10 Frightening facts about our world

Sometimes even the most everyday things hide something we don’t realize. Have you ever wondered where the papers we use all the time come from? Is it also being replenished in nature? Also, the day of our birthday can be riskier than we imagine, as our chances of dying on that date are greater!

O awesome.club loves the craziest curiosities of our Planet and society. Some look scary, even if there’s nothing supernatural about them.

A study of British and Irish doctors in 1988 revealed that 13% of respondents were convinced that children between 0 and 12 months were not capable of feeling pain, and 23% were absolutely certain of this. Thus, even in the most serious operations, doctors often applied only local anesthesia.

The question of whether or not children under one year feel pain has been the subject of debate for decades. But today, newborns, and even unborn children, have been shown to feel pain in the same way that adults do.

According to several surveys, the chances of winning a big prize in the lottery can range between 176 million and 15 million. But unfortunately, the probability of dying in your own bathroom, during a shower, is much higher: one in 840,000! But despite the few chances of winning the lottery, some continue to believe in luck, as was the case with this Scottish couple (in the photo) who won 161 million pounds sterling, the same as 835 million reais, in 2011.

Researchers at the University of Chicago (USA) found that the probability of dying on our birthday is, on average, 6.7% higher than on other days. Furthermore, among young people aged between 20 and 29, the average is even higher: 25.39%. A pretty scary number, don’t you think?

Unfortunately, scientists do not know how to substantiate the exact cause of these data. Accidents during such celebrations and the imbalance of depressed people, who hope to settle accounts with life precisely on that day, are likely involved in this matter.

This frightening creature enters through the nose into the brain and begins to devour it. This sounds dubious, like an urban legend or a typical horror movie story, but, to our dismay, it’s a sad reality. The parasitic amoeba Naegleria fowleri inhabits dirty and warm waters, and is able to penetrate through the olfactory nerve to the human brain, causing primary amoebic meningoencephalitis (MAP).

Even with the wide availability of medicines, it is not always possible to save people who have had the misfortune of contracting this disease. That’s why it’s not worth ignoring the warnings against bathing on the edge of freshwater beaches.

This problem is far from being new, as, until recently, television and radio were the main source for receiving daily news. For example, in this photo from 1991, we see 2 sisters from Israel watching television with gas masks to get information about an air strike.

And even now, with the arrival of the mobile Internet and smartphones, watching soap operas, movies and series remains a hobby for many people. But its consequence is not so harmless: those who spend more than 2 hours a day watching television, risk shortening their lives by 1.4 years. However, do not despair, as it is not the device itself that is responsible for this, but the habit of sitting for hours and hours, without moving, with your eyes fixed on the screen.

Another story that seems straight out of a horror movie: in 1/3 of children, 2/4 of adults and 2/3 of the elderly, we can find parasitic mites called demodex. In general, they live in or near the hair follicles of the face, that is, in the area of ​​the eyebrows, eyelashes and nose.

The mite feeds on skin cells and fat (the sebum), and usually does not cause any major inconvenience. But in some cases (due to illness or stress), their number increases excessively, causing a disease called demodicosis, very common in dogs.

This is a terrible fact that should serve as a warning. It is unlikely that we can end the use of toilet paper, but it is possible to improve this situation if we develop a recycling technology (which is already used in developed countries) and start producing paper from other plant materials.

It’s no secret that we often put our smartphone next to us during a meal, especially people who are addicted to social media and need to type while eating. Imagine that, instead of your cell phone, you placed the toilet seat next to your plate of food. Disgusting, no? But believe me: this is not as disgusting as having lunch next to a cell phone. Scientists at the University of Arizona (USA) found that 10 times more bacteria are found on the surface of a smartphone.

And what to do to minimize the proliferation of bacteria? According to microbiology experts, it is enough to regularly clean the cell phone with a liquid containing alcohol or disinfectant wet wipes. And there is also a more radical way, which consists of acquiring a device (as we see in the image) that kills the bacteria on the surface of the device.

According to UN estimates, about 3 million boats rest at the bottom of all oceans. Among them are civil and military vessels from different eras, several nuclear submarines and, of course, the famous Titanic. If we took all these vessels out of the bottom and lined them up, the ‘current’ could go around the Earth 2 times along the Equator!

According to estimates by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, 7,000 patients die in this country every year due to prescriptions written in illegible handwriting. Possibly, in Brazil, the reality is similar. To combat this phenomenon, a system of electronic prescriptions was implemented there, which exempts pharmacists from having to decipher doctors’ handwriting.

Unfortunately, this technology is not yet available everywhere. Therefore, many people still rely on the skills of pharmacy staff when it comes to interpreting prescriptions.