1. The longest human poop ever recorded was 26 feet long.
You might feel an immense sense of pride after passing a monumental turd, but what I'm about to tell you about the world's actual longest poop will scare the crap out of you, literally. Back in February 1995, an unnamed woman from Ann Arbor in Michigan decided it was her duty to set such a record, and boy did she commit.
To ensure her digestive health was in tip-top condition, nutritionists from the University of Michigan first placed the woman on a super fiber-rich diet. Instead of relying on pure willpower to hold it all in, she was also fitted with his specialty design butt plug to prevent any premature excretions. After a week of painful endurance, the time had finally come.
The record-breaking poop was the length of the woman's entire colon at a massive 26 feet long and was passed in one uninterrupted sitting. The best part was that the event took place at the Cranbrook-Kingswood High School bowling alley in Bloomfield Hills because it was the only surface long enough to measure it. They say the smell has haunted the alley ever since.
2. A maintenance hole is the fastest thing on earth.
What would you say if I were to ask you what is the fastest thing ever recorded on earth? A cheetah, speeding bullet. The answer is, in fact, a maintenance hole. The maintenance hole in question didn't just grow legs and start sprinting like Usain bolt; it exploded into space. On July 26, 1957, astrophysicist Robert Brownlee designed the Pascal A-bomb test to contain nuclear fallout.
The bomb was placed at the bottom of a hollow column, three-foot-wide, 486 feet deep, and sealed with a four-inch-thick iron cap. In the ensuing explosion, the cap was blasted off the torn of fire at an unthinkable speed. Brownlee was so impressed that he decided to repeat the test renamed Pascal B to record the speed of the cap using a camera that shot at one frame per millisecond. Although the recording remains classified,
Brownlee estimated that the cover was launched up to a speed of 125,000 miles per hour, which is about five times the escape velocity an object needs to leave the earth's atmosphere. Though Brownlee expected the cap to fall back to earth, it never did. This means that when you're gazing up at the stars, you might be looking at a floating maintenance hole cover.
On October 4th, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the world's first artificial satellite. So the U.S. technically won the space race with their unusual entry, a maintenance hole.
3. Forks were once considered evil.
In the 11th century, Byzantine-born princess Theodora Anna Doukaina was wed to Domenico Salvo, the Doge of Venice. This dude was the duke, so such an arrangement hardly seemed out of the ordinary until it came to dinner time. Among the few possessions, the princess had brought with her to Italy were some gold forks. Although the ancient Greeks used forks to stop food from wriggling about, the tool hadn't yet got on in Europe.
So she was a trendsetter. What's wrong with that? Well, the Italians were pretty appalled by the whole thing because the food was considered a gift from God, and eating with cutlery implied that God's gift was unfit to be touched by human hands. To make matters even worse, the princess unexpectedly died from the plague soon afterward.
The Venice clergyman decided that her use of the two-pronged utensil was the work of the devil and said she'd been punished accordingly. Word quickly spread through Europe, and it took another 500 years before the Italians accepted that the fork was not evil.
In France, it wasn't until the 1700s that the fork was adopted after people realized it was actually quite useful for reading peas. A Peppa Pig episode was banned in Australia. Anyone with young kids will be well acquainted with the haunting snorts of the animated swine Peppa Pig and her family. They might be irritating, but they're totally harmless, right? Back in 2012 the Australian government didn't only ban an episode of the British TV show, they also had it removed from all streaming services in the country.
What could warrant such extreme measures? Did someone sneak some adult content into the background of a scene? Did Peppa drop the F-bomb? Not quite; the episode titled Mister Skinny Legs happened to focus on something Australia has an unfortunate abundance of, spiders? The moral of the episode is that Daddy Pig tells Peppa that there's no need to be afraid. Spiders are very, very small, and they can't hurt you. Spiders are very, very small, and they can't hurt you.
That's all fine and dandy in England, but in a country where many of the eight-legged creepy crawlies could easily kill a child, not so much. Smart move, Peppa.
4.The goat's tongue was a popular form of medieval torture.
There are many gruesome forms of medieval torture, but few are as strange as the goat's tongue, which is surprisingly exactly what it sounds like. Anyone unfortunate enough to suffer this unique torture style would have their legs tied to a tree and their feet moistened with salt water. Eyes widening with fear, the victim would then be greeted by the sight of one very thirsty tethered goat.
The goat would then be released upon the poor unfortunate soul who would have their feet licked without mercy. It may not sound particularly unpleasant, but as the initial tickling sensation subsided, it would be replaced by the sheer discomfort of the goat's rough tongue. Eventually, the licking would become unbearable as the soles of the feet were worn away completely. Who knew goats could be so deadly?
5. Pirates never made treasure maps.
Hollywood has taught us that pirates love nothing more than drawing up a good treasure map to lead them back to their stash, but that's all lies. Not a single genuine pirate treasure map has ever been found. And there's no evidence to prove that they even made them in the first place. This isn't to say they never buried their treasure, which definitely did happen, but maps played no part in it; why?
Firstly, map-making isn't easy, especially when accurately recording the exact location of buried treasure. Although pirates were expert navigators, the art wasn't really perfected until famous cartographer Captain Cook studied charts in the late 1700s. What's more, pirates were hardly the most trustworthy people. So unwittingly leading a thieving pillaging ship made to your own personal loot was hardly a risk worth taking.
