Last week I was writing about Goliath, the giant of biblical renown. The earliest records mark his height at 6 and a half feet, while later stories (including the Old Testament bible) report him being just shy of ten feet tall.

I had commented that the average height was shorter then, so being over 6 feet might very well be gigantic, relatively speaking. Well, now I’m doing the follow-up to that. Just how tall have humans been throughout history?

As it turns out, the answer is remarkably un-dramatic. Currently, the average height of men worldwide measures in at 5 feet, 9 inches. Turn the clock back 1000 years and the average height then was… [suspenseful organ sound] …5 feet, 8 inches. So in the last 1000 years we’ve grown an inch? Not quite. In around the 1600′s when our health and sanitation hadn’t yet caught up to the size of growing cities, human height was averaging 5 feet, 5 inches.

So we’re looking at a general fluctuation of maybe 5 inches per millennium. Not too exciting. Now let’s talk about some notable exceptions!

The tallest man… ever! Robert Wadlow was measured at 8 feet, 11 inches. He died in 1940, at the age of 22. Being ridiculously tall does seem to affect your lifespan. The average age of people over 8 feet is 43 years. (not counting two gentlemen still towering among us) Biologically, the human body runs into a lot of problems at that size, which seems to cast some doubt on Goliath pushing 10 feet and still being an able-bodied warrior.

Now, I find it rather amusing that there is a speck of physical evidence in support of the biblical height claim… but it comes from our ape ancestors. The Gigantopitecus blacki is an ancient species of ape discovered in southern China. All that has been found is a jaw bone and a few teeth, but they are huge! Some very smart people have been working on this, and by comparing the size of the jaw to its nearest related species the whole ape is speculated to be 10 feet tall. It’s a real-life sasquatch!

There are plenty of other stories of giants. Many claim “hearing about” giant skeletons found around the world, but in every case… every single case… the bones were either A) secreted away by some un-named government organization, or B) mysteriously lost. And for science, frankly, that just won’t do.

• Source: Historically Tall – The Height Site
• Source: Gigantopithecus blacki

Related Facts

• Year At The Museum
• Was Ivan the Terrible really just misunderstood?
• The Suspiciously Sweet Justice of Aspartame

In one of my mind wandering moments I got to wondering about tastebuds. The sense of taste evolved to protect us from poisons. As a rule of thumb, anything that tastes bitter is poisonous… given you eat enough of it. (pure cocoa is very poisonous to a dog but we would have to eat several pounds of it to have any effect)

First, the little bumps on your tonque are not your tastebuds. Those are papillae, shaped like a button mushroom, that stick out all over your tongue. Located on the papillae are the actual tastebuds, too small to be seen with the eye. Depending on your age you have about 5 or 10 thousand tastebuds.

Individual tastebuds have a lifespan on about a week and a half, about half that of most skin cells, before the cells die and are replaced. The older you get, the fewer tastebuds you have. Babies have tastebuds on their tongue as well as on their cheeks and the roof of their mouth. So it’s not so much that they are finicky eaters, as they are just overwhelmed by the mighty taste of mushed carrots.

There are five basic tastes. Sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and umami. You’ve likely never heard of the last one. It’s relatively new, first discovered a century ago in Japan but mostly ignored in the rest of the world until lately. Umami is like bacon. Savoury. Each flavour is experienced by a chemical reaction between certain compounds and your tastebuds. Sucrose causes sweetness, acid makes sour, saltyness is created with sodium chloride and the taste sensation is actually somewhat akin to electricity.

You may have heard that certain areas of your tongue are tuned to specific tastes. (the tip of the tongue for sweet and salty, the back for bitter, etc) This has recently been found to be untrue, or at the very least a gross over-simplification. Tastes can be tasted all over the tongue, though there are still certain spots that are stronger in different areas.

In the grand scheme of things, taste is actually a small part of the overall flavour sensation. The bulk of flavour is created with your nose, in the olfactory sensors. (why not just call them smellbuds?) If you have grated apple beside grated onion, you would be unable to tell the difference if you plugged your nose.

