Richard Branson

British business magnate Richard Branson was born in Blackheath, London on July 18, 1950. He was the eldest of three children of Eve Branson, a former ballet dancer and air hostess, and Edward James Branson, a barrister.

From the age of seven to about ten Branson's school friends called him "Letsgo" because he was always saying "let’s go" to get everyone on to the next thing.

Branson says that the worst job he ever had was trying to breed budgies as a business aged 11 during the summer holidays. He recalled to Event magazine: "They multiplied faster than I could sell them and my mother had to let them fly away."

The dyslexic Richard Branson dropped out of school at the age of 15.

On his last day at school, Sir Richard Branson's headmaster told him he would either end up in prison or become a millionaire.

Despite being dyslexic, he started a magazine called Student whilst at school, which was relatively successful at selling ads.

Richard Branson is the founder of Virgin. He chose the company name after it was suggested by one of his friends that they were all 'virgins' in business.

When he started his record label, the first artist Richard Branson signed was his school friend Mike Oldfield. His album length composition Tubular Bells became a multi- million seller after an extract was used as the theme to the film The Exorcist (1973).

Richard Branson started Virgin Atlantic Airways after a flight he was scheduled for was cancelled. Upon hearing of the cancellation, he quickly had a charter jet liner secured, and invited the passengers of the cancelled flight to fly for free. He jokingly posted a hand-lettered sign above the entryway, reading, "Virgin Atlantic Airways - Flight 1." Several of the passengers of that flight became investors of the airline.

His businesses include the Virgin Music label (launched 1973, sold to Thorn-EMI for $1 billion in 1992), Virgin Radio (launched in 1993), Virgin Trains (launched 1997 superseded by London North Eastern Railway and Avanti West Coast), Virgin Mobile (launched 1999), Virgin Galactic (founded 2004), Virgin Hotels (launched 2010).

Richard Branson once lost a bet with AirAsia Group CEO Tony Fernandes on the winner of the 2010 F1 Grand Prix. The loser had to work as a female flight attendant on the winner's airline. Branson shaved his legs, dressed in drag, and hosted passengers on a 5 hour Air Asia flight that raised $200,000 for charity.

Richard Branson wakes up at 5.30 am and goes to bed at 11 pm.

Richard Branson 2015. By Chatham House - https://www.flickr.com/photos/chathamhouse/16528067458/,

In 1978, Richard Branson was trying to impress his girlfriend by pretending to buy a private island in the BVI. It was on sale for $6 million and the 28-year-old entrepreneur offered $100,000 as a joke. The owner settled for $120,000 and Branson bought Necker Island. He would marry the same girl there 11 years later.

Richard Branson dislikes the formality of neck ties so much that he often carries around a pair of scissors with him, ready to cut the ties off of unsuspecting tie wearers. He even has a cushion that he keeps at his Necker Island home made up from the ties of some of his victims.

Branson is also known for his attempts to break records of distance, in both boats and hot-air balloons.

He often drinks more than 20 cups of tea a day.

He was knighted in 1999 for services to entrepreneurship.

On July 11, 2021, Branson travelled as a passenger aboard his own company's space tourism spacecraft, VSS Unity. This suborbital flight reached an altitude of about 80 kilometers (50 miles) above the Earth, allowing him to experience weightlessness and witness breathtaking views of the planet.

Brandy

In 1305 Arnaldus de Ulla Nova, a professor at the medical school of Montpelier, distilled the first brandy to be thought of as a drink. Previous similar distilled wines were used for medical purposes only. 

Brandy gets its name from the Dutch “brandewijn”, meaning ”burnt wine” as it is derived by boiling the wine.

Pixiebay

Dating back to the 1600's, thermometers were filled with brandy instead of mercury.

Applejack is the name of an apple brandy that was popular in the American colonial era. In Maine moonshiners irritated by Prohibition (enacted in the state in 1851) made their own applejack. Apple orchards were plentiful and applejack is easy to make by freezing fermenting cider, draining the ice, and keeping the high concentration liquor that stayed liquid.

Queen Anne’s chronic brandy addiction is said to have contributed to her chronic losses of children in pregnancy. The Queen suffered from a condition known as “sticky blood” and none of her 17 children made it into their teens.

A fine brandy has been distilled from wine in the region around Cognac in the Charente region of France since the mid 17th century. The name “cognac” came to be applied to this quality brandy by 1783.

King George IV of England was partial to cherry brandy, which he liked to sit up late at night drinking. A heavy drinker, the phrase "drunk as a Lord” is said to have originally referred to him.

In 1829, when Mrs. Lydia Child wrote The Frugal Housewife, hair care was quite different from what it is now. New England rum was considered to be excellent for cleaning the hair and keeping it healthy; brandy was supposed to strengthen the roots.

Daniel Webster spent nearly three decades in one federal office or another. As he approached the end of his distinguished career he grew increasingly dependent on alcohol, regularly drinking brandy and water while speaking. In 1851 this practice caused him trouble at a ceremony marking the completion of the Boston-Montreal Railroad. Then secretary of state, Webster ignored the point of the ceremony and delivered a rambling speech on American history. The governor general of Canada, one of the honoured guests, was so enraged by the performance that he almost stormed off the platform.

Winston Churchill had a seemingly enormous capacity for brandy. Such was his passion for it that the Nazi, Goebbels, caricatured him as a drunk. Churchill's marathon drinking sessions, usually started late and went onto the early hours of the following day. "When I was younger I made it a rule never to take strong drink before lunch. It is now my rule never to do so before breakfast." he once quipped to King George VI.

At the Yalta Conference in 1944, Joseph Stalin was reputed to have plied Winston Churchill with a Yerevan brandy called Dvin. Legend has it that Churchill enjoyed it so much that he arranged for a regular supply to be shipped to him in Britain.

By Harold Wilson's second term as the British Prime Minister, his dependence on brandy was becoming increasingly evident. He was prone to rambling in cabinet meetings and sometimes forgets to sum up.

St. Bernard dogs have never carried small casks of brandy around their necks on rescues, as popularly believed. Sometimes, however, they are posed with casks to please tourists.

On a bottle of brandy VSOP stand for "Very Special Old Pale."

Getting the pear or apple into a bottle of brandy is a technique called bonsai apple or bonsai pear. The technique of growing fruit trees in bottles is called "cloche-culture" and is an ancient practice that predates modern horticulture. 

A popular drink in Cambodia is a Tarantula Brandy. The concoction includes rice liquor and freshly dead tarantulas.

Source Book Of Lists 3, Christianity Today

Marlon Brando

Marlon Brando was born on April 3, 1924, in Omaha, Nebraska, to Marlon Brando, Sr., a pesticide and chemical feed manufacturer, and Dorothy Julia (née Pennebaker)

Marlon Brando was expelled from two different high schools—the first expulsion was from Libertyville High School for riding a motorcycle down the hallway.

Marlon Brando’s mother gave him an odd pet a raccoon he named Russell.

In 1944 Marlon Brando enrolled in Erwin Piscator's Dramatic Workshop at New York's New School, and was mentored by Stella Adler, a member of a famous Yiddish Theatre acting family. Adler helped introduce to the New York stage the "emotional memory" technique of Russian theatrical actor, director and impresario Constantin Stanislavsky, whose motto was "Think of your own experiences and use them truthfully." The results of this meeting between an actor and the teacher preparing him for a life in the theatre would mark a watershed in American acting and culture.

A 24-year-old Marlon Brando on the set of the Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire,

During an acting class, when the students were told to act out "a chicken hearing an air-raid siren," most of the students clucked and flapped their arms in a panic, while Brando stood stock-still, staring up at the ceiling. When asked to explain himself, Brando replied, "I'm a chicken - I don't know what an air-raid siren is." 

Brando made his debut on the boards of Broadway on October 19, 1944, in I Remember Mama. It was a great success. 

Marlon Brando was a fan of Afro-Caribbean music and changed from being a drummer to the congas after becoming enthralled by the music in New York City in the 1940s. 

He befriended the author James Baldwin in 1944 and the two were roommates for a time. They would remain friends for more than 20 years.

Marlon Brando tried to join the army during World War II but was rejected due to a knee injury he had sustained while playing football at Shattuck Military Academy. After he made The Men (1950), the Korean War broke out, and he was ordered by the draft board to report for a physical prior to induction. As his knee was better due to an operation, he initially was reclassified from 4-F to 1-A, but the military again rejected him, this time for mental problems, as he was under psychoanalysis. 

When Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire premiered at a  New York theatre, Marlon Brando took to the stage wearing a bright white capped-sleeve T-shirt. It was the first time it had appeared in public as anything but an undergarment. It was not because of prior stage direction, but because Brando had worn one to rehearsals.

Marlon Brando’s signature was considered so valuable to collectors, that many personal checks he wrote were never cashed because his signature was usually worth more than the amount on the check.

