Having sex can reduce a fever because of the sweat produced.

Sex is also a pain reliever, ten times more effective than Valium: immediately before orgasm, levels of the hormone oxytocin rise by five times, determining a huge release of endorphins. These chemicals calm pain, from a minor headache to arthritis or migraines, and with no secondary effects. Migraines also disappear because the pressure in the brain's blood vessels is lowered while we have sex. So now we see that actually, a woman's headache is rather a good reason for having sex, not against it.

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.

There are weird similarities between Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy.

* Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846. John F. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946. * Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860. John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960.

* Both were shot in the back of the head in the presence of their wives. * Lincoln was shot in the Ford Theatre. Kennedy was shot in a Lincoln, made by Ford * Both wives lost their children while living in the White House.

*Both Presidents were shot on a Friday. * Lincoln's secretary was named Kennedy. * Both were succeeded by Southerners named Johnson. * Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808. Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908. * Lincoln was shot at the theater named 'Ford.' Kennedy was shot in a car called 'Lincoln' made by 'Ford.'

* Lincoln was shot in a theater and his assassin ran and hid in a warehouse. Kennedy was shot from a warehouse and his assassin ran and hid in a theater. * Booth and Oswald were assassinated before their trials.

Anatidaephobia is the fear that somewhere in the world, there is a duck watching you.

You can't hum while holding your nose closed.

Four is the only number that has the same amount of letters as its actual value

You're more likely to die on your way to buy a lottery ticket than you are to actually win the lottery.

If you touch your tongue while yawning, it can stop the yawn.

Women speak about 7000 words a day. The average man averages just over 2000.

THIS IS CRUEL: 'Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia' is the fear of long words.

Jellyfish evaporate in the sun. They're 98% water.

On average, people fear spiders more than they do death.

No word in the English language rhymes with purple, orange, month or silver.

When a person is tickled, the response is actually a form of panic, as the brain interprets the tickling sensation as produced by spiders or other creepy crawlies on your skin - the uncontrollable laughter is a response to panic.

Those stars and colours you see when you rub your eyes are called phosphenes.
(source)

Yawning is contagious - even thinking about yawning is enough. After reading this fact, there is a 50% chance you will yawn.

Research shows that 11-week-old fetuses yawn. Yawns become contagious to people between the first and second years of life. When one person in a group yawns, over half of the people in the group will yawn within 5 minutes, and the rest will at least be tempted to yawn. Even animals yawn when they see another animal yawn. The average duration of a yawn is about 6 seconds, and guys yawn for longer than girls.

The total weight of all the ants on Earth is about the same as the weight of all the humans on earth.

Ants also outnumber us a million to one! They also can lift weight twice their size! If they ever wanted to turn on us, they could just pick us all up and throw us in the ocean.
(source)

Grapes EXPLODE when you put them in the microwave!

A Rubik's cube has 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 possible configurations.

With 6 colored sides, 21 pieces and 54 outer surfaces, there's a combined total of over 43 quintillion different possible configurations. To put that into perspective: if you turned the Rubik's cube once every second it would take you 1400 trillion years to finish to go through all the configurations. If you had started this project during the Big Bang, you still wouldn't be done yet.
(source)

'racecar' is spelled the same forwards and backwards.

An elephant can die from a broken heart. (Source)

When you kiss someone for a minute, you both burn about 2.6 calories.

According to that math, it would take about an hour of kissing to burn 156 calories. A person who runs for 45 at a 10mph pace burns 538 calories. Which one would you rather do?

In Japan they have square watermelons.

They get square watermelons by growing them inside of square glass cases. That way they can fit easily into a refrigerator, and you can stack things on them. Square watermelons are expensive though (10,000 yen or about $82). Compare that to regular round watermelons which cost about $15-20 in Japan.
(source)

Laughter is extremely difficult to control consciously. Most people cannot laugh on command.

Laughter almost always occurs during pauses at the end of phrases. Laughter requires the coordination of many muscles throughout the body: a long bout of laughter is like a full body workout. It gives your diaphragm and abdominal, respiratory, facial, leg and back muscles a workout. If you need to break a quick sweat, maybe trim a few pounds, you should try watching Caddyshack.

