Humor
From: http://www.kellys.com/know.html - I love this...
Did You Know?
Barbie's measurements if she were life size: 39-23-33.
The double vertical bar dollar symbol ($) is a U combined with
an S (U.S.)
Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and
ears never stop growing.
The Statue of Liberty's tablet is two feet thick.
There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.
The slogan on New Hampshire license plates is 'Live Free or Die'.
These license plates are manufactured by prisoners in the state
prison in Concord.
The straw was probably invented by Egyptian brewers to taste in-process
beer without removing the fermenting ingredients which floated
on the top of the container.
David Prowse, was the guy in the Darth Vader suit in Star Wars.
He spoke all of Vader's lines, and didn't know that he was going
to be dubbed over by James Earl Jones until he saw the screening
of the movie.
The United States government keeps its supply of silver at the
U.S. Military Academy at West Point, NY
There are only thirteen blimps in the world.
Nine of the thirteen blimps are in the United States.
The existing biggest blimp is the Fuji Film blimp.
Naugahyde, plastic "leather" was created in Naugatuck,
Connecticut.
The Swiss flag is square.
The word 'pound' is abbreviated 'lb.' after the constellation
'libra' because it means 'pound' in Latin, and also 'scales'.
The abbreviation for the British Pound Sterling comes from the
same source: it is an 'L' for Libra/Lb. with a stroke through
it to indicate abbreviation.
Same goes for the Italian lira which uses the same abbreviation
('lira' coming from 'Libra'). So British currency (before it went
metric) was always quoted as "pounds/shillings/pence",
abbreviated "L/s/d" (Libra/solidus/denarius).
The three largest land-owners in England are the Queen, the Church
of England and Trinity College, Cambridge.
The monastic hours are matins, lauds, prime, tierce, sext, nones,
vespers and compline.
If you come from Manchester, you are a Mancunian.
No animal, once frozen solid (i.e., water solidifies and turns
to ice) survives when thawed, because the ice crystals formed
inside cells would break open the cell membranes. However there
are certain frogs that can survive the experience of being frozen.
These frogs make special proteins which prevent the formation
of ice (or at least keep the crystals from becoming very large),
so that they actually never freeze even though their body temperature
is below zero Celsius. The water in them remains liquid: a phenomenon
known as 'super cooling.' If you disturb one of these frogs (just
touching them even), the water in them quickly freezes solid and
they die.
The white part of your fingernail is called the lunula.
Madrid is the only European capital city not situated on a river.
The name for fungal remains found in coal is sclerotinite.
The Boston University Bridge (on Commonwealth Avenue, Boston,
Massachusetts) is the only place in the world where a boat can
sail under a train driving under a car driving under an airplane.
Emus cannot walk backwards.
It is believed that Shakespeare was 46 around the time that the
King James Version of the Bible was written. In Psalms 46, the
46th word from the first word is shake and the 46th word from
the last word is spear.
The shopping mall in Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada has
the largest water clock in North America.
Both writer Edgar Allen Poe and LSD advocate Timothy Leary were
kicked out of West Point.
The word posh, which denotes luxurious rooms or accomodations,
originated when ticket agents in England marked the tickets of
travelers going by ship to the Orient. Since there was no air
conditioning in those days, it was always better to have a cabin
on the shady side of the ship as it passed through the Mediterranean
and Suez area. Since the sun is in the south, those with money
paid extra to get cabin's on the left, or port, traveling to the
Asia, and on the right, or starboard, when returning to Europe.
Hence their tickets were marked with the initials for Port Outbound
Starboard Homebound, or POSH.
The top layer of a wedding cake, known as the groom's cake, traditionally
is a fruit cake. That way it will save until the first anniversary.
The German Kaiser Wilhelm II had a withered arm and often hid
the fact by posing with his hand resting on a sword, or by holding
gloves.
The forward pass was created by the football team at Saint Louis
University.
In every show that Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt (The Fantasticks)
wrote, there is at least one song about rain.
A kind of tortoise in the Galapagos Islands has an upturned shell
at its neck so it can reach its head up to eat cactus branches.
The only city whose name can be spelled completely with vowels
is Aiea, Hawaii, located approximately twelve miles west of Honolulu.
Parthenogenesis is the term used to describe the process by which
certain animals are able to reproduce themselves in successive
female generations without intervention of a male of the species.
At least one species of lizard is known to do so.
Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have
about ten.
The word "Checkmate" in chess comes from the Persian
phrase "Shah Mat", which means "the king is dead".
The ship, the Queen Elizabeth 2, should always be written as QE2.
QEII is the actual queen.
"Quisling" is the only word in the English language
to start with "quis."
All of the cobble stones that used to line the streets in New
York were originally weighting stones put in the hulls of Belgian
ships to keep an even keel.
Nepal is the only country without a rectangular flag (it looks
like two pennants glued one on top of the other)
Libya has the only flag which is all one color with no writing
or decoration on it
The only borough of New York City that isn't an island (or part
of an island) is the Bronx.
The 1957 Milwaukee Braves were the first baseball team to win
the World Series after being relocated.
The tune for the "A-B-C" song is the same as "Twinkle,
Twinkle Little Star."
When a coffee seed is planted, it takes five years to yield it's
first consumable fruit.
The common goldfish is the only animal that can see both infra-red
and ultra-violet light.
Linn's Stamp News is the world's largest weekly newspaper for
stamp collectors.
Tennessee is bordered by more states than any other. The eight
states are Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama,
Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia.
Des Moines has the highest per capita Jello consumption in the
U.S
The Western-most point in the contiguous United States is Cape
Alava, Washington.
There are only three animals with blue tongues, the Black Bear,
the Chow Chow dog and the blue-tongued lizard.
The first fossilized specimen of Austalopithecus afarenisis was
named Lucy after the paleontologists' favorite song, Lucy in the
Sky With Diamonds, by the Beatles.
Pinocchio is Italian for "pine head."
The geographical center of North America is near Rugby, North
Dakota.
The infinity sign is called a lemniscate.
Hacky-sack was invented in Turkey.
If you stretch a standard Slinky out flat it measures 87 feet
long.
There are six five words in the English language with the letter
combination "uu." Muumuu, vacuum, continuum, duumvirate
and duumvir, residuum.
The "Calabash" pipe, most often associated with Sherlock
Holmes, was not used by him until William Gillette (an American)
portrayed Holmes onstage. Gillette needed a pipe he could keep
in his mouth while he spoke his lines.
Most Americans' car horns beep in the key of F.
Dirty Harry's badge number is 2211.
The pupil of an octopus' eye is rectangular.
The shortest French word with all five vowels is "oiseau"
meaning bird.
Camel's milk does not curdle.
"Mr. Mojo Risin" is an anagram for Jim Morrison.
The ball on top of a flagpole is called the truck.
A person from the country of Nauru is called a Nauruan; this is
the only palindromic nationality.
The word "modem" is a contraction of the words "modulate,
demodulate."
Oliver Cromwell was hanged and decapitated two years after he
had died.
In the last 4000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.
Iowa has more independent telephone companies than any other state.
Many hamsters only blink one eye at a time.
Hamsters love to eat crickets.
The only "real" food that U.S. Astronauts are allowed
to take into space is pecan nuts.
The word "queueing" is the only English word with five
consecutive vowels.
The first Eagle Scout west of the Mississippi is buried in San
Marcos, Texas.
In every episode of Seinfeld there is a Superman somewhere.
Roberta Flack wrote "Killing Me Softly" about singer
Don McLean.
The Greek version of the Old Testament is called the Septuagint.
Spencer Eldon was the name of the naked baby on the cover of Nirvana's
album
All three major 1996 Presidential candidates, Clinton, Dole and
Perot, are left-handed.
The Madagascan Hissing Cockroach is one of the few insects who
give birth to live young, rather than laying eggs.
The book of Esther in the Bible is the only book which does not
mention the name of God.
Sheriff came from Shire Reeve. During early years of feudal rule
in England, each shire had a reeve who was the law for that shire.
When the term was brought to the United States it was shortened
to Sheriff.
An animal epidemic is called an epizootic.
Dracula is the most filmed story of all time, Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde is second and Oliver Twist is third.
The silhouette on the NBA logo is Jerry West.
The silhouette on the Major League Baseball logo is Harmon Killebrew.
The name Jeep came from the abbreviation used in the army for
the "General Purpose" vehicle, G.P.
The little lump of flesh just forward of your ear canal, right
next to your temple, is called a tragus.
Soweto in South Africa was derived from SOuth WEst TOwnship.
Murphy's Oil Soap is the chemical most commonly used to clean
elephants.
The Andy Griffth Show was the first spin-off in TV history. It
was a spin-off of the Danny Thomas Show.
Goat's eyes have rectangular pupils.
Walt Disney's autograph bears no resemblance to the famous Disney
logo.
Other than humans, black lemurs are the only primates that may
have blue eyes.
The United States has never lost a war in which mules were used.
The two longest one-syllable words in the English language are
"screeched" and "strengths."
Great Britain was the first county to issue postage stamps. Hence,
the postage stamps of Britain are the only stamps in the world
not to bear the name of the country of origin. However, every
stamp carries a relief image or a silhouette of the monarch's
head instead.
Images for picture stamps in the United States are commissioned
by the United States Postal Service Department of Philatelic Fulfillment.
Artist Constantino Brumidi fell from the done of the U.S. Capitol
while painting a mural around the rim. He died four months later.
Since 1896, the beginning of the modern Olympics, only Greece
and Australia have participated in every Games.
There were no squirrels on Nantucket until 1989.
Cathy Rigby is the only woman to pose nude for Sports Illustrated.
(August 1972)
Blueberry Jelly Bellies were created especially for Ronald Reagan.
Will Clark of the Texas Rangers is a direct descendant of William
Clark of Lewis and Clark.
When ocean tides are at their highest, they are called "spring
tides." When they are at their lowest, they are call "neep
tides."
