Male recklessness, the almighty liver and other #FridayFunFacts

Ahh those fateful words, "hold my beer, bro..." well the stats are in and men are more than three and a half times more likely to die from all types of accidental causes than women are.

Euphemisms are deliberately meant to obscure meaning, but you can usually figure out where they come from. So what about that favourite of old ladies - "I'm just going to spend a penny, darling"? The term comes from London's famous Crystal Palace in 1852. The permanent exhibition in Hyde Park had the world's first flushable toilet and it cost one penny to do so. People thought this was so amazing that they paid penny after penny for sheer interest's sake.

The human liver is pretty amazing. It detoxifies our blood, regulates our metabolism, and it can even regenerate if part of it is removed. It's like a super organ with a major weakness - your drinking habit. But this isn't a lecture. This is a fun fact - your liver grows and shrinks by up to 40% every 24 hour period! 

But wait, there's more - on a few rare but totally real occasions, a fertilised egg took a wrong turn down the fallopian tubes and wound up attaching itself to the liver (a rich source of blood) and a human baby proceeded to grow in the liver. These babies unfortunately don't make it, but it is an amazing feat of biology.

And finally, some etymology for the week - "biscuit" is from the Latin bis, meaning ‘twice’ and coctus, 'cooked', because they were first baked and then dried out in an oven. So if your biscuits have gooey centres, you know what to do!