Adam Taylor

Greek philosophers believed that feelings emanated from the midriff, including the diaphragm, hence phrenic nerve and phrenology and schizophrenia and frantic, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

The record for the longest bout of hiccups is 68 years.

Someone called Charles Osborne from Nebraska started hiccuping in 1922 and stayed hiccuping for 68 years.

And there was nothing anyone could do to stop it.

But weirdly, after 68 years, they just abruptly ceased.

Your philtrum is above your lips, that sort of shallow depression with two ridges on either side that runs below your nose to your lip.

Philtrum, again, is a lovely word because it means love potion in Greek.

the ancient Greeks considered the philtrum to be a particularly erogenous zone, hence philtrum, love potion.

In fact, in English, love potions are filters, and you'll find filters in fairy tales and Harry Potter movies and Shakespeare plays.

You drink it and you fall in love with the person you next see.

Strangely, though, for such a prominent body part, we're fairly ignorant about what the philtrum is for.

expressive part of our face, but we don't really know what it does.

People think maybe it helps us express ourselves by providing a store of skin that can be called upon when our mouth needs to move in a way that stretches our upper lip like smiling or crying, but we're not really sure.

What is for sure, though, is that philtrum is very important in determining attractiveness.

Researchers have taken digital photographs of people and reduced the contours of people's philtrums.

And when they do that, the people in the pictures are rated as being older and less attractive than the original.

So it's a hugely important part of our face that tells us a lot about how attractive we may be or how young we may be.

And it's all about love because it's named after love potion.

But, yeah, we don't really know why it's there or what it does for us.

Yes.