Random Facts

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2012-05-09T19:41:00.003-07:00

If you have not yet heard Fat to That is, in my opinion, unofficially one of the best blogs out there!!! Try one of our programs today!!! If you have not yet heard there is a new segment on "fat to That" called "Work Out Music".

2011-05-23T12:32:00.000-07:00

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On the cartoon show 'The Jetsons', Jane is 33 years old and her daughter Judy is 15.
In the movie "Toy Story", the carpet designs in Sid's hallway is the same as the carpet designs in "The Shining."
The longest film ever released was "****" by Andy Warhol in 1967, which lasted 25 hours. After its utter failure, it was withdrawn and re-released in a 90-minute form as "The Loves of Ondine."
Chocolate syrup was used for blood in the famous 45 second shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock's movie, Psycho, which actually took 7 days to shoot.
The lion costume in the film Wizard of Oz was made from real lions.
Wilma Flintstone's maiden name was Wilma Slaghoopal, and Betty Rubble's Maiden name was Betty Jean Mcbricker.
Sherlock Holmes never said "Elementary, my dear Watson."
In the movie "Casablanca," Humphrey Bogart never said "Play it again, Sam."
In every episode of "Seinfeld" there is a Superman somewhere.
Donald Duck comics were banned from Finland because he doesn't wear pants.
All of the clocks in the movie "Pulp Fiction" are stuck on 4:20.
101 Dalmatians and Peter Pan (Wendy) are the only two Disney cartoon features with both parents that are present and don't die throughout the movie

http://interestingfactshere.blogspot.com/2008/10/interesting-facts-about-movies.html

2011-05-19T18:25:00.000-07:00

Since 2010, not only does the United States have a central bank, but it also runs our economy and issues all of our currency. The Federal Reserve has devalued the U.S. dollar by over 95 percent since 1913 and it has been used to create the biggest mountain of government debt in the history of the world.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has ruled that U.S. government agents can legally sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, place a secret GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of you everywhere that you go.
The 50 wealthiest members of Congress saw their collective fortunes increase by 85.1 million dollars to $1.4 billion in 2009.
The U.S. government has accumulated a national debt that is rapidly approaching the 14 trillion dollar mark.
All over the United States, asphalt roads are being ground up and are being replaced with gravel because it is cheaper to maintain. The state of South Dakota has transformed over 100 miles of asphalt road into gravel over the past year, and 38 out of the 83 counties in the state of Michigan have now turned some of their asphalt roads into gravel roads.
Americans now owe more than $849 billion on student loans, which is more than the total amount that Americans owe on their credit cards.
In 2010, Americans waste an astounding amount of food. According to a study by the California Integrated Waste Management board, 63 percent of the average supermarket's waste stream is food. When you break that down, it means that each supermarket wastes approximately 3,000 pounds of food each year.
The city of Cleveland plans to sort through curbside trash to ensure that people are actually recycling properly. If it is discovered that some citizens are not recycling they will be hit with very large fines.
Once upon a time, U.S. industry was the envy of the world. But since 1979, manufacturing employment in the United States has fallen by 40 percent.
Even though the U.S. population has exploded in size, the number of Americans with manufacturing jobs today is smaller than the number of Americans who were employed in manufacturing in 1950.
Having one out of every eight Americans enrolled in the food stamp program is now considered "the new normal" and Americans continue to drop into poverty in astounding numbers.
One out of every six Americans is now being served by at least one government anti-poverty program.
A family of four actually has difficulty surviving on an income of $50,000 a year in America in 2010.
Barack Obama is backing a proposal to create a national database that will store the DNA of all individuals who have been arrested, even if they end up not being convicted of a crime.
In 2010, it takes the average unemployed American worker over 8 months to find a job.
The U.S. government has made some parts of Arizona off limits to U.S. citizens because of the threat of violence from Mexican drug smugglers. The federal government has actually posted signs more than 100 miles north of the Mexican border warning travelers that certain areas are unsafe because of drug and alien smugglers.
One survey of the year 2010's college graduates discovered that 80 percent moved right back home with their parents after graduation.
The average American worker now pays literally dozens of different kinds of taxes each year.
Christians are being arrested and thrown in jail in some areas of the United States for quietly passing out Christian literature on public sidewalks.
The Florida State Department of Juvenile Justice has announced that it will begin using cutting edge analysis software to predict crime by young delinquents and will place "potential offenders" in prevention and education programs.
Organic milk is now considered such a national crisis that the FDA has been conducting military style raids on Amish farmers in the state of Pennsylvania.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently announced that they are considering a crackdown on farm dust.
According to a new CDC report, nearly half of all Americans now use prescription drugs on a regular basis.
Oakland, California Police Chief Anthony Batts says that due to severe budget cuts there are a number of crimes that his department will simply not be able to respond to any longer. The crimes that the Oakland police will no longer be responding to include grand theft, burglary, car wrecks, identity theft and vandalism.

Click here to view the website these facts were found on.

2011-05-19T18:20:00.000-07:00

Today, Americans are losing their homes in staggering numbers. One out of every seven mortgages was delinquent or in foreclosure during the first quarter of 2010.
Many of our leading scientists are now calling themselves "transhumanists" and are openly proclaiming that a future where men have fully merged with machines is inevitable.
Americans who spend large amounts of cash are viewed as "potential criminals" by the U.S. government in 2010.
New full body security scanners going into airports all across the United States can actually see through our clothing and produce very clear and very detailed images of our exposed bodies as we walk through them.
The U.S. financial system has become a massive gambling parlor in 2010. As a result, a horrific derivatives bubble has developed that threatens to destroy our entire economy at any moment. Nobody knows exactly how big the derivatives bubble is, but low estimates place it at around 600 trillion dollars and high estimates put it at around 1.5 quadrillion dollars. Once that bubble pops there simply will not be enough money in the entire world to fix it.
The U.S. government is spending an amount of money equivalent to approximately 25.4 percent of GDP this year.
Today, 10,000 people make 30% of the total income in the United States.
According to a recent poll of Americans between the ages of 44 and 75, 61% said that running out money was their biggest fear. The remaining 39% thought death was scarier.
Approximately 57 percent of Barack Obama's 3.8 trillion dollar budget for 2011 consists of direct payments to individual Americans or is money that is spent on their behalf.
A recent Department of Justice guide for investigators of criminal and extremist groups lists "constitutionalists" and "survivalists" alongside organizations like Al-Qaeda and the Aryan Brotherhood.
The U.S. trade deficit has exploded to nightmarish proportions over the past two decades. Every single month tens of billions more dollars goes out of the United States than comes into it. Essentially, the United States is becoming far poorer as a nation each and every month.
Factories are closing in droves across the United States because the American people would rather buy things made in China.
Millions upon millions of good paying middle class jobs are being shipped off to China and they are never coming back. Meanwhile, U.S. politicians stand by idly and do nothing.
Some analysts now believe that China could become the largest economy in the world by the year 2020.
If the U.S. government was forced to use GAAP accounting principles (like all publicly-traded corporations must), the annual U.S. government budget deficit would be somewhere in the neighborhood of four to five trillion dollars.
According to one recent survey, 28% of all U.S. households have at least one person that is currently searching for a full-time job.
The U.S. dollar continues to rapidly decline in value. An item that cost $20.00 in 1970 will cost you $112.35 today. An item that cost $20.00 in 1913 will cost you $440.33 today.
Major international organizations are actually proposing that the United States start considering the adoption of a truly global currency.
Students at a high school in Missouri have built a car that they claim can get up to 450 miles per gallon. On another note, some of the top energy experts in the world believe that thorium could solve our energy problems and supply very cheap energy for society for hundreds of thousands of years. But in today's world technologies such as these are endlessly suppressed by the rich and powerful.
One Colorado high school student is seeking an explanation from officials at his school after he was ordered by security guards to remove American flags from his truck because they might make other students at the high school "uncomfortable".
Three California high school students were recently forced to remove their American flag T-shirts on Cinco de Mayo.
Memorial crosses erected along Utah public roads to honor fallen state troopers have been found unconstitutional by a federal appeals court and now must be removed permanently.
One group of high school students made national headlines recently when they revealed that a security guard ordered them to stop singing the national anthem during a visit to the Lincoln Memorial.

Click here to visit the website these facts were found on.

2011-05-19T17:49:00.000-07:00

1. For the movie the Wizard of Oz, Judy Garland was paid $35 a week while Toto received $125 a week.

2. The Blues Brothers once held the record for crashing the most police cars in a movie at approximately 30. The record was eventually broken by Blues Brothers 2000.

