White House Facts

White House Facts


There are 132 rooms, 32 bathrooms, and 6 levels to accommodate all the people who live in, work in, and visit the White House. There are also 412 doors, 147 windows, 28 fireplaces, 7 staircases, and 3 elevators.

At various times in history, the White House has been known as the "President's Palace," the "President's House," and the "Executive Mansion." President Theodore Roosevelt officially gave the White House its current name in 1901.

The White House receives approximately 6,000 visitors a day.

Presidential Firsts… President John Tyler (1841-1845) was the first President to have his photograph taken… President Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909) was not only the first President to ride in an automobile, but also the first President to travel outside the country when he visited Panama… President Franklin Roosevelt (1933-1945) was the first President to ride in an aeroplane.

With five full-time chefs, the White House kitchen is able to serve dinner to as many as 140 guests and hors d'oeuvres to more than 1,000.

The White House requires 570 gallons of paint to cover its outside surface.

For recreation, the White House has a variety of facilities available to its residents, including a tennis court, a jogging track, swimming pool, movie theater, billiard room, and a bowling lane.

1. Another city built its own version of the White House. Yes, Philadelphia wasn’t happy that the new city of Washington was getting the president’s executive mansion. During the 1790s, the city built its own presidential palace as a way to tempt George Washington and others from leaving Philadelphia, which was the acting capital. Washington refused to use the “palace” and stayed elsewhere in Philadelphia. That location is two blocks south of the National Constitution Center.

2. George Washington never lived in the White House. Don’t look for Washington’s ghost on your next White House tour. The mansion was in the city named for Washington, and he had a big role in the executive residence’s creation. But George passed away in late 1799, about one year before John Adams became the first president to live in the building.

3. Very little of the original White House remains. Those pesky British burned the original White House in 1814 after U.S. forces set fire to Canada’s parliament. The famous Gilbert Stuart painting of George Washington was saved by a fleeing Dolley Madison and some exterior stone walls survived the fire.

4. There was a second big fire at the White House. A blaze on Christmas Eve in 1929 gutted parts of the West Wing and Oval Office during the Herbert Hoover administration. Hoover left a Christmas party to personally direct the firefighting efforts, helped by Ulysses S. Grant III, a city official. Hoover also briefly entered the Oval Office during the fire, but he was whisked away by the Secret Service. The blaze was started by a blocked fireplace flue.

5. The suffragettes stayed at the White House for two years. The heated fight over the right of women to vote reached a fever pitch in 1917, as suffragettes picketed at the White House gates in an attempt to get President Woodrow Wilson’s attention. Led by Alice Paul, the picketers stayed in front of the White House for two years, with more than 200 arrests. The pressure helped in the successful effort to pass the 19th Amendment.

6. It was Teddy Roosevelt who created the West Wing. The West Wing was expanded under William Howard Taft and Franklin D Roosevelt, but it was Teddy who got the facility built. Thomas Jefferson had started the ball rolling with the idea 100 years earlier, but things take a long time to build in Washington. Teddy had some conservatories leveled and the “temporary” office building established, to be connected to the main White House using a colonnaded gallery. President Taft added the Oval Office to the West Wing.

7. The White House was nearly condemned in 1948. President Harry S. Truman was forced out of the White House as his living quarters to the Blair House after officials decided the aging White House was close to collapse. Apparently, the repair budget under the FDR administration was ignored, even as more White House staffers were added to payrolls. When Truman tried to upgrade the White House, engineers discovered it was structurally unsound and close to falling down. The project was completed in 1952.

8. There was a 1950 attack on the president’s house. While Truman was staying at the Blair House, two Puerto Rican nationalists attempted to storm the Blair House and kill Truman while he was napping inside the residence. After a 38-second gun battle, one assailant was dead, and a White House police officer was mortally wounded. They were apparently emboldened by the idea that the Blair House was less secure than the White House. The officer who died in the attack fatally shot the assailant as he stood 30 feet from the president’s bedroom window. Truman had moved to the window just before the assailant was killed.

9. You can buy your own White House, for just $4 million. That may sound like a lot of money, but it’s a steal when the real White House is worth about $110 million (or as much as $286 million by another estimate). The replica White House is in McLean, Virginia, and it has just 14,000 square feet of space, compared with 55,000 for the real White House. It does have a full-sized Oval Office and replica Lincoln bedroom. The original owners used plans from White House I to build the facility from scratch. You will need to bring your own helicopter and pets.

