Did you know that these guys are actually very hygienic animals? It is only their situation in the realm of animal husbandry that causes them to partake in less than hygienic activities – in the wild they would avoid bathing in waste matter. They do bathe in mud from time to time, but only as a satisfying way to keep cool.
There were no winners of the National Spelling Bee in 1943, 1944 or 1945. You can probably guess why, huh? Yep, the war.
Research has found that the birds choose which of their next generation they should prioritize by instinct. When the parent birds carry insects or other food back to the nest, the starving hatchlings will elongate their necks, tweet loudly, and in desperation for food, open their mouths as wide as possible, showing the bright red or yellow color of their lips and mouths. All these are strong signals to the parent bird’s feeding instinct.
Elephants can carry their wisdom around for a very long time! The average lifespan for these enormous creatures is roughly between 50 and 70 years, but the oldest on record lived for a whopping 86 years (1917 – 2003).
The English language has over one thousand different ways to spell its forty-four distinct sounds, that’s more than any other language.
The Gregorian calendar which we use in the western world adds 1 day extra each 4 years, the Hebrew calendar adds a 13th lunar month every 19 years.
The words ‘you’ and ‘ewe’ are pronounced in the same way, yet they have no words in common. Whereas ‘Io’ is the shortest two-syllable word in the English language.
People under the age of 30 need written permission from their parents to get married in Suriname. The country is also home to a large East Indian population thanks to contract workers who arrived in the country in the 19th century from India
Do English-speaking people really talk about themselves so much? Seems so, the most commonly used word in English is ‘the’, but the most commonly spoken word is ‘I’.
Some words are commonly misspelt as well as misunderstood. For example, ‘Allusion’ and ‘Illusion’. An ‘Allusion’ is a noun that means an indirect reference, such as: ‘she made an allusion in her speech to the penguins’. Whereas an ‘Illusion’ is a noun that means there has been a misconception.