3. In the movie E.T. there is a scene where the young boy lures the extraterrestrial with some Reese’s pieces. Originally Spielberg was going to use M+M’s, but he could not get the rights. Reese’s pieces were the replacement.

4. When the Mother-Ship passes over the Devil’s Tower near the end of Spielberg’s movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, R2-D2 can be seen hanging from the bottom of the ship.

5. When filming summer scenes in winter, actors suck on ice cubes just before the camera rolls – it cools their mouths so their breath doesn’t condense in the cold air.

6. The Godfather was the first movie in over twenty years in which Marlon Brando was required to audition.5. When filming summer scenes in winter, actors suck on ice cubes just before the camera rolls – it cools their mouths so their breath doesn’t condense in the cold air.

7. Before anyone is killed in the movie The Godfather, an orange is always seen somewhere.

8. Near the beginning of the movie Back To The Future there’s a scene where they show all of the clocks at Doc’s house. If you look closely there is one clock with a little man hanging from the minute hand.

9. Brooke Shields spent a lot of time during the filming of Blue Lagoon standing/walking in a trench beside Chris Atkins so that she wouldn’t be taller than him in the scenes that they had together.

10. The producers of the movie Gone With The Wind were fined 5,000 dollars for allowing the word “damn” to be heard within the movie’s dialog.

Click here to visit the website these facts were found on.

2011-05-18T17:57:00.000-07:00

Flamingos are pink because shrimp is one of their main sources of food.
The Mayans and Aztecs symbolized every tenth day with the dog, and those born under this sign were believed to have outstanding leadership skills.
When a male Tiger and female Lion mate they make a Tigon, when a male Lion and Female Tiger mate they make a Liger.
French poodles did not originate in France – they came from Germany.
The breeding age for male goats is between 8-10 months.
Elephants don't drink through their trunks like a straw.
Baby whales grow to a 1/3 of their mother's length in the womb.
Goats do not have teeth in their upper front jaw.
Goat’s milk is higher in calcium, vitamin A and niacin than cow’s milk.
Turkeys have a poor sense of smell, but excellent sense of taste.
Cats can hear ultrasound.
Tuna fish can swim 40 miles in a single day.
Bumblebees have hair on their eyes.
Penguins can jump 6 feet out of water.
Giraffe hearts pump twice as hard as a cow's to get blood to its brain.
Dogs can smell about 1,000 times better than humans.
Some dogs can smell dead bodies under water!
More than 45 million turkeys are cooked and eaten in the US at Thanksgiving.
Baby whales can gain up to 200 pounds per day.
Dogs have a wet nose to collect more of the tiny droplets of smelling chemicals in the air.
Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about ten.
A group of frogs is called an army.
Barn owls hunt mostly small mammals such as the short-tailed vole.
A ducks quack does echo, it's just very hard to hear.
A cheetahs lifespan is up to 12 years in the wild

These facts were found using the link below.

http://www.factsaboutanimals.net/

2011-05-18T17:56:00.000-07:00

Shark corneas are being used in human eye transplants.
Dogs are about as smart as a two or three-year-old child.
Butterflies have their skeletons on the outside of their bodies, this is known as the exoskeleton.
Arachnophobia is the fear of spiders.
Polar bears are the world's largest land predators.
Butterflies can only see the colours red, green and yellow.
Yellowtail is the general name for loads of different species of fish that have yellow tails or a yellow body.
There are roughly twenty four thousand species of butterflies.
A dik-dik is a tiny antelope that lives in East Africa, Namibia and Angola.
Dik-diks weigh between three and six kilograms.
Female polar bears normally start having baby cubs at the age of four or five.
Fireflies are also known as Lightning Bugs.
Even though a polar bears average body temperature is 37°C; they don’t give off any detectable heat, so they won’t show up in infrared photographs.
Dogs can see better when the light is low.
Dumbledore isn’t only the Headmaster of Hogwarts; in fact a dumbledore is an old English term for a type of bee.
Most young fireflies feed on nectar and pollen, although adult fireflies do not need to eat to survive.
79% of pet owners sleep with their pets.
Two dogs were among the Titanic survivors.
Many species of owls have special feathers for flying silently.
An elephant can smell water up to 3 miles away.
There is only one pink bottlenose dolphin which has been discovered, in an inland lake in Louisiana, USA.

These facts were found using the link below.

http://www.factsaboutanimals.net/

2011-05-18T17:44:00.001-07:00

The placement of the eyes of a donkey enables them to see all four of their legs at all times.
At birth, a panda is smaller than a mouse and weighs about four ounces.
Oysters can change from one gender to another and back again depending on which is best for mating.
Fireflies are the only creatures that give off light without generating heat.
Hummingbirds beat their wings 60 to 80 times per second.
Only half of a dolphin’s brain sleeps at a time. The other awake half makes the dolphin come up for air when needed to prevent drowning.
Dogs have about 1,700 taste buds.
It takes 3,000 cows to supply the NFL with enough leather for a year's supply of footballs.
A completely blind chameleon will still take on the colours of its environment.
A rodent's teeth never stop growing.
When young abalones feed on red seaweed their shells turn red.
Small quantities of grapes and raisins can cause renal failure in dogs.
The hippopotamus is born underwater.
Taurophobia is the fear of bulls.
A bat can eat up to 1,000 insects per hour.
One million stray dogs and 500,000 stray cats live in New York City metropolitan area.
You can tell a turtle's gender by the noise it makes. Males grunt, females hiss.
An elephant's trunk has around 15,000 muscles. 200 litres of water is drunk from it per day.
The most popular female dog name is Maggie. The most popular male dog name is Max.
A large group of goats is called a herd.
Squirrels cannot see the colour red.
The average chicken lays about 260 eggs per year.
A dog's smell is more than 100,000 times stronger than an average human's.
Only 5 to 10 percent of cheetah cubs make it to adulthood.
Ferrets sleep around 20 hours a day.

These facts were found using the link below.

http://www.factsaboutanimals.net/

2011-05-18T17:44:00.000-07:00

Birds can recognize landmarks.
The starfish is the only animal capable of turning its stomach inside-out.
Male dogs will raise their legs while urinating to aim higher on a tree or lamppost because they want to leave a message that they are tall and intimidating. Some wild dogs in Africa try to run up tree trunks while they are urinating to appear to be very large.
About two-thirds of shark attacks on humans have taken place in water less than six feet deep.
Sharks are immune to cancer!
Worldwide, more people eat and drink milk from goats than any other animal.
Alligators cannot move backwards.
The most popular dog breed in Canada, America, and Great Britain is the Labrador retriever.
The largest giant squid ever found weighed 8,000 pounds.
Approximately 100 people die each year when they are stepped on by cows.
A butterfly has 12,000 eyes.
Humpback whales create the loudest sound of any living creature.
The Sea Horse is the slowest fish, drifting at approximately 0.016 km/h.
Whale Milk is 50% Fat.
In Croatia, scientists discovered that lampposts were falling down because a chemical in the urine of male dogs was rotting the metal.
In the Caribbean there are oysters that can climb trees.
The swan has over 25,000 feathers in its body.
The blue whale is the largest of all whales and is also considered the largest animal to have ever existed in the world.
Giraffes have no vocal cords.
Starfish have eight eyes - one at the end of each leg.
There are almost 60 million dogs in the United States.
After eating, a housefly regurgitates its food and then eats it again.
A mole can dig a tunnel 300 feet long in just one night.
Back in 1924, a monkey was convicted in South Bend of the crime of smoking a cigarette and sentenced to pay a 25 dollar fine!

These facts were found using the link below.

http://www.factsaboutanimals.net/

2011-05-18T17:28:00.000-07:00

If you cut off a snail's eye, it will grow a new one.
The ostrich has two toes on each foot which gives it greater speed.
Starfish have no heart, brain, or eyes!
'Jaws' is the most common name for a goldfish.
The most dogs ever owned by one person were 5,000 Mastiffs owned by Kubla Khan.
On average, cows poop 16 times per day!
The phrase “raining cats and dogs” originated in seventeenth-century England. During heavy rainstorms, many homeless animals would drown and float down the streets, giving the appearance that it had actually rained cats and dogs.
The most poisonous fish in the world is the Stone fish.
Killer Whales are not whales at all, rather a species of dolphin.
Goats were the first animals domesticated by man in 10,000 B.C.
Dogs have sweat glands in between their paws.
The fear of animals is called zoophobia.
We share 70% of our DNA with a slug.
We share 98.4% of our DNA with a chimp.
) Fireflies do not bite or have pincers. Fireflies are harmless, they don't even carry diseases.
Chocolate, macadamia nuts, cooked onions, or anything with caffeine is harmful to dogs.
No two tigers ever have the same stripes, and this is how individual tigers can be identified.
The American Kennel Club, the most influential dog club in the United States, was founded in 1884.
The longest recorded life span of a slug was 1 year, 6 months.
A whale's heart beats only nine times a minute.
Elephants are covered with hair.
A python can swallow a rabbit whole and may eat as many as 150 mice in a six-month period.

