Whether you are a smoker or not, these facts serve as an additional knowledge for you. Then, if you are a smoker, think twice before you pick up a cigarette.

1. Urea, a chemical compound that is a major component in urine, is used to add “flavor” to cigarettes.

2. The United States is the only major cigarette market in the world in which the percentage of women smoking cigarettes (22%) comes close to the number of men who smoke (35%). Europe has a slightly larger gap (46% of men smoke, 26% of women smoke), while most other regions have few women smokers. The stats: Africa (29% of men smoke, 4% of women smoke); Southeast Asia (44% of men, 4% of women), Western Pacific (60% of men, 8% of women).

3. The U.S. states with the highest percentage of smokers are Kentucky (28.7%), Indiana (27.3%), and Tennessee (26.8%), while the states with the fewest are Utah (11.5%), California (15.2%), and Connecticut (16.5%).

4. The nicotine content in several major brands is reportedly on the rise. Harvard University and the Massachusetts Health Department revealed that between 1997 and 2005, the amount of nicotine in Camel, Newport and Doral cigarettes may have increased by as much as 11 percent.

5. Men who smoke are more likely to experience erectile dysfunction. Smoke 10 or fewer cigarettes a day and your risk of dysfunciton is 16% greater than non-smokers; 11 – 20 cigarettes a day has been linked to a 36% rise in erectile problems; and men who smoked more than 20 cigarettes a day have a 60% greater chance of dysfunction.

6. In 1970, President Nixon signed the law that placed warning labels on cigarettes and banned television advertisements for cigarettes. The last date that cigarette ads would have been permitted on TV was extended a day, from December 31, 1970 to January 1, 1971 to allow the television networks one last cash windfall from cigarette advertising in New Year’s Day football games.

7. Cigarettes are the single most-traded item on the planet, with approximately 1 trillion being sold from country to country each year. At a global take of more than $400 billion, it’s one of the world’s most largest industries.

8. U.S. cigarette manufacturers now make more money selling cigarettes to countries around the globe than they do selling to Americans.

9. Just 4 cigarette brands — including the popluar American brands Marlboro, Kool and Kent — own roughly 70% of the global cigarette market.

10. According to the World Health Organization, approximately 25% of cigarettes sold around the world are smuggled.

[Picture ource: http://www.mensfitness.com/]

Where are the fittest and fattest people in America?

Albuquerque, N.M., has been cited as the fittest U.S. city. The bragging rights are based on an unscientific survey by Men’s Fitness magazine.

The magazine surveyed 50 cities in its March (2006) issue. It lists Seattle as No. 2.

The survey also listed the 10 fattest cities. Las Vegas leads the beefy category. Four Texas cities are in the top 10: San Antonio, Houston, Dallas and El Paso. The heavyweights also include Mesa, Ariz.; Los Angeles; Detroit and San Jose, Calif.

The survey examines lifestyle factors in each city, including fast-food restaurants per capita and availability of gyms or bike paths.

Top 25 Fittest:

1. Albuquerque, N.M.
2. Seattle, Wash.
3. Colorado Springs, Colo.
4. Minneapolis
5. Tucson, Ariz.
6. Denver
7. San Francisco
8. Baltimore
9. Portland, Ore.
10. Honolulu
11. Washington, D.C.
12. Omaha, Neb.
13. Tulsa, Okla.
14. Boston
15. Virginia Beach, Va.
16. Milwaukee
17. Sacramento
18. Louisville-Jefferson, Ky.
19. Columbus, Ohio
20. Philadelphia
21. Austin, Tx.
22. Nashville-Davidson
23. Charlotte
24. Atlanta
25. Oakland, Calf.

Top 25 Fattest:

1. Las Vegas
2. San Antonio
3. Miami
4. Mesa, Ariz.
5. Los Angeles
6. Houston
7. Dallas
8. El Paso
9. Detroit
10. San Jose
11. Long Beach, Calf.
12. Memphis
13. Chicago 14. Arlington, Texas
15. Oklahoma City
16. Indianapolis
17. Forth Worth
18. New York
19. Fresno, Calif.
20. Wichita, Kan.
21. San Diego
22. Phoenix
23. Jacksonville, Fla.
24. Kansas City
25. Cleveland

Source:

1. http://www.kirotv.com/health/10980643/detail.html
2. http://www.mensfitness.com/polls/207

1. It’s your body’s largest organ, despite what the readers of Maxim think.

2. An average adult’s skin spans 21 square feet, weighs nine pounds, and contains more than 11 miles of blood vessels.

3. The skin releases as much as three gallons of sweat a day in hot weather. The areas that don’t sweat are the nail bed, the margins of the lips, the tip of the penis, and the eardrums.

