About Everything? Because
Coffee Girl, who is currently a little free today, is about to set some records straight on some old-standing claims. Today I am just the second voice of Factotum De-bunker.
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1. The liquid inside young coconuts can be used as a substitute for blood plasma.
Well yes, coconut water, the juice, not the coconut milk. But only in EMERGENCY cases ok. Remember Jackie Chan doing the emergency drip in the movie "Who Am I?" Yeah, if my memory serves me right. Unless you're stuck there bleeding in the middle of the oasis, then don't try this at home.
2. No piece of paper can be folded in half more than seven (7) times.
Hello, this record has been broken by a
Miss Britney Gallivan in January 2002, while still in Junior High. Get your facts right. She eliminated the paper-folding problem using a bit or Math technique and managed to half-fold a piece of paper into twelve (12) folds. And now she's selling books and probably making millions from her little adventure. Her accomplishment was even mentioned in the drama series Numb3rs in April 2005. You go girl!
3. Donkeys kill more people annually than plane crashes or shark attacks.
Well, this claim was cited in the London Times back in the 1987. While data on plane-crashes and shark attacks are readily available, no such donkey-induced deaths has been monitored. In other words, a little unlikely to happen. Poor donkey-lovers are a little mad over this speculation. But hang on, I believe it was mentioned that this claim is to counter those groups having fear of flying or death caused by flying. A little true... but if you're afraid of flying then think of how more dignified it is to die in an aviation accident than to be ass-kicked to death. So watch your Ass!
4. You burn more calories sleeping than you do watching television.
This is at least half true, which entirely depends on the individual. BUT, that does not mean you should head for the bed every time you are free or when you should be working out. It just means you need to get more sleep during the rest period to give your body time to rejuvenate and recharge itself. Getting fewer than four hours of sleep over an extended period of time slows the metabolism. Experts recommend aiming for between seven and nine hours of sleep.
5. Oak tree do not produce acorns until they are fifty (50) years of age, or older.
I don't really care about this one, but in the interest of Science, although the majority of them start producing acorns after reaching 50 years or older, some oak trees have been researched to start producing acorns after 20 years, and some once a decade. But then that all depends on various geographical factors. Interesting. We don't have oak trees in Malaysia yet and some people are disseminating this borrowed claim. I doubt they would even thrive in the tropics, let alone up to 50 years!
6. The first product to have a bar code was Wrigley's Gum.
This is a case of being at the right place at the right time, and the issue is more on logistics than historical. Because according to American Railroad History, the first product to use bar codes are railroad cars in the late 1950s, but it wasn't as successful and the idea was abandoned in 1975, until some local food chain authorities picked up the idea again and implement it on supermarkets. And as history goes, in June of 1974, the first scanner was installed at a Marsh's supermarket in Troy, Ohio and the first product they picked and scanned from the shelf and tested on was a packet of Wrigley's Gum, among other things. So if it had been a can of Campbell's Soup or a pack of Marlboro, they too would have been mentioned in history.
(Oh... I love doing this! Googling and comparing answers and proving some people wrong... ha ha)
7. Venus is the only planet that rotates clockwise.
I am not arguing this fact at all. Here people, a little outer space knowledge for you, if you don't already know your Solar system: All the planets of the Solar System orbit in a counter-clockwise direction as viewed from above the Sun's north pole, but Venus rotates clockwise (which is called "retrograde" rotation) once every 243 Earth days. Strange that Venus is closely associated with women. So hey yeah, we're going in the RIGHT direction ladies. Wohoo!
8. Apples, not caffeine, are more efficient in waking you up in the morning.
On the account of me being a coffee lover, I would have to say that this is half false. But to give a bit of merit to the researchers who painstakingly went out of their way to make this claim, I can just say that this all depends on the individual. Apples may contain glucose that keeps you on sugar-rush borderline, but coffee is a stimulant that quickly crosses over from hyper point to a state of madness. No contest.
9. The first owner of the Marlboro company died of lung cancer. So did the first Marlboro Man. And three other Marlboro Men.
Well, this just proves that no matter how macho you look when you smoke, there's nothing macho about dying of lung cancer. The owner of Marlboro, Phillip Morris, died of lung cancer although how much of that can be attributed to smoking is currently not mentioned anywhere, probably due to lawsuits the mega-international company might hold against you for saying stuffs like that. Darrel Winfield, that good looking macho man up there, the first 'Marlboro Man' (remember him in the black-and-white tv ad?), died of lung cancer, and three other Marlboro models Wayne McLaren, David McLean and Dick Hammer, followed in his wake. What a waste of good looking men.
10. Pearls melt in vinegar.
Maybe the right word is actually 'dissolve'. Well, if you don't want your pearls anymore, pick one from the strand and try this, just for the sake of being a sport. Pearls are mostly made up of calcium carbonate, painstakingly formed inside the shell of a long-suffering oyster. Vinegar is acidic and so basic chemistry teaches us that a carbonate will react to acid when in contact with one. Put a pearl inside a goblet of vinegar, it would fizz, slow-pop a little, giving off carbon dioxide, and leave behind a slightly bubbly concoction of calcium ethanoate, which does not smell all that bad and was believed to be an aphrodisiac in the first century. Fancy that for a Friday rendezvous.
Resource: Wiki, Google, Yahoo, Jeff Lewis's Factoid Debunked
P/s: There you have it, my version. HAPPY MONDAY YOU ALL!
