Page 184 - Animal Facts

Baskin-Robbins once made ketchup-flavored ice cream.

At a factory in Burbank, CA, the young ice cream company experimented with hundreds of ice cream flavors that never made it to the public. This included Ketchup, "Grape Britain", and Lox and Bagels. This was years after they had come up with their first 31 flavors, but they kept the "31 flavors" slogan, and instead used it to mean that they will have a new flavor for every day of the month.

Irvine Robbins and his brother-in-law Burton Baskin had been running their own separate ice cream stores for a few years (Snowbird Ice Cream Store and Burton's Ice Cream, respectively) before merging. This was just after WWII; at the time, a store that only sells ice cream was a novel concept. By teaming up they started a sensation. The company changed its name to Baskin-Robbins in 1953. This was decided on a coin-flip, otherwise it would have been Robbins-Baskin!

You can read more about Baskin-Robbins in this Irvine Robbins obituary from the L.A. Times.

2,000 Chinese people die from smoking every day.

China has the largest number of smoking related deaths in the world. 2,000 people in China die from cigarette smoking every day, according to a study performed by British, American, and Chinese researchers (the largest survey of tobacco use ever). That number is projected to hit 8,000 a day by 2050. Also, the average Chinese person smokes an average of 10 cigarettes every day.

Unsurprisingly, awareness of the health risks posed by smoking is low in China. ? of people in China think that smoking is harmless. 60% don't believe that it causes lung cancer. 96% had no idea that it also leads to heart disease.

The numbers are especially bad for Chinese men. ¾ of Chinese men are smokers. That's 690 MILLION people! The study showed that over half of Chinese smokers die from tobacco related problems. Chinese men aged aged 35 to 69 are 51% more likely to die from cancer, 31% more likely to die from respiratory problems, and at a 15% higher risk of dying from vascular diseases.

Here are some more statistics on smoking in China.

Dogs are smarter than cats.

It has commonly been accepted that dogs are dumb because they need attention and cats are smart because they can take care of themselves. Not so fast, my friends; a recent study has shown that canines' social tendencies are actually the REASON they are more intelligent than felines! The researchers even found that there is a common link among all mammals - the more social the animal, the larger its brain. This line of reasoning shows that increased socializing and the ensuing demands in cooperation and coordination challenge a creature to think more.
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Every year, a rumor goes around the internet that some time in August will be a once in a lifetime opportunity to see Mars, because it will look as big in our sky as the Moon.

Why do we see this rumor every year, often in the same time of the year?

August 27, 2003 was when Mars was the closest to our planet that it has ever been in over 50,000 years (35 million miles away, about 144 times as far away as the mooon).

At that time, Mars appeared to be 6 times larger than it normally does. At the time it was an exciting event, as long as you had a telescope. To the naked eye, Mars was still just a tiny dot in the sky.

At the time, chain emails went around that overstated the event, claiming that Mars would be within only a few miles of us, that it would be next to the Moon, or that it would look like we had two moons in the sky. These emails still show up every year, even though the event happened almost 7 years ago.

(Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

An ostrich's egg is the largest bird egg and can support an adult human's weight.

Ostrich eggs are 6 to 8 inches long, 4 to 6 inches wide, and can reach weights of up to 3 pounds, 14 oz. That's the equivalent of 2 dozen chicken eggs!! The shell of this eggs-treme ovum is only 0.06 inches thick, but can support an adult human. The smallest bird eggs are laid by the tow vervain hummingbird. These eggs weigh 0.0128 ounces and are less than 0.39 inches thick - that's like 6 ostrich eggshells side by side!
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