It cost 7 million dollars to build the Titanic and 200 million to make a film about it.

2% of Earth's people have red hair.
(source)

'Dreamt' is the ONLY WORD in the entire English language that ends in the letters 'mt'.

India has MORE cellphones than TOILETS.

When you put a seashell next to your ear, it's the sound of your blood surging in your veins, not the ocean.

'Dysania' is the state of finding it hard to get out of bed in the morning.

Only 55% of all Americans know that the sun is a star.

Did you know that "ough" can be pronounced TEN DIFFERENT WAYS?

There's "cough" (which rhymes with "off"), "enough" (which rhymes with "stuff"), "dough" (which rhymes with "no"), "through" (which rhymes with "do"), "thought" (which sounds like "awe"), "plough" (an alternative spelling of "plow"), "hiccough" (an alternative spelling of "hiccup"), "hough" (an alternative spelling of "hock"), "lough" (an alternative spelling of "loch"), and "thorough" (which has a different pronunciation in the UK than it does in American English).

Try this sentence: "A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed."

Oysters can change genders back and forth.
(source)

One tablespoon of semen has approximately 20 calories. Semen also contains zinc and calcium which helps prevent tooth decay.

One typical ejaculation contains 150 mg of protein, 11 mg of carbohydrates, 6 mg fat, 3 mg cholesterol, 7% US RDA potassium and 3% US RDA copper and zinc. The protein content is roughly equivalent to that found in one egg white. Also, women physically exposed to semen are less likely to suffer from depression. The ingesting of it is called 'spermophagia'. Studies suggest that seminal plasma both prevents and fights cancer, particularly breast cancer.

The Bible is the number one most shoplifted book of all time.

Breathing the air in Mumbai, India for just ONE DAY, is equivalent to smoking 2.5 packs of cigarettes.

According to suicide statistics, Monday is the favored day for self-destruction.

There are more plastic flamingos in America than real ones.

If you walk and talk with someone, eventually you will synchronize your steps with each other.

Interpersonal synchronization of stepping happens when people walk side-by-side. Little is known about this, but it has practical uses in therapy. In 2009, this phenomenon was the subject of a study to help impaired people in rehabilitation. Subjects were paired together to walk on treadmills side-by-side. The result? People started walking faster to keep up with their partners.

Plus, as OK GO has demonstrated, it can be awesome.

The longest English word, at 45 letters, is 'pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis'.

Make a fist with your left hand, squeeze your left thumb, then put your right index finger down your throat. NO GAG REFLEX.

People who laugh a lot are much healthier than those who don't.

Dr. Lee Berk at the Loma Linda School of Public Health in California found that laughing lowers levels of stress hormones, and strengthens the immune system.

Laughter increases levels of a hormone called beta-endorphines (which elevates mood state) by 27% and increases human growth hormone by 87%. Human growth hormone (HGH) is used to treat patients with hormone deficiencies and has been shown to improve the immune system, bone and muscle mass, and reduces body fat. This is the same hormone that athletes use to improve their athletic performance in their sports.

Laughter also has been shown to reduce levels of three stress hormones: cortisol, dopac, and epinephrine. Epinephrine is also known as adrenaline, the hormone that triggers the "fight-or-flight" response when we are afraid. At chronic levels, these three hormones can harm the immune system's function as well as contribute to other detrimental health effects.

Berk also found that mirthful laughter raised good cholesterol and lowered inflammation during a test of the effects of laughter on diabetic patients.

At exactly 06 minutes and 07 seconds after 5 o'clock on August 9th of this year it will be 05:06:07 08/09/10. This will not happen again until the year 3010

Yes, you CAN tickle YOURSELF! The only place you can tickle yourself is the top of your mouth. TRY IT.

The sensation of tickling is important to have. It's similar to the feeling of having bugs or spiders crawling on you. The reaction you have to being tickled is important to keep those kind of animals from crawling on you.

