National Geographic weird facts

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Gum Painter

Forever Blowing Bubbles

Ben Wilson is an English artists who turns discarded chewing gum into art. Ben transforms the gum, which is stuck to pavements, by adding a lick of paint! He has created over 10,000 tiny artworks. As he is painting art onto litter, it isn’t technically against the law.

Bubblegum was invented in 1928 by Walter Deimer who worked at a chewing gum factory – as an accountant!

No Gum Allowed

G

Y M M U Facts

Bubblegum Alley There is a place in California called Bubblegum Alley – it has gum stuck there from passers by and now has millions of pieces of chewed-up gum on the walls.

Selling chewing gum is banned in Singapore. You can only get chewing gum from the dentist or doctor in Singapore as it needs to be prescribed.

Oldest Gum Chewing gum is a habit that humans have had for a long time. A 5,000-year-old bit of chewed gum – made from birch sap – was found in Finland, with toothmarks still visible.

Keep Chewing! Freaky Flavours There are some very odd flavours of gum – including meatball, beef, turkey (with cranberry sauce flavour gum), bacon and even something called ‘man smell’! 2

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Around 100,000 tonnes of gum is chewed each year – that’s as that weighs around the same as 25,000 Indian

elephants! 3

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NAME YOURCAFES NUGGET REPTILE McDonald’s chicken McNuggets come in four shapes. Each has a name: the boot, the bone, the ball and the bell.

NEW YORK SUB PIG CAFES Subway – the world’s biggest fast food restaurant chain – has a popular sandwich called the Italian BMT. ‘BMT’ stands for Bigger, Meatier, Tastier but it used to stand for ‘Brooklyn Manhattan Transit’, which is part of the subway system in New York.

Fast Facts

TACO TO GO

FAST FOOD BURGER BITE PIG CAFES McDonald’s fast food restaurants feed nearly 1% of the whole world’s population every day.

PIZZA IN SPACE

Flour tortillas were used in place of bread to make sandwiches for astronauts as they made fewer crumbs to float around and possibly damage the spacecraft.

2001

In , Pizza Hut delivered a pizza to the International

Space Station! MAHARAJA – KING SIZE In In India the Big Mac is called the

“Maharaja Mac” “Ma

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and is made with chicken rather than chic beef as the cow is bee sacred in the Hindu sacr religion. relig

BELGIAN FRIES? REPTILE CAFES In Britain, £1..2 billion is spent on fish and chips each year!

COWS Over 2,000 quarter pounders can be made from one cow.

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VITA AMIN N PE EPPE ER

i c u J y u i r t s F

There is more vitamin C in a be sweet pepper than there is in an orange.

CHERRY Y COPTE ER Did you know that cherries can be damaged from rainfall? So, after heavy rain, helicopters are used to blow dry cherry trees. It is dangerous work – the helicopters have to fly low to fan the cherries – and people have died in cherry orchard crashes.

AN APPLE A DAY There are over 7,500 types of apple. Eating a different type of apple every day, it would take you over 20 years to get

BANAN NAS ARE E BERRIIES

through them all. Weirdly, if you planted the seeds of the apples you ate, you unlikely to get trees that produced the same apples. They are likely to be totally different and might not taste very nice.

Technically, a banana is a berry. Even weirder: a strawberry isn’t a berry, its known as a pseudocarp or ‘false fruit’. Berries have their seed on the inside of the fruit. Strawberries have their seeds on the outside of the fruit. Tomatoes, avocados, pumpkins and watermelons are all types of berry!

THE KIING OF F FRUIT TS? The durian, from Southeast Asia, is also

GRAPE DANGER R Grapes and raisins can kill dogs. There is a substance in grapes that causes kidney failure in dogs. 6

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known as “The King of Fruits”. This large, thorn-covered fruit is also known for being so bad-smelling that it is banned from underground train systems in Singapore. The strong smells of the durian have been described as like rotten onions, vomit and pig poo!

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Mystery y Flavour Drinks Anything (carbonated) and Whatever (non-carbonated) were the names of two drinks. Each came in various flavours ours (Anything had a mix of cola, apple, lemon and roott beer; beer Whatever had different types of tea), but the cans didn’t reveal what they were.

k n i Dr

Up

Tuna, Toes and Pizza There’s a drink that is made using the fluid from the eyes of a tuna fish. There is fl also a bar in Canada where adults can a order drink that has a mummified toe in ord it. In the United Kingdom, brewers o d a beer that tastes like pizza. evellope deve d

Poo Coffee There is a type of coffee in which the coffee beans have been eaten, digested and pooed out by palm civets, before being used to make the drink. Called kopi luwak, this coffee is one of the most expensive in the th world – a single cup could cost you around

£70!

Cola and Submarines

Soft drink company Pepsi was once paid in submarines. In 1989, the Soviet Union government had purchased a lot of cola from Pepsi and so paid them with 17 submarines and three warships. Pepsi sold them for scrap. 8

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MINCEMEAT

Holiday SEASON

Mincemeat, the spicy M dried fruit filling in C Christmas mince pies, d to contain actual meat. used

A WEEK OF PANCAKES In Russia, the end of winter is celebrated ed al that with Maslenitsva – a week-long festival encourages people to eat blinis, which are Russian pancakes.

15,000 EGGS An Easter festival in France involves an omelette being made by the Brotherhood of the Giant Omelette that uses over

FESTIVE FEAST In the USA over 40 million turkeys are eaten during the Thanksgiving holiday.

15,000 eggs.

SOUTHERN FRIED CHRISTMAS SALTED SHEEP HEAD

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A traditional Norwegian dish usually eaten before Christmas, is sheep’s head that has been smoked and steamed.

In Japan, it has become custom to eat Kentucky Fried Chicken on Christmas day.

CHRISTMAS CATERPILLARS Mopane ‘worms’ (actually caterpillars), are eaten in southern Africa around Christmas (because they are seasonal then). They are fried with tomato, onion and chili.

BLUBBER AND AUK In Greenland, traditional Christmas food includes Muktuk, which is made from whale skin and blubber. It is served with Kiviak, which is made by wrapping up to 500 small seabirds (little auks) in seal skin and burying it for months. 11

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D O O FFIGHT!

Sometimes, food is eaten, sometimes it is thrown away and sometimes it is thrown at people for fun! Every year, thousands of people across the world take part in food fights. Sometimes these food fights can take over an entire town!

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I Eastern Spain, the streets of In Buñol run red with tomato juice B eevery August. The town is home to a festival celebrating the tomato. Approximately 120,000 kilograms A of o tomatoes are thrown, squashed and a smashed, with around 20,000 people taking part. p I Italy, one of the largest organised In ffood fights in the world involves people throwing oranges at each p oother, resulting in cuts and bruises. Back in Spain, the ‘El Enfarinats’ B ffestival, which has been running for oover 200 years, encourages people tto throw flour and eggs at each oother. At Easter, another Spanish ffestival ‘La Merengada’ involves a huge number of people throwing meringues m at each other. Other O weird food contests around the t world include throwing fruit cake in i the USA, throwing custard pies in England E and bags of flour in Greece!

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