February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have
a full moon.
The last NASCAR driver to serve jail time for running moonshine
was Buddy Arrington.
Many Japanese golfers carry "hole-in-one" insurance,
because it is traditional in Japan to share one's good luck by
sending gifts to all your friends when you get an "ace."
The price for what the Japanese term an "albatross"
can often reach $10,000.
The difference between male and female blue crabs is the design
located on their apron (belly.) The male blue crab has the Washington
Monument while the female apron is shaped like the U.S. Capitol.
It takes a lobster approximately seven years to grow to be one
pound.
The ridges on the sides of coins are called “reeding”.
The lot numbers for the cyanide-tainted Tylenol capsules scare
back in 1982 were MC2880 and 1910MD.
Montpelier, Vermont is the only U.S. state capital without a McDonalds.
The Roman emperor Caligula made his horse a senator.
At latitude 60 degrees south you can sail all the way around the
world.
A Chinese checkerboard has 121 holes.
The hyoid bone, in your throat, is the only bone in the body not
attached to another bone.
Mice, whales, elephants, giraffes and man all have seven neck
vertebra.
Sunbeams that shine down through the clouds are called crespucular
rays.
Very small clouds that look like they have been broken off of
bigger clouds are called scuds.
On a dewy morning, if you look at your shadow in the grass, the
dew drops shine light back to your eye creating a halo called
a heilgenschein (German for halo.)
The correct response to the Irish greeting, "Top of the morning
to you," is "and the rest of the day to yourself."
Giraffes have no vocal cords.
Joe DiMaggio had more home runs than strikeouts during his career.
All porcupines float in water.
Hang On Sloopy is the official rock song of Ohio.
A-1 Steak Sauce contains both orange peel and raisins.
Many northern parishes (counties) of Louisiana did not agree with
the Confederate movement. To show their disapproval, they changed
their names. That's why there is a Union Parish, Jefferson Parish,
etc.
The Pentagon, in Arlington, Virginia, has twice as many bathrooms
as is necessary. When it was built in the 1940s, the state of
Virginia still had segregation laws requiring separate toilet
facilities for blacks and whites.
Residents of the island of Lesbos are Lesbosians, rather than
Lesbians. (Of course, lesbians are called lesbians because Sappho
was from Lesbos.)
The Chinese ideogram for 'trouble' symbolizes 'two women living
under one roof'.
German has a wood for the peace offerings brought to your mate
when you've committed some conceived slight. This is "drachenfutter"
or dragon's food.
In Chinese, the words for crisis and opportunity are the same.
No word in the English language rhymes with month.
Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people
without killing them use to burn their houses down - hence the
expression "to get fired."
The poisonous copperhead smells like fresh cut cucumbers.
In Disney's "Fantasia", the Sorcerer's name is "Yensid"
(Disney backwards.)
The smallest mushroom's name is "Hop-low."
Anne Boleyn had six fingernails on one hand.
Mustard gas was invented in the McKinley Building on the American
University campus. Additionally, preliminary work on the Manhattan
Project was done in that building. The government used the McKinley
Building because of its unusual architecture. If there would be
any type of large explosion inside the building, the building
would implode onto itself, containing any lethal gas or nuclear
material. The building now houses the Physics Department.
When angered, the ears of Tazmanian devils turn a pinkish-red.
The cruise liner, Queen Elizabeth II, moves only six inches for
each gallon of diesel that it burns.
The naval rank of "Admiral" is derived from the Arabic
phrase "amir al bahr", which means "lord of the
sea".
The Les Nessman character on the TV series WKRP in Cincinnati
wore a band-aid in every episode. Either on himself, his glasses,
or his clothing.
A coat hanger is 44 inches long if straightened
The roads on the island of Guam are made with coral. Guam has
no sand. The sand on the beaches is actually ground coral. When
concrete is mixed, the coral sand is used instead of importing
regular sand from thousands of miles away.
Mt. Vernon Washington grows more tulips than the entire country
of Holland.
Jamie Farr (who played Klinger on M*A*S*H) was the only member
of the cast who actually served as a soldier in the Korean war.
The southern most city in the United States is Na'alehu, Hawaii.
Alaska was the only part of the United States that was invaded
by the Japanese during WWII. The territory was the island of Adak
in the Aleutian Chain.
Woodward Ave in Detroit, Michigan carries the designation M-1,
named so because it was the first paved road anywhere.
Michigan was the first state to plow it's roads and the first
to adopt a yellow dividing line.
Canada is an Indian word meaning "Big Village".
The longest chapter in the Bible is Psalm 119.
The shortest verse in the Bible is "Jesus wept."
Way back when they were using marble columns, the people selling
the columns would carve out the centers and fill it with wax.
So the people buying them started asking "Is it without wax?"
Or in other words "Are you sincere?"
Zaire is the world leader in cobalt mining, producing two-thirds
of the world's cobalt supply.
No modern language has a true concept of "I am." It
is always used linked with are in reference of another verb.
Little known Cathedral Caverns near Grant, Alabama has the world's
largest cave opening, the largest stalagmite (Goliath), and the
largest stalagmite forest in the World.
The only person ever to decline a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction was
Sinclair Lewis for his book Arrowsmith.
Maine is the only state that borders on only one state.
There are almost twice as many people in Rhode Island than there
are in Alaska.
Kudzu is not indigenous to the South, but in that climate it can
grow up to six inches a day.
Did you know that there are coffee flavored PEZ?
The word 'byte' is a contraction of 'by eight.'
The word 'pixel' is a contraction of either 'picture cell' or
'picture element.'
Ralph Lauren's original name was Ralph Lifshitz.
Bananas do not grow on trees, but on rhizomes.
Astronauts in the Space Shuttle are weightless not because there
is no gravity in space, but because they are in free fall around
the Earth.
St. Augustine was the first major proponent of the "missionary"
position.
Lizzie Borden was acquitted.
Alexander Hamilton was shot by Aaron Burr in the groin.
Isaac Asimov is the only author to have a book in every Dewey-decimal
category.
Roger Ebert is the only film critic to have ever won the Pulitzer
prize.
A scholar who studies the Marquis de Sade is called a Sadian,
not a Sadist (of course).
Tribeca in Manhattan stands for TRIangle BElow CAnal street. Soho
stands for SOuth of HOuston street.
Columbia University is the second largest landowner in New York
City, after the Catholic Church.
The world's largest wine cask is in Heidleberg, Germany.
Lorne Greene had one of his nipples bitten off by an alligator
while he hosted "Lorne Greene's Wild Kingdom."
Cat's urine glows under a blacklight.
Seven Olympic gold medal winners eventually went on to win the
Heavyweight Championship of the World
Kerimski Church in Finland is world's biggest church made of wood.
The St. Louis Gateway Arch had a projected death toll while it
was being built. No one died. The average ear of corn has eight-hundred
kernels arranged in sixteen rows.
A cat has four rows of whiskers.
Vincent Van Gogh committed suicide while painting Wheat Field
with Crows.
An iguana can stay under water for 28 minutes.
Jelly Belly jelly beans were the first jelly beans in outer space
when they went up with astronauts in the June 21, 1983 voyage
of the space shuttle Challenger (the same voyage as the first
American woman in space, Sally Ride).
Baseballer Connie Mack's real name was Cornelius McGilicuddy.
If you were standing in the northernmost point in the contiguous
(48) states, you'd be standing in Minnesota.
Only thirty percent of the famous Maryland blue crabs are actually
from Maryland, the rest are from North Carolina and Virginia.
Back in the mid to late 80's, an IBM compatible computer wasn't
considered a hundred percent compatible unless it could run Microsoft's
Flight Simulator.
Not all of West Virginia voted to go with the North. When the
State of West Virginia was formed from Virginia in 1863 the three
western counties in Virginia voted to go with West Virginia, but
West Virginia didn't take them because they were poor. Instead
they took three counties that voted to stay with Virginia, because
they were richer and they had the B&O railroad. Those counties
since split and are 5 Jefferson, Hampshire, Berkley, Mineral,
and Morgan.
The first Ford cars had Dodge engines.
The Dodge brothers Horace and John were Jewish, that's why the
first Dodge emblem had a star of David in it.
Studebaker was the only major car company to stop making cars
while making a profit from them.
Studebaker still exists, but is now called Worthington.
Chrysler built B-29's that bombed Japan, Mitsubishi built Zeros
that tried to shoot them down. Both companies now build cars in
a joint plant call Diamond Star.
On the new hundred dollar bill the time on the clock tower of
Independence Hall is 4:10.
The top three cork-producing countries are Spain, Portugal and
Algeria. (Cork comes from trees.)
In the Wizard of Oz Dorothy's last name is Gail. It is shown on
the mail box.
If you bring a raccoon's head to the Henniker, New Hampshire town
hall, you are entitled to receive $.10 from the town New York
Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and the late M*A*S*H star McLean
Stevenson were both once assistant football coaches at Northwestern
University.
The letter W is the only letter in the alphabet that doesn't have
1 syllable... it has three.
All swans and all sturgeons in England are property of the Queen.
Messing with them is a serious offense.
Michael Di Lorenzo, who plays Eddie Torres on New York Undercover
is one of the lead dancers in Michael Jackson's "Beat It"
video.
Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence on July
4th, John Hancock and Charles Thomson. Most of the rest signed
on August 2, but the last signature wasn't added until 5 year
later.
October 4, 1957 is a historic date to be remembered, it is the
day both "Leave it to Beaver" and the Russian satellite
Sputnik 1 were launched.
Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.
It takes about a half a gallon of water to cook macaroni, and
about a gallon to clean the pot.
The antifungal, nystatin, which is sometime used for treating
thrush, is named after New York State Institute for Health (Acronym)
QANTAS, the name of the Australian national airline, is a (former)
acronym, for Queensland And Northern
Territories Air Service.
The world's largest four-faced clock sits atop the Allen-Bradley
plant in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Almonds are members of the peach family.
