WEIRD FACTS ABOUT
DOG
The first mammal to orbit the earth was the Russian dog Laika, sent into space in 1957.
No plans were made for its return trip and it burned up on re-entry.
The first dogs to return from space alive were Belka and Strelka ('Squirrel' and 'Little Arrow') in 1960.
Strelka later gave birth to six puppies, one of which was given to President Kennedy.
Bothy Twistleton-Wykeham-Fiennes, a Jack Russell terrier, is the only dog to have been at both the North and South Poles.
Each day dogs deposit between 4 and 5 tons of excrement on London streets.
In 1875, a Frenchman named Huret patented a three-wheeled vehicle called the Cynophere, whose wheels were powered by dogs on treadmills.
In January 2003, German inventor Stephan Licht was granted a patent for a 'harness for dog-wearing sunglasses'.
In 2005, an Italian court ordered a man to pay £694 a year maintenance to his ex-wife for their dog.
The unnamed women in the divorce case argued that the cost of keeping the dog was almost as expensive as raising a child.
In 2008, the German city of Dusseldorf introduced blue plastic shoes for its police dogs because of the high incidence of pawn injuries when patrolling streets littered with broken bottles. "I'm not sure they like it, but they'll have to get used to it," a police spokesman said.
On 11 June 1991, Rodney H. Metts and Barry D. Thomas were granted US patent No. 5,023,850 for their invention of a Dog Watch, which they describe as 'A novelty clock, watch, and the like for keeping time at an animal's rate, defined in terms of a multiple of human rate by dividing the average lifetime of a particular animal into the average lifetime of a human being.'
In other words, for dogs it multiplies time by seven, because humans live seven times as long as dogs.
The first diagram accompanying the patent document shows 'a wristwatch worn by a typical dog'.
The record for the largest dog litter was 24 puppies born to a mastiff in England in January 2005.
The top ten dogs' names in the UK are as follows:
1 Max
2 Molly
3 Sam/Sammy
4 Meg/Megan
5 Ben
6 Holly
7 Charlie
8 Oscar
9 Barney
10 Millie/Milly
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DARWIN
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DEGREE
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DIOGENES
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FLEAS
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MOON
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PAKISTAN
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ROUSSEAU
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SAUSAGES
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SNORING
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SOUTH KOREA
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SWIMMING
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TASMANIA
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TITANIC
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