1. Approximately one fifth of all the publications from Japan are comic books.
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2. The little bags of netting for gas lanterns (called ‘mantles’) are radioactive–so much so that they will set of an alarm at a nuclear reactor.
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3. If an infant becomes blind soon after they’re born they will still almost always see images in their dreams, but infants born with blindness will most likely never have dreams with images. People who were born blind do still have very emotionally intense dreams which include hearing, smells, feeling and taste. Now that’s an interesting fact about dreams.
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4. Avocado is derived from the Spanish word ‘aguacate’ which is derived from the Nahuatl word ‘ahuacatl’ meaning testicle. I guess that it is referring to the shape. Avocados were known by the Aztecs as ‘the fertility fruit’.
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5. The first electric Christmas lights were created by a telephone company PBX installer. Back in the old days, candles were used to decorate Christmas trees. This was obviously very dangerous. Telephone employees are trained to be safety concious. This installer took the lights from an old switchboard, connected them together, strung them on the tree, and hooked them to a battery.
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6. The Earl of Condom was a knighted personal physician to England’s King Charles II in the mid-1600′s. The Earl was requested to produce a method to protect the King from syphillis.(Charles the II’s pleasure-loving nature was notorious.) Hence the word Condom for protection.
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