1,001 Facts That Will Scare the S#*t Out of You: The Ultimate Bathroom Reader (18 page)

104

FACT :
The acid in your stomach is so powerful that it can
dissolve a razor blade
in less than a week.
You should still be careful when eating them, though.

Matthew Fox, The A.W.E. Project: Reinventing Education, Reinventing the Human (Wood Lake Publishing, 2006).

105

FACT :
If a boy is born without testosterone,
his genitalia will mimic that of a female
: the scrotum forms labia majora—the outer lips of a vagina—and the penis becomes a sort of clitoris.
That’s the guy you don’t want to tell to go fuck himself, because he might try.

Ruth K. Westheimer, Sex for Dummies, 3rd ed. (For Dummies, 2006).

106

FACT :
The skin is the largest organ in the human body,
covering about twenty square feet
in an adult male. It also constantly regenerates; a person sheds around forty pounds of skin in his lifetime.
Some people can shed it all at once by just shaking their dandruff-ridden heads.

Robert Dolezal, Reader’s Digest Book of Facts (Readers Digest, 1987).

Mitchell Symons, That Book: . . . of Perfectly Useless Information (HarperCollins, 2004).

107

FACT :
We grow in our sleep, and wake up every morning
about eight millimeters taller
than the night before. However, we return to our former height as gravity compresses our cartilage discs back into place throughout the next day.
It’s like “morning wood” for the entire body.

Robert Dolezal, Reader’s Digest Book of Facts (Readers Digest, 1987).

108

FACT :
The pressure exerted by a pumping human heart can
squirt blood thirty feet
.
Research is limited, though, so if you ever lose a limb unexpectedly, grab a tape measure and see how far your blood squirts before you pass out and die. Don’t forget to write it down, too.

Mitchell Symons, That Book: . . . of Perfectly Useless Information (HarperCollins, 2004).

109

FACT :
You can find 20 million microscopic animals
living on a square
inch of human skin.
Skin sounds like Tokyo.

Mitchell Symons, That Book: . . . of Perfectly Useless Information (HarperCollins, 2004).

110

FACT :
The average human body radiates enough heat in thirty minutes to
boil two pints of water
.
But only if you’re not looking. A watched body won’t boil.

Robert Dolezal, Reader’s Digest Book of Facts (Readers Digest, 1987).

111

FACT :
The postage stamp-sized foreskin from a circumcised baby takes just twenty-one days to grow enough skin to
cover three basketball courts
. Such laboratory-grown skin is used to treat burn patients.
This is why you should never call a burn victim “dickhead.” You could be right.

Robert Dolezal, Reader’s Digest Book of Facts (Readers Digest, 1987).

112

FACT :
Though female ovaries generate almost half a million eggs,
only about 400 of them
will ever get the chance to be fertilized.
It’s like being called for jury duty, except the eggs probably don’t sit there whispering to themselves, “Please don’t pick me, please don’t pick me.”

Robert Dolezal, Reader’s Digest Book of Facts (Readers Digest, 1987).