1
Blood is blue inside your body. Human blood is the same
color inside your body as it is outside: red. Our veins look
blue because the tissue covering them changes the way light
is absorbed and scattered, which affects our perception of
their color.4
Jesus Christ
was born on
December 25. The
Gospels of Matthew
and Luke never men-
tion the date of Jesus’s
birth. So why do we
celebrate December 25
as the day that Christ
was born? It could be
because of a Roman
Catholic historian from
the third century,
Sextus Julius Africanus,
who believed Jesus
was conceived on
March 25—nine
months before what
is now Christmas Day.“Facts” That
Are
FALSE3
The hottest
part of a
chili pepper
is the seeds.
Capsaicin,
a chemical
compound
that binds
to the pain
receptors on
our nerves to
produce that
fiery heat, is
most concen-
trated in the
inner white rib
of the chili pep-
per. The seeds
don’t actually
contain any capsaicin,
but they may be coated
in it because they touch
the rib.2
Paul Revere
shouted “The British
are coming!” Yo u ca n
thank Henry Wads-
worth Longfellow and
his poem “Paul Revere’s
Ride” for spreading that
tale. No one knows
what, if anything, Re-
vere shouted through
the streets of Lexington,
Massachusetts, though
we do know he told one
guard that “the regulars
are coming out.”Reader’s Digest Cover Story
ewing galloway/uig/shutterstock (revere). artkio/shutterstock (pepper)