Illustration by Taejun Lim

Things you’ve always never wanted to know

Studies of the Dead Sea Scrolls indicate that the passage in the Bible known as the Sermon on the Mount is actually an ancient Essene prayer dating to hundreds of years before the birth of Christ.

Newborn babies are not blind. Studies have shown that newborns have about 20/50 vision and can easily discriminate between degrees of brightness.

The liver is a gland, not an organ.

In ancient Rome it was considered a sign of leadership to be born with a hooked nose.

Undertakers report that human bodies do not deteriorate as quickly as they used to. The reason for this, they believe, is that the modern diet contains so many preservatives that these chemicals tend to prevent the body from decomposing too rapidly after death.

About 80 percent of the men serving terms in American prisons for rape were convicted not of forcible rape, but of statutory rape.

The candies most likely to cause tooth decay are dark chocolate and fudge. Those least likely to damage the teeth are nut- or coconut-covered candies. The most harmful baked goods to the teeth are chocolate-chip cookies, frosted cakes and graham crackers. The least harmful to the teeth are pies, plain cakes and doughnuts.

The receipts from illegal gambling each year in the U.S. surpass the total revenues of America’s 75 largest industrial organizations combined.

The American Bible Association has published almost 1 billion Bibles since it was founded in 1816.