LOL The random fact of the day thread

depends on your aim.

 

The main ingredient of fly spray is Acetylcholinesterase Inhibitor; acetylcholine is a neurotransmitter that is used by the body (including humans and insects) to transfer signals from one nerve cell to another. It is broken down by the enzyme acetylcholinesterase very quickly, otherwise the target nerve cell keeps firing. The inhibitor in fly sprays blocks the breakdown of this neurotransmitter, meaning that all of the nerve cells keep firing non-stop and the fly convulses itself to death. It works on insects so effectively because of the relatively large dose per unit body weight, but also because insects absorb oxygen (and insect sprays) directly into the blood. Direct ingestion of a large enough inhibitor would cause a similar effect in a human.

It's also why frogs and fish can survive in frozen ponds - they simply go to the bottom of the pond where the temp is a constant 4c and the water is still fluid.

 

Errr.... Actually every one is different...

 

Hot water will freeze faster than cold water in most situations, it's called the Mpemba effect named after the student who first obserbved it during an ice-cream making session. (And I didn't just find this on wikipedia.)

 

You would still get a good compression ratio as a sizable chunk is the same, also DNA should compress quite well anyway.

 

Non-processed cheese (e.g., Stilton), red wine, and marmite, contain a compound similar to amphetamine (but unable to cross the blood-brain barrier), known as tyramine.

It is broken down by monoamineoxidase enzymes in the gut wall. Thus, if you take MAO inhibitors (they are common antidepressants) you can absorb lethal amounts of tyramine, causing hypertensive crisis. This is known as 'Cheese syndrome'.

Found that out in my lecture today

 

Sterling silver is not pure silver. Because pure silver is too soft to be used in most tableware, it is mixed with copper in the proportion of 92.5% silver, to 7.5% copper.

 

I'd imagine it would be less enjoyable if you ejaculated out a 1.5TB hard drive...

 

If I ejaculated a 1.5TB HDD I'd probably do it again from the excitement.

 

The white powder inside bicycle innertubes is ground fish bones which is why all innertubes smell fishy.

 

Not to mention the increase i data storage abilities!

 

The first airplane in the Yukon Territory crash landed on the first car in the Yukon Territory. Also, Half&Half non-dairy creamer has 3 ingredients.

 

If every byte of data processed by Google in one day was a grain of rice, those grains laid out end to end would stretch far enough to create a figure of 8 going around the Earth and the Sun. (approximately)

The first powered flight by the Wright Brothers was shorter than the wingspan of a Boeing 707 (and all larger aircraft).

Sir Patrick Moore is the only person ever to meet the first person to fly (Orville Wright), first person in space (Yuri Gagarin) and the first man on the moon (Neil Armstrong).

 

Not to mention the fact that there would be a lot of people out there with more storage space than google!

 

if you snort 20 000 litres of kefir (russian yoghurt) you get high.
or if you eat 10 kg dill you die.

 

Im pretty sure eating 10kg of anything would kill you.

Well, you'd be violently sick because you've overloaded your stomach instead.

 

The animal referred to as a unicorn in some translations of the Bible (king, James, I believe) is more commonly believed to be an Aurochs, a form of cattle that stood 2 metres high at the shoulder. The Aurochs is often drawn from a side perspective where only one horn can be seen. The Original Hebre word that leads to this translation discrepancy is "re'em".

something I picked up over the weekend while talking to my creationalist sister about fantasy creatures. Thank you, Wikipedia.

 

There is a project going on to create Aurochs from remnant DNA.

The entirety of the Wright Brother's first flight could have taken place inside the cargo hold of a C-5 Galaxy.

Caffeine is not absorbed by the body but rather passes through unchanged. The caffien molecule binds competitively to a neuro receptor preventing the regular neurotransmitter from bonding. Because caffeine does not exist in a pure form in nature it is sometimes used as a tracer to look for sewage leaks. They tried this in Seattle once but found the background level from everyone dumping their coffee out was so high that it didn't work.

 

Maersk's container ships release more CO2 than the entire of Denmark does.

 

Bamboo is the tallest growing grass