A Russian woman gave birth to 69 children!

     

               

             In the 1700s there was a woman who birthed 69 children. She completely holds the record for most children born to one woman. In total, she had 16 sets of twins, 7 sets of triplets, and 4 sets of quadruplets!

            Out of the 69 children, 67 of them survived past their infancy. This information has been in circulation since the 1800s, and there have been doubts about how true the claims are. Nevertheless, the information presented was good enough for the Guiness Book of World Records to include this woman in their record books.

A river shoots red fireballs into the air

        A river in Thailand randomly shoots red fireballs into the air. No one knows why.

        About 70 - 100 km downstream from Vientiane, capital of Laos, the Mekong River does something really strange. At night, the river produces red fireballs that rise up into the air and disappear without making any noise. The balls are usually small, but some have been observed to be the size of basketballs. While it might seem mysterious and remote to most of us, the area along the river is heavily populated with homes and roads, and people have gotten used to it.

          People from the area confirm to witnessing the fireballs their whole life and that their parents and grandparents did too. So far there is no scientific explanation for the phenomenon. There are, however, myths about the fireballs have been formed over the years. The most famous is of a naga, dragon or snake, which crawled through the mountains where the Mekong is now. The naga continues to pass through the area, but now underwater, and like a good dragon it spits fireballs into the air from the river bottom.

At the end of every October, a festival is held in celebration of the mysterious fireballs. Tens of thousands show up every year, but the balls are random and some years aren’t even witnessed during the festival.

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]