18 Unbelievable Facts That Sound Completely Fake – Part 2
Our world is full of weird and wonderful things. Some of these crazy things have already happened in history while some are going on right now. Sometimes we hear facts that sound fake but surprisingly they turn out to be absolutely true. Here we have compiled a list of facts that are so bizarre that people usually dismiss them as fake facts but they are true.
In case you have missed the first part, check it here.
1 To make a sword out of the blood, you will have to kill 359 people to get enough iron from their blood.
This may seem weird, but it’s actually true that to make an average long sword, you need the blood of at least 359 people. Â It can be proved in the following way.
The weight of an average British long sword lies between 1.1 and 1.8 kg. Let’s consider the middle value i.e. 1.45 kg.
The iron content of the long sword lies between 0.002% and 2.1%. Let’s take the median carbon content 1.051%.
So, the total amount of iron in the long sword will be 1.45 kg – (1.45 kg * 1.051%) = 1.4347605 kg.
The blood of an average person contains 4 grams i.e. 0.004 kg of iron.
Thus, to make an average long sword, we will need iron extracted from the blood of (1.4347605 / 0.004) = 358.69 i.e. 359 people.(source)
2 Viagra dissolved in water can make cut flowers stand up straight for up to a week beyond their natural lifespan.
Viagra is a widely popular drug due to its ability to treat male impotence. Apart from that, researchers from Israel and Australia have found that viagra, when added to water, can double the shelf life of cut flowers. When 1 mg of viagra is dissolved in vase water, it can make the cut flowers stand up straight up for a week.
Professor Yaacov Lasham, a plant researcher at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel, and his group have found out that the vase life of flowers is increased by viagra by retarding the breakdown of cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP).(source)
3Â More people are bitten each year by New Yorkers than by sharks.
Studies have shown that in US the chance of being attacked by sharks is 1 in 11.5 million while the chance of a person being killed due to a bite from other people is less than 1 in 264.1 million. In New York, each year people are bitten 10 times more by other people than worldwide by sharks.
The statistics of the shark-vs.-human war shows that all over the world, about 100 million people are killed by humans while only 7 people are killed by unprovoked shark attacks each year.(source)
4Â Lincoln is enshrined in the Wrestling Hall of Fame.
As a young man, Abraham Lincoln was an accomplished wrestler. In the book “Abraham Lincoln: The Praire Years” the author, Carl Sandburg, states that once after dispatching an opponent in a match, Lincoln challenged the entire crowd of onlookers and said, “Iâm the big buck of this lick. If any of you want to try it, come on and whet your horns.” But no one dared to accept the challenge.
He played 300 matches in his lifetime and had lost only once. His huge fame in wrestling world earned him the honor of “Outstanding American” in the National Wrestling Hall of Fame.(source)
 5 Roughly, 14% of humans do not have a Palmaris longus muscle in their arm.
Bring the thumb and fifth finger of one of your hands together. Then, flex the fingers inwards i.e. towards your wrist. You will see a small elongated tendon-like muscle popping up in the center of your wrist. This small popped up muscle is known as palmaris longus. If flexing your wrist in the above way does not produce a visible muscle, then you are among the rare 14 percent of people in the world who doesn’t have the PL muscle.
In Europe and North America, 5.5 to 24 % of Caucasian populations and in Asia (India, Japan, China, Turkey, and Malaysia), 4.6 to 26.6 % of people do not have palmaris longus tendon.(source)
6 A tiger with broken teeth killed 436 people. Therefore, it is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for the highest number of kills.
During the 19th century, a female Bengal Tiger, Champawat Tiger, killed an estimated 436 people in Nepal and Kumaon area of India. The number of deaths caused by Champawat Tiger is the highest number of fatalities caused by a single tiger in the world and has been listed in the Guinness Book of World Records.
It started its attack in Nepal in a region close to the Himalayas. She managed to evade hunters and eventually the Nepalese Army was called in. Even they couldn’t capture or kill her, but they managed to force the tigress to abandon her territory. Then, she crossed the border and reached the Kumaon district of India and continued her killing spree. She grew so bold that she started prowling around villages and killing people in broad daylight. Finally, in 1907, the British hunter Jim Corbett shot her dead. Later on, a postmortem on the tigress showed that the upper and lower canine teeth on the right side of her mouth were broken.(source)
7Â Â In 1932, there was a war known as the Great Emu war in Australia between emus and soldiers of WWI. The emus won.
After World War I, many British veterans and ex-soldiers from Australia took up farming within Western Australia. They started facing difficulty when as many as 20,000 emus migrated into the area. They consumed and spoiled the crops. Moreover, they left gaps in fences from where rabbits would enter and cause further problems. Therefore, the ex-soldiers requested the Minister of Defense to let them use machine guns to gun down the emus. He agreed and provided military personnel with guns.
The first attempt to kill the emus was made on November 2, but they didn’t manage to do any significant damage. Similar attempts were made again, but the futile results made the Minister of Defense withdraw the military back. By November 12, the military action was resumed, and finally, it was stopped on December 10.
Despite the two attempts, farmers requested military assistance again in 1934, 1943, and 1948 to which government did not provide any assistance.(source)
8Â A chicken named Mike lived for 18 months after having his head cut off and had a career of touring sideshows.
In 1945, a Wyandotte chicken called Mike had survived for 18 months after having his head cut off. This seemingly impossible feat earned it the name Miracle Mike. Mike’s head was severed when its owner, Lloyd Olsen, decided to have him in supper on September 10, 1945. After beheading, Lloyd found out that Mike didn’t die. So, he decided to take care of the chicken and fed him a mixture of milk and water through an eye dropper and small grains of corn.
When Mike became famous his owner took him for touring sideshows. He was also photographed for a number of magazines. Mike died in March 1947 when a kernel of corn stuck in his throat. After his death, his postmortem report stated that when his owner cut off his head the axe missed the jugular vein and a clot prevented Mike from bleeding to death. So, most of his brain and one ear was left attached to its body even though most of its head was severed.(source)
9Â During a kidney transplant, the diseased kidneys are not usually removed and the third kidney is placed in the pelvis.
We know that when a person suffers from kidney failure, they undergo kidney transplantation. We also know that during kidney transplant a healthy donor kidney is placed in the patient’s body which functions in the same way as his original kidney. But people rarely know that the damaged kidney is also left inside the body and the new kidney is placed in the patient’s pelvis. The damaged kidney is not removed from the body because removing it increases the rate of surgical morbidity.(source)