Page 111 - Sex Facts

Peter the Great made his wife keep her adulterous lover's head in a jar after he had him executed.

Peter the Great made his wife keep her lover's head in a jar after he had him executed.

The Tsar of Russia, Peter the Great, ordered his wife's secretary, Willem Mons, to be executed on charges of embezzlement. Rumor has it that Peter was suspicious that his wife, Catherine, was having an affair with Mons, and thus ordered him to die a particularly gruesome death by drawing and quartering (being hanged, decapitated, and split into four pieces). Mons' head was kept in a jar in the Kunstkamera museum, and Peter forced his wife to spend hours in front of the "exhibit" as punishment.

Ironically, Catherine only knew Willem Mons because his sister Anna was Peter's mistress, which makes Peter kind of a hypocrite.

Peter wasn't any kinder to his first wife, Eudoxia Lopukhina. He used to ignore her and tried to force her to become a nun and move to a convent so she would leave him alone. Then when he found out that she had a new lover, he had that guy executed too (drawing and quartering again). He had her charged with adultery, and even ordered the execution of his own son that he had with her.

In short: Worst. Husband. Ever.

3% of all pregnant women will give birth to twins, an increase of 65% since 1980.

Another strange increase: between 1980 and 1998 the rate of triplets and other multiple births (quadruplets, quintuplets, etc.) shot up by 400%! In 2003, 535 births resulted in either triplets or more.

Your odds of having twins increases as you get older. At age 45 there's a 17% chance you'll have twins. Other factors that will increase your likelihood of having multiple births are using fertility drugs, having other sets of twins in your ancestry, having a BMI of 30 or higher, being in the top 25th percentile for height, or being Nigerian. The twin rate is 1 for every 22 births in Nigeria.

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The female praying mantis RIPS OFF THE MALE'S HEAD during sex!

The female praying mantis RIPS OFF THE MALE'S HEAD during sex!
Often, the male will try to initiate courtship in secret (technically rape, but in his defense, there's a good chance he's about to become someone's lunch). If detected, the female will kill him and eat him, often by ripping off his head mid-coitus. Upon being decapitated, the male mantis will reflexively tense up and start to deliver sperm more vigorously than before. Afterwords, in lieu of a cigarette, the female mantis will relax by eating whatever is left of her new ex-boyfriend.

Most mantises don't do this, but the most famous species of mantis, Mantis Religiosa (aka the "Praying Mantis"), does this all the time, thus giving the rest of the mantis family a bad name. For some reason, male praying mantises are undeterred by this and they continue to initiate this bizarre mating ritual. The technical term for this process is "Sexual Cannibalism", a fetish that (thankfully) has yet to catch on much among humans.

What do they call a "French Kiss" in France? They definitely don't call it a French kiss.

What do they call a "French Kiss" in France? They definitely don't call it a French kiss.

The act of "French kissing" (kissing with tongues) has different names in different countries. For example, people call it "French kissing" in the United States, Turkey, Chile, and Nigeria. In the UK, they simply refer to it as "snogging". The French just call it "baiser avec la langue" literally meaning, "kiss with the tongue".

Be careful when offering a "French kiss" in Austria since in that country, "French Kiss" is slang for fellatio.

Also, ironically enough, in India the "French kiss" is sometimes referred to as the "English kiss", due to the fact that it more commonly appears in English films than in Indian ones.

Cracking your knuckles does not actually hurt your bones or cause arthritis. The sound you hear is just gas bubbles bursting.

Cracking your knuckles (or any of your joints) can have therapeutic benefits. When you crack one of your joints you are pulling the bones that are connected at the joint apart from each other. This process stimulates your tendons, relaxes your muscles, and loosens your joints. Chiropractors do this for spinal joints when your back is sore and stiff, but you can do this on your own for your knuckles, toes, knees, neck, etc.

Unfortunately, there can be too much of a good thing. Cracking your knuckles will never lead to arthritis (despite what your mom keeps telling you), but scientists have discovered that it can cause tissue damage in the affected joints. Knuckle-cracking pulls your finger bones apart which stretches your ligaments. Too much stretching of your ligaments will cause damage to your fingers akin to the arm injuries sustained by a baseball pitcher who throws too many pitches. In addition to making your hand really sore, this ligament damage can also result in reduced grip strength.

How does this work? Your joints, the places in your body where you can bend, are where your bones intersect and are held together by ligaments. These joints are surrounded by a liquid called synovial fluid. When you stretch your ligaments by pulling the bones apart to crack your knuckles a gas in the synovial fluid escapes and turns into a bubble. This process is called cavitation. Cavitation ends when the bubble eventually bursts, producing that popping sound we know and love. After that, your joints won't be able to crack for another 25-30 minutes while the gas gets reabsorbed into the synovial fluid.

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