Hi, we're here from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes.

I'm Cody Gough.

And I'm Ashley Hamer.

Today you learn about why a normal body temperature isn't really 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit,

why Mars Rovers should look for rocks that look like

feta chini, and how often you should replace your toothbrush.

Let's brush off some curiosity.

Ready to have your mind blown. A normal body temperature isn't really 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit or 37 degrees Celsius.

It turns out that the old 98.6 degree rule of thumb is a result of outdated science that nobody thought to question, until

relatively recently.

The temperature you're probably familiar with came from the 1868 publication titled The Course of Temperature in Diseases

by a German physician named Carl Reinhold Agust Vunderlich.

This book was a big deal because Vunderlich had analyzed a ridiculously massive data set to come up with

the findings in it, as in several million temperature records of around 25,000 patients.

After he analyzed the data, he wrote this historic statement, quote,

when the organism is in a normal condition, the general temperature of the body

maintains itself at the physiologic point, 37 degrees Celsius or 98.6

degrees Fahrenheit, unquote.

Vunelik also concluded that the upper limit of the normal body

temperature was 100.4 degrees

Fahrenheit or 38 degrees Celsius.

And anything above that counted as fever.

...