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An Australian Antarctic base advises avoiding sweating “at all costs,” because damp clothing freezes in the outer layers.
As soon as you stop moving, sweat chills the body, with a risk of hypothermia. Hence the layering system: you take layers off as soon as you feel warm and put them back on when you stop.
Source: Australian Antarctic Division · Checked on October 26, 2026
In his fresco of the Last Judgment, this saint holds his own skin, because he was flayed alive. Most authors see a self-portrait of the artist in it.
For some, this limp mask held above hell shows the artist's doubt; others read it as a prayer to be reborn purified. No 16th-century critic had noticed this detail.
Source: Vatican Museums — The Last Judgment · Checked on October 26, 2026
Each language can be translated into the other 23: 24 × 23 = 552 combinations, hence the huge body of translators and interpreters.
Citizens have the right to write to the EU institutions in any of the 24 languages and to receive a reply in the same language. To limit direct combinations, the institutions often use “pivot” languages.
Source: Parlement européen (Service de recherche, Multilingualism) · Checked on October 24, 2026
In pre-modern records from Finland and Canada, women who lived long after menopause had more grandchildren.
This “grandmother hypothesis” says that a woman who helps her daughters have children earlier, more often and more successfully passes on her genes just as much as by having children herself. It is a hypothesis, debated, not definitive proof.
Source: Nature (Lahdenperä et al., 2004) · Checked on October 24, 2026
Ignaz Semmelweis required students to wash their hands with a chlorine solution; mortality fell from more than 10% to about 2%.
His colleagues rejected his conclusions because the existence of germs was still unknown. He died in 1865 in an asylum. The later work of Pasteur and Lister confirmed that he had been right.
Source: Epidemiology and Infection — What happened at Vienna's Allgemeines Krankenhaus after Semmelweis's contract as… · Checked on October 24, 2026
The photoreceptors are at the back of the retina, behind the nerve cells and blood vessels, facing away from the light.
Octopuses have a retina wired the other way around and no blind spot. In us, the nerve fibers pass through the retina to form the optic nerve, which creates the blind spot. The brain corrects the image.
Source: NYU — Perception Lecture Notes: The Retina · Checked on October 24, 2026
They can raise small bumps on their skin to imitate a rock or coral.
Thanks to specialized muscles under the skin called papillae, they can raise small bumps on their bodies to mimic the rough look of a coral or rock.
Source: Marine Biology Journal — Octopus Skin Papillae · Checked on October 24, 2026
From an airplane or a summit, you can see the entire circle around the observer's shadow.
Each person sees their own rainbow, centered on the point opposite the Sun from where they stand: two neighbors don't see exactly the same one. You also see a full circle in the mist of a water jet when the Sun is behind you.
Source: Met Office — Rainbows: optical wonders · Checked on October 24, 2026
The Baltic country has allowed online voting in every election since 2005, a world first at the national level.
Voters identify themselves with an electronic ID card or a mobile app, and can change their online vote before election day. Estonia has also moved almost all of its administrative procedures online.
Source: Elections in Estonia — Statistics about Internet voting in Estonia · Checked on October 24, 2026
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