Facts | 365 Days of Me

Science confirms: the more coffee you drink, the longer you will live! – Did you know that coffee is a major source of antioxidants? There are also major studies that show coffee drinkers have a lower risk of dying from total and cause specific mortality. A study in the New England Journal of Medicine states, “… after adjustment for tobacco-smoking status and other potential confounders, there was a significant inverse association between coffee consumption and mortality.” I love this image from AuthorityNutrition.com:
From the looks of it, the magic number of cups a day is 4-5 for both men and women. 🙂
Lighter roasted coffee has more caffeine that darker roasted coffee – According to Wikipedia (and other sites as well), Caffeine diminishes with increased roasting level: light roast – 1.37%, medium roast – 1.31%, and dark roast – 1.31%.
Coffee is a fruit! That is right, it is not really a bean, it is a fruit. What we call coffee beans are actually seeds of this fruit that somewhat resembles a cherry. Among other things, the seeds are separated from the fruit, and the seeds are dried, which gives us what is known as a green coffee bean. Now, the next time someone says you have had too much coffee, just remind them that you are getting your daily fruit intake.
You can thank coffee for the webcam. No, coffee didn’t invent the webcam, but an empty coffee pot (the Trojan Room Coffee Pot) inspired it. Coffee drinkers at the University of Cambridge were tired of walking to the coffee pot to only find it empty, so the webcam was invented to monitor the coffee pot.
Civet Coffee has been called the most expensive coffee in the world. At $700 a liter, that is not hard to believe. It is not a type of coffee though, but instead it is coffee that has been specially processed. Civet coffee is made from coffee beans that have been eaten and excreted by the Asian Palm Civet, a wild cat from southeast Asia. Yes, you read right. People actually pay for coffee that comes from beans dug out from the dung of a cat. SIGH. No thank you.
Apparently it is just a rumor that Civet Coffee is the most expensive. Black Ivory Coffee actually takes the award. It is not fished out of cat dung, but instead, it is fished out of elephant dung! EWWWW! Get this: it sells for $1100 a liter! Again, SIGH. No thank you.
Over 2.25 billion cups of coffee are consumed in the world every day. Just for comparison’s sake, there are 12.7 billion cups of oil consumed in the US daily (18.89 million barrels a day x 672 (the number of cups in a barrel)). That means coffee is the second most traded commodity in the world, behind oil.
Coffee can protect against Alzheimer’s and Type 2 Diabetes. Like I need another excuse to drink a cup!
You may have heard of The Bible Belt, but did you know there is a Bean Belt? All of the world’s coffee is grown between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, otherwise known as the Bean Belt.
Though coffee snobs, of which I am one, mostly think of the region that the bean comes from, there is another consideration. The type of bean. Most coffee sold is Arabica, but there is another common bean: Robusta. According to www.thekitchn.com, Arabica tends , “to have a sweeter, softer taste, with tones of sugar, fruit, and berries.” Robusta has, on the other hand, ” [a] stronger, harsher taste, with a grain-like overtone and peanutty aftertaste.” Oh, and Robusta has twice the caffeine. Even so, I, for one, prefer Arabica.

Eye color was once thought to be determined by a single gene, which meant we thought brown eyes were dominant over blue eyes. However, now we know that eye color is multiple gene trait, and we know that brown eyes aren’t always dominant.
Many of us are mutants. Yes, that’s right. Multiple-colored eyes is a mutation, the neatest of which, in my opinion, is Central Heterochromia. This is where the inner part of the iris is a different color than the outer part of the iris. The out part is the true eye color. All the genetic talk aside, it makes for some amazing macro eye pictures. You can see some at the end of this post.
People with lighter colored eyes are more prone to be sensitive to bright light. This is because darker eyes have more pigment, which protects against the light.
Your personality can be predicted by your eyes or as some say, your eyes are the window to your soul. Just for fun, here is another description of eye color and personality. It seems your eye color and the patterns in your eyes can be used to predict your personality. You might have a read to see if you agree with what is said about your eye pattern.
While 10% of Caucasians are color blind, only 1% of Eskimos are. We don’t really know why. Do you think you can see all colors? Why not try a color blindness test?
There is a term for those who have a fear of eyes: Ommetaphobia.
If the eye were a camera, it would be 576 MP! That’s right, the resolution of the human eye is 576 MP!
While we are on the topic of cameras, have you ever wondered why our pictures have so many dark spots or spots that are too bright? Why can we see so much more than our cameras can capture? Don’t rush out and buy the biggest and the best camera hoping to fix this – it isn’t happening with today’s cameras. There is something called dynamic range, which is the difference between the brightest and the darkest thing you see. A camera can only see 8 stops of dynamic range, whereas the human eye can see 20 stops of dynamic range.
20/20 vision is not perfect vision. It is simply being able to see at 20 feet what a normal person can see at 20 feet. So if 20/20 is not perfect, what is? It is believed that 20/8 is the best a human could see, though that has not been recorded. Some US professional athletes have been recorded to have 20/8.9 vision, but a hawk is believed to have 20/2 vision!
Human eyes are much bigger than you think! Only a small portion of the eye is visible, and the eye is nearly an inch (24mm) deep!

Now, enjoy a few macro shots of the human eye, and who knows, you might learn something about their personality while you are at it.

Tag: facts

Ten Things You Didn’t Know About Coffee

Ten Facts About Eyes