Did You Know? - 5 Totally Random but Interesting Facts

                                                          Certain Certitude #8

                                              5 Totally random but interesting facts!

1. There once was a man hit on the head by a falling baby, twice! - According to Time Magazine, the year of the first event was 1937. Joseph Figlock, a local street sweeper in Detroit, Michigan, was walking down the road when a baby fell from a 4th story window. The baby struck him on the head and shoulders. The tackling toddler was thankfully not killed. However, he and Mr. Figlock were both injured. The following year another mother of the year candidate allowed her 2 year old son David Thomas to fall from a window. Joseph, doing his job sweeping out an alley, was again struck by the tumbling tyke. Remarkably, once again neither the ankle-bitter nor the newborn nabber were killed.
2. Most streets in Japan don't have names. - In Japan, they use a very different addressing system than is used in most Western countries. Rather than streets having names (the space in between the blocks), they give block numbers and leave the space in between the blocks, streets, nameless. (There are some exceptions to this where certain streets do have names, like main thoroughfares, though these are generally largely ignored by locals, postal workers, etc.) The city area is divided up into blocks, with each one being given a number. If you want to find some location, rather than asking what street something's on, you'd rather ask what block it is in. 
3. Apple seeds contain cyanide. - Apple seeds contain cyanide. The seeds of apples, also known as "pips", contain a sugar/cyanide compound called "amygdalin", which turns into hydrogen cyanide when it is metabolized in your body. Hydrogen cyanide was one of the key ingredients to Zyklon B, the trade name of the pesticide used by the Nazis in their gas chambers. Before you go panicking after accidentally swallowing an apple seed, you should know that ingesting a few seeds won't kill you. The human body is perfectly capable of handling very small doses of cyanide. However, chewing a handful of apple seeds could do the "killing you" trick quite quickly. So don't do it!
4. It costs more than double what pennies and nickles are worth to produce them. In 2006, the U.S. Mint sent a letter to Congress informing them that for the first time in history, it costs more to produce a penny and a nickle than the coins themselves were worth. Including materials, machinery, labor, shipping, and other such costs, they estimated it would cost 1.23 cents to produce a penny and 5.73 cents for a nickle at that time. The situation has since become much worse. In 2007, the costs association with producing a nickle swelled to 9.5 cents. Currently, it costs about 2.4 cents (1.1 cents in metals) to produce a penny and 11.2 cents (6 cents in metals) to produce a nickle. 
5. If you eat an excessive amount of carrots, your skin will turn an orangish/yellow shade. You don't need to get a fake tan to turn orange, you can simply eat a large amount of orange plants, such as orange carrots. The resulting condition is known as carotenemia and isn't as uncommon as you might think. It particularly rears it organish-yellow head with infants that are often feed copious amounts of mushed carrots and a variety of vegetables that contain high amounts of carotene. Carotene is a pigment and if you consume a lot of it, the carotene levels in your body will build up and your skin will turn orangish-yellow. This effect will typically first show up with your nose and/or palms showing the color first, which is why you occasionally see babies with orange noses.