alterFACT: IBM's 1964 Supercomputer Was Much Bigger And Much Weaker Than Your Smartphone

IBM's 1964 360/91 model computer had an internal memory of 8Mb and was humongous. It was housed by NASA and was at the time the most powerful computer in the world. Your smartphone is thousands of times more powerful than this device

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alterFACT: You Are More Likely To Die On Your Birthday

The study carried out by "serious" (as BBC calls them) Swiss scientists shows that you are 14% more likely to die on your birthday than any other day. The study analysed 2.5 million death in Switzerland between 1969 and 2008.

Some claim that the dogs playing dead were mistakenly accounted for as well

There are number of hypothesis to explain this phenomena. Some say that people "hang on" to their birthday, while  others attribute this statistic to the fact that one is more likely to take greater risk on their birthday, such as drunk driving. There is also a possibility that some documents had wrong dates.

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alterFACT: In 2002 McDonalds Introduced McAfrika

So let's get this straight, McDonalds, a huge multi-national corporation and one of the most recognized brands in the world introduces a burger in one of the richest countries in the world, naming the burger McAfrika while there are 12 million Africans starving at the time. Good one, McDonalds.

Unsurprisingly, there was a huge media uproar about this product and many charities spoke against McAfrika. At first McDonalds announced that they would consider giving some of the proceeds from the sale of the burger to charities, but eventually they withdrew the product from the shelves.

And it wasn't even the last time Ronald McDonald found himself in trouble

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alterFACT: Spontaneous Human Head Combustion

SHHC is a specialized kind of spontaneous human combustion (you know, the thing when you just blow the fuck up for no apparent reason), except this time it's just your head. It is thought that if the brain sends too many misdirected electric impulses, it may heat up enough to cause a sudden violent explosion, in a similar fashion to a gunshot.

As this dear sir has found out

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alterFACT: Tripping Balls With Spiders

In 1995 scientists gave spiders different drugs and the watched them go about their daily spider activities (knitting webs and presumably planning the world domination). The results were astonishing; here they are:

However it wasn't just the spiders who were administered psychedelics and were watched as they went about their daily activities. Back when LSD was still legal (now scheduled as a Class I drug) in the US, scientists themselves were given LSD while being watched by their colleagues. It seems that LSD, surprisingly enough, didn't just increase productivity, but also gave them a 'fresh' perspective. For example Kary Mullis, Nobel Prize laureate in Biology in 1993, claimed that he wasn't sure he would have come up with his ground-breaking ideas if it wasn't for the use of psychedelics:

Kary Mullis, seen here watching your momma ride a three-breasted unicorn

In any case, if all of this information is "tripping you out" (get it?) then it's time to watch a funny video based entirely on historic events:

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alterFACT: The average person has over 1,460 dreams a year

And you thought your bed was uncomfortable

Dreams are still largely unexplored by modern science. There is no reasonable explanation for dreams from the point of view of evolution. It is thought that dreams are just random firings of neurons in the brain, although the purpose for such activity is unknown as well. One of the very few things that scientists can tell you about your dreams is that they come during the REM (Rapid Eye Movement) phase of your sleep. The often quoted fact that dreams only last for a few seconds is not true as dreams can range anywhere from a few seconds to 20 minutes.  

Scientists are just as clueless about sleep as they are about dreaming. It is still unknown whether or not lack of sleep can kill or cause other serious harm. It is thought that sleep deprivation can lead to depression and eventually suicide. FFI (Fatal Familial Disease) is a very rare and little known hereditary genetic mutation, it involves an increasingly worsening insomnia, which eventually leads to hallucinations, dementia and delirium. There is no cure for it. The age of onset ranges between 18 and 65, with the average being 50. The average survival span after the onset is merely 18 months and the mutation has a 100% death rate. While on the other hand there are rare cases like that of Thai Ngoc claims to have not slept for 33 years and the only side effect is that he feels "like a plant without water".

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alterFACT: Kangaroo babies are only 2 cm long at birth

You probably wish your babies were this cute

A baby kangaroo, or ‘joey’, is born at a very immature stage, after spending just one month in the womb and, that's right, they are only about 2 cm long and weighs less than a gram (easiest birth ever!). Immediately after birth it crawls up the mother’s abdomen and enters the pouch. The baby attaches its mouth to one of four teats (nipples), which then enlarges to hold the young animal in place. Newborns are so insignificantly small that they don’t even have the ability to suck. And we thought human babies were useless? Muscular action from the nipple therefore squirts milk into the baby's mouth. 

