Forced Anal Exams

In the last five years, forced anal examinations on men and transgender women accused of consensual same-sex relations have been reported in Cameroon, Egypt, Kenya, Lebanon, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uganda, and Zambia. These examinations have the purported objective of finding ‘proof of homosexuality’.

Needless to say, this treatment is not only a cruel, inhuman, and degrading practice that may in some cases amount to torture, it also of no evidentiary value since these exams are rooted in discredited 19^th century theories that (male) homosexuals can be identified by the tone of the anal sphincter.

– Courtesy of hrw.org (Human Rights Watch)

“The only people who are obsessed with food are anorexics and the morbidly obese, and that in erotic terms is the Catholic Church in a nutshell.” – Stephen Fry

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Henry IV of France promoted green parks in Paris. He is responsible for a street called the Street of the Bridge of Cabbages.

10,113 Americans insured themselves against giving birth to the messiah at the millennium.

The 10th President of Nigeria (that is, the 3rd President of the Fourth Nigerian Republic), was called Goodluck Jonathan.

Scorpions navigate by starlight.

More than 50% of the world’s languages are located in just eight countries: India, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, Indonesia, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, and Cameroon.

See other: Quite Interesting Facts

Linguistic Diversity

According to the Swedish linguist Mikael Parkvall: ‘Languages are very unevenly distributed among the countries of the world.’ He lists the world’s countries with the largest number of languages:

1. Papua New Guinea [823]
2. Indonesia [726]
3. Nigeria [505]
4. India [387]
5. Mexico [288]
6. Cameroon [279]
7. Australia [235]
8. DR Congo [218]
9. China [201]
10. Brazil [192]
11. United States [176]
12. Philippines [169]

It’s curious how the linguistically most diverse country in the world is Papua New Guinea – because it’s also the place with the biggest biodiversity anywhere, one of the last places in the world where new species get discovered regularly. It leads one to wonder whether there could there be a single explanation for both phenomena?

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Mormonism is the fastest growing faith in the world.

Arthur Conan Doyle

The use of the word fall or the fall to mean autumn is commonly assumed to be an Americanism, but in fact it is found in the works of Michael Drayton (1563-1631), Thomas Middleton (1580-1627) and Sir Walter Rayleigh (?1554-1618).

Arthur Conan Doyle and WB Yeats both believed in fairies.

Local attractions in Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, include the Grottoes of the Pygmies and the cigarette factory.

German politician Käte Strobel broke a taboo in 1967 by promoting sex education with a school book and the government-sponsored film Helga.

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The Dik-dik is a miniature antelope that can go months without water but dies after a week without salt.

Balaenoptera Musculus or Blue Whale

Until the 14th of May 2002 Lithuanian women had to undergo a gynaecological examination as well as a regular driving test in order to acquire a driving licence.

The French philosopher Descartes believed that all humans could live as long as the Biblical patriarchs and that he was on the very brink of discovering a way that would make man live as long again when he died aged 54.

Anthophobia is the fear of flowers.

If you imagine a set of weighing scales and you place an average-sized blue whale on one side of the weighing scales and you have to pile lots of other things on the other side to balance the scales, you would have to use all of the following as counter-weight: half a dozen African elephants, a black rhino, a couple of whale sharks, five Tyrannosaurus Rex, one-hundred world-class Sumo wrestlers, the entire football team of Norwich City and an average-size family van.