The first video ever played on MTV Europe was "Money For
Nothing" by Dire Straits.
If you add up the numbers 1-100 consecutively (1+2+3+4+5 etc)
the total is 5050
The "Grinch" singer and voice of Tony the Tiger is a
charming man named Thurl Ravenscroft.
The famous split-fingered Vulcan salute is actually intended to
represent the first letter ("shin," pronounced "sheen")
of the word "shalom." As a small boy, Leonard Nimoy
observed his rabbi using it in a benediction and never forgot
it; eventually he was able to add it to "Star Trek"
lore.
The symbol on the "pound" key (#) is called an octothorpe.
Ham radio operators got the term "ham" coined from the
expression "ham-fisted operators", a term used to describe
early radio users who sent Morse code (i.e. pounded their fists).
While the Chinese invented gunpowder, they were not the first
to develop firearms. Sam Colt invented the "revolving pistol."
Therefore, all revolvers are correctly called pistols.
A 12 gauge "rifled slug" does not spin, even though
there are grooves on its bearing surface. A slug actually travels
like a dart.
Revolvers cannot be silenced, due all the noisy gasses which escape
the cylinder gap at the rear of the barrel.
A bullet fired from the 7.62x51mm NATO cartridge (also called
the .308 Winchester) is still supersonic at 1000 yards.
The term "the whole 9 yards" came from WWII fighter
pilots in the South Pacific. When arming their airplanes on the
ground, the .50 caliber machine gun ammo belts measured exactly
27 feet, before being loaded into the fuselage. If the pilots
fired all their ammo at a target, it got "the whole 9 yards."
The home team must provide the referee with 24 footballs for each
National Football League game.
The maximum weight for a golf ball is 1.62 oz.
A flea expert is a pullicologist.
A bear has 42 teeth.
M&M's stands for the last names of Forrest Mars, Sr., then
candymaker, and his associate Bruce Murrie.
The only domestic animal not mentioned in the Bible is the cat.
The dot over the letter 'i' is called a tittle.
Table tennis balls have been known to travel off the paddle at
speeds up to 105.6 miles per hour.
In Irian Jaya exists a tribe of tall, white people who use parrots
as a warning sign against intruders.
In the Dutch province of Twente people live on average half a
year shorter than in the rest of the Netherlands.
Spiral staircases in medieval castles are running clockwise. This
is because all knights used to be right-handed. When the intruding
army would climb the stairs they would not be able to use their
right hand which was holding the sword because of the difficulties
in climbing the stairs. Left-handed knights would have had no
troubles except left-handed people could never become knights
because it was assumed that they were descendants of the devil.
Duddley DoRight's Horses name was "Horse."
If the Spaceship Earth ride at EPCOT was a golf ball, to be the
proportional size to hit it, you'd be two miles tall.
On Sesame Street, Bert's goldfish were named Lyle and Talbot,
presumably after the actor Lyle Talbot.
The word "hangnail" comes from Middle English: ang-
(painful) + nail. Nothing to do with hanging.
Louis IV of France had a stomach the size of two regular stomachs.
Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain smoked forty cigars a day for the
last years of his life.
Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain was born on a day in 1835 when Haley's
Comet came into view. When
He died in 1910, Haley's Comet came into view again.
Pepsi originally contained pepsin, thus the name.
Babies are born without knee caps. They don't appear until the
child reaches 2-6 years of age.
The highest point in Pennsylvania is lower than the lowest point
in Colorado.
If you were born in Los Alamos, New Mexico during the Manhattan
project (where they made the atomic bomb), your birthplace was
listed as a post office box in Albuquerque.
Robert Kennedy was killed in the Ambassador Hotel, the same hotel
that housed Marilyn Monroe's first modeling agency.
Ronald Regan sent out the army photographer who first discovered
Marilyn Monroe.
Carbonated water, with nothing else in it, can dissolve limestone,
talc, and many other low-Moh's hardness minerals. Coincidentally,
carbonated water is the main ingredient in soda pop.
Ethernet is a registered trademark of Xerox, Unix is a registered
trademark of AT&T.
The newest dog breed is the Bull Boxer, first bred in the United
states in 1990-91.
The first hard drive available for the Apple ][ had a capacity
of 5 megabytes.
South of Tucson, Arizona, all road signs are in the Metric System.
In many cases, the amount of storage space on a recordable CD
is measured in minutes. 74 minutes is about 650 megabytes, 63
minutes is 550 megabytes.
The real name of Astro (the dog from The Jetsons) is "Tralfaz"
-- his real owner appeared one day to claim him but wound up giving
him back to the Jetsons.
Charlie Brown's father was a barber.
The original story from Tales of 1001 Arabian Nights begins, "Aladdin
was a little Chinese boy."
Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously
When a film is in production, the last shot of the day is the
"martini shot", the next to last one is the "Abby
Singer".
Of the six men who made up the Three Stooges, three of them were
real brothers (Moe, Curly and Shemp.) Ohio is listed as the 17th
state in the U.S., but technically it is number 47. Until August
7, 1953, Congress forgot to vote on a resolution to admit Ohio
to the Union.
It is a misdemeanor to kill or threaten a butterfly -- so says
City Ordinance No. 352 in Pacific Grove, California.
If you have three quarters, four dimes, and four pennies, you
have $1.19. You also have the largest amount of money in coins
without being able to make change for a dollar.
Other than fruit, honey is the only natural food that is made
without destroying any kind of life! What about milk, you say?
A cow has to eat grass to produce milk and grass is living!
When Saigon fell the signal for all Americans to evacuate was
Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" being played on the
radio.
The Fort George Point in Belize City was formed by the silt runoff
of Hurricane Hattie.
If you lace your shoes from the inside to the outside the fit
will be snugger around your big toe.
Only 1/3 of the people that can twitch their ears can twitch only
one at a time.
The expression "What in tarnation" comes from the original
meaning: "What in eternal damnation"
Gary Burgough who played Walter Radar O'Reily on M*A*S*H has a
deformed left thumb. If you watch closely you will see that he
never shows his left hand.
Only two states' names begin with double consonants: Florida and
Rhode Island.
The volume of the Earth's moon is the same as the volume of the
Pacific Ocean
Ingrown toenails are hereditary.
The Cincinnati Reds baseball team name was officially changed
to the Redlegs during the anti-communist movement.
Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance.
"Xmas" does not begin with the Roman letter X. It begins
with the Greek letter "chi," which was used in medieval
manuscripts as an abbreviation for the word "Christ"
(xus = christus, etc.)
The ampersand (&) is actually a stylized version of the Latin
word "et," meaning and."
The largest city in the United States with a one syllable name
is Flint, Michigan.
The most common name in the world is Mohammed.
Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than all of
the Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined.
On the cartoon show 'The Jetsons', Jane is 33 years old and her
daughter Judy is 15.
In Mel Brooks' 'Silent Movie,' mime Marcel Marceau is the only
person who has a speaking role.
Only humans and horses have hymens.
No NFL team which plays it's home games in a domed stadium has
ever won a Superbowl. (Texas Stadium, home of the Cowboys, is
not a dome, there is a large hole in the roof.)
The word "set" has more definitions than any other word
in the English language.
The first toilet ever seen on television was on "Leave It
To Beaver". Wally and Beaver had a baby alligator which they
kept in the toilet.
In the great fire of London in 1666 half of London was burnt down
but only 6 people were injured
The most eastern part of the western world is located in Ilomantsi,
Finland.
"Hara kiri" is an impolite way of saying the Japanese
word "seppuku" which means, literally, "belly splitting."
The term the "Boogey Man will get you" comes from the
Boogey people,who still inhabit an area of Indonesia. These people
still act as pirates today and attack ships that pass. Thus the
term spread "if you don't watch out the Boogey man will get
you."
The Saturn V moon rocket consumed 15 tons of fuel per second.
The state with the longest coastline in the US is Michigan.
Race car is a palindrome.
We will have four consecutive full moons making two blue moons
in 1999 (January 2 and 31, March 2 and 31.) The only other time
it happened this century was in 1915 (January 1 and 31, March
1 and 31.)
The Basset Horn, a kind of alto clarinet, was named after its
inventor -- a man named Horn. "Basset" is from "Basetto,"
or "little bass" in Italian.
There are more bald eagles in the province of British Columbia
then there are in the whole United States.
Lincoln Logs were invented by Frank Lloyd Wright's son.
The "second unit" films movie shots that do not require
the presence of actors.
Pulp Fiction cost $8 million to make - $5 million going to actor's
salaries.
The world's second largest pipe organ is located at the Organ
Grinder on 82nd avenue in Portland, Oregon.
Games Slayter, a Purdue graduate, invented fiberglass.
One of the reasons marijuana is illegal today because cotton growers
in the 30s lobbied against hemp farmers -- they saw it as competition.
It is not chemically addictive as is nicotine, alcohol, or caffeine.
Olympic Badminton rules say that the bird has to have exactly
fourteen feathers
The music group Simply Red is named because of its love for the
football team, Manchester United, who have a red home strip.
In case you ever find yourself piloting a dogsled, shout "Jee!"
to make the dogs turn left and "Ha!" to go right.
Richard Nixon left instructions for "California, Here I Come"
to be the last piece of music played at his funeral ("softly
and slowly") were he to die in office.
The earliest document in Latin in a woman's handwriting (it is
from the first century A.D.) is an invitation to a birthday party.
Spot, Data's cat on Star Trek: The Next Generation, was played
by six different cats.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard's fish was named Livingston.
Hydrogen gas is the least dense substance in the world, at 0.08988
g/cc
Hydrogen solid is the most dense substance in the world, at 70.6
g/cc
The longest U.S. highway is route 6 starting in Cape Cod, Massachusetts
going through 14 states, and ending in Bishop, California...
The movie "Paris, Texas" was banned in the city of Paris,
Texas, shorty after its box office release.