These facts were found using the link below.

http://www.factsaboutanimals.net/

2011-05-18T17:25:00.000-07:00

A black panther is really a black leopard.
The dumbest dog in the world is the Afghan Hound.
A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.
A dog’s shoulder blades are unattached to the rest of the skeleton to allow greater flexibility for running.
Tigers have striped skin as well as their fur.
Hippos can run faster than humans!
The Latin name for moose is alces alces.
The earliest European images of dogs are found in cave paintings dating back 12,000 years ago in Spain.
The Kangaroo's ancestors lived in trees. Today there are eight different kinds of tree kangaroos.
A Woodpecker can peck 20 times per second.
The Great Horned Owl has no sense of smell.
Scientists have performed brain surgery on cockroaches.
The flea can jump up to 200 times its own height. This is equivalent to a man jumping the Empire State Building in New York.
Most elephants weigh less than the tongue of a blue whale.
The very first bomb that the Allies dropped on Berlin in WW2 hit an elephant.
A garden caterpillar has 248 muscles in its head.
A moth has no stomach.
George Washington's teeth were made of elephant ivory, and walrus tusks.
Reindeer milk has more fat than cow milk.
Goats and sheep are seasonal breeders.
An elephant can smell water up to 3 miles away.
Deer can't eat hay.
A skunk will not bite and throw its scent at the same time.
In 2003, Dr. Roger Mugford invented the “wag-o-meter” a device that claims to interpret a dog’s exact mood by measuring the wag of its tail.
Every day of the year, 100 whales are killed by whale fisherman.

These facts were found using the link below.

http://www.factsaboutanimals.net/

2011-05-18T12:44:00.001-07:00

The most profitable moves, based on absolute profit in worldwide gross, are Avatar (2010), Titanic (1997), Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), Jurassic Park (1993), and Shrek 2 (2004).
The top five largest worldwide grossing movies of all time before inflation are Avatar (2009), Titanic (1997), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006), and The Dark Knight (2008).
The biggest money losers, based on absolute loss on worldwide gross, are Town & Country (2001), Stealth (2005), The Adventures of Pluto Nash (2002), Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001), and The 13th Warrior (1999).^m
According to the Movie Mistakes Web site, the movies with the most goofs are Apocalypse Now (1979) 390, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) 296, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002) 289, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987) 267, and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) 262.ⁿ
To Have and Have Not (1945) is the only instance when a Nobel prize-winning author (Ernest Hemingway) was adapted for the screen by another Nobel-winning author (William Faulkner).^t
In the 1985 horror film Day of the Dead, zombies are actually feasting on turkey legs that were barbecued in a special way to look like human flesh.
The three main actors in Rebel Without a Cause (1955) all met an untimely death. James Dean died in a car crash, Natalie Wood drowned, and Sal Mineo was stabbed to death.
Bela Lugosi’s (1882-1956) face was used as a model for Satan in Walt Disney’s production Fantasia (1940). Lugosi was famous for playing Count Dracula on the stage and on screen.
D.W. Griffith (1875-1948), a pioneering Hollywood film director, is credited with using the first close-up, the long shot, the fade-out, and other film techniques in his 1915 groundbreaking and highly racist film The Birth of a Nation (a.k.a. The Clansman), a film that portrayed the Ku Klux Klan in a positive way.
With an alleged budget of $280 million, Avatar is one of the most expensive movies of all times.The word avatar is Sanskrit for “incarnation” and is used in Hindu scripture to refer to human incarnations of God.
Thomas Edison invented the first moving pictures, which were small film images that could be viewed in a box. Initially, he was opposed to showing movies on the big screen because he thought one-on-one viewing would be more profitable.
The first Hollywood movie star is arguably Mary Pickford (1893-1979), who along with Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith formed United Artists Corp (1919). At the peak of her popularity, she made a record-breaking $10,000 a week (over $196,000 in 2008 USD).
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) called for a boycott of the 1947 Disney film Song of the South, an adaptation of the Uncle Remus stories that showed happy slaves on a plantation. Though the film inspired the Disneyland ride “Splash Mountain,” the film has never been released in its entirety on home video in the U.S.
In the 1969 musical Paint Your Wagon, star Clint Eastwood sang “I Talk to the Trees, But They Don’t Listen to Me.” Eastwood says the experience prompted him to start producing and directing his own movies.
David O. Selznick was fined $5,000 for the line “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn” in Gone with the Wind (1939). The Catholic Legion of Decency gave the movie a B rating, citing that the film was “morally objectionable in part for all.”
The first move to be filmed in Technicolor was Becky Sharp (1934).
The first movie to gross over $100 million was Jaws (1975).
The shortest performance to win an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor was Anthony Quinn’s eight-minute tour de force as Gauguin in Lust for Life (1956). The shortest performance to win as Oscar for Best Supporting Actress was Beatrice Straight's 5 minutes and 40 seconds performance in the 1976 film Network.
The first African-American Oscar winner was Hattie McDaniel who was awarded the 1939 Best Supporting Actress for her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind. Twenty-four years would lapse before another African-American would win: Sydney Poitier for Lilies of the Field (1963), which was filmed in just 14 days.
The all-time box office record set by an R-rated movie is The Passion of the Christ (2004) $370,782,930. The record for a PG-13 film is Avatar (2010). For a PG film it's Star Wars (1977), for a G film it's Finding Nemo (2003), and for an NC-17 film it's Showgirls (1995).

These facts were found using the link below.
http://facts.randomhistory.com/random-facts-about-hollywood-movies.html

2011-05-18T12:44:00.000-07:00

Originally, the term “movies” did not mean films, but the people who made them. It was generally used with disdain by early Hollywood locals who disliked the “invading” Easterners.
The first film ever made in Hollywood was D.W. Griffith’s 1910 In Old California, a Biograph melodrama about a Spanish maiden (Marion Leonard) who has an illegitimate son with a man who later becomes governor of California. It was shot in two days.
When Horace and Daeida Wilcox founded Hollywood in 1887, they hoped it would become a religious community. Prohibitionists, they banned liquor from the town and offered free land to anyone willing to build a church.
The “running W” was a trip wire to make horses fall over at the critical moment during filming. The device broke countless horses’ legs and necks. It is now illegal.
The most filmed author is William Shakespeare, including straight film versions, modern adaptations (West Side Story [1961], The Lion King [1994], etc.), and Shakespeare parodies.
The shortest dialogue script since the introduction of talkies was written for Mel Brook’s Silent Movie (1976), which has only one spoken word throughout: “Non.”

The character most frequently portrayed in horror films is Count Dracula, the creation of the Irish writer Bram Stoker (1847-1912).
The Western Hero most portrayed on screen has been William Frederick Cody, a.k.a. Buffalo Bill, followed by William Bonny, a.k.a. Billy the Kid.
The first African-American to play a leading role in a feature film was Sam Lucas (1850-1916) who was cast in the title role of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1914). The first African-American actor to make a career in films was Noble Johnson (1881-1978).
The Hollywood star who played the most leading roles in feature films was John Wayne (1907-1979), who appeared in 153 movies. The star with the most screen credits is John Carradine (1906-1988), who has been in over 230 movies.
The American Humane Association (AHA) objected to the scene in the Shawshank Redemption (1994) where the character Brooks feeds his crow a maggot. The AHA stated it was cruel to the maggot, and it required that the crow be fed a maggot that had died from natural causes.
In The Godfather (1972), John Marley’s (Jack Wolz) scream of horror in the horse head scene was real, as he was not told that a real horse head, which was obtained from a dog food company, was going to be used.
The first movie fashion fad was Hollywood star Mary Pickford’s (1892-1979) curls, which were augmented from the hair of Los Angeles prostitutes, employees of Bit Suzy’s French Whorehouse.
The top five biggest grossing films on opening day in the United States and Canada before inflation are The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009), The Dark Knight (2008), Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009), Spider-Man 3 (2007), and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009).
The five highest domestic grosses adjusted for inflation are Gone With the Wind (1939), Star Wars (1977), The Sound of Music, (1965), E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial (1982), and The Ten Commandments (1956).
In 1923, Mark Sennett, Harry Chandler, and the Los Angeles Times put up the “Hollywoodland” (later shortened to “Hollywood”) sign to publicize a real estate development. The sign cost $21,000.
For The Twilight Saga: New Moon, each actor portraying one of the wolf pack was required to have documentation proving Native American descent.
The director of 2012 (2009), Roland Emmerich, is a fan of rapper 50 Cent, whose real name is Curtis Jackson. The Jackson Curtis character in the film is 50 Cent's real name inverted.
The Twilight Saga: Twilight movie's opening weekend totaled to $69.6 million, which was the biggest opening for a film directed by a woman and starring a woman. Nearly 80% of tickets were bought buy women.