You tickle mostly because of surprise. Even if you know you're about to be tickled, you don't necessarily know where, so you react by being ticklish. When you try to tickle yourself, it usually doesn't work because your brain already knows how you're going to do it. You can't tickle yourself because you can't surprise yourself.

Possibly because the roof of your mouth isn't used to being touched like that, it still tickles if you touch the roof of your mouth.
(source)

McDonald's SALADS are more fattening than their burgers.

You can see for yourself in their nutrition facts. A hamburger at McDonald's has 9 grams of fat. A cheeseburger has 12 grams of fat. The Premium Caesar salad with crispy chicken has 17 grams of fat. The Premium Southwest Salad with crispy chicken and the Premium Bacon Ranch Salad with crispy chicken both have 20 grams of fat.

On top of that, SALAD DRESSING adds EVEN MORE fat. If you want to add Creamy Southwest Dressing, it's 6 more grams of fat. The Ranch Dressing has 15 grams of fat. The Creamy Caesar Dressing has 18 grams of fat. So, if you get a salad with crispy chicken and salad dressing, you could be consuming 35 grams of fat - the fat equivalent of 4 hamburgers.
(source 1, 2)

India has more honor roll students than America HAS students.

Albert Einstein couldn't speak fluently when he was nine. His parents thought he was mentally retarded.

Blueberries are purple! (source)

Like fingerprints, everyone's tongue print is different!

Never miss a high-five again! Look at the other person's elbow first.

Albert Einstein left his first wife for his COUSIN.

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.

A lion's roar can be heard from five miles away.

The sound of E.T. walking was made by someone squishing their hands in Jello.

After making 1.4 billion crayons, Crayola's senior crayon maker dropped a bombshell: He's COLOR BLIND.

Emerson Moser retired from Crayola after serving as the senior crayon maker for 37 years. He then announced that he was colorblind the whole time.

This would make Moser one of the 8% of men around the world who have the same condition (like baldness, it's more common among males, and females serve as carriers of the genes).

What we call "color blindness" is not like watching a black and white television set. That kind of color blindness is very rare. More commonly, you'll find many people who have difficulty differentiating between two different colors, for instance, telling the difference between red and green.

Emerson Moser was in good company, too. Paul Newman, Mr Rogers, and Vincent van Gogh were all colorblind.

The following are crayons that were not part of Emerson Mosers 1.4 billion: Rejected Crayons
(source)

A strawberry is not an actual berry, but a banana is.

By technical definition, a berry is a fleshy fruit produced from a single seed. The strawberry, however has its dry, yellow "seeds" on the outside (each of which is actually considered a separate fruit). True berries, such as blueberries and cranberries have seeds inside. However, the banana fruit is a berry for the same reason strawberries are not.

There is a theory that strawberries were named by 19th century children who picked the fruit, strung them on grass straws, and sold them as "Straws of berries".

Having blue eyes is actually a mutation. Before the mutation occurred, all humans had brown eyes.

Biology nerds know that these mutations often occur in the womb. In this case, the OCA2 gene, which is also involved in the production of melanin, is disrupted to make the eyes blue rather than brown.

Your earlobes line up with your nipples.

If the population of China walked past you in single file, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction.

Sealand claims to be the smallest "country" in the world. It's not even made out of land.

The Principality of Sealand is officially a "micronation", which is "an entity that resembles a nation or a state, but which for the most part exists only on paper, on the Internet, or in the mind of its creator". Sealand earns the dubious title of smallest country, with only 550 square meters of area. It's really just an old WWII anti-aircraft platform 7 miles off the English coast.

The Principality of Sealand was founded in 1976 when British Army Major Paddy Roy Bates occupied the old platform and formally declared independence. The independent status of Sealand has never been recognized by any other nation, and it has only been consistently inhabited by Bates and his family. Bates and his wife go by Prince Roy and Princess Joan.

Despite the small size of Sealand, it has gone through a civil war in 1978. It also once burned down in 2006. Also, BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay once tried to buy Sealand in 2007.
(source: 1, 2, 3, 4)

Believe it or not, you actually CAN'T see the Great Wall of China from Space!

