I love all kind of documentaries, African animal documentaries and documentaries about the Romans and mid-evil times, and if it is not too graphic (showing surgery in progress) I especially enjoy medical documentaries about the human body. And since the past few journal entries have been boring and about, well boring old me, I thought I’d create a more interesting one with random facts about the world you can randomly throw at people during conversation.

The human body
* A man produces 1000 sperm per heart beat.
* Your nose and ears never stop growing.
* A woman is born with 7000 000 eggs and will only have 1000 eggs left by the time she researches menopause.
* A baby will recognise its mother’s voice and face first and only there after the father’s.
* Your skin amounts to more or less 5kg of your total body weight.
* During sex a man will ejaculate around 100 000 sperm of which about only 10 will ever reach the egg and only 1 will be lucky enough to fertilise it.
* A woman only really needs 500 eggs during her life time.
* Your eyes stay the same size through out your life.
* Studies have shown that can of tomato soup per week will increase a man’s fertility. (Eat up boys!)
* The first three years of a child’s life is the most important for language development.

Wildlife
* Zebras are not immune to mosquitoes, but they hardly ever get bit. It is believed that the zebras’ stripes confuse the mosquitoes.
* The dassie is the closest living relative of the elephant. (See here what a dassie looks like: [link])
* Elephants can live up to between 50 – 70 years.
* Wildebeest and zebras always graze together.
* The hippopotamus is responsible for the most animal related human deaths in Africa.
* The white rhinoceros’s name was originally the “wide rhinoceros” to refer to its wide mouth.
* Lions prefer not to get wet.
* The black mamba snake is the most dangerous snake in Africa.
* Freesia is a flower only found in certain regions (mostly southern) in Africa. (One for the Twilight fans.)
*Contrary to popular belief (by an alarming amount of people in the US, UK and the rest of world) lions and other wildlife do not walk around in South African backyards (we reserve that right to birds and other small mammals and reptiles).

History
* Julius Caesar was murdered because the council was afraid he would end democracy in the Roman Empire. Ironically they killed democracy with Caesar.
* Shaka Zulu invented a number of war strategies, most notably the “cow’s head” strategy.
* More people died of the “back death” (plague) than in World War I & II combined.
* If the 300 Spartans (and a number of other soldiers) did not fight in the Battle of Thermopylae, the modern world as we know it today would most likely not exist.
* In the last few years the rulers of the Roman Empire had to hire barbarians to fight for them.
* Jan van Riebeeck established the first European settlement in, what is now known as Cape Town, South Africa in 1652.
* At first the gladiators were only slaves, but as time moved on other men down on their luck (nobles, politicians, businessmen, etc.) became gladiators to generate an income for themselves.
* Historians believe that Leonardo da Vinci might have been homosexually inclined.
* The microwave was invented by accident when a scientist realised that his hand has slowly been cooked from the inside out.
* The first heart transplant was done by Dr Chris Barnard in South Africa.

Now who said television was bad for you?

I often post random useless facts on my Twitter when ever I feel so inclined or when I watched something interesting, so if you like that kind of thing you can find me at this [link] . Be warned though, my friends and tweet each other quite a lot and most of the time in Afrikaans, so you might not understand all I tweet.



Friends:



Clubs: