Post 996480161

Okay, a bit of trivia (from the Trivia newsletter) and then I'd better get on with it.

» Tooth enamel is the hardest substance manufactured by the human body.

» In the second it takes to turn the page of a book, you will lose about 3 million red blood cells. During that same second, your bone marrow will have produced the same number of new ones.

» The epidermis, the outermost layer of the skin, sheds itself at a rate of about a million cells every 40 minutes.

» The average square inch of skin holds 650 sweat glands, 20 blood vessels, 60,000 melanocytes (pigment cells), and more than a thousand nerve endings.

» The rush of air produced by a cough moves at a speed approaching 600 miles per hour.

» The brain reaches its maximum weight at age 20 - about 3 pounds. Over the next 60 years, as billions of nerve cells die within the brain, it loses about 3 ounces. The brain begins to lose cells at a rate of 50,000 per day by the age of 30.

» Between ages 30 and 70, a nose may lengthen and widen by as much as half an inch and the ears may be a quarter-inch longer - due to the fact that cartilage is one of the few tissues that continue to grow as we age.

» The pituitary gland - responsible for producing the hormone that regulates growth - is only the size of a pea and weighs little more than a small paper clip.