Tall Girls
Where are 19-year-old women tallest?
Where are 19-year-old women tallest?
| # | Country | Mean height of 19-year-old girls (cm) | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 🇬🇧 United Kingdom | 163.9 | 2019 |
| 2 | 🇨🇳 China | 163.5 | 2019 |
| 3 | 🇺🇸 United States | 163.3 | 2019 |
| 4 | 🇯🇵 Japan | 158.5 | 2019 |
| 5 | 🇮🇳 India | 155.2 | 2019 |
United Kingdom leads this card at 163.9, with India at 155.2. The gap is 8.7 cm. United Kingdom is 1.06 times India.
Chinese 19-year-old women are now as tall as American ones, after better childhood diets since the 1980s. US heights barely rose. Note: the top three overlap within uncertainty, so treat them as a near-tie.
Source: NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC), Lancet 2020;396:1511-24 See the source.
The bristle toothbrush
Which country invented the bristle toothbrush?
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| The bristle toothbrush | CHN |
Hog-bristle brushes are Chinese. The Smithsonian puts bone-handled ones in the Tang dynasty, and the Library of Congress dates a written one to 1498. William Addis in England mass-produced them around 1780. Egyptian chew sticks are older, and they are not brushes.
Source: Library of Congress, Who invented the toothbrush?; Smithsonian National Museum of American History See the source.
The word shampoo
Which country gave English the word shampoo?
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| The word shampoo | IND |
Shampoo is Hindi chāmpo, to press or knead, which is why an English word looks British. Sake Dean Mahomed, from Patna, opened Indian vapour baths in Brighton in 1814 and worked oils into the scalp. Poured soap came later in Europe.
Source: Etymonline, shampoo; Wikipedia, Sake Dean Mahomed See the source.
Free T
Free testosterone in men aged 65+
| # | Country | Age-adjusted mean free testosterone, men 65 and older (ng/dL) | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 🇭🇰 Hong Kong men | 10.49 | 65+ |
| 2 | 🇸🇪 Swedish men | 9.52 | 65+ |
| 3 | 🇺🇸 US White men | 9.14 | 65+ |
| 4 | 🇺🇸 US Black men | 9.06 | 65+ |
| 5 | 🇺🇸 US Asian men | 8.82 | 65+ |
| 6 | 🇹🇹 Tobago men | 8.76 | 65+ |
| 7 | 🇯🇵 Japanese men | 8.17 | 65+ |
Japanese men have the lowest free testosterone here (8.17 ng/dL) even though their total testosterone is among the highest, because their SHBG is about 47% higher than the other groups. Hong Kong is highest (10.49). These are men aged 65 and older.
Age-adjusted ng/dL from small, non-uniform studies, often one city, not one survey. Many countries have no usable study. French West Indies is not a country. Croatia (752 in 1987) and Armenia (556 in 1980) are left out because the compiler has no current figure. The printed table still shows the United States at 459; the 25 Nov 2024 note revises it to 451 (NHANES 2021-2023).
Source: Orwoll et al., J Clin Endocrinol Metab 2010;95:E121–E129. Men aged 65+. Total testosterone is the age-adjusted mean in Table 1 (ng/ml × 100 = ng/dL). Every sample was measured in one mass-spectrometry lab. Table 1 prints the free-testosterone figures as 8.17–10.49 beside totals of about 4.5–5.3 ng/ml. A free fraction near 2% of those totals is about 9 ng/dL, so the free-testosterone number is reported here in ng/dL. See the source.