The world's most popular goals, according to 43 Things.

These experiments with infrasonics were as dangerous as those early investigations of nuclear energy. Dr. Gavreau and his associates were dangerously ill for nearly a day after these preliminary tests. These maladies were sustained for hours after the device was turned off. Infrasonic assaults on the body are the more lethal because they come with dreadful silence. The eyesight of Dr. Gavreau and his fellow workers were affected for days. More dangerously were their internal organs affected: the heart, lungs, stomach, intestinal cavity were filled with continual painful spasms for an equal time period.

After I read a post on cybergeisha.net about the 51-year old nurse who choked an amateur hitman to death with her bare hands, I idly wondered how physically difficult it really could have been for her, which by twists and turns led me to this tid-bit of information:

Since [diving seal] muscles are deprived of their usual supply of blood and oxygen, they compensate by containing large amounts of a special compound called myoglobin, an iron-bonding pigment related to hemoglobin that stores oxygen. Myoglobin helps the seal to tolerate the large accumulation of carbon dioxide in its bloodstream that prompts breathing during periods of prolonged breath-holding.

Some mammals get all the luck.

... in discovering an algorithm critical for X-ray diffraction microscopy, Elser and colleagues solved two problems. First, they gave researchers a new tool for imaging the tiniest and most delicate of biological specimens. And second, they discovered that the same algorithm also solves the internationally popular numbers puzzle Sudoku.

Not just one puzzle. All of them.

Dextro-amphetamine and diazepam were administered orally to the spider Araneus diadematus. Thread connections from the spider's orb web were examined by photomicroscopy. Amphetamine altered fine structure but diazepam did not. Results are discussed in terms of disturbed spinning behavior.

Speaking of faked moon landings, from One giant blunder for mankind:

But just 37 years after Apollo 11, it is feared the magnetic tapes that recorded the first moon walk - beamed to the world via three tracking stations, including Parkes's famous "Dish" - have gone missing at NASA's Goddard Space Centre in Maryland.