Sometimes something scary exists even in the most ordinary things. Have you ever thought about how many times you might have been near a dangerous criminal but weren’t able to tell them from a regular person? Or have you ever considered ignoring the “No swimming” sign? People who think that “some germs” can’t eat them throw caution out the window, but that could lead to grave circumstances.
Up until the end of 1980s, some doctors didn’t believe that newborn babies could feel pain.
© Showtime / Everett Collection
A study conducted by doctors in Great Britain and Ireland in 1988 showed that 13% of people were sure that children from 0 to 12 months couldn’t feel pain and 23% weren’t completely sure. That’s why during serious surgeries, doctors often only used local anesthesia.
The question of whether children younger than one year could feel pain was debated for many years. But now it is a proven fact that newborn children, and even those that are not born yet, can feel pain just like adults.
You have a better chance of dying while taking a bath than you do of winning a jackpot in a lottery.
© PacificCoastNews.com / EAST NEWS
According to different estimations, your chances of winning a jackpot are from 1 in 176 million to 1 in 15 million. Unfortunately, the chances of dying in your own bathroom are way higher — 1 in 840 thousand. But people still believe in their own luck and some of them do win. For example, this couple from Scotland in the photo won £161 million in 2011.
Over the course of your life, you can be nearly murdered thousands of times and not even notice it.
© ASSOCIATED PRESS / FOTOLINK / EAST NEWS, © ASSOCIATED PRESS / FOTOLINK / EAST NEWS
This number depends on where you live and how many people you meet every day. A person from a small town will come across around 16 murderers during their lifetime, and a person from a big city who walks by hundreds of people every day can encounter thousands of murderers and not even know it.
The thing is, most criminals, including violent serial killers like Ted Bundy (in the photo), look like regular people and can have a seemingly ordinary life. Bundy worked at a hotline for a while where he helped people and called 911 for those who were going to kill themselves.
It’s a really unsettling thought that behind the mask of a nice person, there was a kidnapper, a murderer, and a rapist who committed 30 murders from 1974 to 1978.
The chance someone will die on their birthday is 6.7% which is higher than on any other day.
© Universal Studios / Everett Collection
The average death rate on someone’s birthdays is 6.7 percent higher than what you’d otherwise normally expect on that day, according to a new analysis done by University of Chicago economics researcher Pablo Pena. He found that the rate is even higher for young people and on the weekends. This is a scary number, isn’t it?
Unfortunately, scientists don’t know the exact reason. Maybe, it’s because there’s a higher chance of accidents during parties or because depressed people decide to commit suicide on this day.
During swimming, a parasite named Naegleria Fowleri can get into a person’s brain through the nose and cause primary amoebic meningoencephalitis that will lead to death
© CDC / Dr. Govinda S. Visvesvara / Wikipedia Commons, © FLPA / Mark Newman / East News
This ugly thing gets into our brain through our nose and starts eating it. This sounds like an urban legend or a scary children’s story, but unfortunately it’s very close to reality. Naegleria Fowleri lives in contaminated warm water and it uses the olfactory nerve to get into people’s brains and cause primary amoebic meningoencephalitis.
Even with medicine, we can’t always save people from this disease. So, don’t ignore the warning signs you see on beaches or near swimming areas.
In most cases, the bodies of mountain climbers who died on Everest stay there forever.
© ROBERTO SCHMIDT / AFP / East News
On Mount Everest, there is a so-called “death area” that starts at 26 thousand feet. The climbers who die in this area stay there forever because a helicopter can’t fly at this altitude, and carrying bodies in these conditions is a very dangerous task even for experienced rescue teams.
It is also shocking that the bodies of some dead climbers are reference points for other climbers. For example, a man known as “Green Boots” was a telling point for many people. His bright shoes pointed toward the path to the summit from 1996 to 2014 until his remains disappeared. Maybe, it was the wind, or maybe someone buried his body under the rocks.
People who spend more than 2 hours a day in front of the TV, make their lives 1.4 years shorter.
© akg-images / Israel Talby / EAST NEWS
This is not a new problem because, until recently, TV and radio were the main sources of everyday news. In this photo from 1991, you can see 2 sisters from Israel who were watching TV during an air attack.
Even now with internet and smartphones, a lot of people still watch TV shows. But as it turns out, it’s not safe at all. People who spend more than 2 hours a day in front of the TV, make their lives 1.4 years shorter. But, don’t throw away your TV just yet: it’s not the device that is to blame, but the habit of not moving when watching something.
This tick lives on the faces of half of humanity and eats their skin cells.
© Mary Evans Picture Library / East News
This is another scary fact that turned out to be true. 1/3 of children, 1/2 of adults, and 2/3 of elderly people have this tick, called Demodex, on their face. Most of the time, it lives inside or near the hair follicles of the eyebrows, eyelashes, and nose.
The tick eats the skin cells and the sebum. Usually, it causes no trouble at all, but in some cases (when people have an illness or too much stress) the number of ticks increases dramatically which leads to a skin disease called demodicosis.
27,000 tress are cut down every day to become toilet paper
© JANEK SKARZYNSKI / AFP / East News
This is another terrifying number that really makes us think. We can’t get by without toilet paper, but there is a way to improve this situation if we develop recycling technologies (which most developed countries are doing) and start making paper out of different materials.
There are 10 times more germs on a smartphone screen than there are on a toilet seat.
© PhoneSoap / Ferrari Press / East News
Many of us place our smartphones on the table when eating. Now, imagine a toilet seat there instead of your smartphone. An unpleasant image, right? Well, the toilet seat would be way less dangerous than your phone. Scientists from Arizona University found that there are 10 times more bacteria on a smartphone than on a toilet seat.
What can you do about this? According to experts in microbiology, all you have to do is wipe your smartphone with alcohol or alcohol-wipes. Or there is a more radical way — you can buy a device (like in the photo) that kills the bacteria on the surface.
There is a graveyard of ships on the bottom of the ocean.
© LILO / SIPA / EAST NEWS
According to the UN, there are around 3 million ships at the bottom of the ocean. There are ships from different eras, several submarines, and of course, the infamous Titanic. If we lifted the ships, they would make a line long enough to go around the equator twice.
Thousands of people die every year because of doctors’ poor handwriting.
Medication mistakes kill more than 7,000 people every year. This is largely because of doctors’ often-illegible handwriting on prescriptions according to a July 2006 report issued by the National Academies of Science’s Institute of Medicine. In order to eliminate this problem, there is a system of internet-based prescriptions that allow pharmacists to avoid mistakes and have to read what doctors write.
Unfortunately, this feature is not available everywhere yet and patients hope that these pharmacists are experienced enough to read the prescriptions they fill.
All of humanity is in this photo. Well, everyone except one person.
© Lightroom Photos / NASA / Photoshot / REPORTER / East News
In this photograph you can see the lunar module of Apollo 11 with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin onboard, the surface of the Moon, and our planet with all the inhabitants, both dead and alive, and everyone who has ever existed. Even those who were born after 1969 are kind of in the photo because their grandmothers and grandfathers are in it already.
The only person who is not in the photo is Michael Collins, the third member of the expedition to the Moon who was alone on the orbit of the Moon while his teammates were on the surface of the satellite. This is the definition of true loneliness.