10. The White House is missing its cornerstone. Any anniversary of the White House wouldn’t be complete without the story of its missing cornerstone. On that fateful day in October 1792, a group of freemasons met at a Georgetown tavern and paraded to the proposed site of the president’s mansion. In a ceremony, they placed an inscribed cornerstone to mark the start of the House’s construction. They then marched to an inn and made a toast to the event. And another, and another. In  fact, they made 16 toasts! So no one really documented where the stone was.  President Truman tried to find the stone during the renovation period, but no one has seen it since 1792. One theory is that is imbedded between two stone walls near the Rose Garden.

100 Interesting Facts

100 Interesting Facts


1.Most soccer players run 7 miles in a game.
2.The only 2 animals that can see behind itself without turning its head are the rabbit and the parrot.
3.Whip makes a cracking sound because its tip moves faster than the speed of sound.
4.It cost 7 million dollars to build the Titanic and 200 million to make a film about it.
5.When hippos are upset, their sweat turns red.
6.Every time you sneeze some of your brain cells die.
7.Your left lung is smaller than your right lung to make room for your heart.
8.Laughing lowers levels of stress hormones and strengthens the immune system. Six-year-olds laugh an average of 300 times a day. Adults only laugh 15 to 100 times a day.
9.Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.
10.The Boeing 747 is capable of flying upside-down if it weren’t for the fact that the wings would shear off when trying to roll it over.
11.Never hold your nose and cover your mouth when sneezing, as it can blow out your eyeballs.
12.The world’s smartest pig, owned by a mathematics teacher in Madison, WI, memorized the multiplication tables up to 12.
13.In ancient Greece, children of wealthy families were dipped in olive oil at birth to keep them hairless throughout their lives.
14.Every Labrador retriever dreams about bananas once in a while.
15.Approximately one-sixth of your life is spent on Wednesdays.
16.You can actually sharpen the blades on a pencil sharpener by wrapping your pencils in aluminum foil before inserting them.
17.111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321
18.12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily.
19.123,000,000 cars are being driven down the U.S’s highways.
20.160 cars can drive side by side on the Monumental Axis in Brazil, the world’s widest road.
21.A cockroach can live several weeks with its head cut off.
22.A company in Taiwan makes dinnerware out of wheat, so you can eat your plate.
23.A cow produces 200 times more gas a day than a person.
24.A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.
25.A dragonfly has a lifespan of 24 hours.
26.A giraffe can clean its ears with its 21-inch tongue.
27.A giraffe can go without water longer than a camel can.
28.A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.
29.A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.
30.A Saudi Arabian woman can get a divorce if her husband doesn’t give her coffee.
31.A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.
32.A quarter has 119 grooves on its edge, a dime has one less groove.
33.A whale’s penis is called a dork.
34.America once issued a 5-cent bill.
35.An iguana can stay under water for 28 minutes.
36.An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain.
37.Bats always turn left when exiting a cave.
38.Ben and Jerry’s send the waste from making ice cream to local pig farmers to use as feed. Pigs love the stuff, except for one flavor: Mint Oreo.
39.Dolphins sleep with one eye open.
40.Hershey’s Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it’s kissing the conveyor belt.
41.If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.
42.If you toss a penny 10,000 times, it will not be heads 5,000 times, but more like 4,950. The heads picture weighs more, so it ends up on the bottom.
43.In most advertisements, including newspapers, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10.
44.It’s impossible to sneeze with your eyes open. (Don’t try this at home!)
