Those stars and colours you see when you rub your eyes are called phosphenes...

Have you ever closed your eyes, rubbed them and seen stars? Or at least little pops of light? It turns out that those pops of light have a name: phosphenes.
They are a phenomenon characterized by seeing light without light actually entering the eye. This rubbing mechanically stimulates the cells of the retina causing this effect. Sometimes, these phosphenes can still be seen for moments after you open your eyes.
Meditators have also reported experiencing phosphenes, and they have actually been known since antiquity. Ancient Greeks described them. Other reasons people ‘see stars’ are because of sneezing, coughing, blowing your nose or receiving a blow to the head.

When you Fall In Love, You Lose Two Close Friends !!!

Researchers at Oxford University conducted a survey asking people to describe their close circle of friends, and compared the difference between people who were in romantic relationships.
On average, when asked to list the members of their core group of friends, people name 5 friends. People in romantic relationships could only name an average of 4 close relationships. That's an average net loss of 1 person in your friend circle as a result of adding a new person into your life. Typically this means that you lose 2 friends from your group of 5 and then add your new lover to get to a total of 4.
This core group consists of people that you see at least once a week. You may of course have many more peripheral friends. Adding a new lover into the mix will force you to budget your time differently, forcing you to lose touch with an average of 2 people in your core group.

Not having friends has the same life expectancy effect as smoking 15 cigarettes a day!

Myths....

• Avoid people who talk to themselves. According to Ukrainian legend, that could indicate a dual soul and the second one doesn't die
• A vampire can result if a cat or dog walks over a fresh grave, a bat flies over the corpse, or the person has died suddenly as a result of suicide or murder.
• Long ago, the people of Nicaragua believed that if they threw beautiful young women into a volcano it would stop erupting.
• In medieval times, thunderstorms were believed by some to be the work of demons. So when it stormed, bell ringers would go up into the bell towers to ring the consecrated bells in an effort to stop the storm. This practice didn't always work out well for the bell ringer.
• According to legend, if a hare crosses a person's path as he starts out on a journey, the trip will be unlucky and it's best to return home and start again. If a pregnant woman sees a hare, her child may be born with a hare-lip. If a hare runs down the main street of a town, it foretells a fire. Cornish legend says that girls who die of grief after being rejected by a lover turn into white hares and haunt their former beaus.
• Breaking of a glass is traditional in some wedding ceremonies. This custom symbolizes different things. To some its the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, and for some its the represents the fragility of a relationship.
• In Greek culture, brides carry a lump of sugar in their wedding glove. It's supposed to bring sweetness to their married life.
• One gift-giving taboo in China is the giving of straw sandals, which are associated with funerals, and therefore considered bad luck.
• Crossing one's fingers is a way of secretly making the sign of the Cross. It was started by early Christians to ask for divine assistance without attracting the attention of pagans.
• One sign of rain that farmers once searched for was for their pigs to pick up sticks and walk around with them in their mouths.
• One superstition says that if a girl leaves her house early on Valentine's Day and the first person she meets is a man, then she will be married within three months.
• Less romantic was the old historical opinion that Valentine's Day is a good day to prepare eels for the purposes of magic. Eating an eel's heart was once believed to enable a person to see into the future.
• The reason one wears a wedding ring on the third finger is that (tradition says) there is supposed to be a vein which goes directly from that finger to the heart—i.e., the seat of love. Also, not everyone wears that wedding ring on the third finger of the LEFT hand. In some traditions, such as the Jewish one, it is worn on the right hand. Also, I'm given to understand that nuns ("brides of Christ") wear a wedding ring, again on the right hand.
• To prevent evil spirits from entering the bodies of their male children, parents dressed them in blue. Blue was chosen because it's the color of the sky and was therefore associated with heavenly spirits.
• Girls weren't dressed in blue, apparently because people didn't think that evil spirits would bother with them. Eventually, however, girls did get their own color: pink. Pink was chosen because of an old English legend which said that girls were born inside of pink roses.Black cats are considered lucky in England.
• Superstition says that the left side is the wrong side of the bed.
• The ace of spades in a playing card deck symbolizes death.
• It's a myth that owls don't hunt in the daytime because they can't see in daylight. It's just that rats and mice, the main items on owl menus, are most active after dark.
• Many sailors believe a cat on board a ship means a lucky trip.
• The mythical Scottish town of Brigadoon appears for one day every 100 years.
• During the middle ages, it was widely believed that men had one less rib than woman. This is because of the story in the Bible that Eve had been created out of Adam's rib.
• The seven deadly sins (sins serious enough to kill one's soul) are currently anger, envy, pride, sloth, lust, gluttony, and covetousness. They haven't always been so, however. Originally, there were eight deadly sins (as proposed by Avagrius of Pontus). The eight (in order of increasing severity) were gluttony, lust, avarice, sadness, anger, apathy, vainglory, and pride. Gregory the Great later decided that vainglory and pride were too much alike to be counted separately and combined them. He added envy. Later still, the Roman Catholic Church decided sadness wasn't a sin, and added sloth. Somewhere along the way, apathy was dropped as well.
• Hindu men once believed it to be unluckily to marry a third time. They could avoid misfortune by marrying a tree first. The tree (his third wife) was then burnt, freeing him to marry again.