Wipe off that disgusted look off your face, this is science

After several weeks, the joey becomes more active and gradually spends more  time outside the pouch, which it leaves completely after 7 or 10 months. Right about this, another joey can be born immediately- talk about efficiency. This causes two types of milks to be produced, one for the active joey, and one for the developing baby inside the pouch. As if this wasn’t fascinating enough, Kangaroos also have a reproductive adaptation that can actually delay implantation. This means that the fertilized egg will cease to develop and just wait until the mother feels ready.

And you thought plastic surgery will change the way you look. 

Check out more pictures here

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alterFACT: We Nearly Built The Death Star

We were so close! Unfortunately, the government of the United States refused to build the Death Star. Yes, that same Death Star from the Star Wars that Luke blows up. That same Death Star which is the embodiment of evil and kills the Jedi.
It all started after the US presidential election of 2012, or as it turns out, much earlier than that. According to Cracked it is actually quite common for news outlets to report stories of states filing petitions to secede from the Unites States as a political statement. And as it turns out, it's utter bullshit. In reality, the government has to issue a response once the number of petitioners reachers the magical number 25,000... and that's about it. Probably because the petition is posted on the public section of the White House website, meaning that anyone can go there and write their opinion and that these petitions are started by bitter old men who still think that Jim Crow's laws were the best thing to happen since Jesus Christ. And that also means some people create fake accounts to get more signatures.

These meaningless crazy political statements made by residents of the Land of Dixie, usually result in similar jocular petitions. One of them for example asks to “to dissolve the current legalsystem and replace it with a single Hall of Justice, run by Judges;motorcycle-riding law officers who act as police, judge, jury, and executioner."

And of course, the Death Star. This one remarkably got all the 25,000 signatures. Although some petitioners suspiciously enough had names such as D.Vader, Vader.D, and The Dark Lord.

The 25,000 signature meant that the White House had to issue and official response, which they did. Disappointingly enough, the name of the response is "This Isn't the Petition Response You're Looking For", and they couldn't be more right. Among the chief reasons for the rejection of the proposed plan is the estimated cost that is thought to be over $850 quadrillion in terms of raw materials alone (roughly 13,000 times world's GDP), and the fact that the necessary technology doesn't yet exist. The administration then goes on to say that they are "working hard to reduce the deficit, not expand it". Some would argue the opposite. Other reasons include lame responses such as "The Administration does not support blowing up planets". Which is about as ironic as it gets considering how just recently news came out that in the 1950's the United States military proposed to blow up the Moon with a nuclear bomb as a show of force to the Soviets. One good point that the response does make is "Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship?". The counter argument could be that there is no one as badass as Luke Skywalker. 

Don't be too upset though, the administration does "share(s) your desire for job creation and a strong national defense", so maybe it wasn't a complete waste of time!

Side note: Centives has figured out some highly important logistical questions related to the building of the Death Star such: How long would it take Darth Vader to mop the Death Start? What would the maintenance costs be if the Death Star administration hired janitors to mop it? Here are some answers:

-It would take 11.4 million years for Darth Vader to do it alone. The website also quite cynically remarks that it "would at least give him plenty of time to think about his children"
-If each part of the Death Star were to be cleaned at least once a year, 48 million workers would be needed (around 33% of American labor force)
-Assuming all earned the minimum wage, it would cost $723 bn, or around 30% of American annual budget.

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alterFACT: hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia - Is a fear of long words

hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia - Is a fear of long words. Albeit, the concept itself is a joke and no such phobia really exists, but it still is quite humorous. Here's the explanation of the word from wikipedia:

"Hippopoto – "big" due to its allusion to the Greek-derived word hippopotamus (though this is derived as hippo- "horse" compounded with potam-os "river", so originally meaning "river horse"; according to the Oxford English, "hippopotamine" has been construed as large since 1847, so this coinage is reasonable); -monstr- is from Latin words meaning "monstrous", -o- is a noun-compounding vowel; -sesquipedali- comes from "sesquipedalian" meaning a long word (literally "a foot and a half long" in Latin), -o- is a noun-compounding vowel, and -phobia means "fear". Note: This was mentioned on the first episode of Brainiac Series Five as one of Tickle's Teasers."

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