The highest grossing movies never to reach number one on the U.S. charts are My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) $241,438,208, Alvin and the Chipmunks (2007) $217,326,336, and Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009) $196, 519, 585.

These facts were found using the link below.
http://facts.randomhistory.com/random-facts-about-hollywood-movies.html

2011-05-18T12:37:00.000-07:00

The famous “burning of Atlanta” scene in Gone with the Wind (1939) consisted of burning the old sets from King Kong (1933), The Last of the Mohicans (1936), and Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936).
The scene in which Judy Garland sings “Over the Rainbow” in The Wizard of Oz (1939) was almost cut from the movie. Assistant producer Arthur Freed is credited with convincing MBM exec Louis B. Mayer to kept the scene.
There were 124 midgets hired to play munchkins in The Wizard of Oz (1939). One midget fell into a studio toilet and was trapped there until somebody finally found him.
When Clark Gable was filmed sans undershirt in It Happened One Night (1934), wives all over the country stopped buying their spouses the undergarment, causing a depression in undershirts in the 1930s.
The most expensive black-and-white movie ever made was Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966). Production costs totaled $7.5 million, due in large part to the salaries of its stars, Liz Taylor and Richard Burton.
The largest number of fatalities ever in a production of a film occurred during the shooting of the 1931 film Viking. Twenty-seven people died, including the director and cinematographer, when a ship they were shooting from exploded in the ice off the coast of Newfoundland.
The most extensive screen tests in the history of motion pictures were held for the role of Scarlet O’Hara in Gone with the Wind. MGM shot 149,000 feet of black-and-white test film and another 13,000 feet of color film with 60 actresses.
The largest cast of living creatures in a Hollywood film were the 22 million bees employed by Irwin Allen in The Swarm (1978).
The longest take in a movie is in Andy Warhol’s Blue Movie (1996), which consists of a 35-minute uninterrupted scene of Viva and Louis Waldon making love.
The greatest number of takes for one scene in a film is 324 in Charlie Chaplin’s 1931 City Lights.
The largest make-up budget was $1million for Planet of the Apes (1968), which represented nearly 17% of the total production cost.
The largest Hollywood film set ever built was the 1312' x 754' Roman Forum for the Hollywood epic The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964).
The largest indoor set was the UFO landing site built for the climax of Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).
The smallest set for the entire action of a movie in terms of confined acting space was the lifeboat in Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat (1944).
The first film studio in the world was Thomas Edison’s “Black Maria,” a frame building covered in black roofing paper built at the Edison Laboratories in New Jersey. It cost $637.67 to build in 1893.
The first Hollywood stunt man was ex-U.S. cavalryman Frank Hanaway who was cast in The Great Train Robbery (1903) for his ability to fall off a horse without hurting himself.
The first Hollywood stunt woman was Helen Gibson who doubled for Helen Holmes in the first 26 episodes of The Hazards of Helen (1914). She was trained as a trick rider and married to cowboy star Hoot Gibson.
The last wholly silent film produced for general distribution was George Melford’s The Poor Millionaire (1930) with Richard Talmadge (who played the hero and the villain) and Constance Howard.
According to BodyCounts.com (which counts only onscreen killings, not characters killed in planet explosions), the movie with the largest body count are The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2003) 836, Kingdom of Heaven (2005) 619, 300 (2007) 600, Troy (2004) 572, and The Last Samurai (2003) 558.
The first film to receive an X rating under the Motion Picture Association of America system of classification was the anti-establishment Greetings (1968) with Robert de Niro, though it later received an R.
The Muppet Movie (1979) was cut by New Zealand Censors on grounds of gratuitous violence. Sweden banned E.T. (1982) for children under 11 because it claimed the film showed parents being hostile to their children.
During the “chest bursting” scene in Alien (1986), director Ridley Scott had the actors unexpectedly showered with actual entrails bought from a nearby butcher shop so that their screams of horror would be real.
Landmark movies Bonnie & Clyde (1967), The Graduate (1967), and Easy Rider (1969) signaled a shift from “Classic Hollywood” movies to “New Hollywood” or “Post-Classical Hollywood” films because they broke several social taboos and traditional filming techniques.
Some of the most infamous Hollywood film “curses,” in which cast members and crew are beset by tragic coincidences, are usually associated with horror movies such as Rosemary’s Baby, The Poltergeist, The Exorcist, and The Omen.

These facts were found using the link below.
http://facts.randomhistory.com/random-facts-about-hollywood-movies.html

2011-05-18T12:32:00.000-07:00

The movie that was most weekends at #1 was E.T: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982). The move that occupied the most consecutive weeks at #1 was Titanic (1997). The lowest grossing #1 movie of all time was Jerry Maguire (1996).^m
The movie to hit $100 million the fastest was The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009).^m
The original title for Ghostbusters (1984) was “Ghost Smashers.”^e
After a difficult battle with censors, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966) was the first movie released with the stipulation that no one under age 18 would be allowed in the theater.
The first feature film created solely with Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) was Toy Story (1995). Over 800,000 hours of mathematical equations went into the film, which works out to more than a week of computer time for every second on the screen.
The first movie shot in CinemaScope was The Robe (1953).
The first picture to sweep all five major Academy Awards—winning for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Screenplay (adaptation)—was Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night (1934) starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. The second movie to do the same was One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975).^l
In Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963), live trained birds^a
The laser swords in Star Wars (1977) were actually fiberglass rods coated with a highly reflective material. Light was reflected onto the rods by mirrors in front of the camera lens and color was later enhanced by animation.
In The Exorcist (1973), Regan (Linda Blair) turns her head almost completely around to face backward. A life-like dummy with a swivel neck performed the famous scene. The sound of her neck turning was made by twisting an old leather wallet around a microphone.
It took 15 crew members to operate each of the three full-scale (25-foot) mechanical sharks used in Jaws (1975).^a
A real bridge with a real train crossing it was blown up for the 1957 The Bridge on the River Kwai.^a
When early executives at Warner Brothers were having financial difficulties, they decided to take a risk on this unusual first-time film: The Jazz Singer (1927), the first “talkie” picture.^e
The swimming pool used in the opening scene of Sunset Boulevard (1950) was the same one James Dean, Natalie Wood, and Sal Mineo played at the bottom of in Rebel Without a Cause (1955).^t
One 10-minute scene in Heaven’s Gate (1980) cost nearly $4 million. The film is not only one of the most notorious flops of all time, but the noted amount of animal abuse during filming prompted the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) to authorize the American Human Society to monitor the use of animals in all subsequent filmed media.
Gary Cooper was the first choice for the part of Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind (1939), but Cooper had just signed a contract with Goldwyn Studios, and Goldwyn was unwilling to lend him to MGM.
Adolph Hitler put studio head Jack Warner on his “extinction list” because of his film Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939).
Katherine Hepburn, Loretta Young, Helen Hays, and Lana Turner all tested for Gone with the Wind's Scarlet O’Hara. Even Lucille Ball read for the part.
Planet Vulcan in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) is actually Yellowstone National Park.

2011-05-13T12:42:00.000-07:00

1) Gorillas can catch human colds and other illnesses.

2) A newborn Chinese water deer is so small it can almost be held in the palm of the hand.

3) Ostriches can run faster than horses, and the males can roar like lions.

4) A lion in the wild usually makes no more than twenty kills a year.

5) The female lion does ninety percent of the hunting.

6) The only dog that doesn't have a pink tongue is the chow.

7) Turtles, water snakes, crocodiles, alligators, dolphins, whales, and other water going creatures will drown if kept underwater too long.

8) Almost half the pigs in the world are kept by farmers in China.

9) On average, dogs have better eyesight than humans, although not as colourful.

10) Deer have no gall bladders.

11) There is an average of 50,000 spiders per acre in green areas.

