Wedding of two snakes - Nearly 1,000 people in Cambodia attended

        Chamreun, a 16-foot, 200 lb python tied the knot with her groom, Krong Pich, a smaller male python. The marriage was held in Village One in the Kandal province near Phnom Penh, drawing a crowd of nearly 1,000 humans. The wedding ceremony was intended to bring about good luck for the village.

       The ceremony lasted for 2 hours, complete with Buddhist monks blessing the newlywed snakes, live music, and the wedding guests showering them with flowers.

There's a town in Italy that doesn't get sunlight for 84 days a year.

            A town in Italy that doesn't get sunlight for 84 days a year. They've solved this problem with a giant mirror   

        The little town of Viganella is located amidst the Italian side of the Alps. During the winter time, the shift in the sun's pattern makes it so that it never clears the 1600 feet tall mountain that's close to the town. This means that for 84 days, they do not get any sunlight. The townspeople end up suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder, a type of mild depression. 

            To solve this, the government installed a massive mirror on the side of the mountain. It measure 26x16 feet and is computer controlled to follow the trajectory of the Sun. The result is that starting in 2006, the town was able to celebrate the first winter sun in 600 years!

A tiny animal that it could stay alive in space

      There’s a tiny animal that can survive in such extreme environments that it could stay alive in space.

     They’re called tardigrades, but are more commonly known as moss piglets or waterbears. They are small water-dwelling animals with eight legs and their name means “slow walker.” However, what is amazing about these creatures is that they can live in environments that would kill almost any other animal. Some can survive temperatures close to absolute zero and as high as 300 degrees Fahrenheit.

       They can endure over 1,000 times more radiation than other animals and go over a decade without water. These creatures are so amazing that recent studies have found that even when sent into the vacuum of space they returned alive!

An earthquake can shorten the length of a day.

        On February 27, 2010, an earthquake in Chile that registered an 8.8 on the Richter scale may very have shortened the length of a day on Earth. Researchers computed the change to be as much as making a day 1.26 microseconds shorter. In addition, the quake also shifted the Earth on its axis. The Earth's axis moved 2.7 milliarcseconds (which is actually a unit of angular measurement, not time). That's the equivalent of about 8 centimeters or three inches.[Omg facts]

Parrot parents name their children!

          

                  Parrots perhaps more than any other animal are knows for their amazing communication skills in which they can mimic human speech. However, scientists have discovered that their communication skills are even more impressive than previously thought.

         Parrots actually name their children a signature call, which they use to communicate with them later! Where do parrot “names” come from? It’s actually very similar to human names. Parrots give their offspring the distinctive sound to address them before the children can even chirp themselves!  [OMG Facts]

The longest place name in Europe is Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch!

     Ever heard of Llanfairpwllgwyngyll-gogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch? It’s located in Wales, and is comprised of over 3,000 inhabitants, 76% of whom speak fluent Welsh.

      It’s more commonly known as Llanfair PG because of the ridiculous length of its name, and translates from Welsh to, “St. Mary's Church in a hollow of white hazel near the swirling whirlpool of the church of St. Tysilio with a red cave.” The name of this town holds the European record for the longest place name at fifty-eight characters! .. [OMF Facts]

Printer ink is more expensive than blood!

         While a printer is relatively cheap compared to what you might expect, printer companies make a majority of their money on the ink! Over the life of just one printer, you’ll most likely pay over 500% of the price of the printer on just refilling ink cartridges.

      A traditional ink cartridge of 42ml costs around $30, for just plain black ink, while the Red Cross charges $200 for 500ml of human blood. This means that while blood comes out to 40 cents per ml, ink costs 71 cents. [OMG Facts]

The entire musical recordings of Michael Jackson have been stolen!

         About 50,000 music files were illegaly downloaded from the Sony Music servers by hackers. The files were the entirety of Michael Jackson's back catalog. Among the files stolen were unheard studio sessions from some of his biggest albums, like Thriller, and Bad.
       There was also an unreleased collaboration with Will.I.Am. The attack on Sony is just the latest it has suffered by hackers. Last year the Playstation Network was down for a period of time.
        This might be one of the costliest ones, though. Sony paid $250m for the catalog back in 2010.

