10
inches) of rain a year. The Sahara gets 25 mm, Antarctica gets around
the same amount, but some areas of Antarctica never get rain, and
haven’t for millennia. Making Antarctica the driest place on earth.
Also, Antarctica can claim to be the windiest place on earth, with wind
speeds of up to 200mph, the fastest ever recorded.