• Source: The Physiology of Taste by Prof. Tim Jacob, Cardiff University

Related Facts

• Why are there Ancient Grains on my fresh bread?
• Try not to enjoy eating fish too much… or else!
• The Suspiciously Sweet Justice of Aspartame

After reading all about the depressed freezing point of the sugar solution in ice cream, you just had to get a closer look, right? There you were, happily shoveling ice cream into your face when all of a sudden… brainfreeze! Arrrgh! Also called ice cream headaches, these sudden pains can be triggered by any excessively cold food or drink.

The cause of this shooting pain is a chilled palate. That’s the roof of your mouth. When you eat your ice cream or slushy drink too fast your palate doesn’t have time to warm up between bites. It eventually drops to the critical temperature that causes the reaction.

The blood vessels in your head contract and dilate causing the rather serious pain at the “back of your nose” or behind the eyes. No matter how much you jump around, the feeling will pass in 30 seconds or so when things warm up again.

Apparently that’s the same feeling as a migraine headache. Thinking back to my last painful brainfreeze moment, it gives me new empathy for migraines sufferers who have to deal with that for hours on end.

Personally, I’m going to put this new knowledge to good use. Being aware and cautious of my sensitive palate means I’ll never have to experience this terrible sensation ever again. It’s a good thing.

• Source: “What Causes Brain Freeze?” article from the Edmonton Journal

Related Facts

• The History of Human Height
• Tastebuds: the fingers of your tongue
• HOW-TO: take a perfect, productive, energizing nap

Many of my lessons here at LSNED are inspired by random curiosity. Yesterday the thought came to me, as I was standing outside in my wool jacket, scarf, mittens, and toque… why does my nose run when it’s cold? Being that November is an ideal month for general nose awareness, I thought it appropriate to pass on what I learned about snot.

Snot, or more technically accurate (but not as fun) “mucus”, is produced inside your nose and sinuses as a first line defence against germs and dust in the air. It works like fly-paper, basically, as particles will stick in the goop before it gets inhaled into your lungs where it could cause more serious trouble. You produce about a quart of mucus every day. Or a litre, for you metrically-inclined. That’s a full bottle of snot every day. Gross.

As for why it might be dripping out your nose, it could be one of many reasons. Of course, when we’re sick with a flu or cold our mucus production goes into overdrive making more than the usual daily quota. It can overfill your sinuses, causing you to get stuffed up, and we all know it runs out your nose like a gooey waterfall. It’s working extra hard to prevent those airborne germs from coming in and getting you doubly sick.

If you have allergies to pet hair, or pollen, or anything else it can cause a runny nose. Allergies are caused when your body interprets something, like dog hair, as a germ and it reacts the same as if you were sick. Again, turning on the snot faucet.

When you cry (and we already learned the health benefits of crying) you get a runny nose, but it has nothing to do with sickness or germs. In that case, the tears produced in your eyes also drain into your sinuses, mixing with the mucus, and making things all runny.

Lastly, the answer to my pondering, when it’s cold outside your body turns on your nose heater so as to warm up the incoming air before it hits your lungs. As the flow increases to the blood vessels in the nose, that triggers more mucus production and the overflow starts on it’s epic journey south causing the traditional Canadian greeting: “(sniff) Hi, (sniff – sniff) it sure is (sniff) cold out there! (sniff)”

• Source: http://kidshealth.org/kid/talk/qa/nose_run.html

Related Facts

• FACT: your appendix is back in business
• FACT: vitamin C has no affect on the common cold
• The History of Human Height

As I sit here, all sniffly, clinging to a tall glass of orange juice, I am somewhat surprised to discover that there is no evidence to support vitamin C as an effective protector against colds. Whether you take it as a regular supplement, or just pack it in after the cold hits, it doesn’t help prevent colds, and it doesn’t help you recover from colds. Bummer.

This is the conclusion of multiple scientific studies, comparing vitamin C against placebos in varying doses and schedules. With the rather odd exception of marathon runners, skiers, and soldiers training in the arctic, most people received no increased protection from the ravages of the sniffles.

So vitamin C won’t help your achy-stuffy-watery-goobery self get through a cold, but don’t knock it. It still has many other health benefits such as preventing further complications from colds, keeping your skin looking young, and reduce the risk of strokes, cancer, and heart troubles. Oh, and scurvy.

Bonus fact: On the other hand, grandma’s chicken soup has been proven to have scientific merit for fighting colds. The combination of the heat, the broth, and the vegetables do make for a beneficial treatment.

