I love those sort of facts that you can bring up with your other half/ a mate that bores them but you actually find fascinating/ interesting.

I’ll start. Humans can’t actually sense the lack of oxygen in our bodies when we hold our breath or dive under water etc. That horrible feeling of lacking oxygen is actually our bodies detecting the rise of carbon dioxide. Our bodies can sense that.

What you guys got?

There is only one muscle in the human body which is attached at one end only.

frankconway
Full Member
There is only one muscle in the human body which is attached at one end only.

I’ll regret asking but which one?😀

I’ll regret asking but which one?😀

I’d have thought tongue. Get your mind out of the gutter you dirty boy.

Tongue, yes, that might be it?

One quarter of all your bones are in your feet. 26 bones per foot.

The air within the Eifel Tower weighs as much as the steel it’s built with.

APF

Humans can’t actually sense the lack of oxygen in our bodies when we hold our breath or dive under water etc. That horrible feeling of lacking oxygen is actually our bodies detecting the rise of carbon dioxide. Our bodies can sense that.

Are we allowed to do fact checks? Partially true.

Most people sense rising CO2 as their stimulus to breathe so what you’ve said about diving is true. But we do have receptors for hypoxia (low oxygen). They’re just not typically activated in normal physiology. However, some people with severe chronic airways disease (COPD) become desensitised to the (chronically high) CO2 and do rely on oxygen, at least partially, to sense the need to breathe.

My fact: If you take all the blood vessels in your body and laid them end-to-end

Spoiler:

you’d die. they’d wrap around the equator 2.5 times (~100,000 km).

The collective noun for Bees is a bike.

A Bike Of Bees.

One quarter of all your bones are in your feet. 26 bones per foot.

Did you know that you are born with 270 bones, but they fuse during childhood leaving with you with between 206-213?

@Superficial

Fact checking is great mate and the info you added to what I said is just as interesting as what I said, cheers!👍

I feel like fact checking all of this is going to be exhausting.

This one felt unbelievable:

The air within the Eifel Tower weighs as much as the steel it’s built with.

But it too is sort of correct. Apparently to be properly accurate, the statement is the mass of air contained within a cylinder large enough to contain the Eifel tower but that’s a bit wordy.

My googling also lead me to discover that all the metal in the Eifel tower, melted down, would fit into a sphere with radius only 6m. Which is incredible.

An interesting fact about the Eiffel Tower

I’m gonna stop this now.

My googling also lead me to discover that all the metal in the Eifel tower, melted down, would fit into a sphere with radius only 6m. Which is incredible.

Oh, that’s a good one. I’m using that.

There are 5 to 10 times more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on all the beaches in the world. On the other hand, there are a million times more atoms in your body than there are stars in the universe.

On the subject of big numbers: If you had a million quid in cash you’d probably consider yourself quite rich. But wealth of mega rich people is measured in billions. As an illustration of the difference consider that a million seconds is about 12 days, whereas a billion seconds is over thirty years. And when considering things like national budgets, consider that a trillion seconds is over thirty thousand years.

The Eiffel Tower was an incredible thing. It was the tallest building in the world by miles when it was built in 1889. That was before planes existed and only intrepid balloonists would ever have been that high. Normal people didn’t go mountain climbing either so it would have been an utterly incredible sight for the people of Paris. I mean it’s impressive now. It remained the tallest building in the world until 1930. Outside of the USA there weren’t really any skyscrapers so it really was a tremendous thing in Europe.

There are 5 to 10 times more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on all the beaches in the world.

That sounds like a difficult one to fact check – sand on beaches seems a difficult one to quantify seeing as its impossible to measure the coastline of Britain let alone the world – the more accurately to measure the coast the longer it gets.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox

as a side bar….. the ‘B’ in ‘Benoit B Mandelbrot’ stands for ‘Benoit B Mandelbrot’ and the ‘B’ in ‘Benoit B Mandelbrot’ stands for ‘Benoit B Mandelbrot and the ‘B’ in ‘Benoit B Mandelbrot’ stands for ‘Benoit B Mandelbrot and the ‘B’ in ‘Benoit B Mandelbrot’ stands for ‘Benoit B Mandelbrot….

