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.

Forbidden To Touch....

Sunandha Kumariratana was the daughter of King Mongkut and Princess Consort Piam of Thailand. She was born in 1860 and was the first queen consort.
In 1880, when Kumariratana was only 19 years old, her boat capsized on the way to Bang Pa-In Royal Palace. She drowned despite the fact that there were many onlookers present that could have helped her. They didn't because they were not allowed to touch the queen. If they had, they could have been put to death. So ironically and tragically, they were not allowed to save her life.

Drawing Stockings...

After the New York World Fair, nylon stockings hit the market on May 14th 1940. Women rushed out to buy them, not in their thousands, but in their millions! Over 72,000 pairs of nylons were sold on the first day of release in America and 64 million by the time a year had passed.
The allure of wrinkle free, bunching free, inexpensive leg wear proved extremely popular putting a colossal dent into all preceding forms of established hosiery manufacture. During World War II, nylon was used to manufacture parachutes and other material for soldiers. Women were called on by the government to show their support for the war and the soldiers by giving up their nylon stockings.
So, many women had no stockings and so they ‘penciled in’ seams, using eyeliner or eyebrow pencil to draw lines up the backs of their legs to create the look of stockings. Stockings had become a style symbol and one that all “ladies” adhered to.

Couldn't Stop Eating.... :P

Tarrare was a French soldier with one of the oddest life stories ever largely because he could never stop eating! Born in 1772, he was thrown out of his home by his parents because they could not support his eating habits so he traveled with a band of thieves and prostitutes stealing food.
He worked as a street performer and would eat corks, stones, live animals, and whole apples! Tarrare joined the army for an income, yet food rations couldn’t support him so he would search the gutters for food. This was still not enough, and he was hospitalized from exhaustion.
Doctors took interest in Tarrare and conducted experiments to test his limits in which he would eat food intended for 15 people composed of live cats, snakes, lizards, puppies, and a whole eel which he swallowed without chewing! Tarrare’s appetite got larger and larger to the point where he ate corpses in the morgue.
Eventually accused of eating a toddler, Terrare was thrown out of the hospital and died of tuberculosis. Strangely, he was of normal size and appearance and doctors never figured out why he was so hungry!

Students in Brazil are bugged with microchips in their school T-shirts...

Did someone say 1984? Some 20,000 pupils in the city of Vitoria da Conquista have microchips embedded onto their school uniforms. The parents get a text-message when the students arrive in class, or if they are ever late.
Authorities claim that this measure assists parent-teacher communication and relationships.The local government has invested about $700 000 to set up this system. By May of this year, all local children under the age of 14 will have to use them.
The chip is embedded in such a way that causing damage to it, would also cause damage to the shirts. However, the shirts can be washed and ironed without damaging the chips.

Coke vs. Pepsi

• Coke drinkers are more likely to have graduated college and speak more than one language.
• Coke people prefer things like sushi, and might have tasted caviar. Pepsi drinkers prefer American snacks.
• Coke drinkers read the New York Times, while Pepsi drinkers read the USA Today.
• Coke drinkers are more likely to own a passport. It's more likely that Pepsi drinkers haven't had a vacation in 6 months. 
• Coke drinkers are more likely to show up early to an appointment. Pepsi drinkers? On time or late. 
• What do you think? Of course these are in average, and not representative of every Coke or Pepsi drinker.

Huh... :O

When Titanic was sinking not a single engineer was trying to save himself, all of them stayed and kept the power on for other passengers.

WTF...

In 1945, a man named Tsutomu Yamaguchi survived the atomic blast at Hiroshima, dragged himself to an air raid shelter, spent the night, caught the morning train so he could arrive at his job on time - in Nagasaki - where he survived another atomic blast.

Dreaming.....zzzzzz

• Within 5 minutes of waking half of your dream is forgotten. Within 10, 90% is gone.
• People who became blind after birth can see images in their dreams. People who are born blind do not see any images, but have dreams equally vivid involving their other senses of sound, smell, touch and emotion.
• Every human being dreams (except in cases of extreme psychological disorder). If you think you are not dreaming – you just forget your dreams.
• Our mind is not inventing faces – in our dreams we see real faces of real people that we have seen during our life but may not know or remember. We have all seen hundreds of thousands of faces throughout our lives, so we have an endless supply of characters for our brain to utilize during our dreams.
• A full 12% of sighted people dream exclusively in black and white. The remaining number dream in full color. Studies from 1915 through to the 1950s maintained that the majority of dreams were in black and white, but these results began to change in the 1960s. Today only 4.4% of the dreams of under-25 year-olds are in black and white. Recent research has suggested that those changing results may be linked to the switch from black-and-white film and TV to color media.
• If you dream about some particular subject it is not often that the dream is about that. Dreams speak in a deeply symbolic language. Whatever symbol your dream picks on it is most unlikely to be a symbol for itself.
• The most common emotion experienced in dreams is anxiety. Negative emotions are more common than positive ones.
• You can have four to seven dreams in one night.
• Studies have been done on many different animals, and they all show the same brain waves during dreaming sleep as humans. Watch a dog sleeping sometime. The paws move like they are running and they make yipping sounds as if they are chasing something in a dream.
• Men tend to dream more about other men. Around 70% of the characters in a man’s dream are other men. On the other hand, a woman’s dream contains almost an equal number of men and women. Aside from that, men generally have more aggressive emotions in their dreams than the female lot.
• Results of several surveys across large population sets indicate that between 18% and 38% of people have experienced at least one precognitive dream and 70% have experienced déjà vu. 
• If you are snoring, then you cannot be dreaming.
• You can experience an orgasm in your dream.

