Victoria’s Read

~According to an ancient Sumerian legend, the universe was created by a female, the goddess Tiamat. This role of a female creator is not unique, as the Australian Aboriginal creation myth also credits the creation of life to a woman.

~The English word “girl” was initially used to describe a young person of either sex. It was not until the beginning of the sixteenth century that the term was used specifically to describe a female child.

~The word “woman” is believed to have derived from the Middle English term wyfman, broken down simply as the wife (wyf) of man. In Old English, women were described simply as wyf, while the term man was used to describe a human person, regardless of gender.

Youngest Mother: The youngest mother is Lina Medina, who delivered a 6½-pound boy by cesarean section in Lima, Peru in 1939, at an age of 5 years and 7 months.

Oldest Mother: On Apr 9, 2003, Satyabhama Mahapatra, a 65-year-old retired schoolteacher in India, became the world’s oldest mother when she gave birth to a baby boy. Satyabhama and her husband had been married 50 years, but this is their first child.

Most Surviving Children: Bobbie McCaughey is the mother who holds the record for the most surviving children from a single birth. She gave birth to the first set of surviving septuplets.

Shortest Interval Between Two Children: Jayne Bleackley is the mother who holds the record for the shortest interval between two children.  The babies were born 208 days apart.

Longest Interval Between Two Children: Elizabeth Ann Buttle is the mother who holds the record for the longest interval between the birth of two children.  The babies were born 41 years 185 days apart.

Highest Recorded Number of Children: The highest officially recorded number of children born to one mother is 69. Between 1725 and 1765, she gave birth to 16 pairs of twins, seven sets of triplets and four sets of quadruplets.

Highest Number of Children in Modern Times: The modern world record for giving birth is held by Leontina Albina from San Antonio, Chile. She is the mother of 64 children.

~Heels were invented in the Middle East to help lift the foot from the burning sand.

~In Ukraine, a woman’s shirt is very important. Every woman was supposed to know how to make a shirt. The average women had around 15-20 shirts while well-to-do women had over 50 shirts.

~In Samoa, it is acceptable for a family who has too many sons, to raise the youngest boy as a daughter. He is known as a fa’afafine, is given a girl’s name, wears feminine clothing and is allowed to use the ladies bathroom.

~The first lady’s boot was designed for Queen Victoria in 1840

~Female rabbits reabsorb their embryo for the proteins.

~In times of stress such as extreme hot spells, the female mushroom coral switches its sex so that most of the population becomes male. The advantage of doing so is that male corals can more readily cope with stress when resources are limited.

~Singing to females makes male birds’ brains happy.

~ Thanks to evolution, Whiptail Lizard males are nonexistent, but the whiptail lizard ladies have found a way around in vitro. A female will get a surge of testosterone, mimicking male behavior enough to trigger reproduction in another female, who can lay eggs and fertilize herself. How’s that for girl power?

-Many years ago, a woman would drop her handkerchief in front of the man she liked. If he picked it up for her an introduction could be made. Lace has always been part of women’s handkerchiefs and it has from that time been linked to romance.

-The red rose was the favorite flower of Venus, the Roman goddess of love. The color red stands for strong romantic feelings making the red rose the flower of love.

-In the Middle Ages young men and women drew the names from a bowl to see who would be their Valentine. They would wear this name pinned on their sleeves for one week. This was known as “to wear your heart on your sleeve.

-A female hippopotamus can eat more food relative to its body size than any other ruminant.

-For the first month of their lives, newborn killer whales and bottlenose dolphins do not sleep but remain mobile for 24 hours a day. As do their mothers.

-Even though they are one of the largest animals on earth, elephants are one of the gentlest creatures when it comes to mating. At an interval or 3 to 6 months, elephants start looking for a mate. Once this has been found, the round of flirting begins, the male offering the female food or squirts of water. After a month or so, the female eventually gives in and the actual mating can begin.

-A female house sparrow will often seek out the nest of another female that her partner has also mated with. She will then kill the first female’s young, to remove the competition and ensure that the male spends as much time as possible helping to raise her chicks.

-A worm-like amphibian, the caecilian takes parenting to a new level. By elongating specializes stratified epithelial cells, mothers transform their skin until it is twice as thick, and it is then eaten by their offspring.

-”Lesbos” is a Greek island where Sappho a Greek female poet lived and wrote about friendship and love between women at around 600 BC.

-A mother hen turns her egg approximately 50 times in a day. This is so the yolk does not stick to the shell.

-Female brown trout fake orgasms to encourage males to ejaculate prematurely. By doing so, they dupe their partner into thinking it has successfully mated, before the female fish moves on to find a better male.

-41% of women apply moisturizer a minimum three
times a day.

-66% of home based businesses are owned by women.

-70% of the poor people in the world are female.

-96% of candles that are purchased are by women.

-93% of all greeting cards are purchased by women.

-Grapefruit scent will make middle aged women appear six  years younger to men. The perception is not reciprocal and the grapefruit scent on men has no effect on women’s perception

-The women of Iceland earn two-thirds of their nation’s university degrees.

-The average woman in New Zealand doesn’t give birth until she is nearly 30 years old.

-Mexican women spend 15.3% of their life in ill health.