INDIA - Mera Bharat Mahaan...

• There is 17 major languages and 844 dialects spoken in India.
• India was one of the richest countries on earth until the British invasion in the early 17th century.
• India invented the number system and Aryabhatta was the scientist who invented the digit zero.
• Algebra, Trigonometry and Calculus also originated in India.Quadratic Equations were used by Sridharacharya in the 11th century. The largest numbers the Greeks and the Romans used were 106 whereas Hindus used numbers as big as 10*53 (i.e. 10 to the power of 53) with specific names as early as 5000 B.C.during the Vedic period.Even today, the largest used number is Terra: 10*12(10 to the power of 12).
• Bhaskaracharya rightly calculated the time taken by the earth to orbit the Sun hundreds of years before the astronomer Smart. According to his calculation, the time taken by the Earth to orbit the Sun was 365.258756484 days.
• The value of "pi" was first calculated by the Indian Mathematician Budhayana, and he explained the concept of what is known as the Pythagorean Theorem. He discovered this in the 6th century, long before the European mathematicians.
• Chess was invented in India.
• India is the 6th largest country in the world, the largest democracy and one of the oldest civilization.
• India has the most number of mosques. It has 300,000 mosques which is much more than the Muslim world.
• India is one of the largest exporter of computer software products.
• Before 1986, India was the only place in the world where Diamonds could be found.
• The biggest and the largest employer in the world is Indian railways employing over a million people.
• India has the most number of post offices in the world.
• India never invaded any country in her last 100000 years of history.
• India has one of the world’s highest rates of abortion.
• Rabies is endemic in India. Additionally, “Delhi Belly” or diarrhea is commonplace due to contaminated drinking water.
• India is the birthplace of chess.l The original word for “chess” is the Sanskritchaturanga, meaning “four members of an army”—which were mostly likely elephants, horses, chariots, and foot soldiers.
• The Indian flag has three horizontal bands of color: saffron for courage and sacrifice, white for truth and peace, and green for faith, fertility, and chivalry. An emblem of a wheel spinning used to be in the center of the white band, but when India gained independence, a Buddhist dharma chakra, or wheel of life, replaced the spinning wheel.
• Usage of anaesthesia was well known in ancient Indian medicine. Detailed knowledge of anatomy, embryology, digestion, metabolism,physiology, etiology, genetics and immunity is also found in many ancient Indian texts.
• Sushruta is regarded as the Father of Surgery. Over2600 years ago Sushrata & his team conducted complicated surgeries like cataract, artificial limbs, cesareans, fractures, urinary stones, plastic surgery and brain surgeries.
• There where no plastic bags in India before 1985.
• The highest cricket ground in the world is Chail in Himachal Pradesh, India.

The Titanic will completely disappear within 20 years.

It seems like the sea just won’t cut the poor Titanic a break. A newly discovered species of aquatic rust-eating bacteria is slowly consuming the 50 000 tons of iron that makes up the sunken liner.
Experts believe that the invasive group of micro-organism will eventually swallow the ship like the ocean did those many years ago. The Titanic has already lasted 100 years but it has been predicted that in 15-20 years it will be nothing but a rust-stain on the bottom of the Atlantic.
The ghostly skeleton of the once magnificent liner haunts the bottom of the oceans as well as our cultural memory. The “unsinkable” ship serves as an ironic warning against overconfidence.
The living survivors of the Titanic are also slowly disappearing. With all this evidence gone, with many kids today not even knowing about the Titanic, is it possible that one day the Titanic will be forgotten as a cultural memory and the few people interested will have to rummage through Jack and Rose’s love story to retrieve a few blessed facts?

In Japan, Valentine's day is usually the female's responsibility. White Day, on March 14th, is the man's turn to reciprocate!

On Valentine's day, women give men chocolate gifts. This is supposed to be an expression of love, courtesy or social obligation. A hand-made chocolate is considered to be a sign that the man who receives it is the woman's "only one."
Starting in 1978, White Day was promoted by the National Confectionary Industry Association. It is supposed to be the answer day to Valentine's. Traditional gifts on this day are cookies, jewelry, white chocolate, white lingerie and marshmallows. The often cited rule is that the gift on this day should be three times as expensive as the one received on Valentine's.