the.com/blood
your body's relentless red river, hauling oxygen and gossip to every cell you own
means The red fluid pumped by the heart through your veins and arteries, carrying oxygen, nutrients, and waste to and from your body's cells.
from From Old English 'blod,' a deep Germanic word with cousins in Old Norse 'bloth,' Old Saxon and Old High German 'bluot,' and modern German 'Blut.' Its roots stretch back to Proto-Germanic '*blodam,' though its connection to older Indo-European stems is debated. The word's age shows in how thickly it has soaked into English idiom — bloodline, bloodthirsty, blood brother — long before anyone knew what the stuff actually did.
- recycle rate
- red cells last about 120 days, then die
- total length
- vessels would circle Earth roughly twice
- plasma cut
- over half of blood is just salty water
- iron core
- red color comes from iron meeting oxygen
- daily output
- heart pumps about 2,000 gallons every day
blood type abo system — karl landsteiner discovered 4 main blood types in 1901, basis for all transfusions
blood diamond conflict — sierra leone civil war 1991-2002, diamonds sold to fund rebels, 70,000 deaths