50 Bizzare Facts Stranger Than Fiction – Part 4

In 19th-century South Africa, a baboon named Jack was employed as an assistant to a railway signalman for 9 years. He helped the railway signalman (who had two peg legs) switch tracks for trains and never once made a mistake.

2. Chickens sometimes engage in cannibalism. Historically, rose-tinted chicken eyeglasses were used on some chickens to prevent them from seeing blood and thus discourage them from cannibalizing injured chickens.

3. Towel Day is celebrated on May 25, where fans openly carry a towel with them, as described in Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, to demonstrate their appreciation for the books and the author.

4. Mamihlapinatapai is considered to be the most succinct word. It refers to "a look shared by two people, each wishing that the other will offer something that they both desire but are unwilling to suggest or offer themselves."

5. There are a series of organic molecules called NanoPutians whose structural formulae resemble human forms.

In 2038, humanity will face a tough problem where our computers, phones and internet will crash if experts can’t solve the ‘year 2038 problem.’ The 2038 problem relates to representing time in many digital systems as the number of seconds passed since 1 January 1970 and storing it as a signed 32-bit binary integer. Such implementations cannot encode times after 03:14:07 UTC on 19 January 2038. The time on Unix systems will instead go back to 1901. There is no solution currently.

7. Stendhal syndrome is a psychosomatic disorder that causes rapid heartbeat, dizziness, fainting, confusion, and even hallucinations when an individual is exposed to an experience of great personal significance, particularly viewing art.

8. Adactylidium is a type of mite known for its unusual life cycle. The pregnant female grows 5-8 females and 1 male in her body. The male then impregnates the females while still in the mother. The females then eat their way out of their mother, and the male dies shortly after.

9. "Cow tipping" is nothing but an urban myth. Cows do not sleep standing up, as they are unable to keep their knees locked like some other animals that do sleep standing up.

10. The following sentence, with proper punctuation, is a legitimate sentence in the English Language: James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher.

Five mice (Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum, and Phooey) circled the moon 75 times on Apollo 17. Among the last eight Earthlings to travel to the Moon, upon returning to Earth the four remaining living mice were soon murdered and dissected in the name of science.

12. In one of the only confirmed cases of homicidal sleepwalking, a man drove himself to his in-laws, bludgeoned the woman and strangled the man and drove off while asleep. He turned himself over to police, and was eventually acquitted of murder.

13. Natalya "Natasha" Nikolayevna Demkina is a Russian woman who claims to possess a special vision that allows her to look inside human bodies and see organs and tissues, and thereby make medical diagnoses. Since the age of 10, she has performed readings in Russia.

14. There is a term for the tendency of technical equipment to fail when certain people are present. It's called the Pauli effect, named after Wolfgang Ernst Pauli.

15. One of Saturn's moons, Mimas, closely resembles The Death Star from "Star Wars", however the film was released 3 years prior to the discovery of it's distinguishing crater feature.

Praise-God Barebone (1598-1679) was a radical English Puritan preacher and member of Oliver Cromwell's parliament. He gave his son Nicholas Barebone (or Barbon) the legendary middle name "If-Jesus-Christ-Had-Not-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned."

17. The "Women Are Wonderful" effect is a phenomenon where people associate more positive attributes to women than to men, in general. While this attribution was true of both genders, woman's in-group bias was 4 times greater than men's.

18. Foreign Accent Syndrome is a rare but recurring phenomenon that causes people to wake up from comas speaking with foreign accents they have never used before.

19. There was a shipping merchant named Preserved Fish, who in the 19th century was responsible for expanding the whale oil market, directing the Bank of America, and being one of the founders of what is now the New York Stock Exchange.

20. Epomis beetles sneak up behind their victims (frogs) and hold on firmly using their legs. To paralyze the victim, the beetle makes an incision in the pelvic region with its mandibles, cutting nerves and perhaps leg muscles. The amphibian loses its ability to move and is eaten by the beetle.

On December 11, 1998, the Mars Climate Orbiter crashed into Mars and ended a $200 million mission because one instrument by Lockheed measured in (U.S.) pound-seconds and not newton-seconds.

22. The Frog Battery was used in early electrical research. It consisted of dead or sometimes live frogs that formed the cells of the battery.

23. Sometimes the penis of a banana slug becomes trapped inside the body of the partner. Apophallation allows them to separate themselves by chewing off the other's or their own penis. Once the penis has been discarded, they are still able to sexually reproduce because they hermaphrodites.

24. Jenny Haniver is the carcass of a ray or a skate that has been modified by hand then dried, resulting in a mummified specimen intended to resemble a fanciful fictional creature, such as a demon or dragon.

25. When ferrets get very excited they do a frenzied series of sideways and backward hops called a "weasel war dance." It is believed that in the wild, ferrets use this to disorient prey.