Facts about cats

Whether your kitty meows or roars, it is a descendant of the Felis silvestris species, which is divided into the African wildcat, European wildcat and Steppe wildcat.
The smallest of the descendants is the rusty-spotted cat found in Sri Lanka. It is about half the size of the domestic cat. The largest is the tiger. The male Siberian or Amur Tiger has a total body length in excess of 3m (10 ft) and weighs up to 300kg (660 lb).
The lion is the king of the cats. It stands out from the other cats, not just in its distinctive appearance but also in being the only felid that lives in organized social groups. Adult male lions weigh up to 225kg (500 lb) and grow up to 3m (10 ft) in body length.
The fastest cat, the cheetah, is also the fastest land animal. It can reach 95 km/h (60 mph) over short distances. Unlike other big cats it does not roar – it makes high pitched yelps, barks and chirruping sounds. And like your kitty, it does purr.

Meow!
Domestic cats purr at about 26 cycles per second, the same frequency as an idling diesel engine. A domestic cat hears frequencies up to about 65 kHz, humans up to 20 kHz. Its sense of smell is about 14 times stronger than that of humans.
In the rear of a cat’s eye is a light-reflecting layer called the tapetum lucidum, which causes cats’ eyes to glow at night. This reflecting layer absorbs light 6 times more effectively than human eyes do, allowing a cat to see better than humans at night.
There are more than 3000 types of domestic cats, but only 8% are pedigree. And, unlike other cats, they are found all over the world… in abundance. In the US, there are more cats than dogs, and people annually spend more on cat food than on baby food.
Domestic cats – or any other cats – do not have nine lives. They also do not always land on their feet. It is said that a cat that falls out of a 20-story building has a better chance of surviving than when falling out of a 7-story building because it takes a cat at least 7 stories to co-ordinate itself to land on its feet.
Cats step with both left legs, then both right legs when they walk or run. The only other animals to do this are the giraffe, camel and the maned wolf.
The tails of wild cats almost never lift higher than their backs.
Cats cannot see directly below their heads that is why they do not see the food when you put it under their nose. Keep this in mind when you’re feeding your kitty.

Animal fast facts

Mammals are the only animals with flaps around the ears.
African elephants only have four teeth to chew their food with.
There are about one billion cattle in the world of which 200 million are in India.
A house fly lives only 14 days.
A dog was the first in space and a sheep, a duck and a rooster the first to fly in a hot air balloon.
The Big Five is a group of animals of Africa: cape buffalo, elephant, leopard, lion and rhino.
The oldest breed of dog is the Saluki.
The bee hummingbird of Cuba is the smallest bird in the world.
An ostrich can run up to 43mph (70 km/h).
An annoyed camel will spit at a person.
The world’s smallest dog is the Chihuahua, which means “tiny dog in the sky.”
Pea crabs (the size of a pea) are the smallest crabs in the world.
75% of wild birds die before they are 6 months old.
The pig is rated the fourth most intelligent animal but are mentioned only twice in the Bible
Sheep are mentioned 45 times and goats 88 times in the Bible. Dogs are mentioned 14 times and lions 89 times, but
domestic cats are not mentioned.
Pork is the world’s most widely-eaten meat.
In Denmark there are twice as many pigs as people.
Dinosaurs did not eat grass: there weren’t any at that time.
The coyote is a member of the dog family and its scientific name, “canis latrans” means barking dog.
A giraffe can clean its ears with its 50cm (20 in) tongue.
A group of geese on the ground is a gaggle – a group of geese in the air is a skein. More animal collective nouns
The South American giant anteater eats more than 30,000 ants a day.
It is impossible to out-swim a shark – sharks reach speeds of 44 mph (70 km/h). Humans can run about 21 mph (35 km/h).
The sailfish is the fastest swimmer, reaching 68 mph (109 km/h), although a black marlin has been clocked at 80 mph (128 km/h).
The slowest fish is the Sea Horse, which moves along at about 0.01 mph (0.016 km/h).
Dolphins can reach 37 mph (60 km/h).
Of the 650 types of leeches, only the Hirudo medicinalis is used for medical treatments.
The heart of a blue whale is the size of a small car.
The tongue of a blue whale is as long as an elephant.
A blue whale weighs as much as 40 rhinos.
The eel is the only fish in the world that spawns in the middle of an ocean but spends its adult lives in rivers.
The scales of a crocodile are made of ceratin, the same substance that hooves and fingernails are made of.
A crocodile’s tongue is attached to the roof of its mouth and cannot move it.
A snail has two pairs of tentacles on its head. One pair is longer than the other and houses the eyes. The shorter pair is used for smelling and feeling its way around. (Some snail species have only one pair of tentacles, thus they have just one eye.)
The heaviest crustacean ever found was a lobster weighing 42 lb (19 kg), caught in 1934.
The largest jellyfish ever caught measured 7’6″ (2,3 m) across the bell with a tentacle of 120 ft (36 m) long.
The largest giant squid ever recorded was captured in the North Atlantic in 1878. It weighed 4 tons. Its tentacles measured 10 m (35 ft) long.
The giant squid has the biggest eyes of any animal: its eyes measure 16 inches (40 cm) in diameter.
Domestic cats purr at about 26 cycles per second, the same frequency as an idling diesel engine.
Sharks are immune to almost all known diseases.
Sharks and rays also share the same kind of skin: instead of scales, they have small tooth-like spikes called denticles. The spikes are so sharp that shark skin has long been used as sandpaper.
Animals also are either right-handed or left-handed. Polar bears are left-handed – and so is Kermit the Frog.
There are 701 types of pure breed dogs. There are about 54 million dogs in the US, and Paris is said to have more dogs than people.
Some bird species, usually flightless birds, have only a lower eyelid, whereas pigeons use upper and lower lids to blink.
Fish and insects do not have eyelids – their eyes are protected by a hardened lens.
Flatfish (halibut, flounder, turbot, and sole) hatch like any other “normal” fish. As they grow, they turn sideways and one eye moves around so they have two eyes on the side that faces up.
Measured in straight flight, the spine-tailed swift is the fastest bird. It flies 106 mph (170 km/h). Second fastest is the Frigate, which reaches 94 mph (150 km/h).
Millions of trees are accidentally planted by squirrels who bury nuts and then forget where they hid them.
There are more than 150 million sheep in Australia, a nation of 21 million people.
New Zealand is home to 4 million people and 70 million sheep.