In Old English, Moles used to be called ‘Wands’. Gradually this morphed into ‘Wants’.
At this time, a molehill was called a ‘Wantitump’.

Dogs can’t look up. There’s a flap in their eyes that closes, a bit like a dolls eyelids when you tip it back. When they point their face upwards towards you, they’re actually just relying on their (dominant) sense of smell to ‘see’ you.

In the past decade 467 species of animal have been declared extinct.

That sounds like a difficult one to fact check

Obviously it’s an estimate.. but whilst coastline is allegedly infinitely variable, beaches are quite smooth and so fairly easy to measure at least in length.

There are more Barbie dolls in the world than there are Canadians.

beaches are quite smooth and so fairly easy to measure at least in length.

but if you’re talking numbers of grains you’re making assumptions about depth

sc-xc & poops – yes, tongue.

There are more Barbie dolls in the world than there are Canadians.

There are more Lego Minifigures than humans – including one combination of minifig bits my brother happened across that looks exactly like my dad so theres probably one that looks exactly like you

Most people sense rising CO2 as their stimulus to breathe so what you’ve said about diving is true.

It applies to playing the oboe too. Because you actually use very little air playing the oboe it is usually necessary to breath out to expel the CO2 remaining in the lungs before breathing in.

Men are 6 times more likely to be struck by lightning than women.

Lego is the largest tyre manufacturer in the world

Dogs poop facing North

Teeth are the only part of your skeletal system that you clean

Mineral water companies make plastic waste, nothing else

New Mexico was named New Mexico before Mexico was named Mexico.

Lego is the largest tyre manufacturer in the world

Britain’s best selling make / model of car for the bast 40 years is the Cosy Coupe

On average, a great white shark will have around 24,000 teeth during it’s life.

the ‘B’ in ‘Benoit B Mandelbrot’ stands for ‘Benoit B Mandelbrot’

This is contentious. Mandelbrot didn’t have a middle name, he added the B to make himself more rangy and interesting. Of course, it could stand for “Benoit B Mandelbrot” and I really want it to, but I rather suspect this is just folklore.

Dogs can’t look up

Similarly, this is surely nonsense. It’s the first time I’ve heard the ‘doll’s eyes’ explanation but it’s been doing the rounds for years alongside other “facts” like a duck’s quack not echoing.

On average, a great white shark will have around 24,000 teeth during it’s life.

How many are its own? (-:

The street Pall Mall derives its name from the sport of croquet, the early name for which was pall-mall, from the Italian pallamaglio. It’s also where we get the word mall as in shopping mall.

I had no idea until I joined our local croquet club.

There are 5 to 10 times more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on all the beaches in the world.

I ‘did the math’ on this on a thread a little while ago. There’s a lot of wild estimations involved here of course, but it’s about right as best we can tell.

IIRC though, this was just in the known / visible universe? That’s a tiny tiny fraction of the universe as a whole. I’d have to look it up, I’ll see if I can find the old post.

Gary Oldman is younger than Gary Newman.

The average number of legs on a human is less than two.

DrP

Here you go.

Related factoid from that post: the number of grains of sand on Earth and the number of molecules in a drop of water is about the same.

IIRC though, this was just in the known / visible universe? That’s a tiny tiny fraction of the universe as a whole.

How would we know?

the ‘B’ in ‘Benoit B Mandelbrot’ stands for ‘Benoit B Mandelbrot’ and the ‘B’ in ‘Benoit B Mandelbrot’ stands for ‘Benoit B Mandelbrot and the ‘B’ in ‘Benoit B Mandelbrot’ stands for ‘Benoit B Mandelbrot and the ‘B’ in ‘Benoit B Mandelbrot’ stands for ‘Benoit B Mandelbrot….

We should call this something.

Perhaps the Maccruiskeen Set as he spotted it?

Shaft drive motorbikes can’t wheelie …