Heroin Was Given To Kids To Help Relieve Coughs

Ah yes, the Bayer Pharmaceutical Company. You might know them best today as the company that brought us Aspirin. Yet this was by no means their first major drug used to relieve pain and help a lot of other conditions. In fact, they are the people that invented and commercialized heroin. This occurred mostly during the 1890s and early 1900s. Bayer claimed it was useful for cough, cold, and pain problems. In fact, they specifically marketed heroin for children this entire time.

They did this all the way up to 1912! This was well after evidence proved heroin was a dangerous drug. Various reports of scientific studies found this problem, so Bayer knew better. By 1914, heroin became prescription-only within the United States but the FDA eventually banned it altogether by 1924. This is one of the scientific facts that really amaze us because Bayer clearly put its profits over people.

The Early Earth Was Purple, Not Blue

Living beings who live in galaxies lightyears away from us might very well be seeing an Earth very different from what we are seeing today. If you look at Earth from space, you’ll see a very blue planet. That is due to all the water you can see from our many oceans. However, early lifeforms on Earth generated metabolic energy from the sun using purple-pigmented molecules called retinal. It is assumed that this predates chlorophyll and photosynthesis. This would have given the Earth a distinctly purple color, rather than blue from space. Scientific facts like this always freak us out.

On other planets, the retinal could create a biosignature that absorbs green light just like the way vegetation on Earth absorbs red and blue light. Earth is known for its oxygen, but we did not always have a great amount of it. For the first few billion years, we had rich carbon dioxide and methane. Yet 2.4 million years ago, that changed as an abundance of free oxygen in our atmosphere rose massively. This is assumed to be caused by cyanobacteria, able to form photosynthesis, transformed by sunlight and carbon dioxide. That forms into metabolic energy that produces sugars to give fuel life as they knew it.

Harvard University Was Founded Before Calculus Was Invented

Harvard University is the oldest higher education center in the United States. Yet people do not really know how old this university really is. American colonization began very early on and by the 1600s, we were already seeing cities rising in the eastern United States. Harvard was established in 1636, yet calculus was not discovered or formed until 50 years after this. It seems crazy to think that a major mathematical breakthrough did not occur until after Harvard came to be.

This was formed by Gottfried Leibniz in 1684 via his “Nova Methodus” as well as Isaac Newton’s brilliant 1687 work called Principia. If that does not freak you out, the infamous European physicist, astronomer, and mathematician Galileo Galilei did not pass until 1642. Meaning Harvard was formed while he was still alive. Overall, to think that a higher education institution is older than a lot of the things it eventually taught is one of those scientific facts that absolutely amaze us.

The Wooly Mammoth Died 1,000 Years After The Pyramid Of Giza Was Completely Built

It was widely assumed that the Wooly Mammoths died out during the late Pleistocene to early Holocene periods. They would have existed alongside the sabertooth tiger among others. In fact, we know that humans came across both over 10,000 years ago due to cave drawings uncovered in multiple sectors. The assumption was that either human beings hunted the Mammoths to extinction or they died out after a little ice age. Of course, that ice age would not have been as impactful as the previous.

In any case, these assumptions were wrong. Mammoths ended up surviving on a small area called Wrangel Island. This is now part of Russia. We also found that they survived on islands around Alaska and other Russian territories. The coolest part is that they ended up surviving until around 1650 B.C. That puts them surviving over 1,000 years after the Pyramid of Giza was completely built. Scientific facts like this one can be mind-blowing. Mammoths living well into human history? That’s amazing!

Bananas Are Berries But Strawberries Are Not

You might be wondering about this one heavily. Perhaps, you’re even assuming the “scientific facts” here are completely faked for amusement. Yet this article is about things that sound untrue but are actually a reality. In this case, we now know that bananas are technically berries but strawberries are not. Why is this, you might wonder? Botanists are to blame, but technically these two fruits are also not innocent in this ordeal either.

In botany, we know true berries are simple fruits with a stem from one single flower with one single ovary. They also tend to have several seeds. That means things like kiwis, eggplants, and bananas all count as “true berries.” However, strawberries come from the stem of a single flower…but they have more than one ovary. This makes them technically aggregate fruits along with their cousins, raspberries and blackberries. This is all weird, but completely true.

You Are Literally A New Person Every Seven Years

Whenever you hear that basic chick say “new year, new me” on her social media, she’s usually lying. We know she is not going to change her ways. Do you hear…or see this, Rachel? We have scientific facts to support this! However, she is not too far off honestly. You may already know that most dust you see in an average home is made up of our dead skin cells. We do not shed all of our cells like a snake sheds its outer skin, but we do something similar to this.

Our body sheds cells throughout the body all the time. While dust might be what you see when our skin cells fall off in favor of new ones, our inner cells are shed through things like the blood and exit our bodies when we use the bathroom and sometimes when we bleed. Every seven years, our body has shed every single cell it has from the start of that seven-year mark. Thus, every seven years, you are literally a new person. Biologically speaking at least. But this is not anything to freak out over.

SOURCES:

United States Department of Interior

United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

National Public Radio (NPR)

American Academy of Neurology

Harvard University

Stanford University

Smithsonian Magazine

Live Science

World Wildlife Fund

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