Marlon Brando in The Wild One

Marlon Brando was a two-time Academy Award winner and eight-time nominee. Brando won his first Oscar in 1954 for On The Waterfront. When filming On The Waterfront, Brando had it written into his contract that he could leave at 4pm every day to see his therapist.

One of the innovators of the Method acting technique in American film, Brando didn't like the term "The Method," which quickly became the prominent paradigm taught by such acting gurus as Lee Strasberg at the Actor's Studio. It was this period of 1951-54 that revolutionised American acting, spawning such imitators as James Dean, who modelled his acting and even his lifestyle on his hero Brando, the young Paul Newman, and Steve McQueen. 

The decision to cast Marlon Brando in Guys And Dolls was hotly contested, largely by Frank Sinatra, who wanted the part of Sky Masterson himself. Later in his career, the crooner made Sky's big number "Luck Be A Lady" part of his stage act.

Brando's musical numbers in Guys And Dolls had to be patched together from multiple audio takes - Sinatra's nickname for him was "Mumbles."

His acting skills were so legendary that Robin Williams, Michael Jackson, Whoopi Goldberg and Sean Penn showed up to his acting classes.

Marlon Brando was the first actor to break $1 million threshold for a movie role. He commanded a $1 million salary for his services playing Fletcher Christian in the 1962 film Mutiny On The Bounty.

Brando was notorious for refusing to memorize his lines. For his long speeches in the Godfather and Apocalypse Now, other actors had Brando's lines taped to their bodies. In Superman: The Movie, Brando read his lines off the baby's diaper as he was putting him in the escape pod.

Marlon Brando's first wife was Anna Kashfi, an Indian actress from Darjeeling. India. Before their wedding on October 12, 1957, Brando was regarded as Hollywood’s most eligible bachelor. Brando and Kashfi had a son, Christian Brando, on May 11, 1958; they divorced in 1959.

In 1960, Brando married Movita Castaneda, a Mexican-American actress seven years his senior; they were divorced in 1962.

Tahitian actress Tarita Teriipaia, who played Brando's love interest in Mutiny on the Bounty, became his third wife on August 10, 1962. She was 20 years old, 18 years younger than Brando. Because Teriipaia was a native French speaker, Brando became fluent in the language and gave numerous interviews in French.

Brando had a long-term relationship with his housekeeper Maria Cristina Ruiz, by whom he had three children.

Brando was an activist for many causes, including the African-American Civil Rights Movement and various Native American movements. His outspoken activism, in the midst of the harshly segregated 1960s, earned him a reserved place near the podium when Martin Luther King Jr. gave his 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech.

In 1973, Brando famously rejected his Oscar award for The Godfather in a protest over the portrayal of Native Americans in film.

Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro are the only actors to win Academy Award for playing the same character: Vito Corleone in The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II, respectively.

He spoke five languages – English, French, Spanish, Italian and Japanese. 

Marlon Brando tried to purchase the rights to a movie about the Iran-Contra scandal using a former CIA connection. The CIA was able to derail this by creating a front company to outbid Brando for the rights. The man they put in charge of this operation was none other than Colonel Oliver North.

Marlon Brando tithed a tenth of his income to various Black organizations such as, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. 

Brando was paid $3.7 million and an 11.75% backend to play Jor-El in Superman (1978). His short appearance comprised 13 days work and less than 20 minutes onscreen. In comparison, Christopher Reeves earned $250,000 in the title role, dominating most of the 143-minute running time. Brando later sued for a percentage of the film's profits.

He loved ice cream. In the 1980s, Brando was routinely spotted at a Beverly Hills ice cream parlor buying five gallon containers of ice cream- which he would eat all himself.

He may be famous for his acting — but it was his conga drumming hobby that turned Brando into an inventor. In 2002, he created an electronic device that stretches the surface of a drum correctly, so it makes the right sound. The contraption pulls four tension points at the same time, uniformly tightening or slackening the surface at the touch of a button. It has since been used in many drum products.

Marlon Brando died in Westwood, California on July 1, 2004 at age 80.

Sources IMDB, The Daily Mail

Branding

Branding is a traditional practice in which a distinctive mark is burned onto the hide of a cattle and other livestock to identify ownership. This method has been used for centuries and serves as a way for ranchers and farmers to establish ownership of their livestock.

CC BY-SA 3.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13339233

Cattle branding was practiced 4,000 years ago. Old tomb paintings show Egyptians branding their fat, spotted cattle.