The myths probably originated from Captain Kidd, a 17th-century pirate whose stash of treasure, buried at Gardener's Island, was used against him at trial. Thanks to his minor celebrity status, people assume that Kidd must have made maps to record his bounty, and speculation became a myth.
6. Chainsaws were invented for childbirth.
Plenty of modern-day products were invented for not-so-modern uses. Just ask John Aitken and James Jeffrey, the two Scottish doctors who dreamed up the chainsaw to help deliver babies.
Yes, really, the tool or a weapon now so closely associated with the timber industry and B-grade horror flicks once played a major role in the miracle of childbirth. You see, when babies couldn't fit through the birth canal or got stuck in the pelvis, parts of the bone and cartilage were removed to create more space. For lack of better tools before the 1780s, this procedure, known as a symphysiotomy, was usually done by hand using a small knife.
As you can probably imagine, this was neither quick, painless, or mess-free. Thankfully in 1785, Aitken and Jeffrey invented the first chainsaw, which looked like a regular knife with rotating jaws to speed up the process. It may have been faster, but it was certainly less painful because anesthesia wasn't used until 1846.nWomen who endured this probably make 21st-century childbirth look like a walk in the park.
7. Charles VI thought he was made of glass.
Yes, you heard that right. France was once ruled by a man who truly believed he was made of glass, which admittedly makes him more transparent than most of today's world leaders. Just to be clear, Charles VI was no ordinary King.
He famously suffered all kinds of delusions, which often caused him to forget his own name, run wildly through the palace, or refuse to bathe for months on end. The extent of his shenanigans caused him to be nicknamed Charles the Mad by the time he reached his mid-20s. So it's safe to say that he probably shouldn't have been ruling a country.
As you might imagine, believing that you were truly made of glass is a rather stressful burden to cope with. Charles reportedly wrapped himself in blankets, avoided anything that could cause him to shatter, and even had his clothing fitted with iron rods to protect his fragile body. And surprisingly, Charles did not smash into a million pieces, but he did die from malaria in 1422, aged 53.
8. The brontosaurus never existed.
Growing up, the brontosaurus was probably one of the first dinosaurs you learned, alongside the T-Rex, Velociraptor, and stegosaurus, but this just in: it never even existed. How did a totally made-up creature get entered into the history books as having actually walked this earth?
Here's how it all went down. In 1879, paleontologist O.C. Marsh dug up the fossilized remains of a dinosaur that was missing its head. Instead of just recording the sample as it was,s Marsh thought no head, no problem and went off searching of the creature's skull, which he found several miles away, except the head and the body wasn't a muscle. The skeleton belonged to a dinosaur called the apatosaurus, which had already been discovered and named two years earlier by none other than Marsh himself. It was a similar story with the skull, except that one came from the camarasaurus,
which had been discovered in 1877 by Oramel W. Lucas. Still, that didn't stop Marsh from just sticking the two parts together and naming it the brontosaurus or thunder lizard instead. A for effort, buddy.
9. Until 2001, Disney employees shared underwear.
And I hate to break it to you, but there are people inside the costumes of Mickey Mouse, Pluto, Goofy, or a whole host of other beloved characters at Disney parks. And they all used to share underwear.
The reason for this strange custom, according to Disney, is that underwear from home would bunch up and ruin the illusion. So employees were provided with specially made company-issued garments instead. When I say underwear, I technically mean undergarments, which could be worn under the costumes and optionally over regular underwear.
These articles were to be handed in and laundered at the end of each day, but things didn't always run so smoothly. Multiple workers started complaining about receiving smelly or stained underwear, and there were at least three official cases of employees getting pubic lice or scabies. After much campaigning, Disney eventually agreed to provide each employee with underwear they could take home in 2001.
10. Why does Mickey Mouse have four fingers?
Speaking of Disney, is there a more pressing question than the reason why Mickey Mouse, the very face of the company, only has four fingers? Perhaps you've never considered this unusual, or maybe you just think it would be strange for a mouse to have five digits. If that's the case, you'd be half right.
Walt Disney himself even shared the same sentiment, claiming that five fingers would look like a bunch of bananas. Mickey isn't the only one though, just take a look at SpongeBob, The Simpsons, The Flintstones, the Looney Tunes, or pretty much any other well-loved cartoon character. Notice the theme?
As with most things, it all comes down to two precious commodities, time and money; you see, early animation required thousands of hand drawn frames, and believe it or not, adding one extra digit per frame would require more of the animator's time and therefore more money from the companies. What's more, having four fingers is a happy medium between three, which looks a little alien and five, which seems also human. Either way, I'll bet you'll never notice till now.
11. Ants have graveyards.
Humans and animals share many traits, but you'd be surprised to know that we are almost alone in the practice of bearing the dead in graveyards, except for ants, that is.
The difference is that ants don't do this out of respect as we do. In fact, it seems like dying is nothing but an inconvenience for these puny insects. When an ant dies its body is left where it fell for at least two days until it starts to emit an odor known as oleic acid that alerts the colony of its passing.
The corpse is then carted off and buried in a designated area or graveyard. In a scientific experiment, researchers dropped oleic acid onto a live ant. They watched as its fellow ants swiftly came along and carried it off, despite its best efforts to demonstrate that it was still alive and kicking.
This led to a key discovery. As far as an ant is concerned, if you smell dead, you are dead. It's a little more complex than that, though. The smell of decay comes from harmful bacteria and as ants live in such close-knit colonies, one dead and could cause a total catastrophe if it isn't quickly removed from the equation. It's a cruel world out there.
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