• Source: http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Vitamin_C_and_the_common_cold
• Source: http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/the-benefits-of-vitamin-c

Related Facts

• FACT: your appendix is back in business
• FACT: a runny nose is for your own good
• The History of Human Height

At one point, we were all pretty hairy. Completely hairy. While most of us have lost the bulk of our body hair, the internal wiring is still present, as evidenced by goosebumps. (or goosepimples as I’ve heard some folks say)

Goosebumps are an automatic reaction of the nervous system that flexes the piloerector muscle found at every hair follicle. Piloerector literally means making the hair stand on end. This reaction is caused by one of two things… either you are cold, or you are scared.

Looking at cats, or anything else more furry than us, they can puff up their fur when it’s cold to trap and hold more air around thier body, thus insulating and staying warmer. Our goosebumps are trying to do the same thing.

As for being scared, the fur puffing reaction is seen in many animals as an attempt to make themselves appear larger and more threatening than they are. Again, without fur, it ain’t so scary… unless you fear chicken skin.

Today the only benefit of chest hair is that it keeps your chilly gold medallion from directly contacting your skin.

• Source: http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2009/09/08/2679925.htm

Related Facts

• The History of Human Height
• Tastebuds: the fingers of your tongue
• HOW-TO: take a perfect, productive, energizing nap

Tomorrow morning I vanish off the face of the earth, technologically speaking, for eight days. I’m leaving and I’ll be totally un-wired. I was planning on writing eight extra LSNED facts this weekend, and scheduling them to trickle out while I was gone. Eight. That’s a lot. Each one takes over an hour to uncover, research, write, and illustrate. I worried about it. I hated the thought of a lapse in my once-a-day continuity (this post marks 70 days without a hiccup). Surely I’d be letting down my readers. As the weekend arrived, the task grew from a worry to a stress.

Just now, at the moment I began writing this, I freed myself from that un-fun, stressful task simply… with a shrug. Here’s some suggestions that may help you de-stress your life.

#1 – Realize it probably doesn’t matter. The majority of what seems critically important today has a very short life span. It will dull by tomorrow, and by months end be a faded memory. My “legacy” of once-a-day-every-day posts, I realized, really only mattered to me. The rest of the world will be un-affected, if they even notice.

#2 – Play matters. Play often. I feel it’s very important for adults to do things that don’t matter at all, except that you enjoy doing them. The key is to release any feelings of guilt. As Dr. Stuart Brown explains in this video, play is vital, beneficial, and makes you smarter. Writing this blog is play, except when I feel “forced” to write eight posts in one day!

#3 – Shop less. Much stress is caused by the earn/spend life cycle. It’s very easy to buy things we don’t need, then spend more unnecessary time working to pay for those useless items. I know some people go shopping as a form of entertainment. Yikes! I personally have a wait-and-see tactic. If I feel the urge to buy something, I don’t give in then and there. I wait to see if I still want it next week, or next month. (this rule does not apply to chocolate bars)

#4 - Move slower. The most stressful part of rushing, for me, is that your mind is focused on where you intend to end up rather than where you are. The zen concept is “being in the moment”, and the folk version is “stopping to smell the flowers”. Take things slow and be mindful of what you’re doing. The insight that comes from that also helps you to discover certain tasks that may not really matter, as above. (I made the decision to not write those 8 posts while laying in a hammock)

#5 – Don’t worry, be happy. If a fish can learn to sing, dag nabbit you better listen! Don’t worry. Worry will never change anything. Either do something about it, or accept that the thing in question is beyond your control. There is never a good reason to worry. Be happy. Author Dan Millman says to practice unreasonable happiness, which is simply being happy without any particular reason. You and only you are 100% responsible for your mood.

I do appreciate all you folks who visit, read, and hopefully enjoy my blog.  I’ll be back again with fact-filled daily posts after my adventure. In the meantime, I encourage you to try applying some of these thoughts to your life. If you do run short on facts, be sure to check out any of the other 69 posts I’ve made around here.

• Source: cobbled from various collected wisdom and things that I at least try to practice in my daily life.

Related Facts

• HOW-TO: take a perfect, productive, energizing nap
• The History of Human Height
• Tastebuds: the fingers of your tongue