Page 61 - Best of the Month

Nature is a legal entity in Ecuador, and people can sue on behalf of it!

Ecuador enacted a new constitution in 2008 and in it, it became the first country in the world to codify the Rights of Nature. The constitution recognizes the rights of ecosystems to flourish and it allows people to take legal action on behalf of the environment.

Ecuador had a history of abuse with the oil industry, including a class-action lawsuit against Chevron, which led to the adoption of Nature Rights in the country. The concept that resonated in this argument was called Buen Vivir, or good living. Buen Vivir meant to live a good life in a communal sense, and the community includes Nature.

There have been a number of legal disputes that have invoked the Rights of Nature. Check the source to read more about them!

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Some cultures believe Vampires have a crippling form of OCD!

Vampires, although tainted by the Twilight series, have been in popular culture for centuries - and throughout most of those centuries, they have been feared immensely. Why? Well, some of the vampires abilities include sucking the blood out of humans, as well as being able to turn into bats. Although, one characteristic of vampires is relatively unknown - unless you are part of a select few cultures that believes Vampires suffer from Arithmomania.

Arithmomania, is a type of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, where the subject is forced to count objects or actions in their surroundings. Thus, people believed that if you were being chased by a Vampire, you should throw a bag of rice, or sand on the ground, as it will distract the creature.

The belief that Vampires were arithmomaniacs was very popular in India, as well as China. It makes you wonder - is this myth about vampires explain the origin of 'The Count' from Sesame Street?

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There is an area in Canada with less gravity than the rest of the Earth!

In the 1960s, scientists began to chart Earth’s gravitational fields. You would expect that gravity be the same across the world. It’s not like you feel incredibly heavy in the United States while you practically float around in South America. You always feel the same gravitational pull.

However, they found that gravity actually did vary. In Canada, there are certain areas with less gravity than normal. The Hudson Bay, for example, is “missing” gravity.

There are two theories as to why this may be true. One theory cites convection as the cause. Convection pulls the Earth’s plates downward, which decreases the mass in that area and decreases the gravity. The other theory cites the Laurentide Ice Sheet as the cause. The Ice Sheet melted 10,000 years ago and left a huge indent in the Earth, which could mess with the gravity.

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A single Lego brick can support 375,000 other bricks before collapsing!

Lego are incredibly strong. A BBC program called More or Less asked Open University's engineering department to find out how many Lego bricks it would take staked on top of each other to destroy the bottom brick.

They used a hydraulic testing machine and they determined that the maximum force that a 2x2 Lego brick can take is 4,240 newtons. Since those 2x2 Lego bricks have a mass of 1.152 grams, it would take a stack of 375,000 bricks to cause the bottom brick to collapse. That would be a stack 3,591 meters (11,781ft) high!

Learn more about Lego at the source.

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Greek statues have small penises because the Greeks considered large ones to be gross and comical!

If you’ve ever seen ancient Greek statues, you may wonder about the size of men’s penises back then. If the statues are accurate, ancient Greek men were not well endowed. Are these true representations though and if so, are they true of all ancient Greek men?

While today, men would prefer to have a large penis. This was not the case in ancient Greece. Experts have actually studied ancient Greek genitalia extensively. Back then, in highbrow culture, large penises were actually considered grotesque, comic or both. The Greeks actually desired small, thin penises. Hence, this ideal small representation on their statues.

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