The 'y' in signs reading "ye olde.." is properly pronounced
with a 'th' sound, not 'y'. The "th" sound does not
exist in Latin, so ancient Roman occupied (present day) England
use the rune "thorn" to represent "th" sounds.
With the advent of the printing press the character from the Roman
alphabet which closest resembled thorn was the lower case "y".
Pickled herrings were invented in 1375.
The number of the trash compactor in Star Wars (20th Century Fox,
1977) is 3263827.
Each year there is one ton of cement poured for each man, woman,
and child in the world.
At McDonalds in New Zealand, they serve apricot pies instead of
cherry ones.
The word "samba" means "to rub navels together."
The only two days of the year in which there are no professional
sports games (MLB, NBA, NHL, or NFL) are the day before and the
day after the Major League Baseball All-Star Game.
The international telephone dialing code for Antarctica is 672.
A byte, in computer terms, means 8 bits. A nibble is half that:
4 bits. (Two nibbles make a byte!)
A full seven percent of the entire Irish barley crop goes to the
production of Guinness beer.
Bank robber John Dillinger played professional baseball.
If you toss a penny 10000 times, it will not be heads 5000 times,
but more like 4950. The heads picture weighs more, so it ends
up on the bottom.
The airport in La Paz, Bolivia is the world's highest airport.
The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.
The housefly hums in the middle octave, key of F.
Chicago is closer to Moscow than to Rio de Janeiro.
Original copy of the Declaration of Independence is lost. The
copy in Washington D.C. is what is referred to as a holograph.
That is a term for a handmade copy of a document and is not the
same as a laser produced hologram.
Singapore is the only country with one train station.
The little bags of netting for gas lanterns (called 'mantles')
are radioactive--so much so that they will set of an alarm at
a nuclear reactor.
When measuring fonts 'point size' refers to the height of capital
letters (one point being one 72nd of an inch). 'Pitch' is a horizontal
measurement of the number of letters which can be printed in an
inch.
The only capital letter in the Roman alphabet with exactly one
endpoint is P.
In the movie "the Right Stuff" there is a scene where
a government recruiter for the Mercury astronaut program (played
by Jeff Goldblum) is in a bar at Muroc Dry Lake, California. His
partner suggests Chuck Yeager as a good astronaut candidate. Jeff
proceeds to badmouth Yeager claiming they need someone who went
to college. During the conversation the real Chuck Yeager is playing
a bartender who is standing behind the recruiters eavesdropping.
General Yeager is listed low in the movie credits as 'Fred.'
"Speak of the Devil" is short for "Speak of the
Devil and he shall come". It was believed that if you spoke
about the Devil it would attract his attention. That's why when
your talking about someone and they show up people say "Speak
of the Devil"
Maine is the only state whose name is just one syllable.
There are only four words in the English language which end in
"-dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.
Nauru is the only country in the world with no official capital.
(Its government offices are all in Yaren
District, but there's no official capital.)
South Africa is the only country with three official capitals:
Pretoria, Cape Town, and Bloemfontein.
Lucy Ricardo's maiden name was McGillicudy.
Mickey Mouse is known as "Topolino" in Italy.
The red giant star Betelgeuse has a diameter larger than that
of the Earth's orbit around the sun.
If your eyes are six feet above the surface of the ocean, the
horizon wil be about three statute miles away.
The one-hundred eleventh element is known as "unnilenilenium"
The longest muscle name is the "levator labii superioris
alaeque nasi" and Elvis popularized it with his lip motions.
The longest time someone has typed on a typewriter continuously
is 264 hrs., set by Violet Gibson Burns.
The Dutch town of Leeuwarden can be spelled 225 different ways.
There was once a town named "6" in West Virginia.
Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older
A cat has 32 muscles in each ear
An ostrich's eye is bigger than it's brain.
The oldest word in the English language is "town"
The sea wasp is half an inch long at best and more poisonous than
any other jellyfish known to man.
Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.
Gerald Ford pardoned Robert E. Lee posthumously of all crimes
of treason.
The band Duran Duran got their name from an astronaut in the 1968
Jane Fonda movie Barbarella.
There are 22 stars surrounding the mountain on the Paramount Pictures
logo.
After human death, post-mortem rigidity starts in the head and
travels to the feet, and leaves the same way it came -- head to
toe.
Police dogs are trained to react to commands in a foreign language;
commonly German but more recently
Hungarian or some other Slavic tongue.
A Laforte fracture is a fracture of all facial bones. It would
allow one to pull on another face and remove it like a mask if
not held on by skin.
Debra Winger was the voice of E.T.
Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt
and Eleanor Roosevelt were all cousins through one connection
or another. (FDR and Eleanor were about five times removed.)
The Earth-Moon size ratio is the largest in our solar system,
excepting Pluto-Charon. (and Pluto may no longer be considered
a “planet”, but other astral bodies may be considered
planets and part of our solar system)
Each unit on the Richter Scale is equivalent to a power factor
of about 32. So a 6 is 32 times more powerful than a 5! Though
it goes to 10, 9 is estimated to be the point of total tectonic
destruction (2 is the smallest that can be felt unaided.)
Most snakes have either only one lung, or in some cases, two,
with one much reduced in size. This apparently serves to make
room for other organs in the highly-elongated bodies of snakes.
A twelve-foot anaconda can catch, kill, and eat a six-foot caiman,
a close relative of crocodiles and alligators. While these snakes
are not usually considered to be the *longest* snake in the world,
they are the heaviest, exceeding the reticulated python in girth.
Cinderella's slippers were originally made out of fur. The story
was changed in the 1600s by a translator.
It was the left shoe that Aschenputtel (Cinderella) lost at the
stairway, when the prince tried to follow her.
Cinderella is known as Tuhkimo in Finland.
If you come from Birmingham, you are a Brummie.
The names of all the continents end with the same letter that
they start with, e.g. Asia, Europe.
There is a word in the English language with only one vowel, which
occurs six times: Indivisibility.
The dome on Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home, conceals a billiards
room. In Jefferson's day, billiards were illegal in Virginia.
According to Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, it is possible
to go slower than light and faster than light, but it is impossible
to go at the speed of light.
In most advertisements, including newspapers, the time displayed
on a watch is 10:10 because then the arms frame the brand of the
watch.
Cleo and Caesar were the early stage names of Cher and Sonny Bono.
Ben and Jerry's send the waste from making ice cream to local
pig farmers to use as feed. Pigs love the stuff, except for one
flavor: Mint Oreo.
The "heat" of peppers is rated on the Scoville scale.
Until 1965, driving was done on the left-hand side on roads in
Sweden. The conversion to right-hand was done on a weekday at
5pm. All traffic stopped as people switched sides. This time and
day were chosen to prevent accidents where drivers would have
gotten up in the morning and been too sleepy to realize *this*
was the day of the changeover.
In left hand drive countries, such as the UK, Ireland, Japan,
and Australia, drivers sit on the right hand side of the car.
Except for Sweden, where drivers sat on the left, as in North-America.
Japan is the third most densely populated country in the world.
First is the Netherlands, followed by Belgium.
Alfred Hitchcock didn't have a belly button. It was eliminated
when he was sewn up after surgery.
The "D" in D-day means "Day". The French term
for "D-Day" is "J-jour".
Female orcas live twice as long as male orcas. The larger numbers
of female orcas in a pod are because of the female's longer lifespan,
not because the males have collected a harem.
Most spiders belong to the orb weaver spider family, Family Aranidae.
This is pronounced "A Rainy Day."
The Mongol emperor Genghis Khan's original name was Temujin.
Genghis Khan started out life as a goatherd.
The type specimen for the human species is the skull of Edward
Drinker Cope, an American paleontologist of the late 1800's. A
type specimen is used in paleontology as the best example of that
species.
The first word spoken by an ape in the movie Planet of the Apes
was "Smile".
The two lines that connect your top lip to the bottom of your
nose are known as the philtrum.
Facetious and abstemious contain all the vowels in the correct
order.
The name Wendy was made up for the book "Peter Pan"
Hummingbirds are the only animals able to fly backwards
All the dirt from the foundation to build the World Trade Center
in NYC was dumped into the Hudson River to form the community
now known as Battery City Park.
The Holland and Lincoln Tunnels under the Hudson River connecting
New Jersey and New York are an engineering feat. The air circulators
in the tunnels circulate fresh air completely every ninety seconds.
The dirt road that General Washington and his soldiers took to
fight off General Clinton during the Battle of Monmouth was called
the Burlington Path.
The only social fraternity founded during the Civil War was Theta
Xi fraternity, at Rensselear Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New
York in 1864.
The Hudson River along the island of Manhattan flows in either
direction depending upon the tide.
Several buildings in Manhattan have their own zip code! The World
Trade Center has several.
Lucifer is latin for "Light Bringer". It is a translation
of the Hebrew name for Satan, Halael. Satan means "adversary",
devil means "liar".
A cat's jaws cannot move sideways.
Geller and Huchra have made three-dimensional maps of the distribution
of galaxies. In each layer of the map some galaxies are grouped
together in such a way that they resemble a human being.
Avocado is derived from the Spanish word 'aguacate' which is derived
from 'ahuacatl' meaning testicle.
The company providing the liability insurance for the Republican
National Convention in San Diego is the same firm that insured
the maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic.
Telly Savalas and Louis Armstrong died on their birthdays.
Donald Duck's middle name is Fauntleroy.
Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer.
The smallest port in Canada is Port Williams, Nova Scotia.
The Canadian province of Newfoundland has its own time zone, which
is half an hour behind Atlantic Standard Time.
Cats in Halifax, Nova Scotia, have a very high probability of
having six toes.
The second longest word in the English language is "antidisestablishmentarianism".
Rats like boiled sweets better than they like cheese. Big Ben
was slowed five minutes one day when a passing group of starlings
decided to take a rest on the minute hand of the clock.
The Velvet Underground was named after a book on the S&M culture.
