The "My word, that's an interesting fact!" thread
 

A fun-filled thread full of facts, no fiction ever thanks. (don't attempt that phrase fast or drunk ;) )

Post all your interesting facts of the world, the universe, anything here and amaze your friends and enemies. :p

I kick off the thread with this relevant little gem:

- The largest city in the world by population is Tokyo, with 32,450,000 (approx.) living in an area the size of 8,014km2 (a density of 4,049 per square km)*

*-Stolen from Wikipedia, but still awesome all the same.

Many of history's dictators did not originate from the countries they rule. Stalin was Georgian, not Russian. Hitler was Austrian, not German.

Pointless but kinda fun thread.

The earth is wider at the equator, than it is from the north to the south tips.
If you go around the equator twenty-six times, you would have gone around enough times to be have gone the equivalent distance from here to the moon.

The square root of a negative number is called an imaginary number, as opposed to a real number.

A Leech has 32 brains.

UCLA physicists and engineers designed a graphene-based FET transistor that can switch at a frequency of 300 GHz and higher.

Sleeping in a cold room with the fan on with 5 blankets is then most comfy sleep ever

The sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog,"uses every letter in the alphabet.

also, If one places a tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death.

In the US we all drive in a parkway and park in a driveway. :D

I have to do this now.

101 Dalmatians and Peter Pan (Wendy) are the only two Disney cartoon features with both parents that are present and don't die throughout the movie.
(that's depressing...)

111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily. (scary scary)

2^43,112,609 − 1 is the largest known prime number at 12,978,189 digits long. It was discovered by the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search on August 23, 2008.

Chocolate is poisonous to Cats and Dogs.:heh:

That's not enough! You need to say more about it!

What's toxic to cats and dogs is a substance called theobromine. They're sensitive to it and it can seriously harm them.

Cats are also very sensitive to tomatoes, or more specifically, the glycoalkaloid tomatine, which is toxic to humans in high concentrations. A single slice of tomato can kill a moderately-sized housecat.

Tomatoes are a member of the nightshade family, after all. :)

Orcas (killer whales) are not actually whales at all. Rather they are the largest species of dolphin on Earth.

So much for being about typical family values when the parents always snuff it. :heh:

The average lead pencil will draw a line 35 miles long or write approximately 50,000 English words.

Coca-Cola was originally made with cocaine

You mean the coca leaves. Then again, since the synthesis of cocaine from the L-glutamine from leaves is highly unlikely to be a 1:1 mole reaction, you'd need alot of leaves to have a proper high.

The synthesis of crack-cocaine, the version which it can be smoked, is a 1:1 reaction though on both sides of the equation. The hydrogen ion and the chlorine ion present during the production process are both in a 1:1:1 molar proportion in the crystallised ionic bond.

Also, for your body to absorb the cocaine, an alkali has to be present most of the time since the common form is an acidic salt. Even if there are trace amount of cocaine within the cola itself, it is inactivated due to the solution it is in (carbonated water is slightly acidic), and the digestive fluids (acidic by nature).

The human being can function with almost all his mental capacities with only one cerebral hemisphere.

I should also add that many local anesthetics and pain control medications are based on cocaine derivatives (procaine, lidocaine, morphine etc.). The stuff is still addicting though and some patients do actually get hooked on that shit. You need a special license here to actually prescribe those.

No I'm not writing you one. :eyespin:

To be highly specific, it was originally made using the coca leaves, quite possibly inspired by a drink called coca wine (which is basically a combo of wine and cocaine). And since cocaine is naturally present in coca leaves...

actually, they still use coca leaves to make it today... just that the cocaine part of it has been extracted