8 Weird Fun Facts

8 Weird Fun Facts:

1. Cruel and Unusual Punishment
Before the 19th century, only poor servants, widows, and orphans ate lobster. At the time, it was actually considered cruel and unusual punishment to serve lobster to prison inmates more than once a week in the United States. Now lobster is often requested by prison inmates as a last meal in the United States. How the times change…

2. Ancient Toy
Ancient Greeks had the yo-yo. We know they had this popular childhood toy because a young boy can be seen playing with one on a vase that dates back to 5 BC. This is the first known picture of a yo-yo.

3. Heart Break Hurts!
According to a study done at the University of Michigan, the brain can’t distinguish between emotional pain and physical pain. Breaking your leg and breaking your heart feels the same to your brain.

4. White Hot
While our sun looks yellow because of Earth’s atmosphere, the star that keeps our little planet warm is actually white.

5. Super Thick
The shell of an armadillo is bulletproof, so be careful before trying to shoot one of nature’s armored tanks. A man in Texas once tried, and was hospitalized when the bullet ricocheted off the armadillo and hit him in the face.

6. Super Long.
The longest word in the English language would fill 12 pages in the dictionary, and is way too long for me to type here. It’s a whopping 189,819 letters long. Comparatively, Mary Poppins’ “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” is only 34 letters long. The word—a technical scientific term—is usually called Titin for brevity’s sake.

7. Secret Garden
The world’s oldest living tree is a bristlecone pine, aptly named Methuselah, that’s 4,851 years old. We can tell you that the tree is in Inyo National Forest in California, but we can’t tell you much more than that—its location is a closely guarded secret, to protect it from harm. However, it may have some competition. Research has shown that another tree in the same grove might be older than 5,000 years, but its location is also secret.

8. Man’s Best Friend
While this may come as no surprise to dog lovers, dogs can tell from your voice if you’re happy or sad. They also have the ability to distinguish between laughter and crying.

9. It’s Not Easy Being Green
It took some time for the Statue of Liberty to turn green. The statue was built in 1886, and by 1920 weathering had turned the copper statue green. Before then, it had been, well, you know what color copper is.