45.More Monopoly money is printed in a year, than real money printed throughout the world.
46.More people are killed annually by donkeys than die in air crashes.
47.More people use blue toothbrushes, than red ones.
48.Mosquitoes have teeth.
49.Most Americans’ car horns beep in the key of F.
50.Most cows give more milk when they listen to music.
51.Most dust particles in your house are made from dead skin.
52.Most lipstick contains fish scales.
53.Over 1000 birds a year die from smashing into windows.
54.Owls are one of the only birds who can see the color blue.
55.The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.
56.The average person has over 1,460 dreams a year.
57.The average person is about a quarter of an inch taller at night.
58.The average person’s left hand does 56% of the typing.
59.The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.
60.The only nation whose name begins with an “A” but doesn’t end in an “A” is Afghanistan.
61.The “save” icon on Microsoft Word shows a floppy disk, with the shutter on backwards.
62.There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.
63.There are 336 dimples on a regulation golf ball.
64.There are over 52.6 million dogs in the U.S.
65.There are more chickens than people in the world.
66.There are more plastic flamingos in America than real ones.
67.There are only four words in the English language which end in “-dous”: tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.
68.There are only thirteen blimps in the world. Nine of them are in the United States.
69.When snakes are born with two heads, they fight each other for food.
70.Windmills always turn counter-clockwise. Except for the windmills in Ireland.
71.You’re born with 300 bones, but when you get to be an adult, you only have 206.
72.You’re more likely to get stung by a bee on a windy day than in any other weather.
73.Windmills always turn counter-clockwise. Except for the windmills in Ireland.
74.The sound of E.T. walking was made by someone squishing her hands in Jello.
75.The starfish is one of the only animals who can turn it’s stomach inside-out.
76.The state of Florida is bigger than England.
77.The name Wendy was made up for the book “Peter Pan.”
78.The national anthem of Greece has 158 verses. No one in Greece has memorized all 158 verses.
79.The Neanderthal’s brain was bigger than yours is.
80.The oldest known goldfish lived to 41 years of age. Its name was Fred.
81.The giant squid has the largest eyes in the world.
82.The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.
83.The highest point in Pennsylvania is lower than the lowest point in Colorado.
84.The housefly hums in the middle octave, key of F.
85.The international telephone dialing code for Antarctica is 672.
86.The katydid bug hears through holes in its hind legs.
87.The “L.L.” in L.L. Bean stands for Leon Leonwood.
88.The longest one-syllable word in the English language is “screeched.”
89.The longest recorded flight of a chicken is thirteen seconds.
90.The longest word in the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. The only other word with the same amount of letters is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconioses, its plural.
91.The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.
92.The Boston University Bridge (on Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts) is the only place in the world where a boat can sail under a train driving under a car driving under an airplane.
93.The characters Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street were named after Bert the cop and Ernie the taxi driver in Frank Capra’s “Its A Wonderful Life”.
94.The condom – made originally of linen – was invented in the early 1500s.
95.The cruise liner, Queen Elizabeth II, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.
96.The Earth weighs around 6,588,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons.
97.The Eisenhower interstate system requires that one mile in every five must be straight. These straight sections are usable as airstrips in times of war or other emergencies.
98.The electric chair was invented by a dentist.
99.The elephant is the only mammal that can’t jump.
100.The first Ford cars had Dodge engines

