FUN FACTS...
on October 12, 1999.
Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.
Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.
The national anthem of Greece has 158 verses. No one in Greece has memorized all 158 verses.
There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.
The average secretary's left hand does 56% of the typing.
A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.
There are more chickens than people in the world.
Two-thirds of the world's eggplant is grown in New Jersey.
The longest one-syllable word in the English language is "screeched."
On a Canadian two dollar bill, the flag flying over the Parliament Building is an American flag.
All of the clocks in the movie Pulp Fiction are stuck on 4:20.
No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver or purple.
"Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt".
All 50 states are listed across the top of the Lincoln Memorial on the back of the $5 bill.
Almonds are members of the peach family.
Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance.
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.
Los Angeles's full name is "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reinade los Angeles de Porciuncula". And can be abbreviated to 3.63% of its size, "L.A."
A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.
Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.
In most advertisements, including newspapers, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10.
The only real person to be a Pez head was Betsy Ross.
The Ramses brand condom is named after the great pharaoh Ramses II who fathered over 160 children.
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 dragonfly has a lifespan of 24 hours.
A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.
A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.
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.
Who's that playing the piano on the "Mad About You" theme? Paul Reiser himself.
The male gypsy moth can "smell" the virgin female gypsy moth from1.8 miles away.
In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak.
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."
The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.
Mr. Rogers is an ordained minister.
John Lennon's first girlfriend was named Thelma Pickles.
The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.
There are 336 dimples on a regulation golf ball.
'Stewardesses' is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand.
To "testify" was based on men in the Roman court swearing to a statement made by swearing on their testicles.
Some lions mate over 50 times a day.
Donald Duck comics were banned in Finland because he doesn't wear any pants.
Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.
February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.
I am. is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.
In ancient Egypt, priests plucked EVERY hair from their bodies, including their eyebrows and eyelashes.
The word racecar and kayak are the same whether they are read left to right or right to left.
Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May and were still smelling pretty good by June. However, they were starting to smell, so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to
hide the b.o.
Baths equaled a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually loose someone in it. Hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water".
Houses had thatched roofs. Thick straw, piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the pets... dogs, cats and other small animals, mice, rats, bugs lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Hence the saying, "It's raining cats and dogs."
There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could really mess up your nice clean bed. So, they found if they made beds with big posts and hung a sheet over the top, it addressed that problem. Hence those beautiful big 4 poster beds with canopies.
The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying "dirt poor".
The wealthy had slate floors which would get slippery in the winter when wet. So they spread thresh on the floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on they kept adding more thresh until when you opened the door it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed at the entry way, hence a "thresh hold".
They cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They mostly ate vegetables and didn't get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes the stew had food in it that had been in there for a month. Hence the rhyme: peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old."
Sometimes they could obtain pork and would feel really special when that happened. When company came over, they would bring out some bacon and hang it to show it off. It was a sign of wealth and that a man "could really bring home the bacon." They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and "chew the fat."
Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with a high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food. This happened most often with tomatoes, so they stopped eating tomatoes... for 400 years.
Most people didn't have pewter plates, but had trenchers - a piece of wood with the middle scooped out like a bowl. Trencher were never washed and a lot of times worms got into the wood. After eating off wormy trenchers, they would get "trench mouth."
Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the "upper crust".
Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey. The combination would sometimes knock them out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a "wake".
England is old and small and they started running out of places to bury people. So, they would dig up coffins and would take their bones to a house and reuse the ~grave. In reopening these coffins, one out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they thought they would tie a string on their wrist and lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night to listen for the bell. Hence on the "graveyard shift" they would know that someone was "saved by the bell" or he was a "dead ringer".
The average human eats 8 spiders in their lifetime at night.
A rhinoceros horn is made of compacted hair.
The shortest war in history was between Zanzibar an England in 1896.
Zanzibar surrendered after 38 minutes.
A polar bear's skin is black. Its fur is not white, but actually clear.
More people are killed by donkeys annually than are killed in plane crashes.
Stewardesses is the longest word typed with only the left hand.
Shakespeare invented the word "assassination" and "bump."
Marilyn Monroe had six toes.
If you keep a Goldfish in the dark room, it will eventually turn white.
Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
Right handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left handed people do.
The name of all the continents end with the same letter that they start with.
The word "lethologica" describes the state of not being able to remember the word you want.
TYPEWRITER, is the longest word that can be made using the letters on only one row of the keyboard.
