10 things I didn't know until last week

1. The collective noun for kangaroos is a mob or a troop.
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2. An anadromous fish is born in fresh water, spends most of its life in the sea and returns to fresh water to spawn. Salmon, smelt, shad, striped bass, and sturgeon are common examples. A catadromous fish does the opposite; it lives in fresh water and enters salt water to spawn. Most eels are catadromous.
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3.The skin of a polar bear is black. This helps them to absorb more of the heat from the sun.
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4. Synaesthesia is a condition in which the five senses intermingle, so that stimulation in one sense may give rise to a stimulation in another sense. In some cases, synaesthetes may associate certain letters of the alphabet with certain colors, or see shapes and colors when listening to music.
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5. The word November means “ninth month” in Latin. It was indeed the ninth month in the early Roman calendar, which began with March.
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6. Of the fifty states of the USA, Louisiana and Alaska do not have counties. The political subdivisions in Louisiana are called parishes and those in Alaska, boroughs.
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7. Each number on the Richter scale represents an Earthquake ten times as powerful as the number below it.
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8. The brain has has no pain receptors and open brain surgery is possible using only local anaesthetics.
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9. Each Olympic gold medal is made up of 210 grams of silver and is coated with 6 grams of 24 carat gold.
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10. The calorie listed on food packages is actually a kilocalorie, or 1,000 calories. A calorie (kcal) is the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 kilogram of water 1 degree Celsius.
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