Seriously, is there anything more bizarre than the word “bizarre”?
The word actually comes from the Basque, who upon seeing bearded Spanish soldiers for the first time found them odd.
Bizar, which in Basque means beard, then came to mean strange, of course, in certain European languages.
Undoubtedly, all languages have a word for “bizarre”, for nothing else fascinates us more than the outlandish, unusual and downright weird, especially when it involves people other than ourselves.
No, this information won’t help you get into Harvard, but it will make for fun conversation at a party.
Here are 10 bizarre facts.
Elephants Can’t Jump
Elephants are the only mammals that cannot jump.
Apart from their sheer size and mega weight, the bones in an elephant’s feet are more closely packed together than other mammals so they don’t have the flexibility and spring mechanisms to help them jump.
Killer Sandcastles
Sandcastles kill more people than sharks.
Physician Dr Bradley Maron conducted research that revealed that more people had died in the US from falling into holes left as by-products of sandcastles than by shark attacks, 16 as opposed to 12, since 1990.
Royal Fish
A 1324 English law states that if a whale is found on a British beach, the head belongs to the king and the tail to the queen.
Whales, sturgeon, dolphins and porpoises are considered Fish Royal and when taken or found on a British beach they become the personal property of the monarch as part of his or her royal prerogative.
The monarch’s right to royal fish was recognized by a statute enacted during the reign of Edward II.
Kalashnikov Rifle
“When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.”
Winston Churchill
The Kalashnikov assault rifle (AK-47) is the most widely spread weapon on earth; there is one for every 70 people nowadays.
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, there are 100 million Kalashnikov rifles in use around the world.
Carbon in the Human Body
The human body contains enough carbon to make 9,000 pencils.
The human body contains 18% carbon, so, a 70 kg adult contains 13 kg carbon.
If we assume a pencil has about 1,5 gr of graphite in it, that’s close to 9000 pencils.
Innovative methods allow for the conversion of human carbon to both common pencils and luxurious diamonds.
Or if you prefer something more upscale, the human body can produce between 50 and 100 diamonds.
In fact, there is a US company that extracts carbon from cremated bodies and turns it into diamonds.
Chicago-based company LifeGem was the first US company to develop a way to extract carbon from human remains and turn it into diamonds at a cushy profit.
Sweet Pesticide
Artificial sweetener Splenda was meant to be a pesticide. It became a sweetener when a lab assistant misheard an order to “test it” as “taste it”.
Shashikant Phadnis, a young Indian chemist at Queen Elizabeth College, in London, and his adviser, Leslie Hough, were working on an insecticide when they came across something new.
How many sips of "pesticide" have you had this week? Sometimes, science's twists are sweeter than fiction.
In 1975, Phadnis was told to test the powder but misunderstood and thought he was ordered to taste it.
He did, didn’t die, and millions of people are now consuming an insecticide in their coffee every morning.
Astronaut Rubbish
Astronauts left 96 bags of urine, feces and vomit on the moon.
It is well-known and highly-publicized that NASA’s moon missions have left a total of 400,00 pounds of trash on the moon’s surface.
Hewlett Packard versus Dom Pérignon
“The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.”
Henry David Thoreau
Hewlett-Packard printer ink is 20 times more expensive than Dom Pérignon champagne.
If you’ve ever owned an HP Printer, you know how expensive the cartridges are.
In any case, visual.ly estimated that a litre of colour HP cartridge ink costs $5,654, whereas the global average price of a 750ml bottle of 2003 Dom Pérignon Champagne ranges from $289 to $385.
Hot water turns into ice faster
An observation conducted in which a liquid (typically water) that is initially hot can freeze faster than the other liquid which is cold under similar conditions.
Sudan: Pyramid Capital of the World
Sudan boasts more pyramids than even Egypt, reflecting its rich ancient history.
These lesser-known structures, primarily located in Meroë, stand as testaments to the powerful Kushite kingdom that once thrived there.
Stay weird, stay informed!
Ah, there you have it, dear readers—a smorgasbord of facts so bizarre they make Salvador Dalí’s mustache look like a straight line. From elephants that defy the laws of mammalian aerodynamics to the moon serving as the universe’s least glamorous landfill, we’ve covered it all.
And let’s not forget the sweet taste of insecticide in your morning coffee, courtesy of a lab assistant’s misheard command.
When you’re sipping Dom Pérignon, remember: you could’ve printed a novel with that money.
Cheers to the absurdity of life!
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