In the Roman Empire, tattooing was a degrading practice used to brand slaves and criminals, and was also sometimes used in pagan religious rites whereby someone became the "slave" of a god.

The earliest evidence of Coptic tattooing goes back to the eighth-century, when Egyptian monks began to brand their hands with Christian symbols. Some scholars believe they learned the practice from Ethiopian Christians, who branded crosses on their foreheads, temples, and wrists.

Cortés introduced branding to North America. He marked his cattle and horses with three crosses.

U.S. patent #200,358 was issued to Frederick Thayer for his baseball catcher's mask in 1878. It was similar to one worn by cowboys to keep from being kicked in the face while branding cattle.

The branding process involves heating a metal branding iron in a fire until it becomes extremely hot. The hot iron is then pressed onto the hide of the cattle, causing the hair and outer skin layers to burn and leaving a permanent mark. This mark can consist of letters, numbers, symbols, or a combination thereof.

Freeze branding, using liquid nitrogen to create scars, is a less painful and stress-inducing option for cattle.

Cattle branding is primarily used for identification purposes, helping ranchers keep track of their herds and prevent theft or disputes over ownership. 

While branding has been a traditional method, some regions and countries have introduced alternative identification methods, such as ear tags, tattoos, or electronic implants, which are less invasive and more humane. Branding, however, continues to be practiced in some areas and is often associated with the ranching and livestock industries.

The word "maverick" came into use after Texan, Samuel Maverick, refused to brand his cattle. Eventually any unbranded calf became known as a Maverick. 

Brand

A brand is a distinctive and identifiable symbol, name, logo, design, or other feature that distinguishes a product, service, or company from others in the marketplace. It goes beyond just the physical elements and encompasses the overall perception and reputation that consumers associate with the entity.

In ancient civilizations, craftsmen would often stamp their name or symbol on their goods to signify ownership and quality. These can be considered early forms of branding, but may not perfectly map onto the modern understanding of a brand.

The first ever packaged branded product to retail in England was Dr Robert James Fever-Powder, which was sold in a box. Patented by English physician Robert James in 1746, he claimed it cured fevers and various other maladies, from gout and scurvy to distemper in cattle.

In 1748 Yardley of London began selling one of the world’s first branded products, their famous lavender water in glass bottles.

The first officially registered trademark is believed to be Bass & Co.'s red triangle for Bass Pale Ale, registered in 1876. However, companies used branding techniques, like consistent logos and messaging, well before formal trademark registration.

Lyle's Golden Syrup has been named by the Guinness Book of Records as Britain's oldest brand, with its green and gold packaging having remained almost unchanged since 1885.

By Whitebox at the English-language Wikipedia, 

The brand name 'Linoleum' is considered the first product name to become a generic term, which happened only 14 years after it was invented in the mid 19th century.

Cow is a Japanese brand of shaving foam.

According to the latest 2023 rankings by Interbrand, a leading brand valuation firm, the three most valuable brand names on Earth are Apple, Amazon and Google, in that order.

The two "M"s in M&M's stand for the initials of its inventors: Forrest E. Mars Sr., founder of the Mars candy company and Bruce Murrie, son of Hershey Chocolate's president William F. R. Murrie.

Foreign branding is the process of naming a product to sound exotic. An example is Häagen-Dazs, which was invented in the Bronx.

Fast food restaurants like McDonalds, Wimpy and Burger King use yellow, red, and orange as part of their branding because those are the colors that stimulate hunger.

By Obandoeño12345 - Own work, Wikipedia

The Australian airline QANTAS stands for Queensland And Northern Territories Aerial Service.

The brand Nokia is named after a place in Southern Finland.

The same creative company, Lexicon Branding. came up with the names ‘PowerBook’, ‘BlackBerry’ and ‘Pentium.'

Actress Gwyneth Paltrow named her company Goop because some branding expert told her that all successful internet companies have double o's in their name, so she just put two o’s between her initials.

The owner of a brand name can lost their legal protection for it if people started using it as the common or generic name for a type of product or service. This is what happened to Cellophane, Escalator, Flip Phone, Frisbee, Hovercraft, Kerosene, Sellotape, Trampoline, and Videotape.

Brake

A brake is a mechanical device or system used to slow down or stop the motion of a vehicle or machine. In the context of automobiles, brakes are crucial for controlling the speed and stopping the vehicle when necessary.

