Random Facts about World and Humans

• The women of the Tiwi tribe in the South Pacific are married at birth.

• When Albert Einstein died, his final words died with him. The nurse at his side didn't understand German.

• It is illegal to play tennis in the streets of Cambridge.

• St Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, was not Irish.

• Many sailors used to wear gold earrings so that they could afford a proper burial when they died.

• A South African monkey was once awarded a medal and promoted to the rank of corporal during World War I.

• Because they had no proper rubbish disposal system, the streets of ancient Mesopotamia became literally knee-deep in rubbish.

• Marie Currie, who twice won the Nobel Prize, and discovered radium, was not allowed to become a member of the prestigious French Academy because she was a woman.

• The Toltecs, Seventh-century native Mexicans, went into battle with wooden swords so as not to kill their enemies.

• In 1647 the English Parliament abolished Christmas.

• In Ancient Peru, when a woman found an 'ugly' potato, it was the custom for her to push it into the face of the nearest man.

• The Puritans forbade the singing of Christmas Carols, judging them to be out of keeping with the true spirit of Christmas.

• It was quite common for the men of Ancient Greece to exercise in public .. naked.

• Albert Einstein was once offered the Presidency of Israel. He declined saying he had no head for problems

• Widows in equatorial Africa actually wear sackcloth and ashes when attending a funeral.

• Sir Isaac Newton was obsessed with the occult and the supernatural.

• It was considered unfashionable for Venetian women, during the Renaissance to have anything but silvery-blonde hair.

• The warriors tribes of Ethiopia used to hang the testicles of those they killed in battle on the ends of their spears.

• On 15 April 1912 the SS Titanic sunk on her maiden voyage and over 1,500 people died. Fourteen years earlier a novel was published by Morgan Robertson which seemed to foretell the disaster. The book described a ship the same size as the Titanic which crashes into an iceberg on its maiden voyage on a misty April night. The name of Robertson's fictional ship was the Titan.

• The women of an African tribe make themselves more attractive by permanently scaring their faces.

• The childrens' nursery rhyme 'Ring-a-Ring-a-Roses' actually refers to the Black Death which killed about 30 million people in the fourteenth-century.

African Women Facial Scaring

Monkey that was awarded medal and promoted the rank of Corporal

Venetian Women During Renaissance

The Warriors of Ethiopia