Tag Archives: quick facts

If We Could Convert Matter Perfectly to Energy, a Typical Adult Male Would Produce an Explosion 80 Times More Powerful Than the Largest Nuclear Bomb Ever Detonated

Physics Facts

Amazingly, if we were actually able to convert matter perfectly to energy with 1 kg of matter being completely annihilated, the energy produced from just that small amount of matter is about 42.95 mega tons of TNT.  So an adult male weighing in at around 200 pounds has somewhere in the vicinity of 4000 megatons of TNT potential in their […]

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The Gopher Protocol on the Internet was Once More Popular Than the Web… Until the Creators Decided to Charge Licensing Fees

In the early days of the World Wide Web, one of the most popular alternatives to the Web (and indeed more popular for a time), Gopher, looked like it was destined to dominate the Internet.  Then the University of Minnesota announced in 1993 that they would no longer let people use their Gopher server implementation for free.  Instead, licensing fees […]

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Sign Languages Do Not Generally Resemble the Spoken Language from the Area They Originated

Myth: sign languages generally resemble the spoken language from the area they originated. In other words, in the majority of cases, the various sign languages used were not developed from spoken languages.  For example, American Sign Language resembles Chinese in form more than it does English in terms of a single gesture often represent a phrase or whole idea, rather […]

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TNT and Dynamite are Not the Same Thing

Myth: TNT and Dynamite are the same thing. In fact, TNT and dynamite are not the same thing at all, contrary to what the Road Runner and Wiley coyote would have you believe. Dynamite doesn’t actually contain TNT, but rather is comprised of an absorbent mixture soaked in nitroglycerin, which is extremely sensitive to shock, unlike TNT; this is then […]

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The Last Period of the “S.O.S” Brand was Not Left Off Due to an Error in the Trademark Submission

Myth: the last period of the “S.O.S” brand was left off due to an error in the trademark submission. In fact, they meant to leave it off because “S.O.S.” could not be trademarked thanks to the SOS distress signal often being written as “S.O.S.”, even though it’s not actually an acronym. By leaving the last period off, it made the […]

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Honey Bees Actually Do Sleep

Myth: Honey Bees Don’t Sleep. Honey Bees do in fact sleep, though there is always significant activity in the hive 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Research done in 1988 shows that, occasionally, Honey Bees will take rest and become relaxed, their body temperature drops, and they become unresponsive. Their sleep is not exactly like human sleep, but […]

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Some Women Do Have Adam’s Apples

Myth: Women Don’t Have Adam’s Apples. In fact, it’s actually not that terribly uncommon if you were to look close enough to most women’s throats, though “man sized” Adam’s Apples are somewhat rare in women. The “Adam’s Apple” is really just an enlarged larnyx which becomes big enough to be visible in your neck. For those of you who don’t […]

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There is an ATM in Antarctica

There is an ATM at McMurdo Station in Antarctica, about 840 miles from the South Pole.  Not surprisingly, this ATM is the most southern ATM in the world.   The most northern ATM in the world is in Longyearbyen, Svalbard, Norway, which is about half way between Norway and the North Pole (about 800 miles from the North Pole).  The world’s […]

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Why Japan has so Many Earthquakes

Japan is located along the Pacific “ring of fire”, on the edges of several continental and oceanic tectonic plates. This is an area of high seismic and volcanic activity from New Zealand, up through Japan, across to Alaska, and down the west coasts of North and South America. Japan’s specific location in this “ring”, causes frequent earthquakes as well as […]

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Where the Word “Spell” Comes From

The word “spell” comes from the Proto-Germanic “spellan”, meaning “to tell”, which in turn gave rise to the Old English “spellian” and then “spell”.  The first recorded instance of spell, being used to indicate writing or reciting the individual letters of a word, was in the early 15th century.  It would later be given the meanings “incantation” (late 16th century) […]

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