WHY MOSQUITO BITES ITCH

When female mosquitoes insert their proboscis through your skin to suck some of your blood to be later used to make eggs, they inject you with some of their saliva. Their saliva helps them to drink your blood more quickly, because it has anticoagulant effect (for your blood not to clot). Once the female mosquito is full up of your blood or is disturbed by slapping yourself, they fly away, leaving some of their saliva behind. Your body responds by producing antibodies which bind to the antigens in the mosquito's saliva. This then triggers  the release of histamine.

Histamine is a nitrogen compound that, among other things, triggers an inflammatory response. It also help white blood cells and other proteins to engage invaders (antigens) in your body by making the capillaries of these cells more permeable. So, the histamine ends up making the blood vessels near the bite site swell up. This produce a itchy bump where the mosquito bite you.

Scratching the bump only makes this worse because it causes more irritation and inflammation of the sight, resulting in your immune system thinking it needs more antibodies to get rid of the foreign protein. So the more you scratch, the more it swells and the itchier it gets.

*Only female mosquitoes feed on blood, a male mosquitoes feeds on flower nectar or sweet juices.

WHY IT IS NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE TO TICKLE YOURSELF

It's very hard to tickle yourself because your brain anticipates things going on around you in order to help speed up response times. More technically, the cerebellum monitors body movements and can also distinguish between expected sensations and unexpected ones, generally resulting in diminishing or completely discarding expected sensations, while paying much more attention to unexpected ones

So your brain is actively anticipating touch sensations. When it is doing this, it is also actively discarding sensation that it deems unimportant, like when you are typing and it significantly dulls the touch sensation in your fingertips so that you don't really notice it unless you consciously think about it. This same type of thing happens when you try to tickle yourself.

So in a nutshell, you can't usually tickle yourself because there is no element of surprise.

WHY MINT TASTE COLD

There is a chemical in mint, menthol, which is deceiving the brain into thinking that the area the menthol is applied to is cold; even though in fact, it's the same as it was before. More specifically, menthol binds with cold-sensitive receptors in your skin; there receptors contain things called "ion channels", in this case TRPM8. The menthol makes these much more sensitive than normal, so they trigger and you feel a cold sensation, even though everything is more or less the same temperature as before.

This extra sensitivity is why when you eat peppermint, which has a relatively high level of menthol, and then you breathe in deeply through your mouth, your mouth feels extra cold. Your cold receptors are reacting much more strongly than they normally would to the air which is cooler than the inside of your mouth.

Menthol is a compound classically obtained from various mint plants, though now is oftern synthetically made due to the extreme high demand for menthol in a variety of products. Menthol is a waxy, crystalline substance that is somewhat clear or white. Interestingly, it is actually solid at room temperature and melts just a few degrees above room temperature.

WHY BLACK CATS ARE CONSIDERED BAD LUCK

The genesis of the superstitions surrounding black cats including why a black cat crossing your path is considered bad luck.

Black Cats were not always the butt of superstitions, feared, or even considered bad luck. In fact, in early Egyptian times, dating back as fas as 3000 BC, cats (including the black ones) were the rock stars of the animal world, held in high esteem; to kill one was considered a capital offence. It wasn't until the middle-ages in Europe that the black cat's rock star status started to decline as they began to be associated with so-called witches. The hysteria of witches practicing black magic had just hit Europe and alley cats were often cared for and fed by the poor lonely old ladies who were later accused of witchery.

Their cat companions, some of which were black ones, were deemed guilty of witchery by association. This belief was taken up a notch when a folklore involving a father and son in Lincolnshire in the 1560's started making rounds. The pair were said to have been traveling one moonless night when a black cat crossed their  path and dove into a crawl space. Because of the folklore, they threw rocks at the black cat until the weak injured creature ran out into a woman's house, who at the time was suspected of being a witch. The next day, the father and son came across the same woman and noticed she was limping and bruised and believed that to be more than just a coincidence. From that day on in Lincolnshire, it was thought that witches could turn into black cats at night.