The Velvet Underground's first manager was Andy Warhol, who also
produced their first album and designed the cover artwork. The
cover artwork for the album (called "The Velvet Underground
and Nico") featured a bright yellow banana that could be
peeled off to reveal a bright pink banana underneath, with the
label "Peel Slowly and See." "Peel Slowly and See"
is the title of the Velvet Underground comprehensive boxed set,
which is the only currently-available Velvet Underground recording
to feature a peelable banana. The peelable banana caused substantial
delays in the production of the VU's first album and contributed
to Lou Reed's firing Andy Warhol as the group's manager.
The "wild" horses of western North America are actually
feral, not wild.
Native speakers of Japanese learn Spanish much more easily than
they learn English. Native speakers of English learn Spanish much
more easily than they learn Japanese.
New Zealand kiwis lay the largest eggs with respect to their body
size of any bird.
Elephants have been found swimming miles from shore in the Indian
Ocean.
When two words are combined to form a single word (e.g., motor
+ hotel = motel, breakfast + lunch = brunch) the new word is called
a "portmanteau."
Sting got his name because of a yellow-and-black striped shirt
he wore until it literally fell apart.
Every photograph of an American atomic bomb detonation was taken
by Harold Edgerton.
The topknot that quails have is called a hmuh.
Dr. Samuel A. Mudd was the physician who set the leg of Lincoln's
assassin John Wilkes Booth ... and whose shame created the expression
for ignominy, "His name is Mudd."
The longest recorded flight of a chicken is thirteen seconds.
The muzzle of a lion is like a fingerprint -- no two lions have
the same pattern of whiskers.
There is a type of parrot in New Zealand that likes to eat the
rubber strips that line car windows.
New Zealand is also the only country that contains every type
of climate in the world.
Cockroaches' favorite food is the glue on envelopes and on the
back of postage stamps
In 1969, the last Corvair was painted gold.
Ralph Kramden made 62 dollars a week.
The only way to stop the pain of the flathead fish's sting is
by rubbing the same fish's slime on the wound it gave you.
Betsy Ross was born with a fully formed set of teeth.
Betsy Ross's other contribution to the American Revolution, beside
sewing the first American flag, was running a munitions factory
in her basement.
Devo's original name was going to be De-evolution. They shortened
it to Devo.
Steely Dan got their name from a sexual device depicted in the
book 'The Naked Lunch'.
Bob Dylan's real name is Robert Zimmerman.
Andy Warhol created the Rolling Stone's emblem depicting the big
tongue. It first appeared on the cover of the 'Sticky Fingers'
album.
Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr were the two left-handed Beatles.
Chris Ford scored the first ever NBA three-point shot.
Of all the East Coast States, New Hampshire has the shortest coastline,
about fourteen miles.
New Hampshire is also the only State name that has four consecutive
consonants in it (in the same word).
Ontario is the only Canadian Province that borders the Great Lakes.
Alaska has the longest border with Canada of all the fifty states.
Montana has the longest border with Canada of the lower forty-eight
States.
Montana also borders the most Canadian Provinces of all the fifty
states. It borders three of them.
Arkansas is the only US State that begins with "a" but
does not end with "a". All the other States that begin
with "a", Arizona, Alabama and Alaska, also end with
"a".
Only three angels are mentioned by name in the Bible: Gabriel,
Michael, and Lucifer.
Dr. Seuss pronounced "Seuss" such that it rhymed with
"rejoice."
Wilma Flintstone's maiden name was Wilma Slaghoopal, and Betty
Rubble's Maiden name was Betty Jean McBricker.
Lenny Kravitz's mother played the part of "Helen" on
"The Jeffersons."
The term "devil's advocate" comes from the Roman Catholic
church. When deciding if someone should become a saint, a devil's
advocate is always appointed to give an alternative view.
Compact discs read from the inside to the outside edge, the reverse
of how a record works.
The term "Mayday" used for signaling for help (after
SOS), it comes from the French term "M'aidez" which
is pronounced "May Day" and means, "Help Me"
Grapes explode when you put them in the microwave.
The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 did start in a barn belonging to
Patrick and Katherine O'Leary. The O'Leary's house was one of
the few that survived the fire. The O'Leary's house had to be
guarded by soldiers for weeks afterwards, however, because many
enraged residents wanted to burn it down.
The biggest bell is the "Tsar Kolokol" cast in the Kremlin
in 1733. It weighs 216 tons, but alas, it is cracked and has never
been rung. The bell was being stored in a Moscow shed which caught
fire. To "save" it the caretakers decided to throw water
on the bell. This did not succeed in -- the water hit the superheated
metal and a giant piece immediately cracked off, destroying the
bell forever.
A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.
The smallest mountain range in the world is outside of Marysville,
California and is named the Sutter Buttes.
The Ramses brand condom is named after the great pharaoh Ramses
II who fathered over 160 children.
Many species of bird copulate in the air. In general, a couple
will fly to a very high altitude, and then drop. During their
descent, the birds mate. Sometimes the couple gets too involved
and SPLAT!
If NASA sent birds into space they would soon die because they
need gravity to swallow.
There is a seven letter word in the English language that contains
ten words without rearranging any of its letters, "therein":
the, there, he, in, rein, her, here, here, ere, therein, herein.
You would have to count to one thousand to use the letter "A"
in the English language to spell a whole number.
The only member of the band ZZ Top without a beard has the last
name Beard.
Ants cannot chew their food, they move their jaws sidewards, like
a scissor, to extract the juices from the food.
The letters H I O X in the Latin alphabet is the only ones that
look the same if you turn them upside down or see them from behind.
The little hole in the sink that lets the water drain out, instead
of flowing over the side, is called a "porcelator".
When the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers play football at home
to a sellout crowd, the stadium becomes the state's third largest
city.
In Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart never said "Play it again,
Sam."
Sherlock Holmes never said "Elementary, my dear Watson."
Captain Kirk never said "Beam me up, Scotty," but he
did say, "Beam me up, Mr. Scott".
Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered
blood donors.
More people are killed annually by donkeys than die in air crashes.
The metal part of a lamp that surrounds the bulb and supports
the shade is called a harp.
The metal part at the end of a pencil is twenty percent sulfur.
John Larroquette of "Night Court" and "The John
Larroquette Show" was the narrator of "The Texas Chainsaw
Massacre."
Vietnamese currency consists only of paper money; no coins.
Vincent Van Gogh sold exactly one painting while he was alive,
Red Vineyard at Arles.
A pig's orgasm lasts for 30 minutes.
A pig's penis is shaped like a corkscrew.
It is physically impossible for pigs to look up into the sky.
Skin is thickest is at the back -- 1/6 of an inch.
The most sensitive finger is the forefinger.
Alaska is the most northern, western and eastern state; it also
has the highest latitude, the most eastern longitude and the most
western longitude.
Some of Beethoven's symphonies were performed in Kentucky before
they were performed in Paris, France.
The word denim comes from 'de Nimes', or from Nimes, a place in
France.
Dublin comes from the Irish Dubh Linn which means Blackpool
Scottish is the language called Gaelic, whereas Irish is actually
called Gaeilge.
The characters Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street were named after
Bert the cop and Ernie the taxi driver in Frank Capra's "Its
A Wonderful Life"
A penguin only has sex twice a year.
Mr. Spock's (of Star Trek) blood type was T-Negative
The Dutch town of Abcoude is the only reasonably sized town/city
in the world whose name begins with ABC.
A dragonfly has a lifespan of 24 hours.
A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.
New Jersey has a spoon museum featuring over 5,400 spoons from
every state and almost every country.
Eleven square miles of southwest Kentucky (Fulton County) is cut
off from the rest of the state by the
Mississippi River. If you wish to travel from this cut off section
to the rest of the state or vice-versa, you must first cross a
bordering state.
Point Roberts in Washington State is cut off from the rest of
the state by British Columbia, Canada. If you wish to travel from
Point Roberts to the rest of the state or vice versa, you must
pass through Canada, including Canadian and U.S. customs
A quarter has 119 grooves around the edge.
A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.
The only city in the United States to celebrate Halloween on the
October 30 instead of October 31 is
Carson City, Nevada. October 31 is Nevada Day and is celebrated
with a large street party.
On an American one-dollar bill, there is an owl in the upper left-hand
corner of the "1" encased in the "shield"
and a spider hidden in the front upper right-hand corner.
No words in the English language rhyme with orange, silver or
purple.
A peanut is not a nut; it is a legume.
It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
"Evian" spelled backwards is naive.
The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets.
Maine is the toothpick capital of the world.
"Bookkeeper" and "bookkeeping" are the only
words in the English language with three consecutive double letters.
Paul McCartney's mother was a midwife.
The flag of the Philippines is the only national flag that is
flown differently during times of peace or war.
The phrase "sleep tight" originated when mattresses
were set upon ropes woven through the bed frame. To remedy sagging
ropes, one would use a bed key to tighten the rope.
It was discovered on a space mission that a frog can throw up.
The frog throws up it's stomach first, so the stomach is dangling
out of it's mouth. Then the frog uses it's forearms to dig out
all of the stomach's contents and then swallows the stomach back
down again.
The A&W of root beer fame stands for Allen and Wright.
A baby eel is called an elver, a baby oyster is called a spat.
Bingo is the name of the dog on the Cracker Jack box.
The arteries and veins surrounding the brain stem called the "circle
of Willis" looks like a stick person with a large head.
Welsh mercenary bowmen in the medieval period only wore one shoe
at a time.
On a trip to the South Sea Islands, French painter Paul Gauguin
stopped off briefly in Central America, where he worked as a laborer
on the Panama Canal.
The Ganges River in India boasts the only genuine fresh-water
sharks in the entire world.
The gene for the Siamese coloration in animals such as cats, rats
or rabbits is heat sensitive. Warmth produces a lighter color
than does cold. Putting tape temporarily on Siamese rabbit's ear
will make the fur on that ear lighter than on the other one.
There are only 12 letters in the Hawaiian alphabet.
