Interesting Facts from around the world

1. Until 1965, driving was done on the left-hand side on roads in Sweden. The conversion to right-hand was done on a weekday at 5pm. All traffic stopped as people switched sides. This time and day were chosen to prevent accidents where drivers would have gotten up in the morning and been too sleepy to realize that this was the day of the changeover.
2. When snakes are born with two heads, they fight each other for food.
3. 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily.
4. A cockroach can live several weeks with its head cut off.
5. Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks otherwise it will digest itself.
6. It’s impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
7. Hershey’s Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it’s kissing the conveyor belt.
8. If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.
9. Birds cannot be eat in space, they need gravity to swallow.
10. It was discovered on a space mission that a frog can throw up. The frog throws up its stomach first, so the stomach is dangling out of its mouth. Then the frog uses its forearms to dig out all of the stomach’s contents and then swallows the stomach back down again.
11. The average person is about a quarter of an inch taller at night.
12. Sylvia Miles had the shortest performance ever nominated for an Oscar with “Midnight Cowboy.” Her entire role lasted only six minutes.
13. In 1980, a Las Vegas hospital suspended workers for betting on when patients would die
14. In 1980, there was only one country in the world with no telephones – Bhutan.
15. In Bangladesh, kids as young as 15 can be jailed for cheating on their finals.
16. In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak.
17. The term “the whole 9 yards” came from WWII fighter pilots in the South Pacific. When arming their airplanes on the ground, the .50 caliber machine gun ammo belts measured exactly 27 feet, before being loaded into the fuselage. If the pilots fired all their ammo at a target, it got “the whole 9 yards.”
18. The phrase “rule of thumb” is derived from an old English law which stated that you couldn’t beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.
19. A hard working adult sweats up to 4 gallons per day. Most of the sweat evaporates before a person realizes it’s there.
20. A hippo can open its mouth wide enough to fit a 4 foot tall child inside.