4. Ooh, that smell: Body odor comes from a second kind of sweat—a fatty secretion produced by the apocrine sweat glands, found mostly around the armpits, genitals, and anus.

5. Yum! The odor is caused by bacteria on the skin eating and digesting those fatty compounds.

6. Breasts are a modified form of the apocrine sweat gland.

7. Fetuses don’t develop fingerprints until three months’ gestation.

8. Without a trace: Some people never develop fingerprints at all. Two rare genetic defects, known as Naegeli syndrome and dermatopathia pigmentosa reticularis, can leave carriers without any identifying ridges on their skin.

9. Fingerprints increase friction and help grip objects. New World monkeys have similar prints on the undersides of their tails, the better to grasp as they swing from branch to branch.

10. Blowin’ in the wind: Globally, dead skin accounts for about a billion tons of dust in the atmosphere. Your skin sheds 50,000 cells every minute.

11. There are at least five types of receptors in the skin that respond to pain and to touch.

12. One experiment revealed that Meissner corpuscles—touch receptors that are concentrated in the fingertips and palms, lips and tongue, nipples, penis and clitoris—respond to a pressure of just 20 milligrams, the weight of a fly.

13. In blind people, the brain’s visual cortex is rewired to respond to stimuli received through touch and hearing, so they literally “see” the world by touch and sound.

14. “In the buff” became synonymous for “nude” in 17th-century England. The term derives from soldiers’ leather tunics, or “buffs,” whose light brown color apparently resembled an Anglo-Saxon backside.

15. White skin appeared just 20,000 to 50,000 years ago, as dark-skinned humans migrated to colder climes and lost much of their melanin pigment.

16. I see very, very white people: Albinos are often cast as movie villains, as seen in The Da Vinci Code, Die Another Day, The Matrix Reloaded, and—inexplicably—the 2001 flick Josie and the Pussycats. Robert Lima of Penn State suggests that people associate pale-skinned albinos with vampires and other mythical creatures of the night.

17. More than 2,000 people have radio frequency identification chips, or RFID tags, inserted under their skin. The tags can provide access to medical information, log on to computers, or unlock car doors.

18. Flesh for fantasy: At the Baja Beach club in Barcelona, customers can get an implanted RFID “debit card” and party until their funds are exhausted.

19. The Cleveland Public Library, Harvard Law School, and Brown University all have books clad in skin stripped from executed criminals or from the poor.

20. Hopefully, they didn’t have to reprint it: One such volume is Andreas Vesalius’s pioneering 16th-century work of anatomy, De Humani Corporis Fabrica (On the Fabric of the Human Body).

Source: Email

A list of amazing facts for you!!

1. Walter Cavanaugh, “Mr. Plastic Fantastic,” has 1,196 different valid credit cards.
2. The oldest known goldfish lived to 41 years of age. Its name was Fred.
3. In 1987, a 1,400-year-old lump of still-edible cheese was unearthed inIreland.
4. There is a town in Newfoundland, Canada called Dildo.
5. In Kentucky, 50% of the people who get married for the first time areteenagers.
6. Kotex was first manufactured as bandages, during WWI.
7. If an orangutan belches at you, watch out. He’s warning you to stay out of his territory.
8. Einstein couldn’t speak fluently when he was nine. His parents thought he might be retarded.
9. In Los Angeles, there are fewer people than there are automobiles.
10. About a third of all Americans flush the toilet while they’re still sitting
on it.
11. In 1984, a New Jersey man opened a summer camp for Cabbage Patch dolls.
12. You’re more likely to get stung by a bee on a windy day that in any other weather.
13. How can you tell when a gorilla is angry? It sticks its tongue out.
14. According to one poll, nearly 3/4 of all American women wear a bra that is the wrong size.
15. In 1976, a Los Angeles secretary formally married her 50-pound pet rock. MORE »

Well, here are 27 facts that most people don’t know about.

27. The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.

26. The average chocolate bar has 8 insect legs in it.

25. Right-handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people do.

24. Its impossible to smoke oneself to death with weed. You won’t be able to retain enough motor control and consciousness to do so after such a large amount. (Common Sense)

23. Uncle Phil, from Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, did the voice of Shredder in the TMNT cartoon.