Charles de Gaulle's final words were, "It hurts."
The words 'sacrilegious' and 'religion' do not share the same
etymological root.
"John has a long moustache" was the coded-signal used
by the French Resistance in WWII to mobilize their forces once
the Allies had landed on the Normandy beaches.
Gatorade was named for the University of Florida Gators where
it was first developed.
Brooklyn is the Dutch name for "broken valley"
There are four states where the first letter of the capital city
is the same letter as the first letter of the state: Dover, Delaware;
Honolulu, Hawaii; Indianapolis, Indiana; and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
There are four cars and eleven light posts on the back of a ten-dollar
bill.
Venetian blinds were invented in Japan.
The Battle of Bunker Hill was fought at neighboring Breed's Hill.
Former US Senator Barry Goldwater attended the opening night ceremonies
and festivities at Bugsy Siegel's famous Las Vegas casino. They
left him out of the movie Bugsy. He is pissed.
Armored knights raised their visors to identify themselves when
they rode past their king. This custom has become the modern military
salute.
ABBA got their name by taking the first letter from each of their
first names (Agnetha, Bjorn, Benny, Anni-frid.)
The first electric Christmas lights were created by a telephone
company PBX installer. Back in the old days, candles were used
to decorate Christmas trees. This was obviously very dangerous.
Telephone employees are trained to be safety conscious. This installer
took the lights from an old switchboard, connected them together,
strung them on the tree, and hooked them to a battery.
White Out was invented by the mother of Mike Nesmith (Formerly
of the Monkees)
The "huddle" in football was formed due a deaf football
player who used sign language to communicate and his team didn't
want the opposition to see the signals he used and in turn huddled
around him.
There is no such thing as naturally blue food, even blueberries
are purple.
In the 1983 film "JAWS 3D" the shark blows up. Some
of the shark guts were the stuffed ET dolls being sold at the
time.
Walt Disney had wooden teeth.
The hundred billionth crayon made by Crayola was Perriwinkle Blue.
Montana mountain goats will butt heads so hard their hooves fall
off.
The coast line around Lake Sakawea in North Dakota is longer than
the California coastline along the
Pacific Ocean
Sylvia Miles had the shortest performance ever nominated for an
Oscar with "Midnight Cowboy." Her entire role lasted
only six minutes.
The legbones of a bat are so thin that no bat can walk.
Kitsap County, Washington, was originally called Slaughter County,
and the first hotel there was called the Slaughter House.
Seattle, Washington, like Rome, was built on seven hills.
Dinosaur droppings are called coprolites, and are actually fairly
common.
School busses in the United States are Chrome Yellow and used
to be Omaha Orange.
The Beatles song "Dear Prudence" was written about Mia
Farrow's sister, Prudence, when she wouldn't come out and play
with Mia and the Beatles at a religious retreat in India.
The tailless dinner jacket was invented in Tuxedo Park, New York.
Thus it is called the "tuxedo dinner jacket" and is
named after the town...not the other way around.
The state of Maryland has no natural lakes.
Cranberries are sorted for ripeness by bouncing them; a fully
ripened cranberry can be dribbled like a basketball.
The giant squid has the largest eyes in the world.
Rhode Island is the smallest state with the longest name. The
official name, used on all state documents, is Rhode Island and
Providence Plantations.
The chemical formula for Rubidium Bromide is RbBr. It is the only
chemical formula known to be a palindrome!
St. Paul, Minnesota was originally called Pigs Eye after a man
who ran a saloon there.
The first letters of the months July through November, in order,
spell the name JASON.
The first letters of the names of the Great Lakes spell HOMES.
The numbers '172' can be found on the back of the U.S. $5 dollar
bill in the bushes at the base of the Lincoln Memorial.
Soldiers from every country salute with their right hand.
Moisture, not air, causes superglue to dry.
Charles Lindbergh took only four sandwiches with him on his famous
transatlantic flight.
Sarsaparilla is the root that flavors root beer.
The U.S. Mint in Denver, Colorado is the only mint that marks
its pennies.
A full moon always rises at sunset.
If you are locked in a completely sealed room, you will die of
carbon dioxide poisoning first before you will die of oxygen deprivation.
Moon was Buzz Aldrin's mother's maiden name. (Buzz Aldrin was
the second man o n the moon in 1969.)
The only two Southern state capitals not occupied by Northern
troops during the American Civil War were Austin, Texas and Tallahassee,
Florida.
Rabbits love licorice.
Ogdensburg, New York is the only city in the United States situated
on the St. Lawrence River.
Rene Descartes came up with the theory of coordinate geometry
by looking at a fly walk across a tiled ceiling.
Kelsey Grammar sings and plays the piano for the theme song of
Fraiser.
Alan Thicke, the father in the TV show Growing Pains wrote the
theme songs for The Facts of Life and Diff'rent Strokes.
If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front
legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one
front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received
in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person
died of natural causes.
In 1963, baseball pitcher Gaylord Perry remarked, "They'll
put a man on the moon before I hit a home run." On July 20,
1969, a few hours after Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, Gaylord
Perry hit his first, and only, home run.
The language Malayalam, spoken in parts of India, is the only
language whose name is a palindrome.
Panama hats come from Ecuador not Panama.
Urea is found in human urine and Dalmatian dogs and nowhere else.
Human birth control pills work on gorillas.
The Earl of Condom was a knighted personal physician to England's
King Charles II in the mid-1600's. The Earl was requested to produce
a method to protect the King from syphilis. (Charles the II's
pleasure-loving nature was notorious.) The result should be obvious.
Cheryl Ladd (of Charlie's Angels fame) played the voice, both
talking and singing, of Joise in the 70s Saturday morning cartoon
"Josie and the Pussycats."
Lynyrd Skynard was the name of the gym teacher of the boys who
went on to form that band. He once told them, "You boys ain't
never gonna to nothin'."
M & M's were developed so that soldiers could eat candy without
getting their fingers sticky.
Richard Nixon's favorite drink was a dry martini.
The Grateful Dead were once called The Warlocks.
The license plate number of the Volkswagen that appeared on the
cover of the Beatles Abbey Road album was 281F.
Pinocchio was made of pine.
An ant lion is neither an ant nor a lion.
Jethro Tull is not the name of the rock singer/flautist responsible
for such songs as "Aqualung" and "Thick as a Brick."
Jethro Tull is the name of the band. The singer is Ian Anderson.
The original Jethro Tull was an English horticulturalist who invented
the seed drill.
Gilligan of Gilligan's Island had a first name that was only used
once, on the never- aired pilot show. His first name was Willy.
The skipper's real name on Gilligan's Island is Jonas Grumby.
It was mentioned once in the first episode on their radio's newscast
about the wreck.
The Professor's real name was Roy Hinkley, Mary Ann's last name
was Summers and Mrs. Howell's maiden name was Wentworth.
Neck ties were first worn in Croatia. That's why they were called
cravats (CRO-vats).
Alma mater means bountiful mother.
A Holstein's spots are like fingerprints -- no two cows have the
same pattern of spots.
Glass flutes do not expand with humidity so their owners are spared
the nuisance of tuning them.
Jersey (in the Channel Islands, UK) was the only place that the
Nazi's occupied in Great Britain during
World War II.
Top English soccer club Liverpool were formed because their local
enemies, Everton, couldn't pay the rent for their stadium. Therefore
Liverpool took over at the stadium (Anfield) and became England's
top soccer team ever.
The male gypsy moth can "smell" the virgin female gypsy
moth from 1.8 miles away.
In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak.
Playing cards were issued to British pilots in WWII. If captured,
they could be soaked in water and unfolded to reveal a map for
escape.
The "Hallelujah Chorus" fits into the Easter portion
of Handel's Messiah, not Christmas.
Over 30 million people in the US "suffer" from Diastima.
Diastima is having a gap between your front teeth.
In 1976 Sarah Caldwell became the first woman to conduct the Metropolitan
Opera in New York City.
Carnivorous animals will not eat another animal that has been
hit by a lightning strike.
Reindeer milk has more fat than cow milk.
The "L.L." in L.L. Bean stands for Leon Leonwood.
Libya is the only country in the world with a solid, single-colored
flag -- it's green.
Seoul, the South Korean capital, just means "the capital"
in the Korean language.
Ivory bar soap floating was a mistake. They had been overmixing
the soap formula causing excess air bubbles that made it float.
Customers wrote and told how much they loved that it floated,
and it has floated ever since.
The original fifty cent piece in Australian decimal currency had
around $2.00 worth of silver in it before it was replaced with
a less expensive twelve sided coin.
"Studies show that if a cat falls off the seventh floor of
a building it has about thirty percent less chance of surviving
than a cat that falls off the twentieth floor. It supposedly takes
about eight floors for the cat to realize what is occurring, relax
and correct itself. At about that height it hits maximum speed
and when it hits the ground it's rib cage absorbs most of the
impact. So throw your cat off a building today!"
There are eight different sizes of champagne bottle and the largest
is called a Nebuchadnezzar (after the Biblical king who put Daniel's
three friends into the oven).
The letters KGB stand for Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti.
The female ferret is referred to as a `jill'.
The word rodent comes from the Latin word `rodere' meaning to
gnaw.
Australian Rules Football was originally designed to give cricketers
something to play during the off season.
Alexander the Great was an epileptic.
The lead singer of The Knack, famous for "My Sharona,"
and Jack Kevorkian's lead defense attorney are brothers, Doug
& Jeffrey Feiger.
Elizabeth Bacon Custer, wife of "The Boy General" is
one of the few women buried at the U.S. Military academy at West
Point, New York.
"Freelance" comes from a knight whose lance was free
for hire, i.e. not pledged to one master.)
The only bone not broken so far during any ski accident is one
located in the inner ear.
The name for Oz in the "Wizard of Oz" was thought up
when the creator, Frank Baum, looked at his filing cabinet and
saw A-N, and O-Z, hence "Oz."
