The wasp sting that feels like love, marriage and divorce, and other #FridayFunFacts
Did you know that if you don't protect your eyes from the sun, your vision will eventually take on a more yellowish filter? Well here's the real fun fact - this was discovered by looking carefully at the paintings of Monet. He, rather meticulously, painted the same scene in his garden every year, and as the years went past, his paintings became yellower and yellower, but he was only painting what he saw. This was an early natural study into the effects of cataracts.
Speaking of art, "You've never had a friend like me!" was a true statement - Disney gave Robin Williams an original Picasso to apologise for breaking the contract they had with him regarding his work as the Genie on Aladin.
In the Levi Strauss & Co archives lie two pairs of jeans dating from the late 1870s or early 1880s, which are thought to be the oldest in existence. Only two people know the combination to the fireproof safe that protects them.
The blue and red swirl outside a barber shop should do more than remind you of Sweeney Todd - in medieval Europe, the Barber-Surgeon was a real profession and included all sorts of operations from amputation to beard trimming.
Remember Steve Irwin? Well, believe me, his spirit is living on in a mad scientist named Justin O Schmidt, who has been stung by bees, wasps, ants and everything in between, over 1000 times, mostly on purpose. Why? He has created the greatest pain index ever known, peppering it with humorous descriptions like "blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair dryer has been dropped into your bubble bath" for the Spider wasp and "a ritual gone wrong, Satanic. The gas lamp in the old church explodes in your face when you light it" for the Black Polybia Wasp. He tastes pain as though it were cognac!