12) Snakes are carnivores, which means they only eat animals, often small ones such as insects, birds, frogs and other small mammals.

13) In Alaska it is illegal to whisper in someone’s ear while they're moose hunting.

14) The bat is the only mammal that can fly.

15) The leg bones of a bat are so thin that no bat can walk.

16) Some male songbirds sing more than 2000 times each day.

17) The only mammals to undergo menopause are elephants, humpback whales, and human females.

18) The chicken and fish are the only animals that are eaten before they are born and after they die.

19) A tarantula spider can survive for more than two years without food.

20) For every human in the world there are one million ants.

21) If you lift a Kangaroo's tail off the ground it can't hop - they use their tails for balance.

22) If you keep a goldfish. in a dark room, it will become pale!

23) Cows can sleep standing up, but they can only dream lying down.

24) The sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog." uses every letter of the alphabet.

25) The average fox weighs 14 pounds.

26) The scientific name of the red fox is Vulpes vulpes.

27) Alligators can live up to 100 years.

28) A single elephant teeth can weigh as much as 9 pounds.

29) The turkey is one of the most famous birds in North America.

30) A housefly hums in the key of F.

31) During World War II, Americans tried to train bats to drop bombs.

32) Canis lupus lupus is the scientific name for a Gray Wolf.

33) To escape the grip of a crocodile's jaw, push your thumb into its eyeballs-it will let you go instantly.

34) It is much easier for dogs to learn spoken commands if they are given in conjunction with hand signals or gestures.

35) Even a small amount of alcohol placed on a scorpion will make it go crazy and sting itself to death!

36) Male rabbits are called "bucks," females are "does."

37) The flamingo can only eat when its head is upside down.

38) Animals generate 30 times more waste than humans which is 1.4 billion tons every year.

39) Ants never sleep. Also they don’t have lungs.

40) A group of owls is called a parliament.

41) Just one cow gives off enough harmful methane gas in a single day to fill around 400 litre bottles.

41) Apple and pear seeds contain arsenic, which may be deadly to dogs.

42) Cows have four stomachs.

43) An anteater is nearly 6 feet long, yet its mouth is only an inch wide.

44) The blue whale weighs as much as thirty elephants and is as long as three Greyhound buses.

45) A herd of sixty cows is capable of producing a ton of milk in less than a day.

46) A grasshopper can leap 20 times the length of its own body.

47) At birth, baby kangaroos are only about an inch long—no bigger than a large water bug or a queen bee.

48) The smell of a skunk can be detected by a human a mile away.

49) There is a butterfly in Africa with enough poison in its body to kill six cats!

50) Cats have lived with people for only 7,000 years.

These facts were found using the link below.

http://www.thefactsite.com/2010/09/300-random-animal-facts.html

2011-05-10T12:28:00.000-07:00

There are presently over a million animal species upon planet earth.
The reptiles have 6,000 species crawling in their habitats; and more are discovered each year.
There are over 70,000 types of spiders spinning their webs in the world.
Well, there are 3,000 kinds of lice. Yes, it is the lice we are prone to get due to lack of hair hygiene.
This is a mind-boggling fact – for each of the 600 million people there is about 200 million insects crawling, flying...
Mammals are the only creatures that have flaps around their ears.
The world has approximately one billion cattle, of which about 200 million belong to India.
The life of a housefly is only 14 days.
A dog was the first animal up in space.
A sheep, a duck and a rooster were the first animals to fly in a hot air balloon. The oldest breed of a dog known to mankind is the ‘Saluki’.
An ostrich is the fastest bird and can run up to 70 km/h.
Never get a camel angry, for he or she will spit at you.
There are crabs that are the size of a pea. There are known as ‘Pea Crabs’.
The lifespan of 75 percent of wild birds is 6 months.
Denmark has twice as many pigs as there are people.
You do not need cotton buds to clean a giraffe ears. It can do so with its own 50cm-tongue.
Want to known the appetite of a South American Giant Anteater? Well it eats over 30,000 ants, per day.
The sailfish can swim at the speed of 109 km/h, making it the fastest swimmer.
The Sea Horse is the slowest fish, drifting at approximately 0.016 km/h.
The small car on the road is probably the size of the heart of a blue whale.
The length of an elephant is the same as the tongue of a blue whale.
The crocodile's tongue is unmovable, as it is attached to the roof of its mouth.

These facts were found using the link below.

http://www.factsaboutanimals.net/

2011-05-09T12:51:00.000-07:00

The average adult brain weighs just under 3 pounds and is the consistency of tofu.
Although multitaskers are extremely confident in their abilities, evidence exists that shows those people are actually worse at multitasking than most people.
When considering an action that would affect others, teens were less likely than adults to use the medial prefrontal cortex, an area associated with empathy and guilt.
Overall, over time, human brains have shrunk. But, brain size has nothing to do with intellect.
According to one calculation, the average human head contains 456 trillion trillion atoms.
The brain accounts for about 2 percent of body weight, but it uses about 20 percent of the oxygen in our blood and 25 percent of the glucose circulating in our bloodstream.
The old saw that we use just 10 percent of our brainpower isn’t true. We use every part of our brain, even in daily functions.
The brain actually stores different parts of a memory in different locations.
It turns out that both true and false memories activate similar brain regions.
Babies, who have no sense of social norms or how they are perceived by others, do not blush.
Humans are the only species known to blush, a behavior Darwin called “the most peculiar and the most human of all expressions.”
Optimists live longer and have lower overall death rates than strong pessimists.
No matter your cultural background, if you sob, scream or growl, others are likely to know what you mean, according to a new study.
A well-known side effect of Botox is the inability to fully express emotions. Now research reveals another side effect: the inability to fully feel emotions.
People who are happy are less likely to catch colds and report fewer symptoms of the illness when they are under the weather.
According to one scientist, a “very large part” of our brains is devoted to dealing with immediate threats, but a “very small part” is concerned about planning for the future.
Shivers down the spine even show up in brain scans, according to research at McGill University.
Contrary to popular notions about what is normal or healthy, new research has found that it is OK not to express one’s thoughts and feelings after experiencing a collective trauma, such as a school shooting or terrorist attack.
Squinty eyes and a pinched nose are the facial signals for disgust, the opposite of flared nostrils and widened eyes that reveal fear.
A fingernail grows 1/8 inch per month and can grow up to four inches per year.
Your fingernails and hair do not continue to grow after death. It appears they grow, as the skin around them contracts.
A study of 117 male members of the brainy society Mensa (you have to have an IQ of over 140 to join) showed that Mensa members had a tendency to thicker body hair — and the most intelligent had hair on their backs as well as on their chests.
Beards grow faster in spring, possibly indicating a seasonal variation in androgen (male hormone) production.
Fingernails are, essentially, flattened forms of claws.
Previous studies have shown that human hair discarded from barbershops and hair salons can be a nutrient source for plants when combined with other compost materials.
Curly hair gets less tangled than straight hair.
Poor circulation to the legs (caused by narrowing of the arteries) can eventually lead to loss of leg hair.
If you’ve ever wondered how hair clogs up your pipes so quickly, then consider this: hair cannot be destroyed by cold, change of climate, water, or other natural forces and it is resistant to many kinds of acids and corrosive chemicals.
The sound you hear when you crack your knuckles is actually the sound of gas bubbles bursting.
Men are sweatier than women, even when you take body size into account.
Sudden hearing loss could occur because of a stroke or severe ear infection. But, in many cases, it’s merely the result of wax buildup.
There are basically two kinds of earwax, wet and dry. Researchers studying earwax genetics say that people with the wet kind generally have more unpleasant armpit odor than people with the dry kind.
Some experts believe that our attempts to hold gas in are an unnatural result of our enclosed lifestyles and the build-up of pressure is responsible for bowel diseases.
In the 1960s, NASA was worried that a build-up of hydrogen from astronauts’ gas might accidentally explode in the spacecraft.
Heat released by the human body in one hour can boil 5 liters of water in one hour.
The human body glows with faint light and faces glow more than the rest of the body.
NASA’s new plan for a water-recovery system recycles not only condensed water vapor and trace contaminants from crew perspiration and respiration, but from urine as well.
Your salivary glands churn out about two to four pints (one to two liters) of spit every day.
Death is one of the side effects of a continued lack of sleep.
Women who slept five or less hours a night were twice as likely to suffer from hypertension than women who slept for seven or more hours.
Most humans in any society (say 70 percent to 95 percent) are right-handed; a minority (say 5 percent to 30 percent) are left-handed, and an indeterminate number of people are probably best described as ambidextrous.
The symptoms of restless legs had been noted by Dr Thomas Willis as far back as 1685.
Recent research has found that varicose veins are more common in men than in women.
The Achilles tendon is the largest tendon in your body, and can withstand more than 1,000 pounds of force, according to the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons (AAOS).
The outline or the border of your lips (called the vermilion border) is a special feature of humans only.
Garlic rubbed into the soles of the feet can be detected later in the breath.
Someone who was born blind experiences sounds, smells, and sensations while dreaming, but since the brain possesses no visual information, the dreams are not visual.