The concept of braking systems for vehicles has a long history, and the development of brakes has evolved over time. The first brakes were not specifically designed for automobiles as we know them today, but for other types of transport.

The development of early braking systems predates the Roman Empire when simple brake mechanisms were used on wheeled carts to assist with slowing down or stopping. A mechanism involving wooden blocks pressed directly against the wheels by an effort-multiplying lever, is an example of one of the early braking systems.

These basic braking systems were crucial in reducing the reliance on the strength of horses alone to control the speed of carts. The lever provided a mechanical advantage, allowing the driver to apply force more effectively and slow down or stop the vehicle.

The first practical application of a braking system for a vehicle is often credited to the English "Father of Railways," George Stephenson. In the early 19th century, around 1815, Stephenson developed a steam-powered locomotive known as the "Blücher." This locomotive featured a primitive braking system that used a chain to apply pressure on the wheels, slowing down the train.

For horse-drawn carriages, early braking systems involved using various mechanisms like wooden blocks or shoes applied to the wheels to create friction and slow down the vehicle.

American entrepreneur and engineer George Westinghouse, patented the compressed-air brake on March 5, 1872. .Before his invention, there was no easy way to quickly stop the extremely heavy freight trains that transported goods over land. Brakemen scrambled over the tops of moving cars to activate hand brakes on each one. The system was unreliable, resulting in frequent derailments, and many brakemen were killed or maimed after falling from trains. The air brake solved all of those problems.

Control handle and valve for a Westinghouse Air Brake

The first production car with hydraulic brakes (i.e. using pipes and fluid rather than cables to activate the brakes) was the 1920 Duesenberg, an American luxury car with a "straight eight" engine. Chrysler brought the now universal feature to mass-produced cars in 1924.

Formula One racing is where the most advanced brakes are found. During 1997, German driver Heinz-Harald Frentzen recorded a force of 5.99G under braking. This is around six times the braking performance of a conventional road car and meant that Heinz-Harald’s 65kg body momentarily weighed nearly 390kg. To achieve this deceleration he had to push the brake pedal of his Williams-Renault with a pressure of 150kg.

In 1950, Dunlop announced the disc brake. They helped Jaguar to win the Le Mans 24 Hour race in 1953 were referred to in the press of the time as "plate brakes". The term "discs" came later.

The 1967 Porsche 911S was the first production car to feature ventilated disc brake rotors. Now common, these rotors have cooling channels running between the two friction surfaces to give better cooling and therefore better resistance to brake fade during heavy applications.

Brakes work by creating friction, converting that speedy momentum into heat. In fact, brake discs can reach scorching temperatures of over 500°C during heavy braking!

Most modern cars use disc brakes, where pads squeeze against a rotating disc. But some vehicles, especially older ones, still rock drum brakes, where shoes press against the inside of a rotating drum. Each has its own advantages and quirks.

Forget muscle power! Most car brakes rely on a hydraulic system. When you press the pedal, fluid is pumped to the brakes, multiplying your force and making stopping effortless.

If a car is travelling at 55 miles per hour it will travel 56 feet before the driver can shift his foot from the accelerator to the brake. 

The power generated by the braking system of even a modest family car can exceed 500bhp (375kW), outstripping the engine output of virtually everything on the road.

That annoying squealing you hear sometimes? Those are actually metal "squealers" embedded in the brake pads, warning you they're nearing the end of their life and need replacing. Don't ignore them!

Hybrid and electric cars use their brakes to their advantage. When you slow down, the energy is captured and partially recharged into the battery, boosting efficiency.

Sources Google Bard, Motorcare.com

Brain

BRAINS IN HISTORY

Neanderthal man had a brain capacity 100cc larger than modern man's.

Alcmaeon of Croton in the 6th century BC was probably the first to claim that we think with our brains.

Aristotle believed that the heart was the source of intelligence and the main function of the brain was to cool our blood.

In 2018, archaeologists studying the remains of a young man who died in the 79 AD eruption of Mount Vesuvius made a surprising discovery in Herculaneum. His body had been found lying face-down on a wooden bed in what was likely a seaside building used for priests or guards.

CT scans and chemical analysis revealed that his brain tissue had undergone a process called "vitrification": the extreme heat of the pyroclastic surge (superheated ash cloud) essentially melted the brain matter, and then the rapid cooling that followed caused it to solidify into a glass-like material.