100 amazing & unknown facts!

100 amazing & unknown facts!

1 Our eyes remain the same size from birth onward, but our nose and ears never stop growing.
2 The Barbie doll’s full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts.
3 The Mona Lisa has no eyebrows.
4 Ants never sleep!
5 When the moon is directly overhead, you will weigh slightly less.
6 Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, never called his wife or mother because they were both deaf.
7 An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain.
8 “I Am” is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.
9 Babies are born without knee caps – actually, they’re made of cartilage and the bone hardens between the ages of 2 and 6 years.

10  Butterflies taste with their feet.
11 A “jiffy” is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
12  It is impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
13 Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.
14 Minus 40 degrees Celsius is exactly the same as minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit.
15 No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver or purple.
16 Shakespeare invented the words “assassination” and “bump.”
17 Stewardesses is the longest word typed with only the left hand.
18 Elephants are the only animals that cannot jump.
19 The names of all the continents end with the same letter that they start with.
20 The sentence, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” uses every letter in the English language.
21 The shortest war in history was between Zanzibar and England in 1896. Zanzibar surrendered after 38 minutes.
22 The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue.
23 The word “lethologica” describes the state of not being able to remember the word you want.
24 Camels have three eyelids to protect themselves from the blowing desert sand.
25 TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters on only one row of the keyboard.
26 You can’t kill yourself by holding your breath.
27 Money isn’t made out of paper. It’s made out of cotton.
28 Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks or it will digest itself.
29 The dot over the letter “i” is called a tittle.
30 A duck’s quack doesn’t echo. No one knows why!
31 The “spot” on the 7-Up comes from its inventor who had red eyes – he was an albino. ’7' was because the original containers were 7 ounces and ‘UP’ indicated the direction of the bubbles.
32 Chocolate can kill dogs, as it contains theobromine, which affects their heart and nervous system.
33 Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made of plaster.
34 There are only two words in the English language that have all five vowels in order: “abstemious” and “facetious.”
35 If one places a tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death.
36 Bruce Lee was so fast that they actually had to slow film down so you could see his moves.
37 The original name for butterfly was flutterby.
38 By raising your legs slowly and laying on your back, you cannot sink into quicksand.
39 Dogs and cats, like humans, are either right or left handed.
40 Charlie Chaplin once won the third prize in a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest.
41 Sherlock Holmes NEVER said “Elementary, my dear Watson”.
42 The Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from Public Libraries.
43 Bats always turn left when exiting a cave.
44 The shortest English word that contains the letters A, B, C, D, E, and F is “feedback.”
45 All Polar bears are left-handed.
46 In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak.
47 “Dreamt” is the only English word that ends in the letters “mt.”
48 Almonds are a member of the peach family, and apples belong to the rose family.
49 Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.
50 The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is “uncopyrightable”.
51 In most advertisements, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10
52 Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.
53 Alfred Nobel, in whose name the Nobel prizes are instituted, was the inventor of dynamite.
54 The planet Venus does not tilt, so consequently, it has no seasons. It is the only planet that rotates clock-wise.
55 Honey is the only food that doesn’t spoil.
56 The word “set” has more definitions than any other word in the English language.
57 Molecularly speaking, water is actually much drier than sand.
58 Human tonsils can bounce higher than a rubber ball of similar weight and size, but only for the first 30 minutes after they’ve been removed.
59 US President John F. Kennedy was an accomplished ventriloquist.
60 Coca-Cola was originally green.
61 Moths are unable to fly during an earthquake.
62 Contrary to popular belief, the white is not the healthiest part of an egg. It’s actually the shell.
63 Nearly three percent of the ice in Antarctic glaciers is penguin urine.
64 Hot water will turn into ice faster then cold water.
65 “Rhythm” is the longest English word without a vowel.
66 Like fingerprints, every person’s tongue print is different.
67 No piece of normal-size paper can be folded in half more than 7 times.
68 The tongue is the only muscle that is attached from one end only.
69 Pumice is the only rock that floats in water.
70 Camel’s milk does not curdle.
71 Your foot is the same length as your forearm, and your thumb is the same length as your nose. Also, the length of your lips is the same as the index finger.
72 Natural pearls melt in vinegar.
73 Buttermilk does not contain any butter.
74 The human brain is 80% water.
75 Men’s shirts have the buttons on the right while women’s shirts have the buttons on the left.
76 Human fingernails grow nearly 4 times faster than toenails.
77 The Great Pyramid at Giza in Egypt holds a constant temperature of 68 degrees Fahrenheit.
78 The liquid inside young coconuts can be used as a substitute for blood plasma.
79 Oak trees do not produce acorns until they are fifty years of age.
80 It takes approximately 2 million flowers for a bee to make 1 pound of honey.
81 Human saliva has a boiling point three times that of regular water.
82 It is physically impossible to urinate and give blood at the same time.
83 The letter J does not appear anywhere in the periodic table of the elements.
84 The right lung of a human is larger than the left one. This is because of the space and placement of the heart.
85 Watermelons, which are 92% water, originated from the Kalahari Desert in Africa.
86 The hair of some cancer patients treated with chemotherapy can grow back in a different colour, and sometimes even be curly or straight.
87 The markings that are found on dice are called “pips.”
88 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321
89 The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.
90 Leonardo Da Vinci never signed or dated his most famous painting, the Mona Lisa.
91 The ampersand (&) was the last letter of the Latin alphabet.
92 The palms of your hands and the soles of your feet cannot tan, or grow hair.
93 Dolphins can swim and sleep at the same time, as they sleep with one eye open.
94 Each nostril of a human being registers smell in a different way. Those by the right nostril are more pleasant than the left.
95 The longest single-syllable word in the English language is “screeched.”
96 The word “Checkmate” in chess comes from the Persian phrase “Shah-Mat,” which means “the king is dead”.
97 Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history:  Spades – King David, Clubs – Alexander the Great, Hearts – Charlemagne, and Diamonds – Julius Caesar.
98 In Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift described the two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, giving their exact size and speeds of rotation. He did this more than 100 years before either moon was discovered!
99 If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.