There are ten human body parts that are only three letters long:
Eye, Ear, Leg, Arm, Jaw, Gum, Toe, Lip, Hip and Rib.
Michigan was the first state to have roadside picnic tables.
Elvis had a twin brother named Jesse Garon, who died at birth,
which is why Elvis' middle name was spelled Aron; in honor of
his brother.
Fitchburg, Massachusetts is the second hillest city in the US.
During WWII the city of Leningrad underwent a seventeen month
German siege. Unable to access the city by roads, the Russians
built a railroad across the ice on Lake Lagoda to get food and
supplies to the citizens.
The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar
tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.
Thomas Edison got patents for a method of making concrete furniture
and a cigar which was supposed to burn forever
Elton John's real name is Reginald Dwight. Elton comes from Elton
Dean, a Bluesology sax player. John comes from Long John Baldry,
founder of Blues Inc. They were the first electric white blues
band ever seen in England--1961
Elton John's uncle was a professional soccer player. He broke
his leg playing for Nottingham Forest in the 1959 English FA Cup
Final.
The saying "it's so cold out there it could freeze the balls
off a brass monkey" came from when they had old cannons like
ones used in the Civil War. The cannonballs were stacked in a
pyramid formation, called a brass monkey. When it got extremely
cold outside they would crack and break off... Thus the saying.
Horses cannot vomit.
Rabbits cannot vomit.
The word "Boondocks" comes from the Tagalog (Filipino)
word "Bundok," which means mountain.
Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks
otherwise it will digest itself.
The "chapters" of the New Testament were not there originally.
When monks in medieval times translated it from the Greek, they
numbered the pages in each "book."
Coca-Cola contains neither coca nor cola.
Yucatan, as in the peninsula, is from Maya "u" + "u"
+ "uthaan," meaning "listen to how they speak,"
what the Maya said when they first heard the Spaniards.
The term, "It's all fun and games until someone loses an
eye" is from Ancient Rome.
The only rule during wrestling matches was, "No eye gouging."
Everything else was allowed, but the only way to be disqualified
is to poke someone's eye out.
The original plan for Disneyland included a Lilliputland.
S.O.S. doesn't stand for "Save Our Ship" or "Save
Our Souls" -- It was just chosen by an 1908 international
conference on Morse Code because the letters S and O were easy
to remember and just about anyone could key it and read it, S
= dot dot dot, O = dash dash dash.
The word "moose" was originally Algonquin.
The Sanskrit word for "war" means "desire for more
cows."
The "ZIP" in Zip Code stands for "Zone Improvement
Plan."
Pocahontas appeared on the back of the $20 bill in 1875.
When a female horse and male donkey mate, the offspring is called
a mule, but when a male horse and female donkey mate, the offspring
is called a hinny.
The way to get more mules is to mate a male donkey with a female
horse.
A donkey will sink in quicksand but a mule won't.
Crickets hear through their knees.
Turnips turn green when sun burnt.
Pigs, walruses and light-colored horses can be sunburned.
A type of jellyfish found off the coast of England is the longest
animal in the world.
When Voyager 2 visited Neptune it saw a small irregular white
cloud that zips around Neptune every sixteen hours or so now known
as "The Scooter".
Crows have the largest cerebral hemispheres, relative to body
size, of any avian family.
Martha's Vineyard once had its own dialect of Sign Language. One
deaf person arrived in 1692 and after that there was a relatively
large genetically deaf population that had their own particular
dialect of sign language. From 1692-1910 nearly all hearing people
on the island were bilingual in sign language and English.
Mr. Rogers is an ordained minister.
Hugh "Ward Cleaver" Beaumont was an ordained minister.
Sir Isaac Newton was an ordained priest in the Church of England.
St. Bernard is the patron saint of skiers.
The Old English word for "sneeze" is "fneosan."
John Lennon's first girlfriend was named Thelma Pickles.
According to the ceremonial customs of Orthodox Judaism, it is
officially sundown when you cannot tell the difference between
a black thread and a red one.
A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
Woodpecker scalps, porpoise teeth and giraffe tails have all been
used as money.
Cyano-acrylate glues (Super glues) were invented by accident.
The researcher was trying to make optical coating materials, and
would test their properties by putting them between two prisms
and shining light through them. When he tried the cyano-acrylate,
he couldn't get the prisms apart
Most of the little schoolhouses in the U.S. of yesteryear were
painted red because red was the least expensive paint color.
Elizabeth I of England suffered from anthophobia, a fear of roses.
Almost half the bones in your body are in your hands and feet.
A flamingo can eat only when its head is upside down.
Dalmatian dogs are born pure white, they don't start getting spots
until they are three or four days old.
The growth rate of some bamboo plants can reach three feet (91.44
cm) per day.
The Los Angeles Rams were the first U.S. football team to introduce
emblems on their helmets.
The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.
The average garden variety caterpillar has 248 muscles in its
head.
An elephant can be pregnant for up to two years.
The two quickest goals scored in the NHL were three seconds apart.
Dartboards are made out of horsehairs.
Your left lung is smaller than your right lung to make room for
your heart.
'Crack' gets it name because it crackles when you smoke it.
(This useless fact is dedicated, with love, to A.G.)
Heroin is the brand name of morphine once marketed by Bayer.
Marijuana is Spanish for 'Mary Jane.'
One of the many Tarzans, Karmuela Searlel, was mauled to death
on the set by a raging elephant.
Slinkys were invented by an airplane mechanic; he was playing
with engine parts and realized the possible secondary use of one
of the springs.
U.S. Interstates which go north-south are numbered sequentially
starting from the west with odd numbers, and Interstates which
go east-west are numbered sequentially starting from the south
with even numbers.
Today's cattle are descended from two species: wild aurochs --
fierce and agile herd animals that populated
Asia, North Africa and Europe -- and eotragus -- an antelope-like,
Asian forest creature.
Ballroom dancing is a major at Brigham Young University.
Professional ballerinas use about twelve pairs of toe shoes per
week. The anteater, aardvark, spiny anteater (echidna), and scaly
anteater (pangolin) are completely unrelated - in fact, the closest
relatives to anteaters are sloths and armadillos, the closest
relative to the spiny anteater is the platypus, and the aardvark
is in an order all by itself.
There are 336 dimples on a regulation golf ball.
Octopi have gardens.
The Beatles song "Martha My Dear" was written by Paul
McCartney about his sheepdog Martha.
"Ever think you're hearing something in a song, but they're
really singing something else? The lyric is 'mondegreen,' and
it comes from a folk song in the '50's. The singer was actually
singing "They slew the Earl of Morray and laid him on the
green," but this came off sounding like 'They slew the Earl
of Morray and Lady Mondegreen.'"
A walla-walla scene is one where extras pretend to be talking
in the background -- when they say "walla-walla" it
looks like they are actually talking.
The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from an old English
law which stated that you couldn't beat your wife with anything
wider than your thumb.
The youngest letters in the English language are "j,"
"v" and "w."
The Australian $5, $10, $20, $50 and $100 notes are made out of
plastic.
Cranberry Jello is the only jello flavor that comes from real
fruit, not artificial flavoring.
The oldest exposed surface on earth is New Zealand's south island.
John Lennon's assassin was carrying a copy of "The Catcher
in the Rye" when he shot the famous Beatle in 1980.
Don MacLean's song "American Pie" was written about
Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens. All three were
on the same plane that crashed.
A game of pool is referred to as a "frame."
Impotence is legal grounds for divorce in 24 American states.
The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper.
Some biblical scholars believe that Aramaic (the language of the
ancient Bible) did not contain an easy way to say "many things"
and used a term which has come down to us as 40. This means that
when the bible -- in many places -- refers to "40 days,"
they meant many days.
101 Dalmatians and Peter Pan (Wendy ) are the only two Disney
cartoon features with both parents that are present and don't
die throughout the movie.
The Soviet Sukhoi-34 is the first strike fighter with a toilet
in it.
They Might Be Giants is the first modern band with an Accordion
and a Glockenspiel
Napoleon constructed his battle plans in a sandbox.
'Strengths' is the longest word in the English language with just
one vowel.
'Stewardesses' is the longest word that is typed with only the
left hand.
One of the longest English words that can be typed using the top
row of a typewriter (allowing multiple uses of letters) is 'typewriter.'
When a giraffe's baby is born it falls from a height of six feet,
normally without being hurt.
Virgina Woolf wrote all her books standing.
The tango originated as a dance between two men (for partnering
practice).
Leon Trotsky, the seminal Russian Communist, was assassinated
in Mexico with an ice-pick.
The Bronx, New York got its name from explorer Henry Bronk.
The Kentucky Derby is the oldest continually held sports event
in the United States (1875); the second oldest is the Westminister
Kennel Club Dog Show (1876.)
"Video Killed the Radio Star" was the very first video
ever played on MTV.
The pitches that Babe Ruth hit for his last-ever homerun and that
Joe DiMaggio hit for his first-ever homerun where thrown by the
same man.
The native tribe of Tierra del Fuego has a language so guttural
it cannot have an alphabet.
A family of six died in Oregon during WWII as a result of a Japanese
balloon bomb.
AM and PM stand for "Ante-Meridian" and "Post-Meridian,"
respectively, and A.D. actually stands for "Anno Domini"
rather than "After Death."
The penguins that inhabit the tip of South America are called
jackass penguins.
To "testify" was based on men in the Roman court swearing
to a statement made by swearing on their testicles.
During conscription for WWII, there were nine documented cases
of men with three testicles.
Avocado is derived from the Spanish word 'aguacate' which is derived
from 'ahuacatl' meaning testicle.
Benito Mussolini would ward off the evil eye by touching his testicles.
Both Hitler and Napoleon were missing one testicle
Stalin was only five feet, four inches tall.
Stalin's left foot had webbed toes, and his left arm is noticably
shorter than his right.
Scientists found a whole new phylum of animal on a lobster's lip.
