Are You Sh*tting Me?: 1,004 Facts That Will Scare the Crap Out of You

by Cary McNeal

  FACT 780 At Michael Jackson’s request, the music video for “Beat It” featured actual rival gang members.

  FACT 781 A planned duet album with Freddie Mercury and Michael Jackson was canceled in part because Jackson brought a llama to a recording session. Jackson also reportedly objected to Mercury’s copious cocaine use. This sounds like the beginning of a joke: “Michael Jackson, Freddie Mercury, and a llama walk into a recording session. . . .”

  FACT 782 In 1989, the Broward County sheriff’s office manufactured its own crack to use in sting operations.

  FACT 783 After the 1981 assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan, Secret Service agents did not realize that Reagan had been shot until after they were in the limo headed for the White House.

  FACT 784 President Ronald Reagan lost half of his blood after being shot in the 1981 assassination attempt.

  FACT 785 In 1980, sportscaster Howard Cosell announced John Lennon’s death during a Sunday night football game between the Patriots and the Dolphins.

  FACT 786 Because blood-clotting medicine was made with donated blood platelets through the early 1980s, huge numbers of hemophiliacs—between 70 and 90 percent—were infected with AIDS before the medication was changed in 1985.

  FACT 787 In 1989, a German official inadvertently opened the borders between East and West Berlin: he announced a planned change too early, which Berliners understood to mean that they could travel freely. Thousands of East Berliners rushed through the wall, too many for guards to stop.

  FACT 788 The Vietnam Veterans Memorial was created in 1982 without any government funding.

  FACT 789 Names are still being added to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial; these are veterans who died from war-related injuries or causes.

  FACT 790 The initial explosion in the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster blew the thousand-ton cover off the reactor.

  FACT 791 When officials evacuated the town of Pripyat near the site of the Chernobyl disaster, they told citizens they could come back soon, so most people left their belongings and valuables behind.

  FACT 792 Within four months of the accident, twenty-eight Chernobyl workers died, some of whom heroically exposed themselves to radiation to protect the plant from additional leaks.

  FACT 793 Despite the contamination of the site—and the inherent risks in operating a reactor with serious design flaws—the Chernobyl nuclear plant continued to operate for years after the disaster. The last reactor was finally shut down in December 2000.

  FACT 794 The nuclear plant, the ghost towns of Pripyat and Chernobyl, and a large area surrounding the plant known as the “zone of alienation” are largely off-limits to humans. Because of the radiation in the region, the area won’t be safe for human habitation for at least twenty thousand years. Mark your calendars.

  FACT 795 When Mount Saint Helens in Washington erupted in 1980, volcano scientist David A. Johnson radioed the excited message, “This is it!” from his post beneath the volcano. It was his last message before he was killed by the eruption. That was it, all right.

  FACT 796 Though Barney Clark, the first man to receive an artificial heart in 1982, lived for 112 days after the surgery, his final months were uncomfortable, filled with media frenzy and painful infections.

  FACT 797 In 1987, Bill Gates became the youngest billionaire ever at age thirty-one.

  FACT 798 In 1981, daredevil Dan Goodwin dressed up as Spider-Man and climbed all the way up Chicago’s Sears Tower.

  IF THIS CHAPTER CAUSES you to have a flaccid penis for more than 168 hours, consult your doctor and tell him you’ve been reading books about scary facts.

  FACT 799 Viagra may be the next new thing in cancer treatment. The combination of sildenafil citrate (the drug in Viagra) and the cancer drug doxorubicin has been shown to shrink cancerous tumors.

  FACT 800 The CIA trades ED drugs to aging Afghan warlords and chieftains in exchange for information.

  FACT 801 According to its manufacturer, Pfizer, Viagra is the world’s most counterfeited drug.

  FACT 802 About 77 percent of Viagra purchased online is fake. These are the ones we should be trading to the Afghan warlords.

  FACT 803 In one month alone in 2013, customs officials at the airport in Miami, Florida, confiscated 180,000 counterfeit Viagra pills.

  FACT 804 Makers of counterfeit Viagra pills get the signature blue color by adding printer ink. Every pill is good for about thirty copies.

  FACT 805 Counterfeit ED drugs are seen as “gateway drugs” for smugglers. As a low-risk, high-yield product, smugglers escalate from erectile medications to counterfeit cancer drugs and antibiotics, which could lead to life-and-death consequences.

  FACT 806 Some erectile dysfunction medications can cause hearing loss, cyanopsia (blue vision), and, in rare cases, permanent blindness.

  FACT 807 For drug dealers, counterfeit sildenafil citrate can be better business than selling hard drugs, with profits up to two thousand times more.

  FACT 808 Sildenafil citrate is rumored to be the next performance enhancer for American football players. One player was quoted as saying he had heard of colleagues taking the drug to improve their game.

