5 RANDOM FACTS YOU PROBABLY NEVER KNEW - People of Mixed Race Are Perceived As Being More Attractive..

Vanessa Williams

1. Studies have suggested that people of mixed race are perceived as being more attractive than non-mixed-race people. The reasoning for this is said to be due to the genetic process of heterosis, where crossbred offspring exhibit greater genetic fitness than their pure-bred counterparts.

A random sample of 1205 black, white, and mixed-race faces was collected and used with a small but highly significant effect, with mixed-race faces, on average, being perceived as more attractive. This result is seen as a perceptual demonstration of heterosis in humans—a biological process that may have implications far beyond just attractiveness.

(Photo: Both of Vanessa Williams's parents, Helen Tinch and Milton Williams, are black, but they each have a complex ancestry. Williams took a DNA test which revealed that her ancestry is 23% from Ghana, 17% from the British Isles, 15% from Cameroon, 12% Finland, 11% Southern Europe, 7% Togo, 6% Benin, 5% Senegal, and 4% Portugal. Source: Ranker)

Sketch by Steven K Ellis
http://www.ske-art.com/

2. Human urine was a main ingredient in the making of gunpowder. Gunpowder is comprised of 75% potassium nitrate, 15% charcoal and 10% sulfur. While charcoal (historically made with wood) and sulfur (historically dug from the ground around volcanoes) have been relatively easy to obtain, potassium nitrate is not commonly found in nature. Early sources were found in caves where guano (bat poo) had combined with minerals from the cave walls; soaking and filtering the guano was an effective method, but there are only so many caves, and so much bat poo.

Urine was used before the development of a chemical industry in the manufacture of gunpowder. Urine was used to moisten straw or other organic material, which was kept moist and allowed to rot for several months to over a year. The resulting salts were washed from the heap with water, which was evaporated to allow collection of crude saltpeter crystals, that were usually refined before being used in making gunpowder. Now today, some humans still pee freely in the making of their own gun powder while following certain cautionary procedures!



3. People with blue eyes have a higher alcohol tolerance.

A study was designed to examine the link between eye colour and alcohol in two archival samples where they hypothesized that among Caucasians whose eyes range from very light to very dark, light-eyed individuals would drink more alcohol and more often exhibit alcohol abuse than dark-eyed individuals.

When psychologists at Georgia State University in Atlanta surveyed more than 12,000 men and women, (10,860 adult male inmates and 1,862 young adult females), they found those with light eyes consumed significantly more alcohol than those with dark eyes. The reason brown-eyed people may drink less - and also be less likely to be alcoholics - is because they need less alcohol to become intoxicated.




4. Tears of joy, tears of happiness, and other types of tears all look different when placed under a microscope.

It is called The Topograhpy of Tears by Rose-Lynn Fisher. Through her own personal life experiences, Fisher wondered if her tears of grief would look different from her tears of happiness and set out to explore them up close under a microscope.

She studied 100 different tears and found that basal tears (the ones that our body produces to lubricate our eyes) are drastically different from the tears that happen when we are chopping onions.

All tears contain organic substances including oils, antibodies, and enzymes and are suspended in salt water. Different types of tears have distinct molecules.

Plus, when tears dry the crystallized salt takes on different shapes and forms.

L - Tears of Laughing until Crying. Center - Tears of Grief. R - Onion Tears
Image source

5. The dates 4/4, 6/6, 8/8, 10/10 and 12/12, all fall on the same day of the week during any one year. That is, they all share the same weekday during any one year.

They are part of an algorithm developed by John Conway that are actually called doomsdays, for mentally calculating the day of the week for any given date.

It provides a perpetual calendar because the Gregorian calendar moves in cycles of 400 years.

This algorithm for mental calculation was devised by Conway after drawing inspiration from Lewis Carroll's work on a perpetual calendar algorithm. It takes advantage of each year having a certain day of the week (the doomsday) upon which certain easy-to-remember dates fall; for example, 4/4, 6/6, 8/8, 10/10, 12/12, and the last day of February all occur on the same day of the week in any given year.


NOW YOU KNOW!