If the population of China walked past you in single file, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction
A snail can sleep for 3 years.
American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in first-class.
China has more English speakers than the United States.
The electric chair was invented by a dentist.
Did you know you share your birthday with at least 9 other million people in the world.
The longest word in the English language is 1909 letters long and it refers to a distinct part of DNA.
Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, dogs only have about ten.
Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.
If Barbie were life-size her measurements would be 39-23-33. She would stand seven feet, two inches tall and have a neck twice the length of a normal human's neck.
Feb 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.
(except for Feb. 1999 )
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.
No word in the English language rhymes with month.
The cruise liner, Queen Elizabeth II, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.
Cat's urine glows under a black light.
Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.
In the last 4000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.
Babies are born without knee caps. They don't appear until the child reaches 2-6 years of age.
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.
One of the reasons marijuana is illegal today is because cotton growers in the 30s lobbied against hemp farmers-they saw it as competition.
Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.
The name Wendy was made up for the book "Peter Pan."
If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days, you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.
If you fart consistently for 6 years and 9 months, enough gas is produced to create the energy of an atomic bomb.
Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour.
Humans and dolphins are the only species that have sex for pleasure.
On average, people fear spiders more than they do death.
The strongest muscle in the body is the TONGUE
It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
You can't kill yourself by holding your breath.
Americans on the average eat 18 acres of pizza every day.
Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie.
You know that you are more likely to be killed by a champagne cork than by a poisonous spider
A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.
The ant always falls over on its right side when intoxicated.
Polar bears are left-handed.
The catfish has over 27,000 taste buds, that makes the catfish rank #1 for animal having the most taste buds.
A cockroach will live nine days without its head, before it starves to death.
The male praying mantis cannot copulate while its head is attached to its body. The female initiates sex by ripping the male's head off.
Butterflies taste with their feet.
Elephants are the only animals that can't jump.
An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
Starfish haven't got a brain.
A pig's orgasm lasts for 30 minutes.
In the 1940s, the FCC assigned television's Channel 1 to mobile services (two-way radios in taxicabs, for instance) but did not re-number the other channel assignments. That's why your TV set has channels 2 and up, but no channel 1.
The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days of old when the engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and figured out how to walk up straight staircases.
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.
Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them would burn their houses down - hence the expression "to get fired."
The only two days of the year in which there are no professional sports events (MLB, NBA, NHL, or NFL) are the day before and the day after the Major League Baseball All-Star Game.
The Eisenhower interstate system requires that one mile in every five must be straight. These straight sections are usable as airstrips in times of war or other emergencies.
The nursery rhyme "Ring Around the Rosey" is a rhyme about the bubonic plague. Infected people with the plague would get red circular sores ("Ring Around the Rosey..."), these sores smelled pretty bad so common folks would hide flowers on their person to cover the smell of the sores ("...a pocket full of posies..."). People who died from the plague would be burned to reduce the possible spread of the disease ("...ashes, ashes, we all fall down!")
Jamie Lee Curtis' legs and Bruce Springsteen's voice are insured by
Lloyd's of London.
Over 39 gallons of chewing gum is removed from the Statue of
Liberty each year.
At the Ancient Olympics athletes competed in the nude, were
whipped for false starts and only virgin women were allowed to
be spectators.
The guillotine was last used in France in 1977.
The last Salem "witch" was cleared in 1957.
In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil cockroaches are sold for $8.00 an ounce.
If you paint graffiti in Rome you could get the death penalty.
A Lily has 400 times more DNA than a human.
The energy from a thunderstorm equals 12 atom bombs.
The world's slowest bird, The American Woodstock, flies at a
speed of only 5 mph.
Jo Ann Ussery of Greenwood, Miss., lives in a 127-ft-long
Boeing 727 Airliner that she converted into a three bedroom home.
M&M's were introduced in 1940 for US soldiers, so their hands
wouldn't be sticky.
From the bottom of a well, you can actually see stars in the daytime.
(in the sky or as a result of falling down the well)
The largest single gold object is a bathtub. It's located at the
Funabara Hotel on Japan's Izu peninsula and has a
weight of 313.5 pounds.
In 70 years of life your heart will beat 2.5 billion times and you will
take 650 million breaths.
More Hollywood films have been made about boxing than any other sport.
Natural gas has no smell. The unpleasant odor is added artificially as a
safety precaution so that people can detect gas leaks.
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