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Women didn’t get the vote in Andorra until 1970.

In 1999, Darlington FC acquired 50,000 worms to irrigate their waterlogged pitch. They all drowned.

Only 35% of the average person’s Twitter followers are actual people.

Rent-a-Mourner is a company in Braintree, Essex from which “professional sobbers” can be hired to blub at funerals to make people believe the deceased was quite popular.

Despite the objections of her family, the American Congressman Daniel Sickles married his wife, Teresa Bagioli, when he was 33 and she just 15. He would later become the first man to use the Temporary Insanity Defence in court. (He had murdered his wife’s lover, who was the son of the man who wrote the lyrics to “The Star Spangled Banner”).

See other: Quite Interesting Facts

Benefits of Masturbation

“In the United States, the last recorded clitoridectomy for curing masturbation was performed in 1948–on a five year old girl.”
– Eve Ensler, The Vagina Monologues

It used to be thought that masturbation had negative medical consequences; it was also considered to be ethically deplorable for various curious reasons. Fortunately, these superstitious days are over, and empirical sciences have taken over from ill-informed prudery. Indeed, quite the reverse, many benefits of masturbation have since been discovered:

In 2003, an Australian research team of The Cancer Council Australia found that males masturbating frequently had a lower probability to develop prostate cancer. Men who averaged five or more ejaculations weekly in their 20s had significantly lower risk. However they could not show a direct causation. The study also indicated that increased ejaculation through masturbation rather than intercourse would be more helpful as intercourse is associated with diseases (STDs) that may increase the risk of cancer instead. However, this benefit may be age related.

• Giles, G.G.; G. Severi, D.R. English, M.R.E. McCredie, R. Borland, P. Boyle and J.L. Hopper (2003). Sexual factors and prostate cancer. BJU International.

A study published in 1997 found an inverse association between death from coronary heart disease and frequency of orgasm even given the risk that myocardial ischaemia and myocardial infarction can be triggered by sexual activity.

That is, a difference in mortality appeared between any two subjects when one subject ejaculated at around two times per week more than the other. Mortality risk was 50% lower in the group with high orgasmic frequency than in the group with low orgasmic frequency, with evidence of a dose-response relation across the groups. It was therefore concluded that sexual activity seems to have a protective effect on men’s health.

• Smith, George Davey; F; Y (December 20, 1997). Sex and death: are they related? Findings from the Caerphilly cohort study. BMJ 315 (7123): 1641.

A 2008 study at Tabriz Medical University found ejaculation reduces swollen nasal blood vessels, freeing the airway for normal breathing. The mechanism is through stimulation of the sympathetic nervous system and is long lasting. The study author suggests “It can be done [from] time-to-time to alleviate the congestion and the patient can adjust the number of intercourses or masturbations depending on the severity of the symptoms.”

• “Masturbation could bring hay fever relief for men”. (April 2008) Newscientist.com.

Some professionals consider masturbation to function as a cardiovascular workout. Though research is still as yet scant, those suffering from cardiovascular disorders (particularly those recovering from myocardial infarction, or heart attacks) should resume physical activity (including sexual intercourse and masturbation) gradually and with the frequency and rigour which their physical status will allow. This limitation can serve as encouragement to follow through with physical therapy sessions to help improve endurance.

• Graber, Benjamin; Benjamin Graber, Scott Balogh, Denis Fitzpatrick and Shelton Hendricks (June 1991). Cardiovascular changes associated with sexual arousal and orgasm in men. Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment (Springer Netherlands) 4 (2): 151–165.

“We have reason to believe that man first walked upright to free his hands for masturbation.” – Lily Tomlin

On Arguments

“The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory, but progress.”