 

50 Interesting Science Facts

50 Interesting Science Facts

1 – The speed of light is generally rounded down to 186,000 miles per second. In exact terms it is 299,792,458 m/s (equal to 186,287.49 miles per second).
2 – It takes 8 minutes 17 seconds for light to travel from the Sun’s surface to the Earth.
3 – 10 percent of all human beings ever born are alive at this very moment.
4 – The Earth spins at 1,000 mph but it travels through space at an incredible 67,000 mph.
5 – Every year, over one million earthquakes shake the Earth.
6 – When Krakatoa erupted in 1883, its force was so great it could be heard 4,800 kilometers away in Australia.
7 – Every second around 100 lightning bolts strike the Earth.
8 – Every year lightning kills 1000 people.
9 – In October 1999 an Iceberg the size of London broke free from the Antarctic ice shelf .
10 – If you could drive your car straight up you would arrive in space in just over an hour.
11 – Human tapeworms can grow up to 22.9m.
12 – The Earth is 4.56 billion years old…the same age as the Moon and the Sun.
13 – The dinosaurs became extinct before the Rockies or the Alps were formed.
14 – Female black widow spiders eat their males after mating.
15 – When a flea jumps, the rate of acceleration is 20 times that of the space shuttle during launch.
16 – If our Sun were just inch in diameter, the nearest star would be 445 miles away.
17 – Astronauts cannot belch – there is no gravity to separate liquid from gas in their stomachs.
18 – The air at the summit of Mount Everest, 29,029 feet is only a third as thick as the air at sea level.
19 – One million, million, million, million, millionth of a second after the Big Bang the Universe was the size of a …pea.
20 – DNA was first discovered in 1869 by Swiss Friedrich Mieschler.
21 – The molecular structure of DNA was first determined by Watson and Crick in 1953.
22 – The first synthetic human chromosome was constructed by US scientists in 1997.
23 – The thermometer was invented in 1607 by Galileo.
24 – Alfred Nobel invented dynamite in 1866.
25 – Wilhelm Rontgen won the first Nobel Prize for physics for discovering X-rays in 1895.
26 – The tallest tree ever was an Australian eucalyptus – In 1872 it was measured at 435 feet tall.
27 – Christian Barnard performed the first heart transplant in 1967 – the patient lived for 18 days.
28 – An electric eel can produce a shock of up to 650 volts.
29 – ‘Wireless’ communications took a giant leap forward in 1962 with the launch of Telstar, the first satellite capable of relaying telephone and satellite TV signals.
30 – The Ebola virus kills 4 out of every 5 humans it infects.
31 – In 5 billion years the Sun will run out of fuel and turn into a Red Giant.
32 – Giraffes often sleep for only 20 minutes in any 24 hours. They may sleep up to 2 hours (in spurts – not all at once), but this is rare. They never lie down.
33 – There are 60,000 miles of blood vessels in the human body.
34 – An individual blood cell takes about 60 seconds to make a complete circuit of the body.
35 – On the day that Alexander Graham Bell was buried the entire US telephone system was shut down for 1 minute in tribute.
36 – The low frequency call of the humpback whale is the loudest noise made by a living creature.
37 – A quarter of the world’s plants are threatened with extinction by the year 2010.
38 – Each person sheds 40lbs of skin in his or her lifetime.
39 – At 15 inches the eyes of giant squids are the largest on the planet.
40 – The Universe contains over 100 billion galaxies.
41 – Wounds infested with maggots heal quickly and without spread of gangrene or other infection.
42 – More germs are transferred shaking hands than kissing.
43 – The fastest speed a falling raindrop can hit you is 18mph.
44 – It would take over an hour for a heavy object to sink 6.7 miles down to the deepest part of the ocean.
45 – Around a million, billion neutrinos from the Sun will pass through your body while you read this sentence.
46 – The deepest part of any ocean in the world is the Mariana trench in the Pacific with a depth of 35,797 feet.
47 – Every hour the Universe expands by a billion miles in all directions.
48 – Somewhere in the flicker of a badly tuned TV set is the background radiation from the Big Bang.
49 – Even traveling at the speed of light it would take 2 million years to reach the nearest large galaxy, Andromeda.
50 – A thimbleful of a neutron star would weigh over 100 million tons

20 Facts you missed

20  Facts  you missed



1. Bleach on the Moon
All of the American flags on the moon are bleached white. No, there isn't bleach on the moon, but the sun's ultraviolet rays are so powerful that they break down chemical bonds in the fabric, fading the colors and eventually bleaching them.
 
