Top 5 Things I Learnt This Week

William Shakespeare

This weeks list contains weird behaviors of animals, curses and legends…

  1. The Mimic Octopus, is a species of octopus that has a strong ability to mimic other creatures. It mimics the physical likeness and movements of more than fifteen different species, including sea snakes, lionfish, flatfish, brittle stars, giant crabs, sea shells, stingrays, flounders, jellyfish, sea anemones, and mantis shrimp. It accomplishes this by contorting its body and arms, and changing colour. (via Wikipedia)
  2. When Leg Before Wicket was first introduced into cricket, when any one was got out in this way, it was marked down as simply bowled in the score sheet, and the leg before wicket omitted. – Only later was it recognized as a specific type of dismissal in the record books.
  3. William Shakespeare composed a curse for his tombstone. – via OMGFacts
  4. The Amazing story of the Birth of Bindusara – Bindusara was the son of the first Mauryan emperor Chandragupta and his queen Durdhara. According to a legend mentioned in the Jain texts, Chandragupta’s Guru and advisor Chanakya used to feed the emperor with small doses of poison to build his immunity against possible poisoning attempts by the enemies. One day, Chandragupta not knowing about poison, shared his food with his pregnant wife queen who was 7 days away from delivery. The queen not immune to the poison collapsed and died within few minutes. Chanakya entered the room the very time she collapsed, and in order to save the child in the womb, he immediately cut open the dead queen’s belly and took the baby out, by that time a drop of poison had already reached the baby and touched its head due to which child got a permanent blueish spot on his forehead. Thus, the newborn was named “Bindusara”. (via Wikipedia)
  5. Rat kings are phenomena said to arise when a number of rats become intertwined at their tails, which become stuck together with blood, dirt, ice, excrement or simply knotted. The animals reputedly grow together while joined at the tails. (via Wikipedia)
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