– Joseph Joubert

 

I Believe

I believe that life is happy and death is sad
I believe my mum was married to my dad
I believe that things that aren’t good tend to be bad
Oh I believe
Yes I believe

I’m prepared to believe that Nixon wasn’t a crook
I’m prepared to believe Love Story’s a readable book
I believe the Dirty Dozen weren’t really dirty
I believe that Lucille Ball’s still under thirty

I believe Joe Thorn is clever
And Bob Hope will live forever
And that lever is pronounced ‘levver’
And the best movie ever made was Saturday Night ‘Fevver’

I believe that Colonel Sanders can fry
And that pigs and even DC-10s can fly
I’m prepared to believe that things go better with coke
And the Ayatollah tells a darn good knock-knock joke

I believe that some folk can hear what Bugs Bunny’s saying
And that Salt Lake City is a real nice place to stay in
I believe that JR really loves Sue Ellen
I believe that things sound better when you’re yelling
I believe that the devil is ready to repent
But I can’t believe Ronald Reagan is President

– Mel Smith, Pamela Stephenson, Rowan Atkinson, Griff Rhys Jones

Lethe

A river in Hades whose waters caused forgetfulness. It was on the banks of another Underworld river called the Styx that the shades, or ghostly remains, of the dead congregated to seek passage to the Afterlife.

Unless they bribed Charon to ferry them across the stream, they wandered aimlessly on the near bank forever. But those who made it across the Styx did not have much more to anticipate. Once they had drunk from the waters of Lethe, they were left with nothing to reminisce about for eternity. The Lethe had therefore been dubbed the stream of oblivion; the others were the Styx, Akheron, Pyriphlegethon and Kokytos.

‘He [Aithalides, son of Hermes, gifted with unfailing memory] has long since been lost in the inexorable waters of the Akheron, yet even so, Lethe (Forgetfulness) has not overwhelmed his soul [ie unlike the other dead he remembers his past lives and retains his memory in the underworld].’

– Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 1. 642 ff (trans. Rieu) (C3rd C.E.)

In modern philosophy, Martin Heidegger used the term lēthē to symbolize the “concealment of Being” or “forgetting of Being” that he saw as a major problem of modern philosophy. Examples are found in his books on Nietzsche and Parmenides.

Kip [Noun.]

‘[mid 18th century] The word meaning ‘a nap’ was first used as a term for a ‘brothel’. It may be related to Danish kippe ‘hovel, tavern’.’

– Chantrell. G. edt. 2002. The Oxford Essential Dictionary of World Histories New York, United States: Berkley Publishing Group (2003) p. 290

Mirage‏

A complex mirage or fata morgana is a display that involves multiple images, alternately expanded and compressed vertically, often giving the impression of buildings, cliffs, etc. where no such objects exist. The name is traditionally used in Italy for the vivid mirages seen across the Strait of Messina.

“What does a mirror look at?”
– Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune

It occurs when two layers of air of different temperatures meet. The basic, or inferior mirage of the sort we see in summer on the roads, arises when the cold air above begins to warm as the heat rises from the hot road surface. This causes the boundary where the layers meet to appear to shimmer like water when viewed from a certain angle. This is due to light refraction, or bending really, and instead of seeing the road, we see the reflection of the blue sky which appears like water.

When these different layers of air meet in the sky, and the boundary is curved, rather than level, the effect not only produces a mirror image, but can also act as a lens to magnify anything that lies many miles beyond the horizon. When this happens and there are several layers of alternating cold and warm air, the images are superimposed one upon the other, creating a multi-layered shimmering vision. The ground air must be cooler than that of the levels above to create a true fata morgana, so this is more commonly seen at sea or around coastal areas. This effect has ‘created’ cities in the deserts and mountain ranges, phantom ships at sea, and more latterly UFOs.

“Gussie, a glutton for punishment, stared at himself in the mirror.”
– P.G. Wodehouse, Right Ho, Jeeves

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In 1915, the British lock millionaire Cecil Chubb bought his wife Stonehenge. She didn’t like it, so in 1918 he gave it to the nation.

Pablo Picasso created some of his greatest works while wearing nothing but an apron and his favourite sandals.

Abraham Lincoln had a dog called Fido who was also murdered.

Harry Houdini’s real name was actually Erik Weisz.

Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz, the 63 letter German word meaning ‘a law on the delegation of supervising the labelling of beef’, is to be removed from the dictionary because it was not used often enough. Up until now, it was the longest word in the language. The 36 letter word Kraftfahrzeug-Haftpflichtversicherung, meaning ‘motor-vehicle liability insurance’ will probably take over first place.

See other: Quite Interesting Facts