Indian with 39 wives, 94 kids is the strangest story of 2011

Wives and children of Ziona Chana take part in a ceremonial e3vening prayer in Baktawng village in Serchhip district of Mizoram. File photo: Ritu Raj Konwar

An Indian man with 39 wives, 94 children and 33 grandchildren, all living under one roof, holds the numero uno position in Ripley’s Believe It or Not top 11 strangest stories for this year.

Ripley’s Believe It or Not! is considered to be the authority on all things odd, amazing and unusual.

The annual list of the strangest stories of the year was released by it on Thursday.

Topping the list if 11 strange stories, is the story reported by London based The Telegraph, about Ziona Chana, who lives in a four storeyed building with 100 rooms in a mountainous village in Mizoram state, sharing borders with Burma and Bangladesh.

“It’s a safe bet that Ziona Chana would not be impressed watching ‘19 Kids and Counting’ or ‘Sister Wives’ The 66 year old Indian man has 39 wives, 94 children and 33 grandchildren,” said Ripley’s Believe It or Not in a statement.

“I once married 10 women in one year,” Mr. Chana is quoted as saying by The Telegraph.

According to the daily, Mr. Chana met his oldest wife, who is three years older than he is, when he was 17.

Other strangest stories include ‘implanting organs in the name of art’; ‘Liechtenstein for Hire at $ 70,000 a Night’; ’Blind Dog Gets Own Guide Dog’; ‘Cemetery Collector with 29 Bodies Arrested’; ‘Alabama Company Turns Gun Lovers’ Ashes into Ammunition’ and ‘Mexican Vampire Woman Maria Jose Cristerna Immortalized in Wax by Ripley’s’ among others.

Keanu Reeves gave up most of his Matrix sequel money and gave it to the special effects and costume teams!

Keanu Reeves is considered to not be motivated by money among the Hollywood circles. He usually compromises with movie studios to star in big budget movies in order to be able to make smaller, quirky films. 

In 2011, he signed away $35 million from the back-end deals he had made from the Matrix sequels and gave it to the special effects and costume design teams because he felt that "they were the ones that made the movie and they should participate." He did, however make $10 million upfront for the sequels. 

This wasn't the first time Reeves has done something like this. It has been reported that he took paycuts on the Devil's Advocate and The Replacements so that he could work with Al Pacino and Gene Hackman. 

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Caterpillars have more than twice as many muscles as humans do.

Some species of caterpillar have 4,000 muscles in their body. Compare that to the human muscular system, which is made up of only 639. It’s not unusual for insects to have more muscles than humans; grasshoppers have about 900.

Still, why do caterpillars have so many more muscles? It’s for a unique form of transportation. Caterpillars use all of their muscles to move, but not in the same way that we do. They contract their body muscles, forcing their internal organs forward. When caterpillars move forward, their guts move first, and then their bodies follow. No other animal is known to move like this.
(Sources: 1, 2)

Steven Spielberg did not originally intend to shoot Schindler's List himself!

Based on the true story of Oskar Schindler, a man who risked his life to save 1,100 people from the Holocaust, Schindler's List is widely considered to be Steven Spielberg's best film. It earned him his first (of two) Best Director Oscar in 1993. However, his original intention was to pass on making the film!

In 1983, Spielberg convinced Universal Studios to buy the rights to the novel "Schindler's Ark," and met with the writer. He told the writer he would get started on the movie "ten years from now." At first, Spielberg was unsure of his maturity as a director to take on a movie about the Holocaust. 

He first asked director Roman Polanski to film it, who turned it down because his mother had been killed at Auschwitz. Later, Martin Scorsese was attached to the film, but Spielberg decided to do it himself, because he didn't want to let go a chance of making a movie for his children and family about the Holocaust.

(Sources 1, and 2)

There is a rainbow colored Tree

The Eucalyptus Deglupta is a tall tree, otherwise known as the rainbow eucalyptus. It is found in the northern hemisphere, in places like New Britain, new guinea etc.

The tree sheds patches of its bark and exposes a fresh bright-green bark. Eventually the color and then darkens. It it will through blue, purple orange and maroon hues. The tree sheds its bark at various times throughout the year, which gives it its rainbow color.

Google mows their lawn with GOATS!

In an attempt to be more 'green,' Google decided to not bring a lawn mowing service to cut down the grass in the fields that are next to its headquarters in Mountain View, CA. 

Instead, they rented a pack of goats from California Grazing. They said that it costs them roughly the same as bringing in lawn mowers to do the job, and they're cuter to watch. What I want to know is... why are they renting the goats? Shouldn't the California Grazers be happy their animals are being fed? 

Gandhi wrote to Hitler... TWICE!

What do an iconic peace-loving protester and easily the most hated man in all of human history have to do with each other? The answer is simple: a plea that was never heard. Mahatma Gandhi wrote to Adolf Hitler on July 23, 1939 to ask him to keep World War II from happening. At the time, Hitler was already progressing through Europe, having invaded Czechoslovakia earlier that spring. The letter never reached Hitler, (for unknown reasons) and it is hard to image that it would have had much impact if it did.

Gandhi wrote two letters to Hitler, which are on display at Mani Bhavan, where Gandhi lived in Mumbai from 1917-1934. These letters are a known, but still shocking, part of the history of WWII. Certainly, they make you wonder what could have been, and even spark speculation about what the world leaders of our time really think about the current state of the world.

