Tuesday, 1 October 2013

What did I learn Today?

Everyday we learn something new. What we learn might be amazing, useful, boring or even useless. Still, everyone learns something new every single day. 

Being an INTP, I don't follow a rigid routine. There are times when I while away time because I don't want to do anything and of course there are times when I work sincerely with massive amount of interest and energy. No matter how I spend my day, I learn something new with each passing day.


'What Did I Learn Today?' comprises of random facts, thoughts and feelings. When I stumble across something interesting I jot it down in my journal. 


Today is October 1,2013.What Did I Learn Today? 


1) The Top 10 most common Phobias : 
For those of you who want a formal definition for the word "phobia" : According to the American Psychiatric Association, a phobia is an irrational and excessive fear of an object or situation. 


Knowing more than a hundred phobias by name and having a few myself,  I wanted to find out what the most common phobias are. Below is a list of the most common phobias that people all over the world suffer from. 



  • Arachnophobia : The fear of spiders
  • Ophidiophobia : The fear of snakes
  • Acrophobia : The fear of heights
  • Agoraphobia: The fear of open spaces or crowded public places
  • Cynophobia: The fear of dogs
  • Astraphobia: The fear of thunder & lightning
  • Nyctophobia: The fear of darkness
  • Social phobia : Fear of being evaluated negatively in social situations.
  • Pteromerhanophobia: The fear of flying
  • Mysophobia : Fear of being contaminated with dirt or germs.

Out of the ten phobias listed above,  the only one that I have is Arachnophobia. What are the phobias that you have?

2) Fun Facts about the number 77: I joined Yahoo! Answers recently and I have mixed opinions about it. There are a huge amount of people out there who use the site effectively and I do find a few trolls. 

I came across the following question in YA and being a mathematics graduate I definitely had a few points to give out. 

'Question: What is special about the number 77? '

I wanted to make sure if there were any other facts that I did not know already. On doing some internet searching I came across a few.

The compiled answer is given below.

1) If you add up the first 8 prime numbers you get the number 77 (2+3+5+7+11+13+17+19 = 77).

2) The number 77 is the number associated with Jesus Christ

3) 77 is the product of two consecutive primes ( 7 & 11)

4) 77 is the sum of three squares i.e 4^2+5^2+6^2

5) The smallest number with a persistence of 4: 7×7 = 49; 4×9 = 36; 3×6 = 18; 1×8 = 8.

6) 77 is the largest number that cannot be written as a sum of distinct numbers whose reciprocals add up to 1.

7) Any number having a abcabc numeral pattern is divisible by 77 (replace each letter with a digit. E.g. 123123)


3) The longest word without vowels ( in English) is : TWYNDYLLYNGS.

Twyndyllyngs is an archaic/obsolete word (of Welsh origin) which means 'twins', or, more accurately, it is a version of 'twinlings,' i.e. twins! 


English pronunciation 
singular:TWIN-diling 
plural: TWIN-dilingz 


Welsh pronunciation: TuhWIN-deellings, with the 'double L' pronounced the Welsh way. 

This word is often cited as one of the longest 'no-vowels' words in the English language. However, although the five letters a,e,i,o,u, are always exclusively used as vowels, it should be noted that the letters w and y are also sometimes used to represent vowel sounds. 

Okay, What did you learn today ? 
Comments are welcome. 

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