  FACT 809 In September 2013, a Colombian man had to have invasive surgery on his penis after he took more than the recommended dose of Viagra. By the time he checked into the hospital, he had had an erection lasting several days, and his penis suffered from inflammation, a fracture, and gangrene.

  FACT 810 A twenty-eight-year-old Russian man died of a heart attack in 2009 after taking a bet that he couldn’t sexually satisfy two women for twelve hours. He overdosed on ED medication, won the bet, and died shortly after.

  FACT 811 A man who injected himself with an excessive amount of erectile dysfunction drugs was so embarrassed by his unyielding erection that he delayed seeking medical attention. The overdose and delayed treatment left him with a penis that was under an inch long.

  FACT 812 A priapism is an erection lasting for more than four hours without sexual stimulation. It is named after the Greek god Priapus, whose penis was permanently erect.

  FACT 813 One method of alleviating a priapism is to insert a surgical shunt into the penis to redirect the flow of blood. Another method is to read the previous sentence out loud.

  FACT 814 Another priapism treatment is aspiration of the penis, or inserting a needle to drain blood from the organ.

  FACT 815 In 2012, a fifty-two-year-old motorcyclist in California sued BMW—the maker of his bike—and the manufacturer of his motorcycle seat after suffering from a two-year priapism that he said began after a long ride in 2010. “He had to reconfigure his clothing,” the man’s attorney told the press, “and going to the bathroom was a problem.” He had to install a toilet on the ceiling.

  FACT 816 According to the Journal of Sexual Medicine, one treatment for erectile dysfunction may be found in the world’s most deadly spider. The venom of the Brazilian wandering spider contains a toxin that has been shown to improve erectile function.

  FACT: RESEARCHING THIS CHAPTER made me kick an eight-can-a-day soft drink addiction. It also reminded me of one of life’s universal truths: there are no such things as shortcuts. I got hooked on soft drinks but didn’t want to get fat, so instead of cutting back, I started drinking diet sodas instead. Guess what? Diet sodas make you even fatter. FAIL.

  Go ahead and laugh at me if you like, then take a sip of that green tea you’re drinking for antioxidants because you think it will replace all those vegetables you don’t eat. Now I’m laughing at you.

  FACT 817 According to the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, children today drink diet soda “at more than double the rate of the last decade.”

  FACT 818 The consumption rate among adults
is growing, too—we’re drinking almost 25 percent more diet sodas than we did ten years ago.

  FACT 819 Research is revealing that diet drinks are not guilt-free at all, but can stimulate your appetite and lead to weight gain, carbohydrate cravings, and excessive fat storage.

  FACT 820 Consumption of diet soda is a large factor in the mounting obesity crisis that many countries now face.

  FACT 821 A study by the University of Texas Health Science Center showed that the risk of becoming over-weight increases with the more diet sodas a person drinks.

  FACT 822 The University of Texas study followed 474 diet soda drinkers for nearly ten years and found that their waists grew 70 percent more than the waists of non–diet soda drinkers.

  FACT 823 In the same study, subjects who drank two or more diet soft drinks a day had a 500 percent greater increase in waist size over ten years than subjects who drank no diet soda.

  FACT 824 Our bodies aren’t fooled by artificial sweeteners because they don’t deliver anything to squelch the appetite, says one obesity researcher. Artificial sweeteners cause your body to crave more sugar “because your brain is not satisfied at a cellular level by the sugar impostor.”

  FACT 825 According to a 2008 University of Minnesota study of almost ten thousand adults, even just one diet soda a day is linked to a 36 percent higher risk of metabolic syndrome, a group of symptoms that includes belly fat and high cholesterol, which puts you at risk for heart disease.

  FACT 826 The sweetening agent in Splenda, sucralose, is made by adding three chlorine molecules to sugar molecules.

  FACT 827 Studies have revealed that sucralose can shrink the thymus glands and enlarge your liver and kidneys. The sweetener has also been linked to atrophy of lymph follicles in the spleen and thymus, decreased red blood cell count, and diarrhea.

  FACT 828 Some studies have suggested that consuming aspartame can lead to headaches.

  FACT 829 Aspartame can trigger or worsen numerous diseases, including multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, lymphoma, birth defects, fibromyalgia, and diabetes.

  FACT 830 A Harvard Medical School study of more than three thousand women associated diet cola consumption with an increased risk for kidney decline. Kidney function started to diminish when women drank more than two sodas a day.

  FACT 831 Unlike regular soft drinks, diet soda contains mold inhibitors. These chemicals, which go by the names sodium benzoate or potassium benzoate, can cause severe damage to DNA in the mitochondria.

  FACT 832 According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, mold inhibitors have also been connected to allergic conditions such as hives and asthma. Given a choice, I’ll take hives over “severe damage to DNA in the mitochondria.”