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1. When a person dies, hearing is the last sense to go — the first is usually sight, followed by taste, smell and touch.
2. A human head remains conscious for about 15 to 20 seconds after it has been decapitated.
3. 100 people choke to death on pens each year. One is more likely to be killed by a champagne cork than by a spider.
4. Alexander’s funeral would have cost $600 million today. A road from Egypt to Babylon was built to carry his body.

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Here are even more interesting facts to know!

1. John Kerry’s hometown newspaper, the Lowell Sun, endorsed George W. Bush for president in 2004. Bush’s hometown newspaper, the Lone Star Iconoclast, endorsed John Kerry for president in 2004.
2. Only 939 of the 1,400,000 high school seniors who took the SAT in 2004 got a perfect score of 1600. Two of them are twin brothers Dillon and Jesse Smith from Long Island, NY.
3. Billboard magazine has recently launched a top 20 chart of cell phone ringtones.
4. The US Army is handing out $2,500 to Fallujah residents whose property was destroyed by US planes and artillery.
5. George W. Bush, who presents himself as a man of faith, rarely goes to church. Yet he received votes from nearly two out of three voters who attend church at least once a week.
6. In 2015, it is estimated that half the federal budget will be spent on programs for the elderly.
7. A private elementary school in Alexandria, Virginia, accidentally served margaritas to its schoolchildren, thinking it was limeade.
8. The Chicago Cubs are suing former Hartford Courant newspaper carrier Mark Guthrie to get back $301,000 in pay that was intended to go to a Cubs pitcher with the same name. The Tribune Company owns both the Hartford Courant and the Chicago Cubs.
9. In February 2004, a Disney World employee was killed when he fell from a parade float and was trapped between two float sections. OSHA termed this a serious workplace violation, but Disney was fined only $6,300.
10. Even today, 90% of the continental United States is still open space or farmland.
11. The second Saturday in September is usually a popular time for weddings. Not in 2004, as most couples did not want their anniversaries on September 11.

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Here are some more interesting facts to know. Even more to come!

1. 60.7 percent of eligible voters participated in the 2004 presidential election, the highest percentage in 36 years. However, more than 78 million did not vote. This means President Bush won re-election by receiving votes from less than 31% of all eligible voters in the United States.
2. John Quincy Adams, sixth president of the United States, loved to skinny dip in the Potomac River.
3. La Paz, Bolivia has an average annual temperature below 50 degrees Fahrenheit. However, it has never recorded a zero-degree temperature. Same for Stanley, Falkland Islands and Punta Arenas, Chile.
4. 41% of Chinese people eat at least once a week at a fast food restaurant. 35% of Americans do.
5. A Wisconsin forklift operator for a Miller beer distributor was fired when a picture was published in a newspaper showing him drinking a Bud Light.
6. G-rated family films earn more money than any other rating. Yet only 3% of Hollywood’s output is G-rated.
7. Richard Hatch, winner of the first “Survivor” reality series, has been charged with tax evasion for failing to report his $1,000,000 prize.
8. The entire fleet of Unicoi County Tennessee’s salt trucks was rendered out of commission in one accident. All three trucks were badly damaged when one of them began skidding down a road, causing a chain reaction accident. Officials blamed road conditions.
9. More people study English in China than speak it in the United States of America (300 million).
10. Fast food provider Hardee’s has recently introduced the Monster Thickburger. It has 1,420 calories and 107 grams of fat.

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Continued from the previous post of More Interesting Facts to Know.

1. Chicago is closer to Moscow than it is to Rio de Janeiro.
2. Dogs have two sets of teeth, just like humans. They first have 30 “puppy” teeth, then 42 adult teeth.
3. In 1950, President Harry Truman threw out the first ball twice at the opening day Washington DC baseball game; once right handed and once left handed.
4. A Swiss ski resort announced it would combat global warming by wrapping its mountain glaciers in aluminum foil to keep them from melting.
5. The chameleon has a tongue that is one and a half times the length of his body.
6. Beethoven dipped his head in cold water before he composed.
7. There once was a town named “6″ in West Virginia.
8. Ten years ago, only 500 people in China could ski. This year, an estimated 5,000,000 Chinese will visit ski resorts.
9. In 1920, Babe Ruth broke the single season home run record, with 29. The same year, he became the first major leaguer to hit 30 home runs. The same year, he became the first major leaguer to hit 40 home runs. The same year, he became the first major leaguer to hit 50 home runs.

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