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Want to seem like the smartest person at your next Zoom meeting? Looking for a fun fact to drop on a date? I don’t know if these will help you with the hook up – but they certainly won’t hurt!
Did you know that only around eleven percent of people are left-handed? Handedness is typically decided by which hand a person writes with, as most people use either hand for a number of tasks.
However, humans tend to strongly favor right-handedness, due a combination of factors. Left-handedness was seen as a sign of sinister spirits and an ill omen in ancient times in some cultures.
In fact, the word “sinister” is derived from the Latin word for left! Likewise, the word “dexterous,” meaning agile and precise, is derived from the Latin word for right. Moreover, even the term “right” to mean “correct” is an extension of the idea that the right side is the correct side.
The average person needs around eight hours of sleep to be healthy. However, science is still unsure why, exactly, we sleep.
Some theories hold that the process is required for the brain to encode long-term memories. People who go long stretches of time without sleeping begin to hallucinate and have waking dreams. In extreme cases, where a person is sleep-deprived for months at a time, they can actually die. From a lack of sleep!
This shows that sleep has a critical neurological function. However, it seems that sleep is also important for the body. The period of restfulness allows the body to heal and recover from daily rigors more rapidly. People who get less sleep tend to take longer to heal wounds and injuries.
English is a bizarre language. It’s technically a Germanic language, though it also shares a number of words and concepts with Romance languages. This is due to the long history of England itself, and the numerous conquests of the island. The modern-day version of English has French to thank for its vocabulary as much as German and Dutch.
In English, the two most common letters of the alphabet are E and S. The only English-language word that ends in “mt” is “dreamt”.
English is the third most-spoken language on Earth. This is partly due to the populations of England, New Zealand, Australia, the US, and Canada. It’s also due, in part, to English’s status as an international trade language.
Moreover, English is, incidentally, the language of international air travel. This is due, in part, to airplanes being an American invention.
When international governing bodies decided on a language for air travel, English was chosen, in part to recognize the achievement of the Wright Brothers when they invented the first airplane.