2. A True Disney Story
In real life, the woman that provided the voice for Minnie Mouse, married the man that was the voice of Mickey Mouse.

3. Coke Float? No, Diet Please
A Diet Coke will float in water, while a regular coke will sink to the bottom. This is because the sugar in the regular coke is more dense, while the diet coke uses artificial sweeteners that cause it to float.

4. Why Hello There Stranger in My Dreams, Have We Met Before?
The people that appear in dreams are all people that you have seen at some point in your life, because our minds are not capable of creating features for imaginary people.

5. Wiggling Ears
Everyone is born with the ability to wiggle their ears. However, if not found early, the muscles will atrophy and can no longer be used.

6. Breakfast: A Gateway Drug?
Eating a poppy seed bagel before a drug test is administered, will result in the false positive testing for opiates. This is because of a commonly used type of poppy called, Papaver somniferum, which is used for both drugs, and food.

7. Otters: The Cutest Cuddlers
When otters sleep, they hold hands with their partners so they don't drift away from each other in the water.

8. Something's Out ThereIn 1977, there was a radio signal that was tracked from space that lasted 72 seconds. The signal has remained a mystery, and has not been detected since.

9. Dream Paralysis
When in a deep sleep and dreaming, your body is paralyzed so that you don't recreate the motions of your dream in real life. This can sometimes be turned off when waking, and explains why it is difficult to run or move rapidly in your dreams.

10. Got An Itch For A Banana
There are a lot of homemade remedies when it comes to itchy mosquito bites, but one that is sure to work is using a banana peel. By taking the meaty side of the banana peel and rubbing it over a bite, the itching stops and stops fast thanks to the enzyme in the banana.

11. Got A Light? No, But I Have Crayons!
In a pinch, or in case of a zombie attack, crayons can be used as candles. Simply light them on fire and watch how they burn for a good 15-30 minutes.

12. Spare Tires From Legos
It is a little known fact, that Legos is the leading manufacturer in tires. Of course they aren't made for cars, but they do make more than even the largest tire companies.

13. Smelly Shoes? Have Some Tea!
If you have some smelly shoes, drop in some dry tea bags. The tea will absorb the odor and leave a fresh scent.

14. Quicksand! Sprawl!
If quicksand ever happens to become a problem for you, avoid sinking by slowly raising your legs and lying on your back. The increased surface area won't allow you to sink.

15. Superheroes Wash Windows Too!
There are a lot of children hospitals that are employing the greatest superheroes known to man to wash their windows. This way, when sick children look out the window, they see their favorite heroes and immediately brighten up.

13 Incredible Bat Facts

13 Incredible Bat Facts

1. Bats are the only mammals able to fly. And you thought it was the winged marmoset! Bats are exceptional in the air. Their wings are thin, giving them what is called, in flight terms, "airfoil." The power bats have to push forward is called "propulsion."
2. A single brown bat can catch around 1,200 mosquito-size insects in one hour. In Bracken Cave, Texas, it's estimated that the 20 million Mexican free-tailed bats that live there eat about 200 tons of insects . . . each night.
3. Vampire bats don't suck blood. They lap it up. Calm down. There are only three species of vampire bats in the whole world. If you are traveling in Central or South America, however, you might see a vampire bat bite a cow and then lick blood from the wound -- no sucking involved.
4. Bats don't have "fat days." The metabolism of a bat is enviable -- they can digest bananas, mangoes, and berries in about 20 minutes.
5. Fewer than 10 people in the last 50 years have contracted rabies from North American bats. Due to movies and television, bats are thought to be germ machines, bringing disease and toxins to innocent victims. Not true. Bats avoid people. If you are bitten by a bat, go to the doctor, but don't start making funeral arrangements -- you'll probably be fine.
6. Bats use echolocation to get around in the dark. Bats don't see very well and do a lot of living at night, so they have to rely on navigational methods other than sight. Bats send out beeps and listen for variations in the echoes that bounce back at them and that's how they get around. Bats are nocturnal, mostly because it's easier to hunt bugs and stay out of the way of predators when it's dark. Bats do use their eyesight to see things in the daytime, but most bat business is done under the blanket of night for convenience.