You've probably seen this "fact" a bunch of times (we here at OMG Facts certainly have):

"The Great Wall of China is the only human-made object that can be seen from outer-space."

Turns out it's not even true. The first known publishing of this "fact" was back in 1938, long before anyone was traveling in space. Since then lots of people have gone into outer space and looked at the Earth and haven't found the Great Wall.

The Great Wall is huge (5500 miles long) but in order to be visible from far away it would also have to be very wide and distinct looking from the ground. The Great Wall is very thin. If it were visible from space, every interstate highway would be too!

On the other hand, you can see the Pyramids of Giza from space. You can also see Minutemaid Park, the Toyota Center, and the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, TX
(source 1, 2, 3)

Men have nipples because, as an embryo, everyone is a female until the Y chromosome kicks in.

After conception, the human embryo develops as a female. Only after 6-8 weeks does the Y chromosome kick in and the fetus begins developing male characteristics. By this point breast tissue, milk ducts and nipples have already formed. This happens in all mammals, the only exception being stallions, who do not posses nipples.

Generally evolution will only weed out a characteristic if it proves harmful to the creature, and of course, although having nipples provides no benefit to a man it has no ill effect either. Darwin (and others) wondered if at some point in the very distant past the males of a species from which we are descended suckled their young.

As a punishment for misbehavior, Thai cops have to wear pink Hello Kitty armbands.

A police chief in Bangkok, Thailand instituted a new policy for Bangkok cops in 2007. They have to wear pink Hello Kitty armbands with hearts on them as punishment for misbehaving. This punishment could be for just about anything: breaking the law, littering, showing up late to work, parking in the wrong place.

"This new twist is expected to make them feel guilt and shame and prevent them from repeating the offense, no matter how minor. Kitty is a cute icon for young girls. It’s not something macho police officers want covering their biceps.

If you take your age and multiply it by 7, then multiply it by 1,443 the product repeats your age 3 times.

In Topeka, Kansas it is illegal to sing the alphabet on the streets at night. It is also illegal to install a bathtub, and you may not scream in a haunted house.

Colgate faced big obstacle marketing toothpaste in Spanish speaking countries because Colgate translates into the command 'go hang yourself.'

The longest MONOPOLY game in history lasted 70 straight days.

Of course, you might recall that the longest underwater game of Monopoly lasted for 45 days (link). More fun facts: The longest Monopoly game in a bathtub lasted 99 hours. The longest game in a tree-house lasted 286 hours. The longest game played underground was 100 hours, and the longest one played UPSIDE-DOWN was 36 hours. Also: Fidel Castro ordered all the copies of Monopoly in Cuba to be destroyed.
(source)

The human mind can maintain social relationships with up to 150 people!

Humans don't just shrink with age. They shrink EVERY DAY.

Humans shrink and regain height daily, sometimes as much as 3/4 of an inch in one day. When we move throughout the day, the fluid disks in in our spinal column compress and we shrink. When we rest at night our backbones reabsorb the fluid and our height comes back.

As our bodies degenerate over time, our ability to grow back our height diminishes over time. This contributes to the loss of height that occurs as we age. It's not uncommon to lose two whole inches by the time we hit 60 years old.

In Singapore, you can't walk in YOUR OWN HOUSE naked.

Well, you could, but you'd be facing a possible $1,136 fine. If that sounds bad, wait until you see the cost of selling chewing gum. If you're caught either selling or manufacturing gum in Singapore you're looking at a fine of $5,600 and one year in jail. It's also a $284 fine if you use a public toilet and forget to flush. So on the plus side, even though you can't chew gum, at least the public bathrooms in Singapore probably smell pretty good.

Of course, Singapore isn't the only country where you can get busted for being naked in YOUR OWN HOUSE!

Justin Bieber can solve a rubik's cube in less than 2 minutes.

If you look at the sun RIGHT NOW, you are technically looking back in time. It takes eight minutes for light from the sun to reach Earth.

Therefore, the image of the sun in the sky outside your window at this moment is actually what the sun looked like about eight minutes ago.

Blue M&M's might be able to treat spinal injuries, scientists say.

