some useless but amusing info...
[they are organized by catagory & the catagories are in different colors]
Animals
• Armadillos can walk under water.
• A full grown bear can run as fast as a horse.
• At birth a panda bear weighs 4 ounces and is smaller than a mouse.
• A group of 12 or more cows is called a flink.
• Cows poop an average of 16 times a day. [eww]
• Brachiosaurus had a heart the size of a pickup truck.
• The greyhound dog can reach speeds of up to 42 miles per hour.
• Black cats are considered lucky in England.
• Dolphins can swim and sleep at the same time.
• During World War II, the very first bomb dropped on Berlin by the Allies killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.
• The MGM lion, whose name was Leo, lived in Memphis until his death.
• A starfish can turn its stomach inside out.
• Sharks are so powerful that their bite can generate a force of up to 6 tons per square inch.
• Some desert snails have been known to sleep for three to four years.
• A blue whale's tongue is so large that fifty people could stand on it.
• An adult blue whale's heart beats about 5-6 times a minute.
Food & Drinks
• According to Scandinavian traditions, if a boy and girl eat from the same loaf of bread, they are bound to fall in love.
• Americans collectively eat one hundred pounds of chocolate every second.
• Baskin Robbins once made ketchup ice cream. This was the only vegetable flavoured ice cream produced. However, they discontinued it since they thought it would not sell well.
• Caffeine is the world's most popular stimulant.
• Chewing on gum while cutting onions can help a person from producing tears.
• Coca-Cola used to contain cocaine when it was initially introduced.
• Coffee has about five times the amount of caffeine as a can of coke.
• Contrary to popular beliefs, chocolate does not cause acne.
• It takes seven to ten days to make a jelly belly jellybean.
• Milk and cheese can aid in the reduction of tooth decay.
• Ninety-nine percent of pumpkins sold in the United States are for the sole purpose of decoration.
• On average, Americans eat one hundred acres of pizza a day. This amounts to three hundred fifty slices per second.
• Pizza is consumed the most during Super Bowl week.Scientists at the Texas A&M University's Institute for Biosciences and Technology are working on ways to grow vaccines inside of bananas.
• The average person will spend about five years eating during their lifetime.
• The world's longest hot dog was 1,996-foot wiener made by the Sara Lee Corp. for the 1996 Olympics.
• The first McDonald's restaurant opened in in San Bernardino, California.
Health & Body
• Adult human bones account for 14% of the body's total weight.
• Once a human reaches the age of 35, he/she will start losing approximately 7,000 brain cells a day. The cells will never be replaced.
• On average redheads have 90,000 hairs. People with black hair have about 110,000 hairs.
• The reason why some people get a cowlick is because the growth of their hair is in a spiral pattern, which causes the hair to either stand straight up, or goes to a certain angle.
• Every year, 11,000 Americans injure themselves while trying out bizarre sexual positions.
• A fetus develops fingerprints at eighteen weeks.
• A man named Charles Osborne had the hiccups for approximately sixty-nine years.
• A sneeze can travel as fast as one hundred miles per hour.
• About twenty-five percent of the population sneeze when they are exposed to light.
• All babies are color blind when they are born.
• Although the outsides of a bone are hard, they are generally light and soft inside. They are about 75% water.
• Asthma affects one in fifteen children under the age of eighteen.
• Babies' eyes do not produce tears until the baby is approximately six to eight weeks old.
Entertainment
• The Walt Disney character Donald Duck's middle name is Fauntleroy.
• The Flintstones cartoon was the first thirty-minute cartoon to be aired during prime time.
• King Kong was Adolf Hitler's favourite movie.
• The Simpsons is the longest running prime-time animated series on television history.
• Monopoly is the best-selling board game in the world.
• In 1939, Judy Garland was originally considered to play Careen, Scarlett's younger sister in Gone With The Wind. But the deal fell through after she decided to take the role of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz instead.
• In the movie ""The Wizard Of Oz,"" Toto the dog's salary was $125 a week, while Judy Garland was $500 a week.
• The first animated film to be nominated for an Oscar for best picture was Disney's ""Beauty and the Beast"" in 1991.
• The projection light used for IMAX theaters can be seen from space.
• The ruby red slippers in the movie ""The Wizard of Oz"" were sold off at an auction for $660,000.
• In 1946, the first TV toy commercial aired. It was for Mr. Potato Head.
Geography & Space
• An earthquake on Dec. 16, 1811 caused parts of the Mississippi River to flow backwards.
• Antarctica is the only land on our planet that is not owned by any country.
• As an iceberg melts, it makes a fizzing sound because of the compressed air bubbles popping in the ice.
• Astronomers once believed a planet named Vulcan existed between Mercury and the Sun.
• The Amazon rainforest produces more than 20% the world's oxygen supply.
• The Atlantic Ocean is saltier than the Pacific Ocean.
• The average iceberg weighs 20,000,000 tons.
• The state of Tennessee was known as Franklin before 1796.
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The Tonle Sap River in Cambodia flows north for almost half the year and then south for the rest of the year.
• The U.S. paid Russia $7.2 million for Alaska in 1867.
• There are over one hundred billion galaxies with each galaxy having billions of stars.
Sports
• Approximately one out of four injuries by athletes involve the wrist and hand.
• Karate actually originated in India, but was developed further in China.
• Sports Illustrated is the largest sports magazine circulation.
• The national sport of Japan is sumo wrestling.
• There are 122 pebbles per square inch on a Spalding basketball.
• Three consecutive strikes in bowling is called a turkey.
• Electronic companies sell five times as many big-screen TVs during Super Bowl Week.
• The chances of making two holes-in-one in a round of golf are one in 67 million.
• The Stanley Cup originally was only seven and a half inches high.
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