Fun Fact About Kissing

Kiss is good for you!

Do you know...

• You burn 26 calories in a one minute kiss.
• The scientific name for kissing is philematology.
• Eskimos, Polynesians and Malaysians rub noses instead of kissing.
• In Ireland, you will have good luck if you kiss the Blarney Stone.
• Romans kissed each other on the eyes or the mouth as a greeting.
• Victorian etiquette required a man to kiss the back of a ladies hand.
• A standard greeting in Europe is a kiss on both cheeks - could be two (French), could be three (Dutch). . . or even four.
• In Russia, the highest sign of recognition was a kiss from the Tsar.
• African tribes pay homage to their Chief by kissing the ground where he has walked.
  
  
• The average person spends two weeks (only?!!) of their life kissing.
• Longest kiss - 29 hours by contestants in the "Breath Savers Longest Kiss Challenge" in New York on March 24, 1998.
• Longest underwater kiss - 2 minutes and 18 seconds in Tokyo, Japan, on April 2, 1980.
• First movie kiss - John C Rice kissed May Irwin in the film called "The Kiss" (1896).
• Most kisses in a single movie - 127 in the movie "Don Juan" (1927). Mary Astor and Estelle Taylor got all of those kisses from John Barrymore.
• Longest movie kiss - 3 minutes and 5 seconds between Jane Wyman and Regis Tommey in, "You're in the Army Now" (1941).
  

Beware where you kiss!
In some places kissing is a crime - it's illegal in Indiana for a mustached man to "habitually kiss human beings", in Hartford, Connecticut it's illegal for a husband to kiss his wife on Sunday, and in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, it's a crime to kiss a stranger.

French Kiss

A French kiss is a kiss, usually romantic or sexual in nature, in which one participant's tongue touches the other's tongue and usually enters his or her mouth. It is also known as tongue kissing.

French kissing stimulates the lips, tongue and mouth, which are all areas very sensitive to touch, and the practice is considered to be pleasurable, highly intimate, and sexually arousing.

Studying animal behavior, Thierry Lodé, an evolutionary biologist, argues that the French kiss has a real function: to explore the sexual partner's immune system via the saliva. Initiating the sexual desire, the French kiss allows the partners to avoid inbreeding.

According to Wordorigins.org, the term "French Kiss" dated from at least the 1920s but doesn't know exactly who coined the phrase.

Like all human behavior, kisses have both a genetic component and an environmental component. Humans need strong emotional bonds with other people, and part of this bonding is brought about by physical touch. It is in our gene.

Our hands and lips are so sensitive, physical touch to these areas stimulates a greater feeling of touch than other areas of the body. So it's not surprising that hands and lips are used quite often to communicate affection between people.

Origin of the kiss

There are many sayings on the origin of kiss.

A theory on the history of kiss is from the caveman age. It is thought that in primitive times that a mother pre-chewed the food for her baby and transferred it 'in a kiss'. Kiss become a sign of affection, between mother and child and latter, adults.

There's another theory origin from sacred religious act. There have been examples from around the world as early as 2000 BC, that show that people could have brought their faces together to symbolise spiritual union. Even in the culture of Indians, it was believed that the exhaled breath was part of the soul, and by two people bringing their mouths together, showed the joining of their souls.

Another theory is from the Ziller Valley of Central Europe, where the exchange of pre-chewed tobacco between a male and a female was common. Young man would let a tip of the piece of tobacco, or spruce resin, etc rest between his closed teeth and invite the girl to grasp it with her teeth -- which of course obliged her to press her mouth firmly on that of the young man -- and pull it out. If a girl accepted the wad of pre-chewed tobacco, it meant she returned the boy's love.

In the 6th century in France, dancing was one way to display affection, but every dance was ended in a kiss.

Apparently, Russia was the first to incorporate the kiss into the marriage ceremony, where a promise was sealed with a kiss.

The Romans kissed to greet each other. On Roman emperor showed a persons importance, by what part of his body they were allowed to kiss, from the cheek to the foot.

In 16th century England, the clove-studded apple originated. An apple was prepared by piercing it with as many cloves as the fruit could hold and then a maid then carried the apple through the fair till she spied a lad she thought worth kissing. She would offer him the apple, and once he'd selected and chewed one of the cloves, they would share a kiss. After that, the apple passed into the man's possession, and he would venture off in search of another lass to continue the game with.

At one stage it was even thought that people found kissing pleasurable because when the two lips met during kissing, an electric current was generated.