  FACT 833 Though some companies have replaced sodium benzoate with potassium benzoate, both preservatives were classified by the Food Commission in the United Kingdom as irritants to the skin, eyes, and mucous membranes.

  FACT 834 One study found similar levels of tooth erosion in the mouths of a person who used cocaine, a person who used crystal methamphetamine, and a person who habitually drank diet soda. All three substances contain citric acid, which can eat away at tooth enamel.

  FACT 835 According to a University of Michigan study, adults who drank three or more diet sodas a day had worse dental health than those who didn’t. The diet soda drinkers experienced more problems, including more fillings, greater decay, and even missing teeth.

  FACT 836 Both diet and regular soft drink cans are lined with the endocrine disruptor bisphenol A (BPA), which has been linked to heart disease, obesity, and reproductive problems.

  FACT 837 Green tea consumers might not be getting the health benefits they expect from the drink. Some bottled green teas are packed with high fructose corn syrup, dyes, preservatives such as sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate, and numerous other chemical additives.

  FACT 838 When you’re drinking bottled green tea, you might not be getting as many antioxidants as you think—many commercial green tea products are little more than sugar water.

  FACT 839 While green tea has been linked to weight loss and cancer prevention, researchers have not been able to rule out other healthy behaviors as contributing factors.

  FACT 840 In a study of green tea sold in stores, one variety was found to contain almost no antioxidants. Another bottled brand had only 60 percent of the amount of antioxidants listed on the label.

  FACT 841 Leaves in two brands of green tea bags tested contained 1.25 to 2.5 micrograms of lead per serving.

  FACT 842 The green tea plant is known to absorb lead at a higher rate than other plants, and lead also can build up on the surface of the leaves.

  FACT 843 Industrial pollution in China, where much green tea originates, is responsible for the presence of lead in those leaves.

  FACT 844 In 2012, the energy drink industry had estimated sales of more than $10 billion.

  FACT 845 Many energy drinks do not label caffeine content and can contain as much of the drug as fourteen cans of soda.

  FACT 846 The FDA limits caffeine content in soft drinks but imposes no such rule on energy drinks.

  FACT 847 Energy drinks can increase blood pressure and stimulate the heart, at times to the point of creating heart palpitations.

  FACT 848 Not only can caffeine raise your blood pressure and disrupt your sleep, but it can also aggravate psychiatric conditions.

  FACT 849 Excessive consumption can cause caffeine intoxication, which can lead to rapid or irregular heartbeat, difficulty breathing, convulsions, and vomiting.

  FACT 850 A rising number of patients, many of them young people, are being treated in emergency rooms for complications related to highly caffeinated energy drinks, new federal data shows.

  FACT 851 Complications from drinking energy drinks can include anxiety, irregular heartbeats, and even heart attacks.

  FACT 852 The number of annual hospital visits involving energy drinks doubled from 2007 to 2011, according to a report by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

  FACT 853 In one study of people treated in the ER for complications related to energy drinks, more than 40 percent of them had consumed the beverages with other alcohol and stimulants, including Adderall and Ritalin.

  FACT 854 The FDA doesn’t review energy drinks because they are sold as dietary supplements.

  FACT 855 People who exercise shouldn’t drink energy drinks. The loss of fluid from sweating and caffeine can lead to dehydration.

  FACT 856 Energy drinks are popular with teens and young adults. In a 2007 survey of 496 college students, 51 percent said they had consumed at least one energy drink during the past month.

  FACT 857 Energy drinks and alcohol are a dangerous match. Since energy drinks are stimulants and alcohol is a depressant, mixing the two can give the illusion that you’re not impaired.

  FACT 858 Energy drinks do not lower your blood alcohol concentration (BAC) when mixed with alcoholic beverages. In fact, research has found the opposite: people who combine alcohol and caffeine drink more and have higher BACs.

  FACT 859 After the stimulant effects of the energy drink taper off, the depressant effects of the alcohol are still in place, and can lead to vomiting and respiratory issues.

  FACT 860 The combined dehydrating effect of energy drinks and alcohol can hinder your body’s ability to metabolize alcohol and will increase the toxicity—and worsen your hangover—the next day.

  FACT 861 In one study, college students who used energy drinks were more likely to use stimulants for recreational use, leading one Johns Hopkins University scientist to be concerned that energy drinks
are gateways to other types of drugs.

  FACT 862 Although energy drink manufacturers claim, or at least imply, that their drinks can have a positive effect on cognitive performance, studies have shown that consuming energy drinks has no significant positive effect on concentration, reasoning, or aptitude.

  FACT 863 The results of two different university studies showed no improved athletic performance in participants who drank sugar-free energy drinks before testing.

  FACT 864 Another study concluded that more than 44 percent of service members deployed in Afghanistan drank at least one energy drink per day. Nearly 14 percent drank more than three energy beverages per day.