Illustration by Arnie Bermudez

· The average human heart beats about 100,000 times every 24 hours. In a 72 year lifespan, the heart beats more than 2.5 billion times.

· During menstruation, the sensitivity of a woman's middle finger is reduced.

· False teeth are often radioactive.

· Approximately 1 million Americans wear some form of denture; half of these dentures are made of a porcelain compound laced with minute amounts of uranium to stimulate fluorescence. Without the uranium additive, the dentures would be a dull green color when seen under artificial light.

· In ancient China, towns were often arranged in specific patterns so that if seen from the air, the whole community resembled an animal or a symbolic design. The city of Tsuen-Chen Fu was built in the shape of a carp. Wung-Chun was laid out in the shape of a fish net. Other towns were arranged to resemble snakes, stars, sunbursts and dragons.

· Some mysterious and unusual physical disorders:

- Athetosis: Constant involuntary movements of the fingers and toes. In advanced stages of this disease, sufferers continually wave their hands about in slow, languid motions and are totally unable to keep the fingers still. Often, this disease is confined to one side of the body.

- Contagious follicular keratosis: The whole body becomes covered with small spinelike growths of dirty yellow color. The spines are very hard and, when cut off and placed in a container, rattle like scraps of metal.

- Harlequin fetus: A newborn child emerges covered with fatty epidermic plates about a sixteenth of an inch thick. These plates cover the entire body and face like a loosely built stone wall. The skin is so stiff and contracted that the eyes cannot be opened (or if they are open, they cannot be shut) and the lips are too stiff to suck. The child soon dies from starvation and loss of body heat.