15 Ice-Cold Facts To Beat The Summer Heat

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15 Ice-Cold Facts To Beat The Summer Heat

In a distant future where the earth was ravaged by war, and humanity was reduced to a few scattered tribes in the mountains of the north, an old man sat alone at night on his hill overlooking the plains. A great fire burned in front of him, and he was holding his sword aloft as if it were an offering to some dark god or spirit of the night that would grant its protection to him and his people. The old man wore a leather vest, but had no weapons with him, only the sword. The firelight glinted off its edge, and it looked almost red. As the man gazed into the flames, he suddenly heard a voice behind him that sounded like many voices in one. The words from the voice came slowly but clearly to the man's ear.
The voice told him, speaking in that utterly calm, slow, methodical voice, a list of fifteen facts. That list went...

The blackfin icefish is the only vertebrate that doesn’t have red blood cells.

The Antarctic blackfin icefish has no scales, white blood, and transparent bones. GRACKED.COM Instead of red blood cells or hemoglobin pigments for transporting oxygen, oxygen simply diffuses into their cir- culating blood plasma from the frigid seawater thanks to the fish's enlarged gills and smooth skin.

Quanta Magazine

Pressure phosphenes are the stars you see when you rub your eyes.

Phosphenes are the flashes of light you see when you rub your eyes. CRACKED.COM When you rub your eyes, the optic nerve translates this pres- sure into various imag- es. You see these pho- sphenes briefly after you open your eyes.

Very Well Health

The first commercial ran in 1941.

The first television commercial in 1941 aired during a Dodgers game. BULOVA Ambassador 31 AUTOMATIC GRAGKED.COM The ad, a silhouette of the continental United States, over which a watch face pops up and a voiceover says, Amer- ica runs on Bulova time, cost $9.

WJCT

Great Whites will avoid areas where an orca has been.

Great White sharks will avoid an area for a year if they spot a Killer Whale. CRACKED.COM The sharks are so terrified of their only natural preda- tor that they'll vacate their preferred hunting ground and will not return for up to a year if they encounter one, even if it's just pass- ing by.

Eureka Alert

The Super Soaker was invented by a former NASA scientist.

A former NASA scientist who helped develop stealth bombers invented the Super Soaker. NERF Super Soaker TMP CRACKED.COM Lonnie G.Johnson eventu- ally licensed his design to Larami Corporation, later acquired by Hasbro. Не made so much money that he was able to fund his own research and develop- ment company.

Biography

Papua New Guinea has 850+ languages.

More than 850 languages are spoken in Papua New Guinea. CRACKED.COM Many of the languages in the country are only spo- ken and understood by a few thousand people in the world. This makes Papua New Guinea one of the most linguistically diverse countries in the world.

Britannica

A shrimp-like creature makes itself metal armor.

A deep-sea amphipod makes aluminum armor to protect itself. CRACKED.COM The small, shrimp-like ani- mal adapted to form a lay- er of aluminum hydroxide gel to cover its exoskele- ton, acting as a kind of pressure-resistant armor. It is also able to digest saw- dust.

PLOS One

Benjamin Franklin was a swimming enthusiast.

Benjamin Franklin was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame. CRACKED.COM Franklin began swim- ming as a child in Bos- ton, which led to one of his first inventions: oval palettes worn on the hands so he could swim faster.

US History

The sunset on Mars is blue.

Martian sunsets are blue, thanks to dust. CRACKED.COM Curiosity team scientist Mark Lemmon explained, The colors come from the fact that the very fine dust is the right size so that blue light penetrates the atmosphere slightly more efficiently.

NASA

“Where The Wild Things” was supposed to be about horses.

Where The Wild Things Are is only about monsters because the creator couldn't draw horses. CRACKED COM The book was originally going to be about a young boy who finds himself in a land filled with wild horses, inspired by the writer's childhood. Mau- rice Sendak took the 'wild things' and made them unique monsters instead.

The Guardian

You can extract peanut oil to make dynamite.

Peanuts can be used to make an explosive. CRACKED.COM When extracted, pea- nut oil can be turned into glycerol, which can then make nitro- glycerine, an unstable explosive substance used in dynamite.

Irish Times

Tic Tacs get their name from the sound of their container.

Tic Tac mints are named after the sound their container makes. REFRESHING LITTLE LIFTS tic tac fresh mint CRACKED.COM Before the rebrand, they were known only as Re- freshing Mints. In 1970, Ferrero was inspired by the tic and the tac sounds heard when you open and close the little plastic container.

TicTac

There is an area of space with 14 trillion times the amount of water on Earth.

There's a floating reservoir of water in space that holds 140 trillion times all the water on Earth. CRACKED.COM NASA scientist Matt Brad- ford says that water is pervasive throughout the universe, and the reser- voir surrounding a black hole 12 billion light years away surely proves that.

NASA

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