Random Facts So Interesting You will be amazed to know Part 15
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1. One man was once constipated for nearly two months.
In 1965, 26-year-old Angus Barbieri, who weighed 456 pounds, was put on a fasting program. It wouldn't be ethical to conduct a study like this today, but at the time, things were different, allowing Barbieri's doctor, William Stewart, to experiment. On a strict regimen of multivitamins and minerals, Barbieri got his nutrients without eating a scrap of food, which resulted in nearly two months of constipation. By the end of the year, Barbieri was 180 pounds. (Note: Fasting to this degree is not recommended, as it can lead to serious health conditions.)
2. Most people break up on Mondays.
Searching through public Facebook data, Lee Byron and David McCandless found that relationships statuses changed for the worse two weeks before Christmas, around Easter, and on Mondays. Though this data may be somewhat misleading, as people might not be live-updating their breakups, it shows an obvious trend.
3. There may be 2,000 active serial killers in the U.S. right now.
Thomas Hargrove has been archiving homicides for years through his Murder Accountability Project. Through his experience, he came up with an algorithm that found patterns in recent unsolved murders linked to at least one other murder through DNA. This allowed him to estimate the number of unsolved cases in the U.S. at any given time. According to The New Yorker, he believes that the number of active serial killers in the U.S. is around 2,000.
4. Beethoven could still hear after going deaf.
Upon going deaf, Beethoven discovered that if he bit onto a metal pole that connected to the piano he was playing, he could hear almost perfectly well. This process is called bone conduction, and while technology has evolved, the science is the same: Vibrations are transferred from the conductive metal into our bones. When this happens, our ears pick up the signal with no sound distortion.
5. Ants have a built-in FitBit.
While previous research found that ants use visual cues, a 2007 study discovered that desert ants have an internal pedometer that helps them keep track of their travels and find their way back home.
6. Stressed men have altered proclivities.
A 2012 study published in the journal PLoS ONE found that men who are feeling stressed out prefer women with curvier figures. The study had one experimental group perform a stressful activity, while the other control group did not. Afterward, they were shown pictures of women with various body types. When the men in the control group were asked to rate the women on a scale of one to nine, they rated pictures of women with higher BMIs as the most attractive.
7. Crows holds grudges.
In 2010, researchers in Seattle found that formerly captured crows were able to remember the face of their abductor even years after the incident. Once they identified the suspect in question, they would threaten them by diving down and swarming the person that they had felt threatened by years before.
8. Canada once heavily targeted LGBTQ individuals.
Our Canadian neighbors may not have been as friendly as we thought. During the Cold War era, Canada spent thousands on its historic "Fruit Machine." This device was supposedly able to identify gay men and lesbian women by monitoring subjects as they were shown pornographic images with homosexual content.
This, unfortunately, led to the wrongful persecution of many of Canada's fine citizens. In 2017, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apologized for the mistreatment of these people.
9. Bill Gates has donated nearly half his fortune.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates encourages the Giving Pledge, a notion that, if you are fortunate enough, you should be giving 50 percent of your wealth to those who need it most. As of 2013, he has donated $28 billion and has saved around 6 million lives by bringing vaccines and better healthcare to people worldwide.
10. You can always "see" your nose.
The human brain is capable of amazing things, but in order to do those things, it needs to block out distractions through a process called unconscious selective attention. The nose is one of those distractions. In his landmark 1960s study, Ulric Neisser discovered this phenomenon after he asked participants to count the number of times basketball players passed a ball in a video. What the large majority failed to notice in the video was a girl walking through the middle of the court with an umbrella, because they were so focused on counting.