First Bar Code!

The first product to have a bar code was a Wrigley's Gum!

Cracking knuckles is NOT harmful...

Cracking your knuckles does not actually hurt your bones or cause arthritis. The sound you hear is just gas bubbles bursting.

Cracking your knuckles (or any of your joints) can have therapeutic benefits. When you crack one of your joints you are pulling the bones that are connected at the joint apart from each other. This process stimulates your tendons, relaxes your muscles, and loosens your joints. Chiropractors do this for spinal joints when your back is sore and stiff, but you can do this on your own for your knuckles, toes, knees, neck, etc.

Unfortunately, there can be too much of a good thing. Cracking your knuckles will never lead to arthritis (despite what your mom keeps telling you), but scientists have discovered that it can cause tissue damage in the affected joints. Knuckle-cracking pulls your finger bones apart which stretches your ligaments. Too much stretching of your ligaments will cause damage to your fingers akin to the arm injuries sustained by a baseball pitcher who throws too many pitches. In addition to making your hand really sore, this ligament damage can also result in reduced grip strength.

How does this work? Your joints, the places in your body where you can bend, are where your bones intersect and are held together by ligaments. These joints are surrounded by a liquid called synovial fluid. When you stretch your ligaments by pulling the bones apart to crack your knuckles a gas in the synovial fluid escapes and turns into a bubble. This process is called cavitation. Cavitation ends when the bubble eventually bursts, producing that popping sound we know and love. After that, your joints won't be able to crack for another 25-30 minutes while the gas gets reabsorbed into the synovial fluid.

The Creator of NIKE logo was paid only $35!

The creator of the NIKE Swoosh symbol was paid only $35 for the design.

Nike paid Carolyn Davidson, a young graphic design student, $35 for the now famous Swoosh symbol. The founder of Nike, Phil Knight was teaching accounting at Portland State University when he met Davidson. He hired her to do some design work for his company, Blue Ribbon Sports, Inc.

For a presentation with some potential investors, Knight needed a design for a line of shoes. They were facing a deadline, so Davidson quickly put together some designs. One of them was the "Swoosh".

This is what Knight had to say about the now legendary design: "I don't love it, but it will grow on me."

He paid her $35 for the design at the time, but he also compensated her in the future by giving her stock in the company and a gold "Swoosh" diamond ring.

7% Americans think Elvis is still alive!

Some people even theorize that the body that is currently buried 6 feet underground in Graceland is actually a wax model, and that the real Elvis was spotted hopping on a plane to Buenos Aires 2 hours before his official time of death, going by the alias "John Burrows".

In reality, Elvis was found dead on his bathroom floor on August 16, 1977. He was overweight and his health was deteriorating due to his drug use. He suffered from glaucoma, high blood pressure, liver damage, and an enlarged colon, and he may have been suffering from degenerative arthritis as well. He was pronounced dead at 3:30 pm at Baptist Memorial Hospital. Though he is most certainly dead, he lives on through his music.

Cows, Cows and duh....COWS!

There are more cows in India, than there are cars in the United States!

India has more cows than any other country. There are over 280 MILLION (281,700,000) cows in India. That's more than a quarter of the entire world population of cows in JUST ONE COUNT(28.29% to be precise).
To put that into perspective the United States has only 96,669,000 cows (less than half the number of cows that India has). The Indian cow population is higher than the American dog and cat populations combined (77.5 million dogs and 93.6 million owned cats).

It's even higher than the U.S. car population, which is also a really huge number: 246 million cars at the end of 2009.

When the Niagara Falls freezed!

In 1848, the Niagara Falls stopped flowing altogether.

In March of 1848, so much ice had flown into the Niagara Falls that the falls literally stopped moving. As reported in the Buffalo Express: "The Falls of Niagara can be compared to nothing but a mere mill dam this morning. In the memory of the oldest inhabitants, never was there so little water running over Niagara's awful precipice, as at this moment!"

Despite what you hear from chain mail, the Niagara Falls rarely freezes over completely. Photographs have captured various times when parts of the Niagara Falls became frozen. In 1912, much of the Niagara River froze. The ice formed a bridge over the falls, but then collapsed, killing three people.

Three continuous 'Becauses' in one sentence...

A sentence cannot start with a because because because is a conjunction.

This is an absolutely correct sentence. Can't believe it? Then read it like this...

A sentence cannot start with a because, because because is a conjunction.

Square Watermelons!

In Japan they have square watermelons!

They get square watermelons by growing them inside of square glass cases. That way they can fit easily into a refrigerator, and you can stack things on them. Square watermelons are expensive though (10,000 yen or about $82). Compare that to regular round watermelons which cost about $15-20 in Japan.

Source: CNN Archives

SINKING Tower of Pisa!

The Leaning Tower of Pisa is actually sinking into the ground.

The entire structure is built on unstable clay and it began sinking before it was even done being built. By the time the architects had built the third floor in 1178 it began leaning.
Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini ordered the Leaning Tower of Pisa to be straightened. He had concrete poured into the tower's foundations, but it only made it sink more.
Out of fear that it would topple over, the Leaning Tower of Pisa was closed in 1990. It reopened in 2001 with cement injected into the ground to keep it from sinking any further.

The Soldier who refused to surrender...

A Japanese soldier refused to surrender to U.S. forces after WWII. Instead, he hid in Guam for 27 years.

Shoichi Yokoi, a Japanese sergeant in World War II, returned to Japan in 1972, 27 years after World War II ended. Two American hunters discovered Yokoi in the jungle in Guam. They turned him over to the police, and he was sent back home. He had been hiding in the jungle rather than surrender to U.S. forces at the end of the war.

Yoichi was living in a cave, eating fish and rats, and made clothes out of tree bark. Like other Japanese troops, he was trained to fight to the death and told that surrendering was shameful. Upon returning to Japan he discovered that he had been declared dead in 1944.

The Japan that he came back to was very different than the one he left. He had never heard of jet planes, television, or the atomic bomb. ''I am ashamed that I have returned alive,'' he said.

Shoichi Yokoi wasn't the only Japanese WWII vet to hide out that long, either. Two years later, a lieutenant named Hiroo Onoda was discovered hiding out in the Philippine jungle.

Source: NY Times