Various strange, bizarre, mythical and more facts

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Various strange, bizarre, mythical and more facts

[LionDen]

There are about 40 supervolcanoes around the world capable of claiming up to a billion lives...and we're about 24,000 years overdue for an eruption. The supervolcano in Yellowstone National Park, USA has a magma chamber that could comfortably fit the entire city of Tokyo in it.

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Over twenty percent of children report hearing voices.

Hearing voices may affect over a fifth of schoolchildren aged 11 to 13, a psychiatric study has found. In most cases, the auditory hallucinations stop with time, the findings show. But children who continue to hear voices could be at risk of mental illness or behavioural disorders. Researchers carried out psychiatric assessments of almost 2,500 children aged between 11 and 16 in Dublin. They discovered that 21%-23% of younger adolescents, aged 11 to 13, had experienced auditory hallucinations. Of this group, just over half were found to have a non-psychotic psychiatric disorder such as depression. Just 7% of older adolescents aged 13 to 16 reported hearing voices - but almost 80% of those who did had a diagnosable psychological problem.

[LionDen]

Disneyland’s famous Pirates of the Caribbean ride used real skeletons.

Having already cost as much as the rest of the park combined to build, it seems that creating life-like skeletons was a step too far for the wardrobe departments. The bones were instead sourced from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and were real human remains.

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In Washington state, US, there's a real-life law stating it's illegal to kill bigfoot and other sasquatch-like creatures.

Bigfoot fervor resulted in two Sasquatch preservation laws: the 1969 Skamania County Ordinance no. 6901, later amended in 1984, and the 1991 Whatcom County Resolution No. 92043. Each law purports to protect a creature that, if it does exist, is obviously endangered.

[LionDen]

A cloud weighs around a million tonnes.

cloud typically has a volume of around 1km3 and a density of around 1.003kg per m3 – that's a density that’s around 0.4 per cent lower than the air surrounding it (this is how they are able to float).

[Bigfoot]

In Washington state, US, there's a real-life law stating it's illegal to kill bigfoot and other sasquatch-like creatures.

Bigfoot fervor resulted in two Sasquatch preservation laws: the 1969 Skamania County Ordinance no. 6901, later amended in 1984, and the 1991 Whatcom County Resolution No. 92043. Each law purports to protect a creature that, if it does exist, is obviously endangered.

Well, we do exist!

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Humans are the only animals on Earth with a chin

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Serial killer Albert Fish would kidnap and cannibalize his child victims. After one of these incidents, he wrote a letter to the child's parents to tell them how good she tasted.

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On October 21, 1978, a pilot named Frederick Valentich was flying a Cessna 182L light aircraft from Moorabbin, Australia, to Kings Island. At 7:06 pm, he radioed Melbourne Flight Service to report an unidentified aircraft flying roughly 1,000 feet above him. He reported four landing lights visible above him that were moving erratically.

His last words were, "It isn't an aircraft" - interrupted by a strange metallic sound.

Valentich was never seen again.

[LionDen]

After a pregnant woman dies, the gases that form inside of her decomposing body can exert enough pressure to push the baby out.

This is called a coffin birth.

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CNN has a pre-recorded broadcast it will premiere during the end of the world. It's called the "Turner Doomsday Video," after CNN founder Ted Turner, who ordered its creation before the network launched in 1980.

It consists of a US Army band playing the song "Nearer My God, to Thee" - the same song the band of the Titanic plays as the ship goes down in James Cameron's film.

[LionDen]

In 1876, chunks of meat mysteriously fell from the sky over Kentucky in an incident that came to be known as the Kentucky Meat Shower. The type of meat was never identified, although some locals even tasted it to try to find out.

One popular theory as to what caused it was that a flock of vultures had vomited over the area.

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The black mamba is one of the fastest snakes in the world, capable of slithering at speeds of up to 12.5 miles per hour.

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A Russian doctor named Leonid Ivonavich Rogozov was on an expedition to Antarctica with other researchers. During the expedition, he started experiencing stomach pains which eventually became unbearable. He had determined that his appendix had burst and needed to have it removed. Being the only medical doctor on the expedition, he was forced to remove his own appendix. He also refused anesthetic since he thought it would effect his focus.

[LionDen]

Candy Dynamics's Toxic Waste Nuclear Sludge Chew Bar wasn't just "hazardously sour," it was actually toxic. When California's Department of Public Health found 0.24 parts per million of lead in the candy line's cherry flavor in 2011, a mass recall was put out to remove the treat from store shelves. The FDA doesn't allow more than 0.1 parts per million of lead in consumable products.

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Male dolphins will occassionaly commit infanticide against baby dolphins unrelated to them, in order to force the mothers back into heat to have their calves instead.

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In 2015, archaeologists digging in Mexico City uncovered an ancient tower made up of over 600 skulls. Built by the Aztecs, the structure contains the remains of male warriors, women, and children, some of which may have been ceremonial sacrifices. As of 2020, even more remains from the tower were still being excavated.

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