Totally True Useless Facts
1 - 100
- Coca-cola was originally green.
- Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than for the US Treasury.
- Smartest dogs in order: border collie, poodle, golden retriever. Dumbest--afghan.
- Majel Barret is the only person to be on all four Star Trek series.
- Hawaiian alphabet has 12 letters.
- Men can read smaller print than women; women can hear better.
- Chances are 1 in 2 that an American lives within 50 miles of where they grew up. This is known as propinquity.
- American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served first class.
- Hong Kong is the city with the most Rolls Royce's per capita.
- Alaska has the highest percentage of people in the States who walk to work.
- A white Christmas in New York only has a snowball's chance, 1 in 4.
- 1/12 of the US annual rainfall falls in April.
- Percentage of Africa that is wilderness: 28. Percentage of North America that is wilderness: 38.
- The hieroglyph for 100,000 is a tadpole.
- About 44% of American adults go on a diet each year.
- Barbie's measurements if she were life size: 39-23-33.
- A West German goes about 7 days without washing his underwear.
- 36% of Americans say that God has spoken to them. 43% of Americans regularly attend religious services.
- Washington DC is the city with the highest per capita viewership of television evangelists.
- 80% of American men say they would marry the same woman if they had it to do all over again. 50% of American women say they would marry the same man.
- 58% of men say they are happier after their divorce or separation. 85% of women say they are happier.
- Hallmark makes cards for quite a number of different family relationships, 105 in all.
- Cost of raising a medium-size dog to the age of eleven: $6,400.
- On average, about 61,000 people are airborne over the US any given hour.
- 70% of Americans have visited Disneyland or Disney World.
- Average life span of a major league baseball: 6 pitches.
- 1/3 of all ice cream sold is vanilla.
- 1/3 of all the potatoes sold are French fried.
- 7% of Americans eat at McDonalds every day.
- 90% of bird species are monogamous. 3% of mammal species are.
- Number of US states that claim test scores in their elementary schools are above national average: 50.
- 4/5 of Harvard students graduate with honors.
- Chances 1 in 7 that a burglary in the US will be solved.
- 1/3 of the land in the US is owned by the government.
- James Buchanon was the only President to remain a bachelor.
- Eleanor Roosevelt was the only first lady to carry a loaded revolver.
- John F. Kennedy was the Only President to win a Pulitzer, for Profiles in Courage.
- Abe Lincoln was the only President awarded a patent, for a system of buoying vessels over shoals.
- Honey is the only food that does not spoil.
- Only one person won the $64,000 Challenge and $64,000 Question, Dr. Joyce Brothers (subject is boxing).
- Hummingbirds are the only birds that can fly backwards.
- Antartica is the only continent without reptiles or snakes.
- A pig is the only animal besides a human that can get sunburn.
- Ostriches stick their heads in the sand to look for water.
- An eagle can kill a young deer and fly away with it.
- In the Caribbean there are oysters that can climb trees.
- Polar bears are left-handed.
- Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.
- Eskimos never gamble.
- The world's youngest parents were 8 and 9 and lived in China in 1910.
- The youngest pope was 11 years old.
- Mark Twain didn't graduate from elementary school.
- Proportional to their weight, men are stronger than horses.
- Pilgrims ate popcorn at the first Thanksgiving dinner.
- Your nose and ears never stop growing.
- Jupiter is bigger than all the other planets in our solar system combined.
- Hot water is heavier than cold.
- The parachute was invented by da Vinci in 1515.
- They have square watermelons in Japan...they stack better.
- Cream does not weigh as much as milk.
- Starfish have eight eyes--one at the end of each leg.
- Iceland consumes more Coca-cola per capita than any other nation.
- First novel ever written on a typewriter was Tom Sawyer.
- There are more collect calls on Father's Day than any other day of the year.
- It is possible to lead a cow upstairs but not downstairs.
- Men get hiccups more often than woman.
- Armadillos can be housebroken.
- 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321
- If you add up the numbers 1-100 consecutively (1+2+3+4+5....etc.) the total is 5050.
- Rene Descartes came up with the theory of coordinate geometry by looking at a fly walk across a tiled ceiling.
- 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.
- Ballroom dancing is a major at Brigham Young University.
- 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.
- The most used letter in the English alphabet is 'E', and 'Q' is the least used.
- 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."
- There is a word in the English language with only one vowel, which occurs six times: Indivisibility.
- Facetious and abstemious contain all the vowels in the correct order, as does arsenious, meaning "containing arsenic."
- No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, or purple.
- "Underground" is the only word in the English language that begins and ends with the letters "und."
- "Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt".
- There are only four words in the English language which end in "-dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.
- The verb "cleave" is the only English word with two synonyms which are antonyms of each other: adhere and separate.
- The word "set" has more definitions than any other word in the English language.
- The longest word in the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. The only other word with the same amount of letters is its plural, pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconioses. Hydroxydesoxycorticosterone and hydroxydesoxycorticosterones are the longest anagrams.
- The second longest word in the English language is "antidisestablishmenterianism".
- The longest one-syllable word in the English language is "screeched."
- Maine is the only state whose name is just one syllable.
- The largest city in the United States with a one syllable name is Flint, Michigan.
- The state with the longest coastline in the US is Michigan.
- The longest U.S. highway is route 6 starting in Cape Cod, Massachusetts going through 14 states, and ending in Bishop, California.
- The highest point in Pennsylvania is lower than the lowest point in Colorado.
- 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."
- Canada is an Indian word meaning "big village."
- There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.
- 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.
- "I am." is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.
- The term "the whole 9 yards" came from World War II 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 original story from Tales of 1001 Arabian Nights begins, "Aladdin was a little Chinese boy."
- Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance.
- The most common name in the world is Mohammed.
1 - 100,
101 - 200,
201 - 300,
301 - 400,
401 - 500,
501 - 600,
601 - 700,
701 - 800,
801 - 900,
901 - 1000,
1001 - 1100,
1101 - current
I do not claim that all of these are actually true, but I have weeded out some of the obvious ones.
If you have any more for me, or if you find a repeat, typo, or blatant fallacy in the above, please e-me about it.
Corrected TTUFs
Where I learn some of this crazy stuff:
The Learning Kingdom
MailBits.com
Win Ben Stein's Money
Accord Publishing's 1999 Nose It All Calendar
Hot Topic pay stubs
E-mails which worm their way into my inbox
Tyler Whitney's Completely Random
Home Page
UselessKnowledge.com
The
Danny Baker Show
PhiLL's Site Of Useless
Information
Buy-ology - TLC
Spam page
Silly Putty page
Other interesting things too long for the TTUF's