30 Facts That Sound Bizarre But Are Real, Shared By Folks In This Online Community

True.

Great comment

Martin played in Eastenders!

It was also totally normal to drink and smoke while pregnant. Not to mention the mortality rate of children under 5 was 3 TIMES higher than now.

And, thanks to the anti-vacers, will soon be again! 🥳

...it was normal because there wasn't any choice. it was still life threatening. No? Hi, my chicken pox turned into encephalitis. Look that sh*t up. April 1965. Five day coma, concerns about any motor control, long term brain damage. Twas a walk in the park..

Even into the early '70s, it was common for parents to host "chicken pox parties" when a child was infected. The idea being, I believe, for children who hadn't gotten them yet, to get it out of the way.

I came very close to dying from a Measles infection, saved by our family doctor who slept on our couch so he could monitor me in case of a huge and very dangerous temp spike. My temp did indeed spike and I ended up in an ice bath on his instruction, which most likely saved my life. A vaccine was already available but I slipped through the cracks and didn't get it, so nearly died instead.

I remember how ill we were; a schoolmate became deaf as a result of encephalitis. A colleague’s sister suffered brain damage from the same cause.

Me too. At least one kid died of measles

So was the plague back in the day.

Chicken pox are still normal in the Netherlands, we don't vaccinate against them. I didn't even know there was a vaccin until last year.

Yeah. Death was closer back then, children dying wasn’t the unusual event it is now. Good thing we’ve moved forward on that score.

Not getting vaccinated against inflammated epiglottis was also a thing. I almost died from it.

Itched all the time though

I now suffer from shingles. Are we having fun yet?

Yep, and the parents in our communities back then would have measles and chicken pox "parties" to get all the kids infected and over it early

I was the oldest so I brought all of the childhood diseases home with me from school to infect my siblings. (My poor mom!) I had both kinds of measles which weren't too bad, but chicken pox was so uncomfortable! My brother however was so bad that he had outbreaks on his eyelids and in his mouth and throat!

Me too. With measles, I remember how strict my mom was about me staying in a darkened room. Yup. there was no vaccine, so parents were pretty sure we'd get one or more. My little brother had the mumps, and my older brother and I both had mononucleosis (not at the same time). 'Twas all normal back then.

Same, including mumps.

One of the best benefits off the chicken pox vaccine is that it greatly reduces the chance of getting Shingles as an adult. My father in law has had it 3 times in the past 7 years, and each time has left him disabled for months afterword. The first time almost caused him to go blind.

Yep, dolphins have better PR than sharks!

Chimpanzees of the sea.

Still way better than alot of humans.

Flipper seemed pretty cool.

Weird compared with humans? I think we win that contest.

Just so I understand, you think the media has a dolphin conspiracy going on? What's in it for them? What's in it for the dolphins? I'm genuinely interested.

Lukas, is that barney from dead end

I should keep a file of the sources I have to use on what seems like a weekly basis to counter this trend of demonizing dolphins. I'm not sure I can bring myself to look it all up yet again, but maybe I'll come back to add links. If you search for people killed by dolphins, or the latest craze, that they're likely to attack or even rape you, and scroll past all the soft sources to look for cases, studies, etc., you will not find the backup to show that dolphins are anything more than super intelligent animals of the sea who are extremely unlikely to be a danger to you and who are generally friendly with people. Yes, young males may harass females, like in most animal species. Yes, there are a smattering of reports of dolphins behaving sexually toward people, no different than many other animals. Yes, a trainer jacked a dolphin off and another human being may have had sex with one in his charge. Yes, there is a smattering of reports of dolphins hurting or killing people.

I wouldn't exactly it to be exactly the same, but there are a lot of VERY good reasons to expect other life forms to require water or carbon, even if not both simultaneously. Both have unusual properties that are not easily substituted by other chemical components, so it makes sense to check for those when looking for life on moons and planets. (And as a matter of fact, a lot of scientists would be willing to bet good money that there's some form of life on Europa (the planet of Jupiter) that's methane-based, but so far no one has dared to drill a hole into the crust to find out). (Myself, I'm also willing to consider the possibility of life inside pulsars, simply because we can't simulate the conditions inside on any useful scale and can therefore not even begin to understand what strange reactions might possibly happen inside)