Every month, we inEvidence writers virtually travel the globe in pursuit of a good story, helping clients grow by crafting their customers’ journeys into compelling, relatable narratives. Often, it’s the incidental details that elevate a story.

Here’s this month’s miscellaneous mashup of most interesting facts.

• Unicorns do exist! Currently, over 12,000 globally. In tech-terms, they’re privately held companies that are valued at over $1billion and not listed on the stock market.

   

• The Dutch produce around six million souvenir clogs each year.

   

• In the Twi dialect of Ghana’s Akan language, the word ‘nsano’ means ‘fingertips.’

   

• A valley settlement in Norway that lives in shadow for nearly half the year has installed giant mirrors on a mountain to redirect sunlight into the town’s square. The idea was first mooted by a local developer 100 years ago but deemed too costly to realize at the time.

   

• The inspiration for Disneyland’s Sleeping Beauty Castle is Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria. It was built by King Ludwig II of Bavaria in the 1870s and included electric lighting, flushing toilets, central heating and an electric buzzer system for summoning servants.

   

• The ancient Greeks used blackberries as a cure for piles.

   

• An ancient Egyptian pregnancy test involved a woman peeing on wheat and spelt over a period of days. If the barley grew, she was pregnant with a male child. If the wheat grew – a female child. And if neither germinated – she wasn’t pregnant. In 1963 the method was tested and found to be 70% effective in confirming pregnancy.

   

• The horned frog – actually a lizard – once roamed Texas in abundance. Its defense mechanism against predators is to shoot blood from its eyes. When threatened, blood pressure builds in its head cause vessels around the eyes to burst.

   

• The London Stock Exchange dates to the 17th century. It started in 1698 when John Castaing began listing the prices of stocks and commodities at Jonathan’s Coffee House in London.

   

• In 2018, 5 billion YouTube hits for the song Despacito used the same amount of energy needed to heat 40,000 US homes annually.