Did You Know? Interesting Tidbits

The Exorcist film set was haunted: Based on the book by William Peter Blatty, The Exorcist, released in 1973, stirred up quite a bit of controversy in the years surrounding its release. For starters, the set used as the home of Regan MacNeil burned to the ground when a bird flew into a circuit box. The only room left standing was the one used for the exorcism.

Even creepier, not only did actors suffer multiple injuries during the filming of the movie, two of them actually died shortly after filming wrapped, actors that played characters who died onscreen. To make matters worse, according to CBS News, when the film premiered in Rome, lightning struck a 400-year-old cross atop a nearby church.

Monsters In Mirrors? There’s a mental phenomenon that causes you to see monsters in mirrors, it's called the Troxler effect, and discovered as long ago as 1804, it causes those who experience it to think they see something fearsome in the mirror just on the periphery of their vision, whether they say “bloody Mary” three times or not.

High heels were first designed for men: Though closely identified as a female fashion staple today, high heels were first designed for men. At the end of the 16th century, Persian-inspired style was all the rage in Europe, according to the J. Paul Getty Museum, and heels were seen as being virile and masculine, and a great way to boost your height a few inches.

Throw away the cotton in your medication bottles. Believe it or not, that little ball of cotton that comes in your bottle of pills, which is there to keep pills safe during shipping, is meant to be removed. It can collect moisture because of its absorbent nature, which makes your pills deteriorate faster.

Calculate a tip without a calculator: Assuming you want to tip 20 percent for good service, move the decimal point one digit to the left and then double that number. It’s that easy! For example, if a bill is for $35.50, you move the decimal to the left, which gives you $3.55. Double that number, and you’ve got $7.10, a 20 percent tip calculated in seconds.

You’re tallest first thing in the morning: If you’re feeling a bit on the short side, measure yourself when you first wake up. According to Jamaica Hospital Medical Center, This phenomenon may be due to gravity compressing cartilage in our spine and in other parts of our bodies, such as our knees when we stand up or sit down throughout the day. While we are lying down in a resting position, the spine is said to “spread out” or decompress, so when we wake in the morning we are taller after lying in bed all night.

Sleeping in a cold room can help you slim down a little more: Just a single month of sleeping in a 66- degree room helped increase subjects’ fat-burning ability by as much as 10 percent, according to research from Commonwealth University.

You can’t breathe and swallow simultaneously: According to registered psychiatric nurse James Steinmetz, “This is because the food and fluids we swallow and the air we breathe in both travel down the same part of our throat,”

Pitch darkness has a color name: If you close your eyes in a completely dark room. When you open them, the color you see is called eigengrau, which means intrinsic gray. It’s the shade of dark gray people see when there’s no light.

The smell after it rains has a name too: It’s called petrichor. It comes from an oil plants exude that dries on the ground. When it rains, the oil combines with a byproduct from a type of bacteria to produce the smell.

There are more life forms on your body than people on earth: You are a planet teeming with microbes. Trillions of them inhabit your body. In fact, 90 percent of the cells in your body are actually composed of microbes.

And microscopic mites live on your face. Don’t freak out, but your face is crawling with eight-legged, spider-like creatures. Fortunately, they are microscopic and impossible to see—but, according to the BBC, they’re mites with long, worm-like bodies residing in hair follicles and pores or sebaceous glands.

Craving ice may be a symptom of iron deficiency in your body: If you like crunching ice after you finish your soda, you might be suffering from anemia. Also known as “pagophagia,” the compulsive eating of ice may not just be a nervous tick, but a way of cooling inflammation in the mouth caused by a lack of iron, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Tomato juice won’t fix getting skunked: Instead of dousing yourself in V8, make a mixture of dish soap, peroxide, and baking soda. The skunk spray is an oil, which your grease-fighting dish soap will take care of. Peroxide and baking soda add plenty of oxygen to the mix to help get rid of the smell.

Wikipedia is downloadable: You can actually download the entirety of Wikipedia and keep it on a USB drive. Here’s the link, if you’d like to eliminate the middle man and own the source.

Wikipedia can act as your tour guide: If you allow Wikipedia to know your location, it can provide you with pages about subjects relevant to where you are using its “Nearby” function.

The size of your social circle is related to the size of your brain: A scientist at Oxford discovered that the size of a person’s “orbitomedial prefrontal cortex” (the part of a brain that identifies other people’s moods and personalities) can predict the size of that person’s social circle. The average prefrontal cortex averages out to around 147.8 friends in a social network.

People with friends live longer: People with active social networks and close friends they talk to live longer than people who rely only on family, according to researchers at Michigan State University. So, whenever possible, make time to see the members of your social circle, even if it’s just for a coffee.

Taking aspirin during a heart attack may save your life: Taking an aspirin at the first sign of a heart attack can be a lifesaver. The drug inhibits platelets from forming a clot that can block and artery and cause a full-on heart attack. For the fastest relief (and time is of the essence), chew the aspirin instead of swallowing it to get it in your system faster. Note: Tylenol is not an aspirin, it's a pain reliever and fever reducer, Aleve does not contain aspirin either. Bayer can be the choice aspirin and is a non steroidal antiinflammatory drug (NSAID.) Talk to your doctor for medical advice.

Women can give birth after they die: It’s very rare, but it has been known to happen. Called “coffin birth,” it’s a phenomenon that occurs when a pregnant woman delivers a child spontaneously after her death, due to gases that built up in the abdominal area, putting pressure on the mother’s uterus and forcing the baby out the birth passageway.

And men can get aroused post mortem: Called priapism, it’s most often seen in the corpses of men who have died by hanging and it’s due to the pressure on the cerebellum created by the noose.

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