Astronauts grow taller in space.

Believe it or not, this is true! On space missions of 12 weeks or longer, astronauts have been known to grow up to an additional two inches taller! For this reason, space suits are fitted to each astronaut with two inches of room to grow. The reason for this phenomenon is not known for certain, but scientists believe it is due to the lack of gravity in space. This weightlessness can also cause astronauts to lose bone mass! The lack of gravity prevents the compression of the spine which would otherwise occur on Earth. Once fully extended, the spine can apparently lengthen up to 2 full inches!

Source: Helium

What are those stars and colors we see when we rub our eyes called?

Have you ever wondered what's the name of those stars and colors that we often see when we rub our eyes or which suddenly come up when we get up in the morning? These little stars and colours are called Phosphenes.

10 or 11 McNuggets???

On the 10-piece Chicken MgNugget box for McDonalds, there is a picture of 11 McNuggets!

All MONOPOLY Facts!

The longest MONOPOLY game in history lasted 70 straight days.

Of course, you might recall that the longest underwater game of Monopoly lasted for 45 days (link).
More fun facts: The longest Monopoly game in a bathtub lasted 99 hours. The longest game in a tree-house lasted 286 hours. The longest game played underground was 100 hours, and the longest one played UPSIDE-DOWN was 36 hours. Also: Fidel Castro ordered all the copies of Monopoly in Cuba to be destroyed.

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.

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.

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