The Bajau people of Borneo live almost exclusively on boats and experience “land sickness” when they come ashore!

Their nickname is the “sea gypsies.” They mostly live on house boats or houses on stilts built over coral reefs in the ocean. Some of their best free divers can go down 20 meters and stay for a few minutes. Studies have shown that the Bajau children have impressive eyesight underwater, because their eyes have adapted to the liquid environment! Their diet consists mostly of fish, so free diving is very important for them. [OMG Facts]

In the first American automobile race, the winning car’s average speed was 7mph!

[OMG]. The first automobile race was in Chicago in 1895 and sponsored by the newspaper. Six cars took part in the race and Charles Duryea won. The first automobiles were only introduced two years prior to the race.

The race took place in order to promote the automobiles and boost newspaper sales. The winner received $5,000! That is roughly equal to $139,000 today. Eighty-three cars originally entered the race, but only six actually showed up for it. The cars either couldn’t make the trip to the race or weren’t ready in time for it. After over 7 hours of racing going 7mph, Duryea won.

In the 1950s, the United States planned to drop a nuclear bomb on the Moon.

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OMG Facts] At the time, the US was lagging behind the Soviet Union in the space race (For example, they sent a man into space before the US did.) Exploding a nuclear weapon on the moon was a way to one-up the Soviet Union. They planned on nuking the Moon as a PR stunt, and they wanted to make sure the explosion could be seen from Earth!

This was part of a top-secret Air Force project, "Project A119" which was called "A Study of Lunar Research Flights". Details of the 1958 plan were made public in 2000 by Dr. Leonard Reiffel, the physicist who ran the project. He had worked on the project with famous astronomer Carl Sagan.

Sagan may have also disclosed some of this top-secret information when he applied for the prestigious Miller Institute graduate fellowship to Berkeley. At the time, Sagan thought that a nuclear explosion could reveal whether there was life on the Moon.

The explosion likely would have ruined the face of the "Man on the Moon". Thankfully, years later they decided to send Neil Armstrong to the Moon, and not a nuclear bomb.

"Checkmate" in chess is actually "Shah Mat," Persian for "the king is defeated" or the "king is helpless".

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[OMG Facts] - Chess is a REALLY OLD GAME. The earliest evidence of chess dates back to the year 600 AD in Persia. "Shah" is the title of the royal Persian monarch, so naturally the King in chess was called the Shah. To win chess, you have to defeat the King, by attacking it and making it unable to move. This is called the "Checkmate" or "Shah Mat", literally, "The King is defeated". Mat is a Persian word for "defeated", "helpless", or "at a loss", all pretty good descriptions for a checkmated king.

Millions of chess enthusiasts wrongly assume that "Checkmate" actually means "The King is dead". Chess made its way from Persia to Europe through Arabia and "mat" is an Arab word for dead, so this is a likely source of the confusion. The King in chess can't be "killed" anyway, so "defeated" makes a lot more sense.

The Statue of Liberty was originally brown!

[OMG facts ] It's because of the copper the statue is made out of. Copper is initially brown, yet when it begins to oxidize, it changes color. The traditional green color we see today is extremely different from what we would have seen when it was initially built.  Since it was built right on the water however, it would have oxidized relatively quickly, and because it was built in 1886, we don't have any color photographs to show what it would have looked like. 

The reason the metal changes color is because of the moisture and elements it is subjected to. After arriving from France brown, the head of the statue of liberty would have begun to change as rain, salt, and moisture bombarded its copper exterior. As the copper interacts with these elements it slightly changes, forming a different form of basic copper consisting of a different color.

OMG Facts - Feeding hens certain dyes, their egg yolk color changes. Green eggs and ham, anyone?

 The Color of a chicken egg's yolk is dependent on the diet of the hen that lays the egg. Certain kinds of corn can make the yolk look more orange or yellow, and peppers can make the yolk look red. In the US, people expect their egg yolks to be lighter, but in parts of Europe, people expect the yolks to look more of a darker yellow.

If the yolks can't become yellow naturally through the hen's diet, farmers may use synthetic dies to change the color.