60 of the world’s happiest facts

1. A group of flamingos is called a flamboyance.
2. If you fake laugh long enough you’ll start to really laugh, really, really hard.
3. The book cover to the prize winning short story collection, Spellbound, was chosen because author, Joel Willans, bought his wife’s engagement ring with poker winnings.
4. The Beatles used the word “love” 613 times throughout their career.
5. The chances of you (as opposed to someone else) being born is about 1 in 40 million.
6. Every year, millions of trees grow thanks to squirrels forgetting where they buried their nuts.
7. On the day of his assassination, Martin Luther King Jr. had a pillow-fight in his motel room.
8. The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We’re all made of star dust.
9. Cancer death rates are down 20% in past 20 years.
10. The miles travelled by the Apollo 11 crew to the moon were greater than every single exploration mission to the New World combined.
11. Penguins only have one mate their entire life and “propose” by giving their mate a pebble.
12. Cows have best friends.
13. Despite high infant mortality rates and lower life expectancies, not one of your direct ancestors died childless.
14. Cuddling releases Oxytocin which helps speed healing and recovery from physical wounds.
15. Otters hold hands when sleeping so they don’t drift away from each other.
16. Apollo 17 astronaut Gene Cernan, the last man to walk on the Moon, wrote his daughter initials there. They’ll last at least 50,000 years.
17. There’s a type of jellyfish that lives forever.
18. Wayne Allwine (the voice of Mickey Mouse) and Russi Taylor (the voice of Minnie Mouse) were married in real life.
19. We now have less crime, a lower death rate and longer life expectancy than at any other time in human history.
20. The clitoris has 8000 nerve fibres, double that of the penis, and is the only organ in the body, which has evolved purely for pleasure.
21. Butterflies can taste with their feet.
22. For someone, somewhere in the world, today is the most amazing day of their life.
23. When you die, your body decomposes, and the atoms that contained “you” are recycled into Earth to be used again.
24. Every year the Netherlands sends 20,000 tulip bulbs to Canada to thank them for their aid in the Second World War.
25. Rats giggle when you tickle them. Their voices are so high-pitched you need special equipment to hear them, but when you do, their laughs are immediately evident.
26. Sea horses mate for life, are completely faithful and travel together by holding on to each others tails.
27. No matter how bad your day is going, somewhere in the world a fat man just dropped his ice cream.
28. If you say “my cocaine” you sound like Michael Caine saying his own name.
29. Male puppies, when playing with female puppies, will intentionally let the female win.
30. The next Star Wars will not be directed by George Lucas.
31. It takes seventeen muscles to smile and forty-three to frown.
32.The kingdom of Bhutan use ‘gross national happiness’ as a key national indicator.
33. The majority of European children born in 2013 will live to see the year 2100.
34. There’s an animal called a Dik Dik. And it’s the cutest antelope you’ll ever see.
35. Neurologically speaking, seeing somebody else smile actually makes you happier.
36. Every human being spent about half an hour as a single cell.
37. There are people, ombrophiles, who have a passionate love for rain.
38. Once your brain realizes that you’re dying, it releases DMT, one of the most powerful known psychedelics. This dilates your perception of time and allowing you to live inside your own mind for hours or even days.
39. No matter how long you live there will always be an amazing new food for you try.
40. A group of porcupines is called a prickle.
41. Aside from a sample in a lab, Smallpox is completely extinct. No one else will ever die from it again.
42. A pig’s orgasms last thirty minutes.
43. We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born.
44. Sloths only leave their tree once a week, to pee and poo.
45. Spinner dolphins sleep in pairs, one with the left hemisphere asleep, the other with the right. They each keep watch with one eye and half a brain. They are known to sleep-mate for life.
46. At the time of your birth, you were, for a few seconds, the youngest person on the planet.
47. Cows produce the most milk when listening to the song Everybody Hurts by REM.
48. Somewhere, someone is losing their virginity right now.
49. If you spell out numbers in order, the first time you get to the letter “a” is at one-thousand.
50. We’ve all been here forever. Every bit of matter we see has been here since the beginning of time and it always will be.
51. A monkey was once tried and convicted for smoking a cigarette in South Bend, Indiana.
52. Happiness is a skill. You can learn it and it’s not hard.
53. Except when breeding, the Common Swift spend their entire lives in the air, living on the insects they catch in flight. They drink, feed, and often mate and sleep on the wing
54. Baby rabbits are called kittens.
55. Baby puffins are called pufflings.
56. Costa Rica is statistically the happiest nation on Earth.
57. Worms communicate by snuggling.
58. 2013 is the first year since 1987 that consists for four different digits.
59. There’s a train station in Japan that’s supervised by a cat who lives inside the ticket booth. The staff have to treat her like their boss and she gets her own uniform.
60. If you blend a sea sponge, it will re-form back into a sea sponge.