1Paruresis
About 7% of men suffer from paruresis or "shy bladder" syndrome. This anxiety disorder renders the sufferer unable to urinate when other people are in close proximity.
2. Humans usually get the urge to pee when the bladder is just 1/3 full. But in zero gravity, the urge doesn't kick in till the bladder is almost completely full. When John Glenn orbited the Earth, his only urination was 27 ounces, seven ounces more than the capacity of the average human bladder.
3. It's illegal to pee in an elevator in Singapore, and some elevators have a urine detection device which detects urine odors, sets off an alarm, and closes the elevator doors until the police arrive.
4. In their "coming of age" ritual, aboriginals in Australia cut a “birth control” hole in the base of the boy's penis and insert into it a splinter to keep it from closing. Urine and semen come out of the hole unless this sub-incision is plugged with a finger.
5. "Pee paint" is a special kind of paint that repels pee back on the person peeing. Cities use it in an attempt to reduce public urination on walls.
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6Peesky
The urine from a person who is suffering from diabetes can be made into whiskey because it has high sugar content.
7. Most German men sit while they pee and are taught that standing to pee is unhygienic.
8. In the 1930s, penicillin was so precious that it was re-extracted from the urine of patients who took penicillin to conserve every last bit of it.
9. A male lobster’s bladder is in its heads, and when male lobsters fight, they squirt each other in the face with urine.
10. Aztecs took two showers every day and used flowers as soap and cleaned their mouth with them as well. The Spaniards at that time avoided water because it was thought water on your skin made you more susceptible to the plague and they used urine to clean their mouths and teeth.
11Discovery
In 1984, a giant pee-icicle formed on the outside of the space shuttle Discovery. Astronauts had to break it off using a robotic arm and shut down the toilet for the remainder of the mission.
12. Ancient Egyptians used the urine from a pregnant woman to germinate seeds to determine the sex of the child. If barley sprouted first, then it was to be a boy. If wheat sprouted first, then it was to be a girl.
13. The urine of ginger boys was prized in medieval Europe for making stained glass.
14. During WW1 Canadian soldiers used urine-soaked clothes as primitive respirators against chemical attacks. The ammonia in urine would react with the chlorine, neutralizing it, and then the water would dissolve the chlorine, allowing soldiers to breathe through the gas.
15. There is a medical disorder in infants called “Maple Syrup Urine Disease,” where the child's urine smells like maple syrup or burnt sugar and it can be fatal.
16Pregnancy Tests
In the 1950s, physicians performed accurate pregnancy tests by injecting urine from the supposedly pregnant women into a frog. If the frog produced eggs within 24 hours, the test was positive.
17. Asparagus was once included in the emergency ration kits given to American pilots because it made their urine attractive to fish, making them easier to catch.
18. In 1997, Mötley Crüe released a soda called "Mötley Brüe", which promised to turn urine blue.
19. Russian cosmonauts have the tradition of urinating on the right rear wheel of the transfer bus before liftoff. Female cosmonauts are excused, but some dash a cup of their own urine in solidarity.
20. There is a traditional dish from Dongyang, China, which is still made today, called Virgin Boy Eggs. Eggs are boiled, soaked and cured in the urine of kids under the age of 10. When they're done, the yokes are green. They are about twice the price of normal eggs.
21Water Recovery System
NASA created a machine that recycles astronauts’ urine into drinking water and launched it aboard Space Shuttle Endeavor to the International Space Station. The recycled water is pure than the U.S. tap water. The system recycles about 93 percent of the water it receives and produces about 6,000 pounds of potable water each year.
22. The Rotterdam Zoo in the Netherlands once called in police officers after reports of a strong marijuana smell, only to find out it was caused by the zoo's maned wolves, whose urine smells like cannabis.
23. Human kidneys can only make urine that is less salty than salt water. Therefore, to get rid of all the excess salt taken in by drinking seawater, you have to urinate more water than you drank. Eventually, you die of dehydration as you become thirstier.
24. The National Trust implores us to stop urinating in a toilet, in order to save the water used in flushing, and instead pee onto compost heaps, which speeds up the chemical process of decomposition, making it a better fertilizer to grow vegetables and save even more energy in reducing food miles.
25. One of the methods used for identifying witches in the Salem Witch Trials was to bake affected girl’s urine in a cake, feed it to a dog, and the controlling witch would then supposedly cry out in pain.