Comedian Emo Philips joked, "I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this"
Though told to get a laugh, the joke is on us. IT IS AN ABSOLUTE FACT! Humans have five organs that are essential for survival: brain, heart, kidneys, liver and lungs. But it is the brain that sends signals through the nervous system and secretes hormones to the others. Your brain makes you tick.
And you are the brain's boss.
We humans start using our brain at some point in the womb and continue to learn and grow every living second after that until death or some catastrophic event or affliction. You simply never stop learning by intent, common sense or just living and experiencing. LEARNING NEVER STOPS.
And what we have learned is quite remarkable. It is brilliance, it is remembering, it is observant, it is nuanced, it is world-shattering, it is noble, it is silly. fun. critical and mundane at the same time... and it is all of our world. For a rare few, it is eidetic (or photographic) with an ability to view memories like photographs, pages or numbers or times experienced in the past in great detail. Notables said to have such skills include Charles Darwin, Nikola Tesla, Teddy Roosevelt, former basketball player Jerry Lucas, Mr. T (yes, him) and actress Marilu Henner.
While the brain has amazing powers of significance in our lives, it also captures whimsy with stuff that makes trivia champions too--and everything in between..
So brain, show me fun and amazing stuff you have learned--or will learn now just by reading this below:
- Of the United States, Hawaii is the furthest south. But Alaska is furthest north, west and east (as its archipelago stretches across the 180th degree of longitude marking ultimate east.)
- Tokyo is the most populous city in the world with more that 38,000,000 residents.
- There is a 30-watt light bulb that has been burning continuously since 1901 in a firehouse in Livermore, California. It has been dubbed "The Centennial Light, Its illumination today is about 3-watts, but it stii burns!
- Cleopatra, born in 69 BC, lived closer in time to the iPhone than the Pyramids of Egypt.
- Some turtles can breath through their anus, so if you see a struggling turtle in need of artificial respiration, you are on your own.
- The entire surface of former planet Pluto would fit easily into the area of Russia. And not only that, since its discovery in 1930, it has yet to circle the sun in its wide rotation.
- After English, German is the most widely spoken language in North Dakota.
- The order of the alphabet is totally arbitrary... but I bet they got today's idea from that sABC song.
- The name of all the continents start and end with the same letter.
- A camel's tongue is long enough to clean its own ears.
- The most common name in the world is Muhammad. The second most common is Lee. Yet there has never been a Muhammad Lee or Lee Muhammad.
- Each King in a deck of playing cards represents a historical King: spades/King David, clubs/Alexander the Great, hearts/Charlemagne, diamonds/Julius Caesar
- It often does little good to 'block' robo-calls numbers as the callers' algorithms simply change their last four digits to avoid being blocked.
- Honey is the only food that never spoils. Honey found in the pyramids that were built 2600 years ago is still edible.
DO YA' HEAR ME BRAIN?