The belief of witches transforming themselves into black cats in order to prowl streets unobserved became a central belief in America during the Salem with hunts. Even today the association of black cats and witches holds strong during Halloween celebrations, despite the holiday's religious beginnings. Thus, an animal once looked on with recognition became a symbol of evil omens in some parts of the World.

However, in some cultures, the black cat is still respected and a symbol of good luck even today. The Scottish believe that a strange black cat's arrival to the home signifies prosperity, while Pirates of the 19th century believed if a black cat walks towards you, it's a sign of bad luck, but it's good luck if it walks away from you. In the English Midlands, a black cat as a wedding present is thought to bring good luck to the bride.

WHY DO CRABS, LOBSTERS, CRAYFISH, SHRIMP TURN RED WHEN COOKED?

Most of the time, the exoskeleton of most crustaceans has a blue-green to graying colour and sometimes they appear a brown or olive green, with just a hint of red; with a few exceptions like the blue and yellow lobsters and crabs. The exoskeletons of such creatures are made up of several pigments, one of which is a carotenoid called astaxanthin, which provides its reddish colouring (astaxanthin is the same carotene that gives salmon its color).

At normal temperatures and when alive (when they are not yet dumped in boiling water or grilled), the astaxanthin pigments are hidden because they are covered with other protein chains that give their shells the bluish-gray or brownish-green colour we see.

Exposure to heat destroys this protein coating, while the carotenoid pigment, astaxanthin still remains stable. So when you cook a crab or lobster or its other tasty crustacean friends and family for your scrumptious meal, the heat breaks down all the other pigments except for astaxanthin; thus, causing the bright red colour we see in cooked lobsters, crabs, and crayfish or the reddish-orange colour of cooked shrimp.

All lobsters eventually turns red when cooked except of the albino crab and lobster. For the obvious reason that they don't have pigments so therefore, they remain the same colour even when cook.

Source: Today found out.

WHY CRACKERS HAVE HOLES

Surprisingly, it turns out the holes are there for a reason, it is not just for decoration or for convenience in some manufacturing process, as you might expect. In fact, without these holes, crackers wouldn't bake correctly. The holes allow steam to escape during baking. This keeps the crackers flat, instead of rising a bit like normal biscuit as the steam tries to escape; these holes also help to proper crisp the crackers.

When crackers are made, dough is rolled flat in sheets. These sheets then travel under a mechanism containing "docker" pins that end up putting the holes in the dough. The hole's positioning and number varies depending on the size and shape of the cracker. If the holes are too close together, the cracker will end up being extra dry and hard, due to too much steam escaping. If the holes end up being too far apart, parts of the cracker will rise a bit forming little bubbles on the surface of the cracker, which is undesirable in most types of crackers.

Source: Today found out.

Viagra Overdose!!!

A 74 year old man almost had an attack after he too 2 tablets of Viagra. He took the pills because he wanted to impress a woman almost 50 years younger than he is.

Retired hairdresser Ray Boddington, 74, had picked up the pills from a friend in his local pub after scoring with the 27-year-old woman, but as he left her apartment after a night of getting it on with the younger woman, He took ill at a bus stop with major heart palpitations and an ambulance had to be called.

As he lay in the back of the ambulance a paramedic treating the father of six told him 'its coming down" and then added "I'm talking about your blood pressure'.

Test showed Ray had a high blood pressure reading of 157/88 - a normal reading shouldn't be above 140/90. His heart rate was 102 beats per minute - above the normal 60-100 beats.

The pensioner, from Salford, Greater Manchester - was allowed to stay in the vehicle until his heart rate went back to normal. He did not require any hospital treatment over the incident on October 25.

Ray said: "The paramedics told me you shouldn't take two and I want to pass on that warning that it can make you ill, it can make your blood pressure go sky high or you could have a heart attack. It was only two hours after taking the tablets when I began to feel faint. I could hear my heart pounding in my chest and the blood rushing from my head. I thought I was having a heart attack and I was going to die"

"Imaging if someone dies because no one has spoken about the dangers. People shy away from the subject. It took around 24 hours for things to go back to normal."