26Fatal insomnia
Fatal familial insomnia is a neurodegenerative disease that eventually results in a complete inability to sleep. Many patients go six to nine months without sleep, during which time they develop dementia and become unresponsive. Death follows. It is incurable and untreatable. Inducing a coma still keeps the brain awake. Because it is a form of prion disease, similar to mad cow disease, it's irreversible even by genetic therapy because once the protein exists in the body, it will slowly transform healthy proteins into their prion form.
27. Chris Benoit was a pro wrestler who murdered his wife and child in their home before committing suicide. About 14 hours before their bodies were discovered, a Wikipedia article noted that he would be replaced by another wrestler in a match due to personal issues including the death of his wife. The IP address of the editor was traced to Stamford, Connecticut, which is also the location of WWE headquarters. After news of the early death notice reached mainstream media, the anonymous poster accessed Wikinews to explain his edit as a “huge coincidence and nothing more.”
28. In 600 million years, the Sun's increasing luminosity will begin to disrupt the carbonate–silicate cycle thus allowing plants that utilize C3 photosynthesis to completely die off and triggering a mass extinction.
29. James Marion Sims, a southern-born slaveholder, is credited as the “father of modern gynecology” but his research was conducted on enslaved black women without anesthesia. He performed 30 operations on a slave with no anesthesia to learn how to repair a tearing of the wall between the vagina and the anus after traumatic childbirth (fistula).
30. Certain breeds of dogs (Shih Tzus, Pugs, Boston Terriers) with shallow eye sockets are more likely to suffer from proptosis, i.e., eyeballs popping out of their socket and there's a special type of spoon to put them back in.
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31Mayhem
The lead singer of the black metal band “Mayhem” used to carry around a bag with a dead crow in it in order to huff it and have the stench of death in his nose before performing. While performing, Dead (the lead singer) would often cut himself with hunting knives and broken glass. Additionally, the band often had pig or sheep heads impaled on stakes and planted at the front of their stage. Later “Dead” committed suicide to complete his image and left a note saying “sorry for the blood, cheers”. A band member found him and before alerting police proceeded to take a photo of his friend’s dead body. This image was later used as their album cover.
32. The record for most children born to one mother is 69, to the wife of Feodor Vassilyev (1707-1782), a peasant from Shuya, Russia. In 27 labors, she gave birth to 16 pairs of twins, seven sets of triplets and four sets of quadruplets over 40 years.
33. If sound could travel through space, the roar of the sun would be deafening even though it's 93 million miles away. The sun constantly produces a roar of 290 decibels. If space could carry sound it would still be 125 dB by the time it got to earth. It'd be like a jackhammer everywhere all the time.
34. Horses cannot vomit due to the angle their esophagus enters their stomach and the muscle tone of their esophagogastric junction. If a horse does vomit it means that they are close to death.
35. Sand tiger sharks in the embryo will develop teeth and eat their weaker siblings. The one that is left alive is the only one that is born, whom the mother will immediately abandon after birth.
