10 Daily Things

The Antikythera Mechanism is a fascinating example of one of the earlierst analog computer devices. Designed as an astronomical tracker, the clockwork mechanism is highly elaborate, and was built at least during the first century BC if not earlier, according to researchers. Recently, a team using advanced imaging equipment was able to decipher more of the inscribed Greek text and they claim to now have 95% of it translated. Full details will be revealed later this summer.

1. St. Francis Dam, 1928
Self-taught engineer William Mulholland built this LA dam on a defective foundation and ignored the geology of the surrounding canyon. He also dismissed cracks that formed as soon as the reservoir behind it was filled. Five days later, it ruptured, killing 450 people and destroying entire towns (along with Mulholland’s career).
2. Kansas City Hyatt walkways, 1981
Walkways crisscrossing the hotels’ multistory atrium collapsed, domino-style, raining debris and hundreds of people onto the packed dance contest below. The cause: grossly negligent design and use of beams that could support only 30 percent of the load.

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Your nose is one powerful protrusion. Whether it’s a big honker or a little button, if it is working correctly you can sense a skunk from only 0.000,000,000,000,071 of an ounce of offensive spray.

Animals can trace even tinier trails. Male luna moths, for example, track females from 5 miles away.

Such nosiness is important for the survival of almost all creatures: to find food, avoid being eaten, and pick proper mates. It warns us about rotten milk, a burning house, or an unhappy skunk, and can turn our attention to attractive potential dates.

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This is weird but true!

While sitting at your desk make clockwise circles with your right foot. (go ahead no one will see you) While doing this, draw the number "6" in the air with your right hand.

Your foot will change direction.

• Grapefruit scent will make middle aged women appear six years younger to men. The perception is not reciprocal and the grapefruit scent on men has no effect on women's perception.
• Women blink twice as many times as men do.
• Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.
• We are about 1 cm taller in the morning than in the evening. Layers of cartilage in the joints gets compressed during the day.
• There are approx. 550 hairs in the eyebrow.
• The strongest muscle in the human body is the tongue.
• The life span of a taste bud is 10 days.
• The world's youngest parents were 8 and 9 and lived in China in 1910.
• The largest known kidney stone weighed 1.36 kilograms.
• Most dust particles in your house are made from dead skin.
• Kidney stones come in any color–from yellow to brown.
• Babies are born without kneecaps. They appear when the child is 2-6 years of age.
• Your body is creating and killing 15 million red blood cells per second!
• The average human produces 10,000 gallons of saliva in a lifetime.
• If you ate too many carrots you would turn orange.
• The force of 1 billion people jumping at the same time is equal to 500 tons of TNT.
• A baby is born every seven seconds.
• You can tell if a skunk is about if you smell only .000000000000071 ounce of its spray.
• You breathe about 10 million times a year.
• The colder the room you sleep in, the better the chances are that you'll have a bad dream.
• The foot is the most common body part bitten by insects.
• The most common time for a wake up call is 7 a.m.
• The typical person goes to the bathroom 6 times a day.
• The fastest growing nail is on the middle finger.
• The most sensitive finger on the human hand is the index finger.
• The human body weighs 40 times more than the brain.
• After eating too much, your hearing is less sharp.
• A person swallows approx. 295 times while eating dinner.
• Your urine will turn bright yellow if you eat too much asparagus.
• There are more people alive today than have ever died.
• The human body is better suited to two four-hour sleep cycles than one eight-hour one.
• A man's beard contains between 7000 and 15,000 hairs.
• A beard grows an average of 140mm a year
• A hair is 70 per cent easier to cut when soaked in warm water for two minutes
• Women's hair is about half the diameter of men's hair
• During an average lifetime, a man will spend 3,350 hours removing 8.4 meters of stubble
• 4.5 million people have their health 'adversely affected' by air pollutants each year.
• 4 million children die each year from inhaling smoke from indoor cooking fires that burn wood and Dung
• 4 million people die annually from diarrhea infections, caused by poor sanitary conditions
• The hardest bone in the human body is the jawbone.

It sounds nuts, but a scientist says his team has made light go backward. And this is not a simple trick of mirrors.
Previous work has slowed light to a crawl. But in the new research, a pulse of light is given a negative speed and—as if just to make your head spin—the researcher says the experiment made light appear to exceed its theoretical speed limit.
If you totally confused, don't worry. This reporter doesn't get it either. Nor do a lot of really smart scientists.

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