Things That Make You Go Hmmm...

We love to use it in our pies, eggnog, spice cakes, etc., but did you know Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously.

Want a little Oleander tea with that?  Things that make you go hmmm...

Things That Make You Go Hmmm...

So let's say the Apocalypse is nigh and you only have a spoon and lots of canned food.  Well, this short tutorial will help you open a can with a spoon.  Though, someone might want to tell Abe he's opened up a can of pears and not peaches.  Things that make you go hmmm...

Things That Make You Go Hmmm....

You knew I had to throw in a little humor on this lovely Earth Day!  Enjoy. :-)

Things that make you go hmmm...

comic via birdandmoon.com

Things That Make You Go Hmmm...

The Boston University Bridge is the only spot in America where a boat can sail under a train - driving under a car - driving under an airplane.  Pretty interesting, huh?  Things that make you go hmmm....

You can read more about the BU bridge here.

Things That Make You Go Hmmm... Dogs Smarter Than Cats?

 Dogs can understand about a two hundred word human vocabulary while a cat only comprehends about fifty words.

Things that make you go hmmm...

 

"I'll teach my dog 100 words," says the boy in the children's story of the same name. But can he really? Dog owners love to gush about canine intelligence. So it would come as no surprise to them that research supports their beliefs that dogs have a profound mental capacity. But how much of our language do dogs really understand? It turns out that the language comprehension of some dogs rivals that of apes and parrots, not to mention the average 3-year-old. [read more]

Things That Make You Go Hmmm... H2O

Hydrogen is an explosive gas. 

Oxygen supports combustion. 

Yet when these are combined it is water which is used to put out fires.

Things That Make You Go Hmmm... Oz - The Great and Powerful

Since we're on the subject of The Great and Powerful Oz.

The name for Oz in "The Wizard of Oz" was thought up when the creator, Frank Baum, looked at his filing cabinet and saw A-N, and O-Z, hence "Oz." Hmmm...

You can take Baum's word for it, or you can take his wive's.  Your choice.

We don't have to rely upon whatever Baum's children may have been told for verification, however, as Baum himself had offered essentially the same story many years earlier in a press release drafted to announce the reissue of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1903:

I have a little cabinet letter file on my desk that is just in front of me. I was thinking and wondering about a title for the story, and had settled on the "Wizard" as part of it. My gaze was caught by the gilt letters on the three drawers of the cabinet. The first was A-G; the next drawer was labeled H-N; and on the last were the letters O-Z. And "Oz" it at once became.

This evidence wouldn't seem to leave much room for doubt, as Baum himself is undeniably the one person who knows how he came to choose the name, and this explanation comes straight from the horse's pen, so to speak. Baum's version does differ from the one offered by his son in that the latter places him in a roomful of children rather than alone in his study, but that difference might be dismissed as a mere literary embellishment on his son's part. Even Baum's version contains its own discrepancies, though, as various pre-publication references and copyright registrations reveal that Baum considered several titles for his book using the word "Oz" but not the word "Wizard" (e.g., "The City of the Great Oz," "The Fairyland of Oz," "The Land of Oz"), so clearly he had not "settled on the 'Wizard' as part of it" before coming up with the name 'Oz.'2 Moreover, Baum's wife Maud wrote to a friend in 1943 that:

The word Oz came out of Mr. Baum's mind, just as did his queer characters. No one or anything suggested the word — or any person. This is a fact.

snopes.com

Things That Make You Go Hmmm... Wanna Chalk Ants?

If you have ants coming into your house, make a chalk line, but use only the white chalk; they won't cross it, it sticks to their footsies. Hmmm....

So here's the best answer I read online, "chalk is made of of calcium carbonate, a nontoxic substance. It doesn't repel ants or immediately kill them. Ants would prefer to avoid crossing chalk if possible, because the chalk particles can puncture their skin and SLOWLY kill them by dehydration. I have used regular chalk, and it hasn't been particularly effective. I tried drawing a circle around a bunch of ants. In desperation, they crossed the line anyway.

However, there are some toxic chalks sold illegally in Chinese markets. These chalks contain lead and mercury compounds (along with who knows what else). I've seen these chalks in action before. Ants die immediately on crossing the line. Most ants avoid it though. It strongly repels them."

Then again, eHow home tells you to go to the Dollar Store and buy some cheap chalk.  Go figure.

Things that make you go hmmm... 

Things That Make You Go Hmmm... Texas vs. Chile

I've known this for a long time, but just in case none of my fellow Texans knew...

We not only stole the flag design from Chile, we stole their damn motto too.  LMAO.

Chilean Flag

In order for Texas to differinteate itself from Chile, they made their star bigger and the blue extend from top to bottom on the left hand side.

Texan Flag

As for the motto, Chile's "La Estrella Solitaria", is "The Lone Star" in English.

