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Thursday 14 July 2016

Motion sickness

Motion sickness is caused by the inability for your brain to coordinate with your eyes. This causes your body to believe you've been poisoned and it starts vomiting to 'get the poison out.'

The reason some people get sick when they read in the car is because your ear and your eyes disagree about whether or not you're moving.

King John of England employed a Royal Head Holder to counter seasickness. Whenever the monarch took to sea, his servant Solomon Attefeld was on hand to hold the royal head steady.

Early in his navy service, Admiral Nelson discovered that he suffered from seasickness. The chronic complaint dogged him for the rest of his life.

The phrase "feeling under the weather" is from sailors who would go below deck to ride out storms and avoid feeling seasick. In other words, they would literally go under the bad weather.


Lawrence of Arabia was famous for riding a camel. However, he suffered from profound motion sickness when riding the humped dromedary.

During the 1950's NASA recruited deaf people to research why they didn't get motion sickness. They were chosen because their disabled inner ear made them immune to motion sickness.Tests included flights in 'Vomit Comet' and sailing in the rough seas (researchers got violently sick, while deaf people just played cards happily).

The 1986 Top Gun movie contained no footage of the actors in the air because they all vomited while shooting.

Space sickness is a condition experienced by around half of astronauts during adaptation to weightlessness. The US federal government invested millions attempting to solve the problem.

Asians are more susceptible to motion sickness than people of other races.

Fish can become seasick if kept aboard a ship.

“Nausea" in Greek means seasickness (naus means ship).

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