7. Bats make up a quarter of all mammals. Yep, you read that right. A quarter of all mammals are bats. There are more than 1,100 species of bats in the world. That's a lot of bats!
8. More than 50 percent of bat species in the United States are either in severe decline or are listed as endangered. You don't know what you've got until it's gone. Industry, deforestation, pollution, and good old-fashioned killing have wiped out many bats and their habitats. For information on how to help keep bats around, contact your local conservation society.
9. Cold night? Curl up next to a bat! Inside those drafty caves they like so much, bats keep warm by folding their wings around them, trapping air against their bodies for instant insulation.
10. An anticoagulant found in vampire bat saliva may soon be used to treat human cardiac patients. The same stuff that keeps blood flowing from vampire bats' prey seems to keep blood flowing in human beings, too. Scientists in several countries are trying to copy the enzymes found in vampire bat saliva to treat heart conditions and stop the effects of strokes in humans.
11. Bats have only one pup a year. Most mammals of smallish size have way more offspring than that. Think cats, rabbits, and rats.
12. The average bat will probably outlive your pet dog. The average lifespan of a bat varies, but some species of brown bat can live to be 30 years old. Considering that other small mammals live only two years or so, that's impressive.
13. Bats wash behind their ears. Bats spend more time grooming themselves than even the most image-obsessed teenager. They clean themselves and each other meticulously by licking and scratching for hours.

25 Most Amazing Facts About Universe

25 Most Amazing Facts About Universe

 

1.Saturn's moon Titan has plenty of evidence of organic (life) chemicals in its atmosphere.

2.Ever wondered how the pull of gravity is calculated between heavenly bodies? It's simple. Just multiply their masses together, and then divide the total by the square of the distance between them.

3.SETI is the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence - the program that analyzes radio signals from space for signs of intelligent life.

4.The Milky Way galaxy we live in: is one among the BILLIONS in space.

5.The very furthest galaxies are spreading away from us at more than 90% of the speed of light.

6.The Universe was once thought to be everything that could ever exist, but recent theories about inflation (e.g. Big Bang) suggest our universe may be just one of countless bubbles of space time.

7.If you fell into a black hole, you would stretch like spaghetti.

8.The swirling gases around a black hole turn it into an electrical generator, making it spout jets of electricity billions of kilometers out into space.

9.The opposite of black holes are estimated to be white holes which spray out matter and light like fountains.

10.A day in Mercury lasts approximately as long as 59 days on earth.

11.As the earth turns, the stars come back to the same place in the night sky every 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4.09 seconds. This is a sidereal day (star day).

12.When Neil Armstrong stepped on the Moon for the first time, he said these famous words:

“That’s one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind.”

13.From the moon, astronauts brought back 380 kg of Moon rock.

14.During the moon landing, a mirror was left on the Moon’s surface to reflect a laser beam

which measured the Moon’s distance from the Earth with amazing accuracy.

15.The distance to the planets is measured by bouncing radar signals off them and timing how long the signals take to get there and back.

16.Spacecrafts toilets have to get rid of waste in low gravity conditions, Astronauts have to sit on a device which sucks away the waste. Solid waste is dried and dumped in space, but the water is saved.

17.The Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet smashed into Jupiter in July 1994, with the biggest crash ever witnessed.

18.The first rockets were made 1,000 years ago in China.

19.Jupiter has no surface for a spacecraft to land on because it is made mostly from helium gas and hydrogen. The massive pull of Jupiter’s gravity squeezes the hydrogen so hard that it is liquid.

20.To save fuel on journeys to distant planets, space probes may use a nearby planet’s gravity to catapult them on their way. This is called slingshot.

21.Einstein’s theory of general relativity shows that gravity not only pulls on matter, but also space and even ‘Time’ itself.

22.With powerful telescopes, astronomers can see galaxies 2 billion light years away. This means we see them as they were when the only life forms in Earth were bacteria.

23.The slowest rotating planet is Venus, which takes 243.01 days to turn around.

24.When things are falling, their acceleration cancels out gravity, which is why astronauts in orbits are weightless.

25.The moon’s gravity is 17% of the Earth’s so astronauts in space suits can jump 4 m high on the moon.