See: Animal fast facts

Bad hair day

Having a bad hair day? Spare some thought for your great-grandparents because in their time it took about 10 hours to complete the process of waving hair to withstand washing, weather and time. Compton’s Online Library explained that the advent of electricity sparked a major change in the concept of hairdressing when in London in 1906 the hairdresser Charles Nestlé invented the permanent-wave machine. The bulky machine – about the size of today’s fridge – took almost 20 minutes to get to usable heat and up to 10  hours to complete perming. Still, it was great 20th-century technology. The next year a Parisian chemistry student, Eugène Schueller founded the company L’Oréal, created a dye to cover gray hair with natural-looking colors in a permanent process, and made life a little more fun for a lot of people.

God and politics

Dorothy Parker famously stated, “If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.” Although it also is attributed to G. K. Chesterton, who also said, “The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.” And that brings us to elections.
In 1975, Emil Matalik put himself forward as US Presidential candidate, advocating a maximum of one animal and one tree per family because he believed that there were too many animals and plant life on earth.
And, also according to Oddballs and Eccentrics by Karl Shaw, Louis Abalofia ran against Richard Nixon in 1968 with a campaign poster featuring a photo of him in the nude, with the slogan “What have I got to hide?”
In 1872, financier George Francis Train (3/24/1829 – 1/5/1904) ran for office with one item: the introduction of a new calender based on his birth date. He also stood for the office of “Dictator of the United States.”
Makes one think. What does God think about politics?

News of the World

The News of the World was a national red top newspaper published in the United Kingdom from 1843 to 2011. It was at one time the biggest selling English language newspaper in the world, and at closure still had one of the highest English language circulations.^[4] Originally established as a broadsheet by John Browne Bell, the Bells sold to Lascelles Carr in 1891; in 1969 it was bought from the Carrs by Rupert Murdoch's media firm News Limited. Reorganised into News International, itself a subsidiary of News Corporation, it was transformed into a tabloid in 1984. News of the World was the Sunday sister paper of The Sun. The newspaper concentrated on celebrity-based scoops and populist news. Its fondness for sex scandals gained it the nicknames News of the Screws and Screws of the World.^[5] It had a reputation for exposing national or local celebrities as drug users, sexual peccadilloes, or criminals, setting up insiders and journalists in disguise to provide either video or photographic evidence, and phone hacking in ongoing police investigations.^[6][7] Sales averaged 2,812,005 copies per week in October 2010.^[8]
From 2006, allegations of phone hacking began to engulf the newspaper. These culminated in the revelation on 4 July 2011 that, nearly a decade earlier, a private investigator hired by the newspaper had intercepted and deleted the voicemail of missing British teenager Milly Dowler, who was later found murdered. However, a Scotland Yard spokesperson later admitted at the Leveson Inquiry that it had not been a private investigator who had deleted Dowler's voicemail.
Amid a public backlash and the withdrawal of advertising, News International announced the closure of the newspaper on 7 July 2011.^[7][9] The scandal deepened when the paper was alleged to have hacked into the phones of families of British service personnel killed in action. Senior figures on the newspaper have been held for questioning by police investigating the phone hacking and corruption allegations. Arrested on 8 July 2011 were former editor Andy Coulson and former News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman, the latter jailed for phone hacking in 2007. The former executive editor Neil Wallis was arrested on 15 July 2011 and former editor Rebekah Brooks, the tenth person held in custody, on 17 July 2011.
On a visit to London on 17 February 2012, Murdoch announced he was soon to launch a Sunday edition of The Sun, widely seen as a successor to the News of the World. On 19 February 2012 it was announced that the first edition of The Sun on Sunday would be printed on 26 February 2012.^[10] It would employ a number of former News of the World journalists.