Here are some of the strange but true facts which I found interesting and selected as I was browsing the web site www.strangefacts.net last weekend.

• 3000 years ago, most Egyptians died by the age of 30.
• In 1962, the schools in Tanganyika closed because of an outbreak of contagious laughter that lasted for six months.
• In 1980, workers in a Las Vegas hospital were suspended. They had bet on which patient would die first.
• Earlier in China, doctors received their fees only if patients were cured.
• In Egypt, people shaved eyebrows on the death of their cats.
• In the 1800s, if anyone failed to die after committing a suicide, they had to face the death penalty.
• Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a spacesuit damages them.
• By raising your legs slowly and lying on your back, you cannot sink into quicksand.
• Lightning strikes the earth about 6,000 times per minute.
• Lobsters have blue blood.
• The thumb nail grows the slowest and the middle nail the fastest.
• Chocolates can kill dogs.
• Ketchup was earlier sold as medicine.
• Rubber bands last longer in refrigerator.
• There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.
• Dreamt is the only word ending with ‘mt’.
• Plastics take 500 years to break down.
• 180 millions of Valentine’s Day cards are exchanged annually.
• 4% of the total population drinks cold drink daily.
• It’s impossible to sneeze with eyes open.
• In Bangladesh, kids are punished and jailed for cheating in final exams.
• It takes yard of sugarcane to make one sugar cube.
• Traffic lights were used even before the invention of cars.
• A normal person laughs five times a day.
• Eskimos use refrigerators to keep food FROM freezing.
• Average life span of a major league baseball is 7 pitches.
• Only one person in two billion will live up to 116 of age.
• 200 companies contributing 29% to the world economy employs only 0.9% of the world’s work force.
• 98 tons of ore historic buried plant material is used to make one U.S gallon of gasoline.
• Strong negative emotions lead to damage of immune system.
• On average, 100 people choke to death on ballpoint pens every year.