Deja Vu: Strange Facts

Showing posts with label Strange Facts. Show all posts

10 extremely strange wedding traditions around the world

Wedding is much more than throwing the bouquet, scandalously removing the garter, the couple’s first dance, the cutting of the cake, and the life-affirming moment that the Electric Slide begins. These are all wedding traditions that most of us know and love. Wedding may be a universal celebration, but for some it’s an unbelievable crazy adventure.Around the world, wedding traditions are a little bit different: Some of them are heartwarmingly romantic, and some of them are a little strange, and some of them might make you a little bit uncomfortable. Check out these 10 love and marriage customs from around the globe.It can be gross, confusing or terrifying. Imagine shooting the bride or marrying a banana tree. How’s that for a wedding?

The Blackening of the Bride

In Scotland, there is a particularly nasty pre-wedding tradition that involves the bride and groom being pelted with food trash, including rotten eggs and fish. The Scots believe that if a couple can withstand this, their marriage can withstand anything.

The Bridesmaid Blockade

In China, when a groom comes to get his bride, he must first break through an aggressive wall of her angry bridesmaids. The bridesmaids demand money from him, and put him through a series of silly performances and tasks – all meant to prove just how strong his love really is.

The Courting Hut

Some African tribes allow women to enter a “courting hut” so they can hang out with potential spouses away from the prying eyes of their parents – and the rest of the village.

The Bridal Kidnapping

In Krygyzstan, an old adage claims that tears on a wedding day will make for a happy marriage. Until 1991 (when it was finally made illegal) many parents would consent to the marriage of a kidnapped young girl, especially if she was crying.

The Graveside Wedding

In an average display of somberness and seriousness, many Russians choose to be married at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow.

The Love Without Bathroom Breaks

In Borneo, one tribe does not allow newlyweds to leave their homes during their wedding day, not even to go to the bathroom. Like most odd traditions, it is said to bring the couple good luck.

The Gerewol Festival for the Ladies

In Niger, men have to dress in elaborate costumes and perform for their potential mates. When the performance is over, the women get to choose the man they like best.

Beating the groom’s feet: Korea

Korean tradition dictates that the groom has his feet beaten with fish or a cane before his first night as a married man. It can be painful but it’s over quickly and more fun than cruel. This is supposed to make sure the groom doesn’t disappoint on his wedding night.

The Questionable Mate-Grabbing

In some gypsy groups, there is a controversial tradition that involves male suitors to grab a girl and start forcefully kissing her. It might be love – or it just might be an unwanted assault.

Spitting on the Bride: Massai nation, Kenya

At a Massai wedding, the father of the bride blesses his daughter by spitting on her head and breasts. She then leaves the village with her husband and does not look back for fear of turning into stone.

Why paper cuts hurt so much?

The scraping slice from an errant page of A4 doesn’t break the skin, but it can be extremely painful. Why?

Paper seems completely harmless, but anybody who has refilled a photocopier or thumbed too quickly through a book knows that this humble material harbours a deep, dark secret. Deployed properly, it can be a serious weapon: paper cuts are just the worst.There isn’t a whole lot of scientific research effort directed at understanding the pain of paper cuts, probably because nobody would sign up for a randomised, controlled study that involved a researcher intentionally inflicting this kind of torture on study participants. But according to Dr. Hayley Goldbach, a resident physician in dermatology at UCLA, “we can use our knowledge of human anatomy to help us out here. It’s all a question of anatomy”.It’s all to do with nerve endings. To start with, there are lots more pain receptors embedded in your fingertips than almost anywhere else in your body. Though Goldbach is quick to point out, “it would probably also hurt a lot if you got a paper cut on your face or in your genitals, if you can imagine that.” So while a paper cut on your arm, or thigh, or ankle might still be annoying, it would probably be more trivial than the intense fiery quality that finger-based paper cuts tend to have.

