Facts About Humans

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This is a repository of facts about humans. Please come back to this page from time to time to see most recent facts.

 

  • Our brains are designed to seek out novelty, but too much information can overwhelm them; we are generally better at assessing risk when listening to Bach than with the chatter of TV news.
  • Men’s brains tend to shut down after they have proposed a deal, waiting for the response. Scans show that women brains continue to be active, analysing whether they have done the right thing.
  • Humans are the only animals that can delay gratification, a function of the prefrontal cortex. However, the prefrontal cortex only matures after the age of 30, and later in men than women. Before that, we are more likely to seek immediate gratification.
  • If groups of young men are shown pornographic pictures of women and then asked to choose between safe and risky investments, compared with men shown non-pornographic pictures they choose far riskier portfolios.
  • Our brains reward social interaction with the release of a chemical called oxytocin. It makes us feel good when we follow the herd. Stock market bubbles are one likely result of this.
  • Our brains are wired for human oxytocin-mediated empathy (or HOME). We are biologically stimulated to love (or hate) what is most familiar to us. We are built to form attachments, to value what we own more than what we do not own. This fact skews the rationality of all our investment decisions.
  • If stomachs did not have a lining of mucus, your stomach would digest itself.
  • There are 60,000 miles of blood vessels in the human body.
  • It takes about 60 seconds for a human blood cell to make a complete circuit of the body.
  • The average person will shed 40 pounds of skin in his/her lifetime.
  • 1/15th of a pint of blood is pumped with every heartbeat.
  • Humans share 98.4% of our DNA with chimps. In comparison, we share 70% of our DNA with a slug.
  • The lightest baby to survive weighed a mere 283 grams.
  • On average, women say 7,000 words per day while men manage just over 2,000 words.
  • The human brain uses 20% of the body’s energy but is only 2% of the body’s weight.
  • On average, humans lose 40-100 strands of hair per day.
  • A sneeze can exceed the speed of 100mph.
  • A cough can reach the speed of 60mph.
  • The average person will drink about 16,000 gallons of water in his/her lifetime.
  • It takes 17 muscles to smile while taking 43 muscles to frown.
  • The human brain is composed of 75% water.
  • Human thigh bones are stronger than concrete.
  • More germs are transferred while shaking hands compared to kissing.
  • There are approximately 550 hairs in a person’s eyebrow.
  • The strongest muscle in the human body is the tongue.
  • A person produces 10,000 gallons of saliva in an average lifetime.
  • The hardest bone in the human body is the jawbone.
  • The number of eye blinks varies greatly from about 29 blinks each minute if you are talking to someone to only 4 blinks each minute if you are reading.
  • The average human blinks 25 times per minute.
  • A nail takes around 6 months to grow from base to the tip.
  • Each second 10,000,000 cells die and are replaced in your body.
  • Your liver performs over 500 functions in your body.
  • The average person spends 1/3 of their lifetime sleeping.
  • More germs are transferred when shaking hands than kissing.
  • The average person (from western culture) consumes 10 liters of alcohol per year.
  • Roughly 75% of people who play the radio in their car sing along to it.
  • Human thigh bones are stronger than concrete.
  • Your right lung takes in more air than your left one does.
  • The human brain is composed of 75% water.
  • 70% of the composition of dust in your home is made up of shed human skin and hair.
  • The tooth is the only part of the human body that can’t repair itself.
  • One human hair can support 3kg.
  • Humans are the only animals that cry tears and blush.
  • It takes the interaction of 72 different muscles to produce human speech.
  • If the normal one hundred thousand hairs on a head were woven into a rope, it could support a weight of more than twelve tons.
  • The fingernail grows about 1.5 inches per year.
  • The total amount of skin covering an adult human weighs 6 lbs.
  • The average person flexes the joints in their fingers 24 million times during a lifetime.
  • Each person inhales about seven quarts of air every minute.
  • On average, we breathe between 12 and 18 times a minute.
  • The average guy will grow about 27 feet of hair out of his face during his lifetime.
  • Approximately 1 out of 25 people suffers from asthma.
  • The average man sweats 2 1/2 quarts every day.
  • One out of every hundred American citizens is color blind.
  • An average person laughs about 15 times a day.
  • A human heart beats 100,000 times a day.
  • Many sailors used to wear gold earrings so that they could afford a proper burial when they died.
  • Some very Orthodox Jew refuse to speak Hebrew, believing it to be a language reserved only for the Prophets.
  • Because they had no proper rubbish disposal system, the streets of ancient Mesopotamia became literally knee-deep in rubbish.
  • Sliced bread was patented by a jeweler, Otto Rohwedder, in 1928. He had been working on it for 16 years, having started in 1912.
  • Ancient drinkers warded off the devil by clinking their cups
  • The Nobel Prize resulted form a late change in the will of Alfred Nobel, who did not want to be remembered after his death as a propagator of violence – he invented dynamite.
  • Coffee is the second largest item of international commerce in the world. The largest is petrol.
  • Only 1 child in 20 are born on the day predicted by the doctor.
  • Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, never phoned his wife or his mother, they were both deaf.
  • There are over 200 religious denominations in the United States.
  • Eau de Cologne was originally marketed as a way of protecting yourself against the plague.
  • Theodor Herzi, the Zionist leader who was born on May 2 1860, once had the astonishing idea of converting Jews to Christianity as a way of combating anti-Semitism.
  • The Great Pyramid of Giza consists of 2,300,000 blocks each weighing 2.5 tons.
  • Urine was once used to wash clothes.
  • The city of New York contains a district called ‘Hell’s Kitchen’.

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