Researchers have been testing the effects of a compound called "Brilliant Blue G" on lab rats. The compound is a blue dye found in blue M&M's that give them their distinctive color.

The researchers injected rats with spinal injuries with Brilliant Blue G. The compound improved recovery and reduced the lesions that came along with the injury. The way it worked is that the compound blocks another chemical that causes more cell damage during an injury, thus reducing the "secondary spinal cord damage" that the chemical causes. The result? The rats with spinal injuries that received treatment with Brilliant Blue G were able to walk again, while the control group rats that weren't treated were not.

Now, before you start picking out blue M&M's to put into your first aid kit, it's important to note that the dye was only effective 15 minutes after sustaining the injury, it has to be absorbed intravenously, and one of the side effects is that the rats' skin turned blue.

You can overdose and die from coffee.

There is such a thing as a lethal dose of caffeine. Medical literature contains reports of people dying from ingesting large amounts of caffeine, often through unconventional means, such as injecting caffeine straight into the bloodstream or having a coffee enema (literally putting coffee in your butt!).

It takes ten grams of caffeine in one sitting to kill a person, which would literally take between 80 and 100 cups of coffee, which is pretty hard to do. If you want to know how many cups of coffee will kill you, check out this calculator.
(source)

Shakespeare was the first to use insults about people's mothers. (yo momma, mother******, your mom is ___, etc.)

Tanning can give you cancer and kill you. Tans are just damaged skin cells

You get a tan by exposing yourself to harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation. This is the case, whether you're tanning in the sun, or in a tanning bed. Exposure to UV radiation can lead to prematurely aged skin (wrinkles, brown spots, etc.) Worse still, you can get skin cancer.

Your risk of melanoma more than doubles if you began using tanning beds before the age of 35. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends banning the use of tanning beds by children under the age of 18.

Some people mistakenly think that you need to use a tanning bed to develop a "base tan" to protect them from UV rays from the sun, but actually the opposite is true. You're really just adding even more radiation to your skin.

Globally in 2000, over 200,000 cases of melanoma were diagnosed and there were 65 000 melanoma-associated deaths. UV rays can also cause cataracts and eventual blindness.

The WHO recommends that you use sunscreen and sunglasses with UV protection when out in the sun, and to stay in the shade as much as you can. Babies should always be left in the shade because they are more at risk.
(Sources: 1, 2, 3)

Ever heard of a Cryovolcano? It's a volcano that shoots out ICE rather than lava.

Cryovolcanoes only exist in outer space. They can be found on icy moons.
(source)

In 1945, a rooster by the name of Mike lived 18 months without a head.

More info: A farmer tried to use him as chicken dinner, but after the beheading, the rooster was still alive. In the 18 months that Mike lived as 'The Headless Wonder Chicken' he grew from a mere 2 1/2 lbs. to nearly 8 lbs. He consequently became famous but eventually died via choking. They fed Mike by inserting an eyedropper of grain and water into his open esophagus.

Cats that fall from higher than 7 stories get fewer injuries than those that fall from lower levels.

A formal study on the effects of falling from building on cats has never been done (could you imagine scientists chucking cats off of a building, in the name of science?) However, a report in the Journal of American Veterinary Medical Association assembled data about cats that have seen vets in New York City after falling from buildings, and the findings are remarkable. Not only did the cats have a 90% survival rate, but the cats that fell from the 7th floor or higher had less injuries than those that fell from lower floors. This phenomenon could be because cats have what is known as a "righting reflex". When cats fall, they shift their bodies in mid-air automatically to land on their feet. The cats that fell from higher floors had more time to shift their bodies and land on their feet.

Now, before everyone starts throwing their cats off of skyscrapers, there's an alternate theory. The 132 cats in the survey were cats that already survived their falls long enough to go visit a vet. It's possible that cats that fell off higher floors were clearly dead, so their owners didn't bother taking them to the vet, so they were never counted.

If your cat falls out of a window or off of a building it's important to take him to a vet immediately. There's more tips on this article from How Stuff Works.

No matter how hard you squeeze the two ends of an egg, it will NEVER break.