You can actually prove this to yourself by employing a test that psychologists and neurologists use. Take a paperclip and unfold it so that both ends are pointing in the same direction. If you use it to poke yourself on your hands or face, you can probably perceive each of the clip’s two pointy ends individually. This is what’s referred to as “two point discrimination,” and because you have so many nerve endings in the skin in those parts of your body, the two points have to get really close to each other before you’re unable to tell them apart.But now try the same thing on your back, or your legs. Chances are the two points would have to be really far apart before you’re able to tell them apart. That’s because the distribution of nerve endings there is far less dense.This actually makes a good deal of evolutionary sense. “Fingertips are how we explore the world, how we do small delicate tasks,” explains Goldbach. “So it makes sense that we have a lot of nerve endings there. It’s kind of a safety mechanism.”It’s reasonable that your brain would devote more neural real estate to continuously monitoring possible threats to your hands, since they’re the main vehicles the body has for interacting with the world. If you come into contact with something extremely hot, for example, or sharp, it’s just more likely that you would interact with it using your hands. So the extreme pain felt when something injures your fingers is simply the result of evolution working as it should, providing a little extra encouragement for you to keep those hands safe.And then there’s the weapon itself. Do a quick Google search and you might become convinced that due to its porous nature, paper is home to a bacterial menagerie, just waiting to colonise your paper-inflicted wounds. But whether or not that’s true, the presence of bacteria and other microscopic beasties can’t explain the sensation of pain, at least not at the moment of cutting. Bacteria can lead to infections if wounds are left untreated, which themselves can be painful, but that takes a bit of time.

Paper edges may look straight, but they are in fact serrated, cutting through skin like a saw

But there is something to the idea that paper is a uniquely painful weapon.To the naked eye, it might seem as if a paper's edge is fairly straight and smooth. But if you were to zoom in, you’d find that paper is more akin to a saw than to a blade. So when a paper cuts open your skin, it leaves behind a chaotic path of destruction rather than a smooth laceration. It rips, tears, and shreds your skin, rather than making clean slice, as a razor or knife blade would do.And if that wasn’t enough, paper cuts are typically shallow – but not too shallow. “They’re deep enough to get past the top layer of the skin, otherwise they wouldn’t hurt. The top layer of skin has no nerve endings,” says Goldbach.But they don’t slice that deep into your body, which is perhaps why it’s puzzling that they should hurt so much. But it’s exactly for this reason that paper cuts are such a menace. A deeper wound would result in bleeding. The blood would clot and a scab would develop, beneath which the skin could go about healing free from the continued assault of the outside world. But the shallow wound of a paper cut doesn't offer such protection. Unless you take care to cover it up with a bandage and perhaps some antibiotic ointment, the nerves that the paper revealed when it tore apart your skin continue to be exposed to the outside world, and that only makes them angrier.Without the cushion of blood, pain receptors are left exposed to the elements, and unless you quickly bandage your paper cut, those neurons will keep on sending the alarm bell, warning your brain of impending disaster. That, after all, is their job.At least, that’s the idea. Nobody has ever proven that this is the case, but Goldbach agrees that it’s a reasonable hypothesis.Unfortunately, each of us is going to face the prospect of enduring a few paper cuts as we go about our lives. Luckily, the common saying is probably wrong. A thousand paper cuts would really really hurt, but it probably wouldn’t kill you.

Top 12 Deadliest Drugs and How They Kill You!

Top 12 Deadliest Street Drugs!

Everyone drugs are incredibly dangerous. They can cause all sorts of health issues, including death. Some are more well known than others.

Drugs are illegal, and some of these narcotics are deadlier than others. They can have dangerous side effects, and make the user incoherent. These are the top 12 street drugs that you may or may not have heard of before. They are more common than you might think, and can be lethal.

1. The first one is called Sizzurp or ‘Purple Drank.’ It is a concoction of soda water, candy and cold medicine. There is a high codeine content in the cold medicine which gives the users a woozy feeling. It has been known to cause heart failure and seizures.

2. AH-7921 is a synthetic opioid that was previously available to legally purchase online from vendors until it became a Class A in 2015. It has similar effects that heroine has, but the lack of human testing is why this drug is considered very dangerous. It is believed to have 80% of the potency of morphine.

3. Flakka is a synthetic drug that can cause an aggressive high for users. It has a cheap street value which is partially why it is so popular among users. People may experience ‘excited delirium’ which includes hyperstimulation, paranoia, and hallucinations. It has been reported to be the cause of many overdoses and suicides.

