Things I learned today

Look what I learned while suring the net.



In Sweden, Easter week begins with a candy hunt that is very similar to Halloween trick-or-treating. Children dress up as påskkärringar, or Easter witches, with headscarves and long skirts, and faces painted with red cheeks and freckles. They go door to door wishing people happy Easter, and collecting candy and small change in copper kettles in exchange for a drawing or a song. Although the practice of dressing up in costumes began fairly recently (in the last 200 years), the association between witches and Easter began much earlier. It was believed that on Maundy Thursday, witches flew off to the mythical Blåkulla--blue mountain--to meet with the devil before church on Good Friday.



In some species of sharks, the embryos eat one another in the womb. This is a classic example of "survival of the fittest." In the group of sharks known as sand tigers, the females typically produce six to eight embryos in each of their two oviducts. The biggest and strongest of these will kill and eat its weaker siblings, leaving one "supershark" in each oviduct that survives to birth.



In 1663 the European settlers experienced their first earthquake in America



Electric Christmas tree lights were first used in 1895. The idea for them came from an American, Ralph E. Morris. The new lights proved safer than the traditional candles.


In 2006 - Mariesa Weber, a 5'3" Florida woman, fell behind a 6' tall bookcase in her family's home and suffocated. She was not discovered for 11 days; her family thought she had been kidnapped.