These facts were found using the link below.
http://onlinesurgicaltechniciancourses.com/2010/50-ridiculous-and-weird-facts-about-the-human-body/

DNA

2011-05-06T12:50:00.000-07:00

James Watson and Francis Crick figured out the structure of DNA.
DNA is a double helix.
The structure of DNA can be likened to a twisted ladder.
The rungs of the ladder are made up of “bases”
Adenine (A) is a base.
Thymine (T) is a base.
Cytosine (C) is a base
Guanine (G) is a base.
A always pairs with T in DNA.
C also pairs with G in DNA.
The amount of A is equal to the amoun tof T, same for C and G.
A+C = T+G
Hydrogen bonds hold the bases together.
The sides of the DNA ladder is made of sugars and phosphate atoms.
Bases attached to a sugar; this complex is called a nucleoside.
Sugar + phosphate + base = nucleotide.
The DNA ladder usually twists to the right.
There are many conformations of DNA: A-DNA, B-DNA, and Z-DNA are the only ones found in nature.
Almost all the cells in our body have DNA with the exception of red blood cells.
DNA is the “blueprint” of life.
Chromosomal or nuclear DNA is DNA found in the nucleus of cells.
Humans have 46 chromosomes.
One chromosome can have as little as 50 million base pairs or as much as 250 million base pairs.
Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is found in the mitochondria.
There’s a copy of our entire DNA sequence in every cell of our body with one exception.
Our entire DNA sequence is called a genome.
There’s an estimated 3 billion DNA bases in our genome.
One million bases (called a megabase and abbreviated Mb) of DNA sequence data is roughly equivalent to 1 megabyte of computer data storage space.
Our entire DNA sequence would fill 200 1,000-page New York City telephone directories.
A complete 3 billion base genome would take 3 gigabytes of storage space.
If unwound and tied together, the strands of DNA in one cell would stretch almost six feet but would be only 50 trillionths of an inch wide.
If you unwrap all the DNA you have in all your cells, you could reach the moon 6000 times!
Over 99% of our DNA sequence is the same as other humans’.
DNA can self-replicate using cellular machinery made of proteins.
Genes are made of DNA.
Genes are pieces of DNA passed from parent to offspring that contain hereditary information.
The average gene is 10,000 to 15,000 bases long.
The segment of DNA designated a gene is made up of exons and introns.
Exons have the code for making proteins.
Introns are intervening sequences sometimes called “junk DNA.”
Junk DNA’s function or lack thereof is a source of debate.
Part of “junk DNA” help to regulate the genomic activity.
There are an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 genes in our genome.
In 2000, a rough draft of the human genome (complete DNA sequence) was completed.
In 2003, the final draft of the human genome was completed.
The human genome sequence generated by the private genomics company Celera was based on DNA samples collected from five donors who identified themselves only by race and sex.
If all the DNA in your body was put end to end, it would reach to the sun and back over 600 times (100 trillion times six feet divided by 92 million miles).
It would take a person typing 60 words per minute, eight hours a day, around 50 years to type the human genome.
If all three billion letters in the human genome were stacked one millimeter apart, they would reach a height 7,000 times the height of the Empire State Building.
DNA is translated via cellular mechanisms into proteins.
DNA in sets of 3 bases, called a codon, code for amino acids, the building blocks of protein.
Changes in the DNA sequence are called mutations.
Many thing can cause mutations, including UV irradiation from the sun, chemicals like drugs, etc.
Mutations can be changes in just one DNA base.
Mutations can involve more than one DNA base.
Mutations can involve entire segments of chromosomes.
Single nucleotide polymorpshisms (SNPs) are single base changes in DNA.
Short tandem repeats (STRs) are short sequences of DNA repeated consecutively.
Some parts of the DNA sequence do not make proteins.
Genes make up only about 2-3% of our genome.
DNA is affected by the environment; environmental factors can turn genes on and off.
There are many ways you can analyze your DNA using commercially available tests.
Paternity tests compare segments of DNA between the potential father and child.
There are other types of relationship testing that compares DNA between siblings, grandparents and grandchild, etc.
DNA tests can help you understand your risk of disease.
A DNA mutation or variation may be associated with a higher risk of a number of diseases, including breast cancer.
DNA tests can help you understand your family history aka genetic genealogy.
DNA tests can help you understand your ethnic make-up.
DNA can be extracted from many different types of samples: blood, cheek cells, urine.
DNA can be stored either as cells on a cotton swab, buccal brush, or frozen blood or in extracted form.
In forensics, DNA analysis usually looks at 13 specific DNA markers (segments of DNA).
The odds that two individuals will have the same 13-loci DNA profile is about one in one billion.
A DNA fingerprint is a set of DNA markers that is unique for each individual except identical twins.
Identical twins share 100% of their genes.
Siblings share 50% of their genes.
A parent and child share 50% of their genes.
You can extract DNA at home from fruit and even your own cheek cells.
DNA is used to determine the pedigree for livestock or pets.
DNA is used in wildlife forensics to identify endangered species and people who hunt them (poachers).
DNA is used in identify victims of accidents or crime.
DNA is used to exonerate innocent people who’ve been wrongly convicted.
Many countries, including the US and UK, maintain a DNA database of convicted criminals.
The CODIS databank (COmbined DNA Index System) is maintained by the BI and has DNA profiles of convicted criminals.
Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is used to amplify a sample of DNA so that there are more copies to analyze.
We eat DNA every day.
DNA testing is used to authenticate food like caviar and fine wine.
DNA is used to determine the purity of crops.
Genetically modified crops have DNA from another organism inserted to give the crops properties like pest resistance.
Dolly the cloned sheep had the same nuclear DNA as its donor mom but its mitochondrial DNA came from from the egg mom. (Does that make any sense?)
People like to talk about DNA even if it bears no relation to science or reality.
A group of bloggers who write regularly about DNA and genetics have banded to gether to form The DNA Network.

These facts were found using the link below.
http://www.eyeondna.com/2007/08/20/100-facts-about-dna/

2011-05-06T12:37:00.000-07:00

1. You have all the muscle fiber you will ever have at birth. Once damaged they can’t be replaced.
2. Arnold Schwarzenegger has as many muscle fibers as you – They’re just thicker!
3. A single muscle cell of the sartorius muscle in the thigh can be more than 12 inches long.
4. There are more than 600 voluntary muscles in the body.
5. The strongest muscle of the body is the masseter muscle used for chewing!
6. Your hand contains 20 different muscles.
7. If all your muscles could pull in one direction you could create a force of 25 tons!
8. Muscles account for approximately 40% of your body weight.
9. It takes 17 muscles in your face to smile, but it takes 43 muscles to frown.
10. You take approximately 5 million steps per year using your leg muscles!

These facts were found using the link below.
http://tanyastroh.wordpress.com/2009/05/18/10-fun-facts-about-your-muscles/

2011-05-06T12:34:00.000-07:00

A human being loses an average of 40 to 100 strands of hair a day.
A cough releases an explosive charge of air that moves at speeds up to 60 mph.
Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie.
A fetus acquires fingerprints at the age of three months.
A sneeze can exceed the speed of 100 mph.
Every person has a unique tongue print.
According to German researchers, the risk of heart attack is higher on Monday than any other day of the week.
After spending hours working at a computer display, look at a blank piece of white paper. It will probably appear pink.
An average human drinks about 16,000 gallons of water in a lifetime.
A fingernail or toenail takes about 6 months to grow from base to tip.
An average human scalp has 100,000 hairs.
It takes 17 muscles to smile and 43 to frown.
Babies are born with 300 bones, but by adulthood we have only 206 in our bodies.
Beards are the fastest growing hairs on the human body. If the average man never trimmed his beard, it would grow to nearly 30 feet long in his lifetime.
By age sixty, most people have lost half of their taste buds. By the time you turn 70, your heart will have beat some two-and-a-half billion times (figuring on an average of 70 beats per minute.)
Each square inch of human skin consists of twenty feet of blood vessels.
Every human spent about half an hour as a single cell.
Every person has a unique tongue print. Every square inch of the human body has an average of 32 million bacteria on it.
Fingernails grow faster than toenails.
Humans shed about 600,000 particles of skin every hour - about 1.5 pounds a year. By 70 years of age, an average person will have lost 105 pounds of skin.

