Saturday, October 22, 2011

"Mrs." is actually an abbreviation for the word "mistress."


"Mistress" is the feminine form of "mister," which originally meant "master." Over the years people garbled the name for the married female, and the word "mistress" took on the meaning of an illicit lover, something far different than its original connotation. Therefore, married women ceased to spell out the full word, leaving "Mrs." as the far more respectable abbreviation!

(source)

Mice that were exposed to heavy metal became aggressive and murderous

One study conducted by David Merrill exposed mice to heavy metal 24 hours a day. The band chosen was Anthrax. The purpose of the study was to see how the heavy metal would affect their ability to learn new things.

Shockingly, the experiment could not be finished because instead of completing the Maze, the heavy metal mice all killed each other.
In further experiments, Merrill exposed the mice to heavy metal for only 10 hours a day. Even though the mice did not become homicidal in this experiment, they were much worse at solving the maze than when they had first encountered it.


(source)

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Any unrestrained liquid in space will form a perfect sphere.

I guess first off I should define what is meant by 'unrestrained.' Here on Earth, whenever we see falling liquids they obviously do not take the form of a perfect sphere (have you ever drawn a round raindrop before?). This is not for a lack of 'trying' on the liquid's part; there are simply other forces at work here on Earth that do not allow liquids to become completely spherical. The two culprits that 'restrain' liquids on Earth are gravity and the atmosphere. Gravity keeps the liquid moving toward the Earth and the gases in the atmosphere provide an uneven drag, with both factors resulting in raindrops that are flattened out and deformed. 

Click here to watch the video! 

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Amazon is now selling more Kindle books than ALL of their print titles combined!

As of this past April 1st, for every 100 print titles the e-commerce site has sold, there have been 105 e-books sold on the Kindle! This includes both paperback and hardcover books and does not count any downloads of the assortment of free Kindle titles that are available. Also, Amazon’s brand-new $114 ad-supported model is now selling more rapidly than the older $139 Kindle. As an avid reader of both E- and “tree” books, I can tell you from personal experience that the Kindle has been worth every dollar for me. I also don’t believe normal books are about to ‘die out’ anytime soon as a result of this digital revolution.


Monday, October 17, 2011

The inventor of the Pringles had his ashes buried inside one of the tall tubes.


Fredric J. Baur of Cincinnati, OH was so proud of his invention that he requested for his remains to be encased inside of it after he died! During his life, he served as an organic chemist and food technician at Procter & Gamble. In 1966, Baur filed for a patent for the tall, skinny can and the novel method of stacking the curved chips inside.


You weigh less at the Equator


The reason for this is that Earth bulges outward at the Equator because of the planet's rotation and its tendency to stay in a straight line while moving. This creates a gravitational field that is uneven, with more pull on the poles than in the middle. Because of this bulge, a person standing at the Equator is really further from the majority of Earth's mass than a person standing at either of the poles. But don't get your hopes up too much - the weight difference is a mere 0.5%! That's less than a pound for anyone weighing less than 200 pounds.

(source)
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