1,001 Facts That Will Scare the S#*t Out of You: The Ultimate Bathroom Reader (42 page)

296

FACT :
The medical condition known as heart failure does not mean that your heart has arrested or is about to quit working, but that the
organ isn’t pumping enough blood
through the body.
Either way, it sucks.

“Heart Failure,” Medline Plus, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health & Human Services,
www.nlm.nih.gov
.

297

FACT : Humans can grow horns
. Called cutaneous horns, they grow when the skin surface thickens, typically in response to disease.
I’m pretty sure my old boss had some but not because she was diseased—because she was the Devil.

Diane Mapes, “These Aren’t Devil’s Horns, They’re Real,” The Body Odd,
MSNBC.com
,
www.bodyodd.msnbc.msn.com
.

298

FACT :
A ninety-two-year-old Chinese woman recently gave birth to
a sixty-year-old baby
.
No baby wants to come out of the womb, but some are a little more stubborn than others. Oh, and by the way—ouch.

Diane Mapes, “The Curious Case Of The Stone Baby,” The Body Odd,
MSNBC.com
,
www.bodyodd.msnbc.msn.com
.

299

FACT :
A sixty-year-old British woman
cannot recognize voices
, even those of family members. She can’t comprehend who is talking to her unless she can see the speaking person’s face. Even if her child calls on the telephone, it is as if she is hearing that voice for the first time. The only exception is Sean Connery’s voice.
But only when he says, “Suck it, Trebek.”

Brian Alexander, “Unable To Recognize Voices, Unless It’s Sean Connery,” The Body Odd,
MSNBC.com
,
www.bodyodd.msnbc.msn.com
.

300

FACT :
Researchers in Germany have discovered that, if exposed to an unpleasant smell,
sleepers will have bad dreams
. When exposed to pleasant smells of roses, the opposite occurred and their dreams were subsequently positive.
That is, if you consider dreaming that you’re a gardener positive.

Mark Leyner and Billy Goldberg, “Bad Smells Can Give You Nightmares,” The Body Odd,
MSNBC.com
,
www.bodyodd.msnbc.msn.com
.

CHAPTER 7
And in My
Spare Time,
I Enjoy
Dying
Bad News about the
Things You Do for
Fun—or Used To

301

FACT :
Boating accidents claim
an average of 700 lives
each year.
The majority of them on water.

“Water-Related Injuries: Fact Sheet,” Home & Recreational Safety, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
www.cdc.gov
.

302

FACT :
Finger holes in bowling balls have been found to contain
“substantial” amounts of fecal contamination
.
Pooping into those little holes isn’t easy, either, believe me. But when you gotta go, you gotta go.

Philip M. Tierno, The Secret Life of Germs: What They Are, Why We Need Them, and How We Can Protect Ourselves Against Them (Simon & Schuster, 2004), 108.

303

FACT :
The CDC estimates that
3.8 million sports and recreation-related concussions
happen in the United States each year.
They can only estimate because no one at the CDC has ever set foot on a sports field.

“Learn to Prevent & Recognize Concussions,” National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, National Center for Health Marketing, Division of eHealth Marketing,
www.cdc.gov
.

304

FACT :
Between two and three jockeys are killed each year—the same number of players who have died in professional baseball’s entire history—making
horse racing one of the most dangerous sports
.