There are more than 20,000 slaves buried in New York!

Archaeologists in New York have been investigating a burial site located under the busy New York streets. They estimate that about 20,000 slaves were buried under the metropolis. They've found many skeletons with filed teeth, a practice that leads them to believe that they arrived to New York straight from Africa. These slaves helped build the city back when it was becoming the economic center of the United States.

One horrible finding that has been found on these slave burial grounds is that half of the remains were children under 12 years old! Researchers speculate that it was more cost effective for slave owners to work people to death and replace them instead of taking good care of them, so they took people that were young, but ready to work.

Reattached fingers don't wrinkle with water!

Researchers saw this as a paradoxical response to fingers being immersed in water. The reason fingers wrinkle is because blood flow to the fingers is reduced, causing the bodies that regulate body temperature to lose volume and they pull the skin structure downwards. 

However, when they found that a reattached finger didn't act the same way, it made the scientists think that maybe the skin shrinking was not triggered by an inherent property of the skin itself, but rather it's activated by nerves! When a finger is reattached, the nerve endings don't function in the same way anymore, so this suggests that the nervous system triggers the response to wrinkle!

There is a breathable liquid!

Perfluorohexane is a component in which hydrogen atoms from hexane are replaced by fluorine. It is mostly used as a solvent and coolant. However, one of the coolest things about this component is that due to its molecular structure, it allows space for gas molecules to be lodged into the liquid from the atmosphere. This means that there is oxygen lodged in between its molecules in a higher concentration than the atmosphere. This phenomenom allows for animals to continue breathing and not drown!

The uses for this property are not just a novelty. The liquid is used to treat burn victims, because their lungs can be filled with this liquid and avoid problems like pulmonary edema, which is caused when the inside of the lungs have been burnt.

Google unsuccessfully tried to sell itself in 1999 for $1 million

Remember Excite.com? Neither do most people. However, they were big cats in the search engine business right before the year 2000. Back then, Google was not the behemoth it is nowadays; in fact, it was still a project from Stanford Graduate students who thought it was taking too much time that would be better spent studying. 

Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the creators of Google then went to Excite and tried to sell him the search engine for $1 million. Apparently this was a laughable proposal for then CEO, George Bell. He not only rejected their offer, he also threw an Excite venture capitalists out of his office when he tried to negotiate them down to only $750,000! This has gone down in history as one of the dumbest business decisions ever. 

During World War I, France built a fake Paris to fool Germany

France decided to make a fake city of Paris to keep German planes from bombarding the real city. The fake city was built just north of the real one. There were electric lights, replica buildings, and even a copy of the Gare du Nord—the station from which high-speed trains now travel to and from London.

The plan would have worked because the radars were much more primitive in 1918. The war ended before they could finish the fake city, so it was never put to test. The only remains we have today are pictures taken back then.

Mickey Mouse's original name was Mortimer Mouse

Mortimer's name was originally meant for Mickey Mouse but Walt Disney's wife Lillian thought the original name made Mickey seem pompous. Years later, the name was used for a new character created to be a rival for Mickey.

Mortimer only appeared in the cartoon "Mickey's Rival" and was never seen again until the late 90s early 2000s when Mortimer's popularity skyrocketed and landed him roles in several Mickey Mouse related material.

Underground Skyscrapers Exist!

An underground building, known as an “Earth-Scraper” is being built in Mexico City, and will be 65 stories deep. The earth-scraper will be called "The Heart of The City", and will have a central plaza to encourage social activities throughout society.

The building will be pyramid shaped and the idea of building it beneath the soil is to keep the Aztec tradition of building underground.

During WWI, a British soldier had a chance to kill Hitler, but didn't!

In the last moments before the end of World War I, Private Henry Tandey fought in a battle near the French town of Marcoing, when a wounded enemy soldier entered his line of fire.

Deciding that he could't shoot an unarmed, wounded man, he only took aim but never fired. The enemy nodded as a thanking gestured and limped away. The enemy? Adolf Hitler. 

Tandrey was later given given the Victoria Cross, a high honor in the English army. Hitler even kept a newspaper clipping of this event and even sent his regards through the Prime Minister of England!

The Chevrolet emblem is based off of a wallpaper design from Paris

It’s a little disconcerting that the logo for Chevrolet--the company that identified itself with baseball, hot dogs, and apple pie--was inspired by (gulp) the French! Several stories about the emblem’s history exist. But according to the most popular version, Chevrolet cofounder William Durant was inspired by a pattern he saw on wallpaper in a Paris hotel. It’s enough to make Hank Hill shudder.

A spider from Hawaii has a smiley face on its back

Found only on the islands of Oahu, Molokai, Maui, and Hawaii, the happy face spider, such as this one guarding its eggs on a leaf in Maui, is known for the unique patterns that decorate its pale abdomen. Scientists believe Theridion grallator may have developed its distinctive markings to discourage birds from eating it.

(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Deadly Silk: Spiderwebs," August 2001, National Geographic magazine)

The average person eats 35 tons of food in a lifetime

That’s equal to 1500 pounds or 680.4 kilograms a year! In addition to the weight of the food, Americans jointly eat 900 billion calories every day!

900 billion calories, if you can imagine, is equivalent to 76,726,342.711 slices of cheese pizza! Since it takes 3500 calories to create one pound, consuming 900 billion calories would cause someone to gain 257142857.14 pounds or 116,638,038 kilograms