Dream

During the Roman Era, interesting dreams were submitted to the Roman Senate for analysis and dream interpretation.

In a study of 640 dream journals conducted by Harvard, psychologists determined the dreams of prisoners in World War II POW camps were less aggressive than the standard male population. Rather than visions of extreme violence, the majority of soldiers dreamed of escape, family, loneliness, and home.

A 2005 survey by the British Cheese Board reported that Stilton cheese seemed to cause unusual dreams, with 75 per cent of men and 85 per cent of women experiencing "odd and vivid" dreams after eating a serving of the cheese half an hour before sleeping.

Infants spend more time dreaming than adults do.

A study found that the dreams of two-year-olds tend to involve little more than a place, without action or characters to speak of.

Over the age of ten we have four to six dreams per night. They can last from five minutes to half an hour. You generally end up remembering only the last dream.

The average person has over 1,460 dreams a year.

In an average lifetime, a person spends about five years dreaming but we forget most of them.

While approximately 80 percent of all dreams are in color, 12 per cent people claim to only dream in black and white. Before color TV arrived, the figure was 85 per cent.

Dreaming occurs mainly during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, distinguishable by random fluttering of the eyes.

We only remember dreams if we wake up within five minutes of having them. We therefore forget an estimated 90 per cent of our dreams.

If you wake up during REM sleep, your chance to remember your dream is 80-90%, while it is much less if you wake up during other sleep stages.

According to an old superstition, dreaming of teeth falling out foretells the death of a friend.

The word 'dream' comes from an Old English word meaning 'mirth', 'joy', 'noise' or 'music'.

According to the Oxford English Corpus, the adjective that most often precedes 'dream' or 'dreams' is 'bad'. Next most common is 'wildest'.

Dreamt' and 'undreamt' are the only common words in the English language ending in -mt.

The phrase 'pipe-dream' originally referred to visions experienced when smoking an opium pipe.

Euneirophrenia is that peaceful state of mind you sometimes experience after you've had a pleasant dream.

The word "nightmare" is derived from "Mare", a Germanic folklore goblin who rode on people's chests as they slept.

The original meaning of 'nightmare' was 'a spirit of a hag on a horse that stifled the sleeping'.

Déjà rêvé is a feeling similar to déjà vu, except instead of feeling like you’ve previously experienced an event in real life, you feel like you previously experienced it in a dream.

The three most commonly reported emotions experienced in dreams are anger, sadness and fear.

It's nearly impossible to read in your dreams due to the inactivity of those parts of the brain while asleep.

One is not able to dream while snoring. People normally snore when in deep sleep and at the same time we dream when sleeping soundly but still snoring and dreams do not go hand in hand.

Birds and mammals also have REM sleep, so it is assumed by many that they also dream.

Source Daily Express