And we are????  

The Lone Star State - go figure. 

Now that is something to really make you go, "hmmm".

Things That Make You Go Hmmm... Star Wars vs. Facebook

So this is how they did it...

Things that make you go hmmm...

Things That Make You Go Hmmm... How The Sap Flows

For those who have no idea how Maple Syrup is produced, here's a sweet little chart to help you understand.  It's pretty darn cool.

You may also want to read up on how syrup makers are having a hard time producing syrup this winter. Read full story here.  It is definitely something that will that will make you go hmmm...

Things That Make You Go Hmmm... 10 Colors That Faded Away

In the animal world or the human world, things go extinct every day. Yep, remember the dinosaurs? Yeah - me neither.  But in the art world, colors have faded away too.  And here are ten colors that have.

Click the chart to enlarge, it's quite fascinating to learn where these 10 colors came from.  Like the color Caput-Mortuum, a tarry brown pigment made of ground-up Egyptian mummies. "caput mortuum" means "worthless remains"  - now these are Things That Make You Go Hmmm...

click to enlarge

Things That Make You Go Hmmm... Pineapple Tree

99.999% of people
don't know how a
pineapple tree looks
like.

90% of you think it looks
like this...

the rest of you,

like this...

But there is no

pineapple

tree!

Things That Make You Go Hmmm...

Things That Make You Go Hmmm... Over 5 Million Dollars in 30 Days!

I'm not joking.  If you take a penny and double it, and then keep doubling it everyday for thirty days, you will wind up with over five million dollars.

I posted this on Facebook two years ago and folks just didn't want to believe me, but it's the God honest truth!  Start counting your pennies.

Things That Make You Go Hmmm... The Fox

The male fox mates for life. If the female dies, he will remain single for the rest of his life. However, if the male dies, the female will find another mate

Foxes are family-oriented critters, often forming lifetime attachments when it comes time to raise young ones. During the rest of the year, however, the male (dog) fox and the female (vixen) live separately, mostly at the insistence of the highly territorial female. When Autumn rolls around and the vixen starts feeling amorous, she lets the male know by her scent marking, which changes to advertise her feelings on the matter. At this point the male will reappear and court the female, and will hang around through the Winter until the kids (kits) are born and the vixen can hunt for herself again. He will hang around into the early Spring to make sure they are well provided for, then take off for a Summer of fun and frolic. [source]

Things That Make You Go Hmmm... The Brick

Wow, we sure have come a long way.  I remember getting excited when I got my first cell phone with a retractable antenna! That was the shit!

The Motorola Dyan TAC 8000X was the first "modern" cell phone to have fools lined up around the block of your local Best Buy or electronics store.  Released in 1984, it was known as "The Brick."  It weighed 2 pounds, only got a half hour of talk out of a recharge and cost nearly $4,000.

Interesting.  Things that make you go hmmm...

Things That Make You Go Hmmm... Legos

How many times have you stepped on some "Legos" as a child or as an adult?  

I have, many times, and they hurt like a motherf**ker.  

Excuse my French, but they are painful as hell!  So my question is this... 

Why waste hundreds of dollars on a high tech security system when you can just lay a few of these around the house?

Definitely Things That Make You Go Hmmm...

Things That Make You Go Hmmm... The Naked Mole Rat

I originally started this series on Facebook back in 2010, and it successfully ran for 67 issues.  I enjoyed reading up on these facts, and sharing them with my friends.  I've always felt that it's the small things in life, that impress us the most, hence, I'm re-booting the series on my blog.  I will start out by posting past issues, and slowly transition to some new and interesting facts.

Today's issue begins with a small rodent.  I was reading an article today about the Naked Mole Rat, and had to re-post this issue from my Facebook years.

Naked Mole Rats are immune to cancer. They have an additional gene to prevent cell growth.  In addition, naked mole rats cannot feel pain because they lack a neurotransmitter that other mammals have called Substance P that sends pain signals to the brain. They also are one of the only mammals known to be eusocial; they live underground in colonies with a queen like ants and bees. They mostly eat tubers (like potatoes) and their own feces, and they live very long lives spanning 3 decades!

Dr Joao Pedro Magalhaes explains:

"The naked mole-rat has fascinated scientists for many years, but it wasn't until a few years ago that we discovered that it could live for such a long period of time. It is not much bigger than a mouse, which normally lives up to four years, and yet this particular underground rodent lives for three decades in good health. It is an interesting example of how much we still have to learn about the mechanisms of aging.

"We aim to use the naked mole-rat genome to understand the level of resistance it has to disease, particularly cancer, as this might give us more clues as to why some animals and humans are more prone to disease than others. With this work, we want to establish the naked mole-rat as the first model of resistance to chronic diseases of aging."