4. Heroine is 2-4 times more potent than morphine and causes bodily function to slow down. If mixed with alcohol, the results can be deadly. Side effects include inflammation of gums, muscular weakness, and more devastating symptoms.

5. Crack cocaine is believed to kill roughly six thousand people a year. It also causes symptoms such as psychosis, heart attacks, strokes and can cause death.

6. Crystal meth is one of the most destructive drugs in the world. The effects are very serious, with short-term users becoming sleep deprived and anxious. The long term effects will cause brain damage, damage of the blood vessels, and the flesh to sink.

7. Bath salts are a synthetic crystalline drug that is similar to mephedrone, and cause a ‘zombification’ for users. The side effects include unusual and psychiatric behavior, psychosis, panic attacks and violent behavior. There is a possibility of an elevated body temperature and a heart attack.

8. Scopolamine is a derivative from the nightshade plant found in the Northern Indian region of South America, in places like Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela. It can be found in a powder form or tea, and is incredibly toxic. One gram is believed to be able to kill up to 20 people. It is believed that when it is blown into someone’s face it causes them to lose all sense of self-control and make them incapable of forming memories. It can cause hallucinations and respiratory failure.

9. Whoonga is a combination of antiretroviral drugs, used to treat HIV, and various cutting agents such as detergents and poisons. It is widely available in South Africa, and is very cheap. It is highly addictive and can cause major issues such as bleeding, stomach ulcers and ultimately death.

10. Krokodil is a heroin opiate which is a mix of codeine, gasoline, and eyedrops. It gives the user a rush of euphoria for the third of the price. It eats your flesh, causes gangrene and rots your flesh from the inside out. Addicts are expected to live only a year as it causes brain damage, organ failure, and HIV.

11. LSD stands for Lysergic acid diethylamide, and can cause hallucinations that have the ability to change the life of the user. It comes in the form of tablets and liquid form as well, and used all over the world illegally.

12. Phencyclidine (PCP) was developed in the 1950s as an anesthetic. It causes side effects of hallucinations, delirium, and mania.

22 photos which prove that your genes are amazing

Genetic inheritance is an amazing thing. Sometimes, when you look at different members of one family, it seems as if nature is being downright lazy; you could say that all it’s doing is using the ‘copy & paste’ function!Here are a few photographs of people who, despite belonging to different generations within their families, are as alike as two peas in a pod.

Grandmother and granddaughter

Great-grandfather and great-grandson

Father and daughter

Grandmother and granddaughter

These women are separated by four generations!

Father and son

Another father and son

...yet another father and son!

Great-great-aunt and grand-niece

Mother and daughter

Father and daughter

Father and son

Father and son with their respective children

Grandmother and granddaughter

Mother and daughter

Another mother and daughter

...and another!

Father and daughter

Grandfather and grandson

Mother and daughter

Father and daughter

Three generations!

Remember This Starving Nigerian Boy? It's Been 2 Years Since The Photo And He Looks Healthy

Early this year, picures of a charity worker rescuing a 2-year-old boy in Nigeria went vial. The boy, now named Hope, was left wandering the streets because his family thought he was witch.

By the time the charity worker, Anja Ringgren Loven--the Danish founder of the African Children’s Aid Education and Development Foundation-- found him, he had spent eight months fending for himself and living off scraps.

After finding the little guy she would later refer to as ‘her son’, Loven gave him something to drink and took him to the hospital. She also asked for help with Hope’s costly medical bills. Thankfully, she received $1M in donations from around the world.With that money, Hope was given medication to remove the worms from his stomach and daily blood transfusions to give him more red blood cells. Shortly after he began taking food for himself and responding to the medicine he was given.

Months have passed and Hope is now unrecognisable. Not only has he gained enough weight to be considered ‘healthy’ but he’s been seen smiling and playing with other children.Loven posted some pictures of her ‘son’ to Facebook and wrote: ‘As you can see on the pictures, Hope is really enjoying his life now having 35 new brothers and sisters who ALL take such good care of him, play with him, study with him, and make sure he is safe and is getting a lot of love.’

She also explained that the little guy was diagnosed with hypospadias, a genital birth defect that causes the urethra to emerge somewhere on the shaft of the male’s reproductive system, instead of a tht tip. 'The doctors found this inborn condition on Hope, so next week he will have surgery,' she wrote.