Occasionally a baby is born with its legs fused together, but still with two feet. This mutation might have led to ‘true’ stories of mermaids. Casper’s Law of decomposition states that a body left in the open-air decomposes twice as fast as if it were immersed in water and eight times faster than if it were buried underground.
Xenographic transplants involve taking an organ from an animal and using it in a human being – a chimpanzee heart was transplanted into a man in Mississippi, the USA in 1964, but the patient died two hours later.
People in Pakistan have been visiting the dentist for 9,000 years. Archaeologists have found drilled and capped teeth in ancient skeletons discovered there.
Most people’s ears grow a quarter of a centimetre (0.1 inches) per year for their whole life.
Genetic evidence shows that most people in Britain are descended from the Spanish. It’s thought that Spanish fishermen colonized Britain 6,000 years ago and took over from the native Britons. 
Most American fashion models are thinner than 98 per cent of American women.


    In 1804, trainee doctor Stubbins Firth tried to prove that yellow fever is not an infectious disease by drinking his patients’ vomit! Although he did not get yellow fever, he was wrong. It is very contagious but must enter directly through the bloodstream.