Feet... :P

• World's largest feet belongs to Matthew McGrory who wears US size 28.5 shoes. 
• Madeline Albrecht holds the world record for most feet sniffed at 5,600. 
• The average person takes 10,000 steps per day. That's equal to 115,000 miles in a lifetime, enough to circle the world four times. 
• The foot accounts for 25% of the bones of our body. 
• The average woman walks three miles per day more then the average male. 
• Nearly four times the weight of body pressure is applied on the feet while running.
• The ideal time to shop for shoes would be in the afternoon, because the feet swell at that time.
• 9 out of 10 women wear shoes of smaller sizes.
• Women suffer from foot problems 4 times more often than men.
• Separate shoes for left and right legs were first created by the ancient Romans. Prior to that, shoes used to be worn on either of the feet.
• There are roughly 250,000 sweat glands on a pair of feet.
• Sweat glands in the feet produce as much as half a pint of moisture each day.
• The pressure on the feet
• The first shoes were invented 5,000,000 years ago during the ice age and were made from animal skins.
• Fingernails and toenails grow faster during hot weather, pregnancy, and teenage years.
• The average foot gets two sizes longer when a person stands up.
• 
  

Cats...

• Cats sleep for 70% of their lifetime. 
• There are more than 500 million domestic cats in the world, with 33 different breeds.
• Cats "paw" or "knead" (repeatedly treading on a spot - sometimes its owner) to mark their territory. Cats sweat through the bottom of their paws and rub off the sweat as a marking mechanism.
• Cat urine glows in the dark when a black light shines on it. If you think your cat or kitten has had an accident in your home, use a black light to find the mishap.
• The print on a cat's nose has a unique ridged pattern, like a human fingerprint.
• If your cat is thrashing its tail, she is in a bad mood - time for you to keep your distance!
• If your cat is near you, and her tail is quivering, this is the greatest expression of love your cat can give you.
• Only domestic cats hold their tails straight up while walking. Wild cats hold their tails horizontally or tucked between their legs while walking.
• The more you talk to your cat, the more it will speak to you.
• A group of kittens is called a "kindle." A group of grown cats is called a "clowder." A male cat is called a "tom," a female cat is called a "molly" or "queen", and young cats are called "kittens."
• Cats can make over 100 vocal sounds, while dogs can only make 10.
• The majority of cats do not have any eyelashes.
• Cats rarely meow at other cats.
• When cats are happy, they may squeeze their eyes shut.
• The reason for the lack of mouse-flavored cat food is due to the fact that the test subjects (cats, naturally!) did not like it.
• Cats see so well in the dark because their eyes actually reflect light. Light goes in their eyes, and is reflected back out. This means that their eyes actually work almost like built-in flashlights.

Thefts & Robberies...

• One car out of every 230 made was stolen last year.
• Everyday 20 banks are robbed. The average take is $2,500.
• Bank robber John Dillinger played professional baseball.
• Out of every four, three robbers get caught. In 2009, during bank robberies, 94 individuals were taken as hostages and 21 robbers were killed
• There are about 2500 bikes listed on the Chicago Stolen Bike Registry (CSBR). 20% of those stolen bikes (CSBR) weren’t locked - no lock at all. Nothing. Nada. Bupkis. 34% of those stolen bikes (CSBR) were locked with either a combination cable lock, a cable with an integrated key lock or a cable with a padlock..

LOL :D

If you've seen a Japanese comment or message around you may notice the letter "w" randomly sprawled out in an otherwise foreign comment. While the Latin character W is used,W actually stands for "Warau"' the Japanese for "laugh". The kanji for laugh/warau (笑) is used in the same way.
Here's how you say LOL in other languages:
mdr: both in French and Esperanto. In French it stands for "mort de rire" (die of laughter)and in Esperanto "multe da ridoj" (lots of laughs)
חחח/ההה: in Hebrew. Putting these letters together makes de word khakhakha / hahaha.
mkm: In Afghanistan, it means "ma khanda mikonom," which translates to "I am laughing"
ha3: In Malaysia, people write ha3 to shorten "hahaha"
jajajá: With or without the tilde, it's the Spanish way of writing Hahaha.

There’s a Chinese fruit 300x sweeter than sugar and is used to treat diabetes and obesity!

The Siraitia grosvenorii is kind of like the holy grail for people with a sweet tooth like me: It’s extremely sweet with nowhere near as bad for you as traditional cane sugar (or high fructose corn syrup).
While the FDA only approved the fruit in 2009 for consumption in the US, it has been used in China for years as a low-calorie sweeter for drinks and in traditional Chinese medicine to treat diabetes and obesity.
One thing that was blocking the use of the fruit in other applications is that it has a lot of interfering aromas. However, Procter & Gamble has patented a process for isolating just the sweeter part.

Abraham Lincoln And John F. Kennedy

• Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846. John F. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946.
• Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860. John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960.
• Both were shot in the back of the head in the presence of their wives.
• Both wives lost their children while living in the White House.
• Both Presidents were shot on a Friday.
• Lincoln's secretary was named Kennedy.
• Both were succeeded by Southerners named Johnson.
• Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808. Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908.
• Lincoln was shot in the Ford Theatre. Kennedy was shot in a Lincoln, made by Ford.
• Lincoln was shot in a theater and his assassin ran and hid in a warehouse. Kennedy was shot from a warehouse and his assassin ran and hid in a theater.
• Booth and Oswald were assassinated before their trials.