These facts were found using the link below.
http://www.teach-nology.com/worksheets/science/trivia/human/index.html

Google

2011-05-06T12:22:00.000-07:00

The prime reason the Google home page is so bare is due to the fact that the founders didn’t know HTML and just wanted a quick interface. In fact it was noted that the submit button was a long time coming and hitting the RETURN key was the only way to burst Google into life.
Due to the sparseness of the homepage, in early user tests they noted people just sitting looking at the screen. After a minute of nothingness, the tester intervened and asked ‘Whats up?’ to which they replied “We are waiting for the rest of it”. To solve that particular problem the Google Copyright message was inserted to act as a crude end of page marker.
One of the biggest leap in search usage came about when they introduced their much improved spell checker giving birth to the “Did you mean…” feature. This instantly doubled their traffic, but they had some interesting discussions on how best to place that information, as most people simply tuned that out. But they discovered the placement at the bottom of the results was the most effective area.
The infamous “I feel lucky” is nearly never used. However, in trials it was found that removing it would somehow reduce the Google experience. Users wanted it kept. It was a comfort button.
Orkut is very popular in Brazil. Orkut was the brainchild of a very intelligent Google engineer who was pretty much given free reign to run with it, without having to go through the normal Google UI procedures, hence the reason it doesn’t look or feel like a Google application. They are looking at improving Orkut to cope with the loads it places on the system.
Google makes changes small-and-often. They will sometimes trial a particular feature with a set of users from a given network subnet; for example Excite@Home users often get to see new features. They aren’t told of this, just presented with the new UI and observed how they use it.
Google has the largest network of translators in the world
They use the 20% / 5% rules. If at least 20% of people use a feature, then it will be included. At least 5% of people need to use a particular search preference before it will make it into the ‘Advanced Preferences’.
They have found in user testing, that a small number of people are very typical of the larger user base. They run labs continually and always monitoring how people use a page of results.
The name ‘Google’ was an accident. A spelling mistake made by the original founders who thought they were going for ‘Googol’
Gmail was used internally for nearly 2 years prior to launch to the public. They discovered there was approximately 6 types of email users, and Gmail has been designed to accommodate these 6.
They listen to feedback actively. Emailing Google isn’t emailing a blackhole.
Employees are encouraged to use 20% of their time working on their own projects. Google News, Orkut are both examples of projects that grew from this working model.
This wasn’t a technical talk so no information regarding any infrastructure was presented however they did note that they have a mantra of aiming to give back each page with in 500ms, rendered.

These facts were found using the link below.

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/interesting-facts-about-google/

2011-05-05T14:06:00.000-07:00

Before he became president, Lyndon Johnson was a teacher at a small school in South Texas.
Before he became president, Woodrow Wilson was president of Princeton University.
Only one president was a preacher -- James Garfield.
Did you know that William Howard Taft is the only President who served as both President and Chief Justice of the United States?
President John F. Kennedy won a Pulitzer Prize in 1957 for his collection of essays, Profiles in Courage.
Both George Washington and Jimmy Carter were farmers before they became president -- President Washington was a planter and a farmer at his home in Mount Vernon, and Before he was President, Jimmy Carter ran his family's peanut farm in Plains, Georgia.
Before he became president, Barack Obama was a U.S. Senator. Before that, he was an Illinois State Senator, and before that he was a community organizer in Chicago.
The President's personal office is called the oval office. Any plane he flies on is called Air Force One, and any helicopter is called Marine One.
The "S" in Harry S. Truman's name isn't short for anything. The President was named after both of his grandfathers, Anderson Shippe Truman and Solomon Young. The initial honors them both.
The first public reading of the Declaration of Independence took place in Philadelphia -- where the bell now-known as the Liberty Bell rang out to call the city's population together on July 8, 1776.
On July 9, 1776, General George Washington gave an order for the Declaration of Independence to be read to his army.
In the early part of the 19th century, a network called the Underground Railroad, which received its name in 1831, helped escaped slaves gain freedom. As a conductor on the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman helped 300 slaves gain freedom during the 1800s.
The Statue of Liberty was a gift of friendship resulting from the diplomatic relationship between the United States and France.
President Lincoln owned only one home during his lifetime -- in Springfield, Ill.
President Jefferson spent more than 40 years designing and building his home in Charlottesville, VA known as Monticello. The President admired classical architecture and incorporated this style into his home.
President Jackson's estate outside of Nashville, TN was known as the Hermitage.
President Richard M. Nixon was offered a position as a player's representative to the Major League Baseball Players Association in 1965. He declined, stating that he was needed in politics. Nixon served as President from 1969 to 1974.
George H.W. Bush played first base on the Yale University team that twice reached the finals of the College World Series.
Grace Coolidge, wife of President Calvin Coolidge, could often be found keeping a perfect scorecard while watching baseball games in the presidential box.
In 1915, Woodrow Wilson became the first President to attend the World Series, where he and his fiance, Edith Gault, made their first public appearance since announcing their engagement. The President insisted on paying for his own tickets.
In 1787, just four years after the end of war with Great Britain, 55 delegates gathered in Philadelphia to replace the Articles of Confederation. The Constitutional Convention led to the creation of the U.S. Constitution, which was signed on September 17, 1787.
On December 7, 1787, Delaware became the first state to ratify the Constitution.
The first day Congress conducted business under the Constitution was April 6, 1789. On this day, members of Congress counted the votes of the electors, who unanimously elected George Washington as the nation's first president.
In order to amend the Constitution, three quarters of all states must vote in favor before the proposed amendment becomes law.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/white-house-101/fun-facts

2011-05-05T12:53:00.000-07:00

While sitting at your desk make clockwise circles with your right foot. (go ahead no one will see you) While doing this, draw the number “6″ in the air with your right hand.
Your foot will change direction – that is a fact. Pretty interesting, huh? Keep on reading.

2. People with higher number of moles tend to live longer than people with lesser number of moles.

3. When filming summer scenes in winter, actors suck on ice cubes just before the camera rolls - it cools their mouths so their breath doesn’t condense in the cold air.

4. Thinking about your muscles can make you stronger.

5. Grapefruit scent will make middle aged women appear six years younger to men. The perception is not reciprocal and the grapefruit scent on men has no effect on women’s perception.

6. The world’s youngest parents were 8 and 9 and lived in China in 1910.

7. The colder the room you sleep in, the better the chances are that you’ll have a bad dream.

8. There are more people alive today than have ever died.

9. Women’s hair is about half the diameter of men’s hair

10. Women blink twice as many times as men do.

11. The average person who stops smoking requires one hour less sleep a night.

12. 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.

13. Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.

14. The human heart creates enough pressure while pumping to squirt blood 30 feet!

15. The brain operates on the same amount of power as 10-watt light bulb. The cartoon image of a light bulb over your head when a great thought occurs isn’t too far off the mark. Your brain generates as much energy as a small light bulb even when you’re sleeping.

16. The brain is much more active at night than during the day.

17. The brain itself cannot feel pain. While the brain might be the pain center when you cut your finger or burn yourself, the brain itself does not have pain receptors and cannot feel pain.

18. The fastest growing nail is on the middle finger. And the nail on the middle finger of your dominant hand will grow the fastest of all. Why is not entirely known, but nail growth is related to the length of the finger, with the longest fingers growing nails the fastest and shortest the slowest.

19. The lifespan of a human hair is 3 to 7 years on average.

20. Human hair is virtually indestructible. Aside from it’s flammability, human hair decays at such a slow rate that it is practically non-disintegrative. Hair cannot be destroyed by cold, change of climate, water, or other natural forces and it is resistant to many kinds of acids and corrosive chemicals.

21. The acid in your stomach is strong enough to dissolve razorblades. Hydrochloric acid, the type found in your stomach, is not only good at dissolving the pizza you had for dinner but can also eat through many types of metal.

22. The surface area of a human lung is equal to a tennis court.

23. Sneezes regularly exceed 100 mph.

24. Approximately 75% of human waste is made of water.

25. The average person expels flatulence 14 times each day. Even if you’d like to think you’re too dignified to pass gas, the reality is that almost everyone will at least a few times a day.

26. Earwax production is necessary for good ear health. While many people find earwax to be disgusting, it’s actually a very important part of your ear’s defense system. It protects the delicate inner ear from bacteria, fungus, dirt and even insects. It also cleans and lubricates the ear canal.

