Today is the National Hug Day!

National Hug Day was created by Reverend Kevin Zaborney in Caro, Michigan in 1986 as an antidote to the reverend's perception that many American were afraid to display affection in public. He created the date on which this holiday is celebrated, January 21st because he felt this was a time of the year when the spirit of people were at the lowest due to it falling between Christmas and Valentine's Day.
1.The average hug lasts 3.17 seconds

A study lead by Emese Nagy from the University of Dundee analyzed 188 spontaneous hugs between athletes and their coaches, competitors, and supporters during the 2008 Summer Olympics Games (Nagy, 2011). The results? The average hug lasted 3.17 seconds and was neither influenced by the gender combination of the hugging pair, nor by the nationality of the two huggers.

2. Humans have hugged each other since thousands of years

No one knows exactly when the first hug occurred between two human beings, but we do know that hugs have been in the human behavioral repertoire for at least several thousand years. In 2007, a team of archeologist discovered the so-called "Lovers of Valdaro" in a Neolithic Tomb near Mantua in Italy (Stewart, 2007). The lovers are a pair of human skeletons that have been buried holding each other in a tight embrace (see Figure 1).  They have been determined to be approximately 6000 years old, so we know for sure that people already hugged each other in Neolithic times.

3.Most people hug to the right - but our emotions affect how we hug

When we hug, we wrap our arms around another person. Typically, we lead the hug...

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