This was the first time scientists had identified a human brain turned into glass by natural events. Even more astonishingly, later studies published in New England Journal of Medicine (2020) showed that the vitrified material still contained preserved neuronal structures — microscopic traces of the man’s nervous system.

Beethoven used to pour cold water over his head to stimulate his brain before sitting down to compose.

In 1848, Vermont railroad worker Phineas Gage survived a 3-foot (0.91 m)-plus iron rod being driven through his head. The resulting medical case was the first to indicate that damage to certain regions of the brain could affect personality and behavior.

Albert Einstein's brain was removed and sent around America to be studied by specialists after he died. The remains were found in the 1970s inside an old cider carton in a doctor's office.

The first brain-scan using x-ray computed tomography (CT scan) was performed at Atkinson Morley Hospital in Wimbledon, London on October 1, 1971. The original 1971 CT Scan took 160 parallel readings with each scan taking a little over 5 minutes. The images from these scans took 2.5 hours to be processed on a large computer.

Historic EMI Scanner

In 2007, a 44-year-old French man went to the doctor complaining of weakness in his left leg. When doctors performed a brain scan, they were shocked to find that he was missing 90% of his brain. The man's brain was filled with cerebrospinal fluid, with only a thin layer of brain tissue left. The man had been living a normal life up until that point. He had a job, a family, and friends. He was able to hold conversations, read, and write. His IQ was tested at 84, which is slightly below average.

Doctors are still not sure how the man was able to live a normal life with so little brain tissue. They believe that the remaining 10% of his brain was able to compensate for the missing tissue.

THE HUMAN BRAIN

The average weight of a human brain is about three pounds, which is about 2% of your body weight.

The brain matures back to front, with the frontal cortex (used for decision making) maturing last.

The human brain reaches its maximum weight (around 1.5kg or 3.3lb) at the age of 19 — and gradually loses small amounts of mass after the age of 50.

The brain shrinks over the course of the day, ending up smaller in the evening – before returning to its full size the next morning.

About 60 per cent of your brain is fat.

The human brain is about 85% water.

Although the cerebellum is only 10% of the brain's volume, it holds over 50% of your brain's total neurons.

From all the oxygen that a human breathes, twenty percent goes to the brain.

There are about 100 billion neurons in a human brain, which is about the same as the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

The most accurate simulation of the human brain ever has been carried out detailing a single second’s worth of brain activity took one of the world’s largest supercomputers 40 minutes to calculate.

Scientists have figured out that the speed of nerve impulses in the brain is 404 feet per second. If an idea is complex enough to take 100 nerve messages from one side of the brain to the other, the thought could be completed in less than a tenth of a second.

It takes our brains 80 milliseconds to process information. That means we are all living ever so slightly in the past.

The power generated by electrical impulses in the human brain would light a 20-watt bulb.

You only use about 10% of your brain even if you're "thinking hard."

The human brain is much more active at night than during the day.

Every time you open your eyes, your brain activity changes drastically.

The human brain is very soft and has a consistency similar to tofu.

The brain itself cannot feel pain, despite its billions of neurons, even if you stick a knife in it.  However, the meninges (coverings around the brain), periosteum (coverings on the bones), and the scalp all have pain receptors and this is why you have migraines.

The left side of your brain controls the right side of your body and vice versa.

The storage capacity of the human brain exceeds 4 Terrabytes.

Experts estimate that in a lifetime, a human brain may retain one quadrillion separate bits of information.

The male brain is 10% larger than the female's but the female brain works more efficiently.

The typical brain uses 20% of the body's total energy and oxygen intake.

Your brain uses one fifth of a calorie per minute.

Half the brain of an eight-year-old child can be removed with no ill-effects

Once a human reaches the age of 35, he/she will start losing approximately 7000 brain cells a day.

While animal brains are part of many countries' cuisines, eating human brains can cause a deadly disease similar to mad cow disease called Kuru. 

ANIMAL BRAINS

The animal whose brain accounts for the largest share of its body weight is the squirrel monkey. It's brain makes up about 5% of its total weight.

Spider brains are so large, that in smaller species they spill into their legs.

A cat's brain is more similar to a human brain than it is to a dog's brain. Humans and cats have identical regions responsible for emotion.

Cat's brain

A hummingbird’s brain makes up 4.2% of its weight—proportionally, that’s the largest of any bird’s.

The animal with the largest brain in proportion to its size is the ant.

A koala's brain is only 0.2% of its body weight.

A manatee has the smallest brain of all mammals in relation to its body mass.

Starfish have no brains.

Source Daily Express