The Baby Ruth candy bar was actually named after Grover Cleveland's
baby daughter, Ruth.
Grover Cleveland's real first name is Stephen, Grover is his middle
name.
Every two thousand frowns creates one wrinkle.
During WWII, Americans tried to train bats to drop bomb.
Swans are the only birds with penises.
A whale's penis is called adork.
Some carnivores, rodents, bats and insectivores have a penis bone,
called a baculum.
A barnacle has the largest penis of any other animal in the world
in relation to its size.
Iguanas, koalas and Komodo dragons all have two penises.
"I'd like clarify the comment about iguanas and komodo dragons
having two penises. In fact, they have a single penis, but it
is split in two (pretty much 'Y'-shaped.) This organ is known
as a hemipenes. Snakes also share this interesting feature. Apparently,
the dual penis is for ease of left-handed or right-handed mating.
Opossums have forked penises.
Some female hyenas have a pseudo-penis.
A winged penis was the city symbol of Pompeii, the ancient Roman
resort town destroyed by Mt. Vesuvius' eruption.
One way to tell seals and sea lions apart is that, sea lions have
external ears and testicles.
Swahili is a combination of African tribal languages, Arabic and
Portuguese.
A person from Glasgow, is called a Glaswegian.
An enneahedron is solid with nine faces.
Most armadillos seen dead on the road did not get hit by the wheels.
When an armidillo is frightened it jumps straight into the air.
Armadillos can be housebroken.
Armadillos have four babies at a time, always all the same sex.
They are perfect quadruplets, the fertilized cell split into quarters,
resulting in four identical armadillos.
Armadillos get an average of 18.5 hours of sleep per day.
Armadillos can walk underwater.
Armadillos are the only animal besides humans that can get leprosy.
Jet lag was once called boat lag, back before jets existed.
Sirimauo Bandranaike of Sri Lanka became the world's first popularly
elected female head of state in 1960.
There are more beetles than any other kind of creature in the
world.
Velcro was invented by a Swiss guy who was inspired by the way
burrs attached to clothing.
The hieroglyph for 100,000 is a tadpole.
The Phillips-head screwdriver was invented in Oregon.
Tomb robbers believed that knocking Egyptian sarcophagi's noses
off would and therefore forstall curses.
The allele for six fingers and toes is dominant in humans. (Watch
out Inigo Montoya...)
Polar bears' fur is not white, it's clear. Polar bear skin is
actually black. Their hair is hollow and acts like fiber optics,
directing sunlight to warm their skin.
Polar bears camouflage themselves more completely during a hunt
by covering their black noses with their paws.
The amount of tropical rainforest cut down each year is an area
the size of Tennessee.
The face of a penny can hold about thirty drops of water.
Medieval knights put sharkskin on their sword handles to give
them a more secure grip; they would dig the sharp scales into
their palms.
Orcas (killer whales) kill sharks by torpedoing up into the shark's
stomach from underneath, causing the shark to explode.
The only planet without a ring is earth.
Wayne's World was filmed in two weeks.
Cleopatra used pomegranate seeds for lipstick.
Cleopatra's last name was Ptolemy, and she was Greek rather than
Egyptian.
The Red sea in the Bible is a long-perpetuated mistranslation
of the Reed sea.
If you feed a seagull Alka-Seltzer, its stomach will explode.
The raised reflective dots in the middle of highways are called
Botts dots.
The Amazon rainforest produces half the world's oxygen supply.
The concerti on the two Voyager probes' information discs are
performed by famed Canadian pianist Glenn Gould.
Reindeer like to eat bananas.
Chia Pets are only sold in December.
Between 1947 and 1959, 42 nuclear devices were detonated in the
Marshall Islands.
Boris Karloff is the narrator of the seasonal television special
"How the Grinch Stole Christmas."
A group of unicorns is called a blessing.
Twelve or more cows are known as a "flink."
A group of frogs is called an army.
A group of rhinos is called a crash.
A group of kangaroos is called a mob.
A group of whales is called a pod.
A group of geese is called a gaggle.
A group of ravens is called a murder.
A group of officers is called a mess.
A group of larks is called an exaltation.
A group of owls is called a parliament.
Hershey's Kisses are called that because the machine that makes
them looks like it's kissing the conveyor belt.
The physically smallest post office in the United States is in
Ochopee, Florida in the heart of the everglades.
Physicist Murray Gell-Mann named the sub-atomic particles known
as quarks for a random line in James Joyce, "Three quarks
for Muster Mark!"
Samuel Clemens's pseudonym "Mark Twain" was the nickname
of a riverboat pilot about whom Clemens wrote a needless nasty
satirical piece. Apparently, Clemens felt guilt later and adopted
the name as a nom de plume as some sort of expiation. The phrase
does not mean measuring the depth of the river; it means a specific
depth, to wit, two fathoms (twelve feet.)
Steve Young, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback, is the great-great-grandson
of Mormon leader Brigham Young.
Money is made of woven linen, not paper
A rhinoceros's horn is made of hair.
Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie.
The 80s song "Rosanna" from the Eighties was written
about Rosanna Arquette, the actress.
Warren Beatty and Shirley MacLaine are brother and sister.
Jean Harlow was the first actress to appear on the cover of Life
magazine.
Sylvia Plath was a famous poet who killed herself at age 31 by
sticking her head in an oven.
Sylvia Plath's husband, Ted Hughes, was married three times, and
two of the women he married committed suicide.
Jesus Christ died at age 33.
Starfish don't have brains.
Shrimps' hearts are in their heads.
The derivation of the word trivia comes from the Latin "tri-"
+ "via", which means three streets. This is because
in ancient times, at an intersection of three streets in Rome
(or some other Italian place), they would have a type of kiosk
where ancillary information was listed. You might be interested
in it, you might not, hence they were bits of "trivia."
The first couple to be shown in bed together on prime time television
were Fred and Wilma Flintstone.
Coca-Cola was originally green.
Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than the US Treasury.
Hawaiian alphabet has 12 letters.
Men can read smaller print than women; women can hear better.
City with the most Rolls Royce's per capita: Hong Kong
State with the highest percentage of people who walk to work:
Alaska
Percentage of Africa that is wilderness: 28%
Percentage of North America that is wilderness: 38%
Barbie's measurements if she were life size: 39-23-33
Cost of raising a medium-size dog to the age of eleven: $6,400
Average number of people airborne over the US any given hour:
61,000.
Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.
The world's youngest parents were 8 and 9 and lived in China in
1910.
The youngest pope was 11 years old.
First novel ever written on a typewriter: Tom Sawyer.
The San Francisco Cable cars are the only mobile National Monuments
Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from
history: Spades - King David, Clubs - Alexander the Great, Hearts
- Charlemagne, and Diamonds - Julius Caesar.
If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front
legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one
front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received
in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person
died of natural causes.
Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence on July
4th, John Hancock and Charles Thomson. Most of the rest signed
on August 2, but the last signature wasn't added until 5 years
later.
Hershey's Kisses are called that because the machine that makes
them looks like it's kissing the conveyor belt.
No NFL team which plays its home games in a domed stadium has
ever won a Superbowl. (Guess that explains the Saints!)
The nursery rhyme Ring Around the Rosey is a rhyme about the plague.
Infected people with the plague would get red circular sores ("Ring
around the rosey..."), these sores would smell very badly
so common folks would put flowers on their bodies somewhere (inconspicuously),
so that it would cover the smell of the sores ("...a pocket
full of posies..."), People who died from the plague would
be burned so as to reduce the possible spread of the disease ("...ashes,
ashes, we all fall down!")
Now the Test
Write down your answers to check them at the end.
1. On a standard traffic light, is the green on
the top or bottom?
2. How many states are there?
3. In which hand is the Statue of Liberty's torch?
4. What 6 colors are on the classic Campbell's soup
label?
5. What 2 letters don't appear on the telephone
dial?
6. What 2 #'s on the telephone dial don't have letters
by them?
7. When you walk does your left arm swing w/ your
right or left leg?
8. How many matches are in a standard pack?
9. On our flag, is the top stripe red or white?
10. What is the lowest # on the FM dial?
11. Which way does water go down the drain, clockwise
or counter-clockwise?
12. Which way does a "no smoking" sign's
slash run?
13. How many channels on a VHF TV dial?
14. Which side of a woman's blouse are the buttons
on?
15. On a NY license plate, is New York on the top
or bottom?
16. Which way do fans rotate?
17. Whose face is on a dime?
18. How many sides does a stop sign have?
19. Do books have even # pages on the right or left
side?
20. How many lug nuts are on a standard car wheel?
21. How many sides are there on a standard pencil?
22. Sleepy, Happy, Sneezy, Grumpy, Dopey, Doc. Who's
missing?
23. How many hot dog buns are in a standard package?
24. On which card in a deck, is the cardmaker's
trademark?
25. On which side of a venetian blind is the cord
that adjusts the opening between the slats?
26. On the back of a $1 bill, what is in the center?
27. There are 12 buttons on a touch tone phone.
What 2 symbols bear no digits?
28. How many curves are in a standard paper clip?
29. Does a merry-go-round turn clockwise or counter-clockwise?
Answers:
30. Bottom
31. 50
32. Right
33. Blue, red, white, yellow, black, and gold
34. Q, Z
35. 1, 0
36. Left
37. 20
38. Red
39. 88
40. Counter-clockwise (unless you happen to be south
of the equator)
41. Towards the bottom right
42. 12 (no #1)
43. Left
44. Top
45. Clockwise as you look at it
46. Roosevelt
47. 8
48. Left
49. 5
50. 6
51. Bashful
52. 8
53. Ace of spades
54. Left
55. ONE
56. *, #
57. 3
58. Counter-clockwise
Scoring:
30-28 Genius...Mensa is calling!
25-27 Not too shabby!
20-24 You could do better!
16-19 McDonald's is calling!
15 or below.. Being blind wouldn't affect you one bit!!
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