27. Babies are always born with blue eyes. The melanin in a newborn’s eyes often needs time after birth to be fully deposited or to be darkened by exposure to ultraviolet light, later revealing the baby’s true eye color.

28. Every human spent about half an hour as a single cell.

29. After eating too much, your hearing is less sharp.

30. Women are born better smellers than men and remain better smellers over life.

31. Your nose can remember 50,000 different scents.

32. Nails and hair do not continue to grow after we die. They do appear longer when we die, however, as the skin dehydrates and pulls back from the nail beds and scalp.

33. By the age of 60, most people will have lost about half their taste buds. Perhaps you shouldn’t trust your grandma’s cooking as much as you do.

34. Your eyes are always the same size from birth but your nose and ears never stop growing.

35. By 60 years of age, 60-percent of men and 40-percent of women will snore.

36. Monday is the day of the week when the risk of heart attack is greatest. A ten year study in Scotland found that 20% more people die of heart attacks on Mondays than any other day of the week. Researchers theorize that it’s a combination of too much fun over the weekend with the stress of going back to work that causes the increase.

37. Provided there is water, the average human could survive a month to two months without food depending on their body fat and other factors.

38. Over 90% of diseases are caused or complicated by stress.

39. A human head remains conscious for about 15 to 20 seconds after it is been decapitated. While it might be gross to think about, the blood in the head may be enough to keep someone alive and conscious for a few seconds after the head has been separated from the body, though reports as to the accuracy of this are widely varying.

40. Babies are born with 300 bones, but by adulthood the number is reduced to 206.

41. We are about 1 cm taller in the morning than in the evening.

42. It takes twice as long to lose new muscle if you stop working out than it did to gain it. Lazy people out there shouldn’t use this as motivation to not work out, however. It’s relatively easy to build new muscle tissue and get your muscles in shape, so if anything, this fact should be motivation to get off the couch and get moving.

43. Tears and mucus contain an enzyme (lysozyme) that breaks down the cell wall of many bacteria.

44. It is not possible to tickle yourself. Even the most ticklish among us do not have the ability to tickle ourselves.

45. The width of your armspan stretched out is the length of your whole body. While not exact down to the last millimeter, your armspan is a pretty good estimator of your height.

46. Humans are the only animals to produce emotional tears.

47. Women burn fat more slowly than men, by a rate of about 50 calories a day. Most men have a much easier time burning fat than women. Women, because of their reproductive role, generally require a higher basic body fat proportion than men, and as a result their bodies don’t get rid of excess fat at the same rate as men.

48. Koalas and primates are the only animals with unique fingerprints. Humans, apes and koalas are unique in the animal kingdom due to the tiny prints on the fingers of their hands.

49. One human hair can support 3.5 ounces. That’s about the weight of two full size candy bars, and with hundreds of thousands of hairs on the human head, makes the tale of Rapunzel much more plausible.
50. It cost 7 million dollars to build the Titanic and 200 million to make a film about it.

51. Cna yuo raed tihs? I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs forwrad it

These facts were found using the link below.
http://somethinwonderful.blogspot.com/2009/02/50-weird-facts-about-humans.html

2011-05-04T12:57:00.000-07:00

The brain doesn’t feel pain: Even though the brain processes pain signals, the brain itself does not actually feel pain.
Your brain has huge oxygen needs: Your brain requires 20 percent of the oxygen and calories your body needs — even though your brain only makes up two percent of your total body weight.
80% of the brain is water: Instead of being relatively solid, your brain 80% water. This means that it is important that you remain properly hydrated for the sake of your mind.
Your brain comes out to play at night: You’d think that your brain is more active during the day, when the rest of your body is. But it’s not. Your brain is more active when you sleep.
Your brain operates on 10 watts of power: It’s true: The amazing computational power of your brain only requires about 10 watts of power to operate.
A higher I.Q. equals more dreams: The smarter you are, the more you dream. A high I.Q. can also fight mental illness. Some people even believe they are smarter in their dreams than when they are awake.
The brain changes shapes during puberty: Your teenage years do more than just change how you feel; the very structure of your brain changes during the teen years, and it even affects impulsive, risky behavior.
Your brain can store everything: Technically, your brain has the capacity to store everything you experience, see, read or hear. However, the real issue is recall — whether you can access that information.
Information in your brain travels at different speeds: The neurons in your brain are built differently, and information travels along them at different speeds. This is why sometimes you can recall information instantly, and sometimes it takes a little longer.
Your smell is unique: Your body odor is unique to you — unless you have an identical twin. Even babies recognize the individual scents of their mothers.
Humans use echolocation: Humans can use sound to sense objects in their area using echolocation. It is thought that those who are blind develop this ability to heightened effectiveness.
Adrenaline gives you super strength: Yes, with the proper response in certain situations, you really can lift a car.
Women smell better than men: Women are better than men at identifying smells.
Your nose remembers 50,000 scents: It is possible for your nose to identify and remember more than 50,000 smells.
Your hearing decreases when you overeat: When you eat too much food, it actually reduces your ability to hear. So consider eating healthy — and only until you are full.
Your sense of time is in your head: How you experience time is all about your perception. Some speculate that stress can help you experience time dilation. Apparently, time manipulation isn’t just for superheroes.
Your teeth are growing before birth: Even though it takes months after you are born to see teeth, they start growing about six months before you are born.
Babies are stronger than oxen: On a pound for pound basis, that is. For their size, babies are quite powerful and strong.
Babies always have blue eyes when they are born: Melanin and exposure to ultraviolet light are needed to bring out the tr
Earwax is necessary: If you want healthy ears, you need some earwax in there.
Your feet can produce a pint of sweat a day: There are 500,000 (250,000 for each) sweat glands in your feet, and that can mean a great deal of stinky sweat.
Throughout your life, the amount of saliva you have could fill two swimming pools: Since saliva is a vital part of digestion, it is little surprise that your mouth makes so much of it.
A full bladder is about the size of a soft ball: When your bladder is full, holding up to 800 cc of fluid, it is large enough to be noticeable.
You probably pass gas 14 times a day: On average, you will expel flatulence several times as part of digestion.
A sneeze can exceed 100 mph: When a sneeze leaves your body, it does so at high speeds — so you should avoid suppressing it and causing damage to your body.
Coughs leave at 60 mph: A cough is much less dangerous, leaving the body at 60 mph. That’s still highway speed, though.
can self-destruct: It is possible for your bones to destruct without enough calcium intake.
You are taller in the morning: Throughout the day, the cartilage between your bones is compressed, making you about 1 cm shorter by day’s end.
1/4 of your bones are in your feet: There are 26 bones in each foot, meaning that the 52 bones in account for 25 percent of your body’s 206 bones.
It takes more muscles to frown than to smile: Scientists can’t agree on the exact number, but more muscles are required to frown than to smile.
When you take a step, you are using up to 200 muscles: Walking uses a great deal of muscle power — especially if you take your 10,000 steps.
Your tongue is the strongest muscle in your body: Compared to its size, the tongue is the strongest muscle. But I doubt you’ll be lifting weights with it.
Bone can be stronger than steel: Once again, this is a pound for pound comparison, since steel is denser and has a higher tensile strength.
We have a number of body parts that are, well, useless. Here are some facts about the body parts we don’t actually need.
Coccyx: This collection of fused vertebrae have no purpose these days, although scientists believe it’s what’s left of the mammal tail humans used to have. It may be useless, but when you break your coccyx, it’s still painful.
Pinkie toe: There is speculation that since we no longer have to run for our dinner, and we wear sneakers, the pinkie toe’s purpose is disappearing
Wisdom teeth: This third set of molars is largely useless, doing little beyond crowding the mouth and sometimes causing pain.
Vomeronasal organ: There are tiny (and useless) chemoreceptors lining the inside of the nose.
Most body hair: While facial hair serves some purposes, the hair found on the rest of body is practically useless and can be removed with few ill effects.
blue color of babies’ eyes. Until then they all have blue eyes.
Your head creates inner noises: It’s rare, but exploding head syndrome exists.
Memory is affected by body position: Where you are and how you are placed in your environment triggers memory.
You can’t tickle yourself: Go ahead. Try to tickle yourself.
Being right-handed can prolong your life: If you’re right-handed, you could live up to nine years longer than a lefty.
Only humans shed emotional tears: Every other animal that produces tears has a physiological reason for doing so.

http://bsnprogram.com/2010/50-incredibly-weird-facts-about-the-human-body/