Useless Facts
Eskimos have hundreds of words for ice but none for hello.
A shrimp's heart is located in it's head.
Starfish have no brain.
111,111,111 x 111,111.111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321
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.
No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, and purple.
Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them used 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 most common name in the world is Mohammed.
The international telephone dialing code for Antarctica is 672.
The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.
Mel Blanc (the voice of Bugs Bunny) was allergic to carrots.
The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin during World War II killed the only
elephant in the Berlin Zoo.
In Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart never said "Play it again, Sam."
Sherlock Holmes never said "Elementary, my dear Watson."
More people are killed annually by donkeys than die in air crashes.
A "jiffy" is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.
Hershey's Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks and sounds like
it's kissing the conveyor belt.
Money isn't made out of paper, it's make out of cotton.
Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie.
An ostrich's eye is bigger than it's brain.
The longest recorded flight of a chicken is thirteen seconds.
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 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 '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".
The little bags of netting for gas lanterns (called 'mantles') are radioactive--so much so that they
will set off an alarm at a nuclear reactor.
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 tetonic
destruction (2 is the smallest that can be felt unaided.)
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.
Donald Duck's middle name is Fauntleroy.
Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.
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."
The flag of the Philippines is the only national flag that is flown differently during times of peace
or war. A portion of the flag is blue, while the other is red. The blue portion is flown on top in
time of peace and the red portion is flown in war time.
It was discovered on a space mission that a frog can throw up. The frog throws up its 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.
Armored knights raised their visors to identify themselves when they rode past their king. This
custom has become the modern military salute.
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.
Goethe couldn't stand the sound of barking dogs and could only write if he had an apple rotting
in the drawer of his desk.
If you are locked in a completely sealed room, you will die of carbon dioxide poisoning first
before you will die of oxygen deprivation.
Carnivorous animals will not eat another animal that has been hit by a lightning strike.
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.
Mr. Rogers is an ordained minister.
Sir Isaac Newton was an ordained priest in the Church of England.
Certain frogs can be frozen solid then thawed, and continue living.
The Baby Ruth candy bar was actually named after Grover Cleveland's baby daughter, Ruth.
A full-grown pumpkin has about 15 miles of roots.
A porpoise swims slowly in a circle as it sleeps.
At one time in Holland it took four years to train to be a hatmaker but only three years to train
to be a surgeon.
Despite the many rat-infested slums in New York City, rats bite only 311 people in an average
year. But 1,519 residents are bitten annually by other New Yorkers.
No one knows why, but 90 percent of women who walk into a department store immediately
turn to the right.
The term skyscraper was first used way back in 1888 to describe an 11-story building.
There are twice as many kangaroos in Australia as there are people. The kangaroo population
is estimated at about 40 million.
During his entire lifetime, Herman Melville's timeless classic of the sea, 'Moby Dick', only sold
50 copies.
Drivers tend to drive faster when other cars are around. It doesn't matter whether they are in
front, behind or beside them.
A small tribe named the Todas in southern India doesn't greet each other with a handshake;
they thumb their noses.
The host team in an NFL football game must have 26 footballs inflated and ready to play with.
The world's greatest lover was King Mongut of Siam. He had 9,000 wives. Before dying of
syphilis, he was quoted in saying he only loved the first 700.
The oldest known goldfish lived to 41 years of age. Its name was Fred.
Kotex was first manufactured as bandages, during WWI.
Einstein couldn't speak fluently when he was nine. His parents thought he might be retarded.
In 1983, a Japanese artist made a copy of the Mona Lisa completely out of toast.
In 1984, a Canadian farmer began renting ad space on his cows.
An average person laughs about 15 times a day.
The average person is about a quarter of an inch taller at night.
A Saudi Arabian woman can get a divorce if her husband doesn't give her coffee.
The Neanderthal's brain was bigger than yours is.
The average bank teller loses about $250 every year.
Every person has a unique tongue print.
Women's hearts beat faster than men's.
Only 55% of all Americans know that the sun is a star.
Most American car horns honk in the key of F.
About 70% of Americans who go to college do it just to make more money.
Sigmund Freud had a morbid fear of ferns.
Most lipstick contains fish scales.
Hypnotism is banned by public schools in San Diego.
The three best-known western names in China: Jesus Christ, Richard Nixon, and Elvis Presley.
27% of U.S. male college students believe life is "a meaningless existential hell."
Thomas Edison was afraid of the dark.
"Kemo Sabe" means "soggy shrub" in Navajo.
It was the accepted practice in Babylonia 4,000 years ago that for a month after the wedding,
the bride's father would supply his son-in-law with all the mead he could drink. Mead is a
honey beer, and because their calendar was lunar based, this period was called the "honey
month" or what we know today as the "honeymoon".
Before thermometers were invented, brewers would dip a thumb or finger into the mix to find
the right temperature for adding yeast. Too cold, and the yeast wouldn't grow. Too hot, and
the yeast would die. This thumb in the beer is where we get the phrase "rule of thumb".
In English pubs, ale is ordered by pints and quarts. so in old England, when customers got
unruly, the bartender would yell at them to mind their own pints and quarts and settle down. It's
where we get the phrase "mind your P's and Q's".
Beer was the reason the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. It's clear from the Mayflower's log
that the crew didn't want to waste beer looking for a better site. The log goes on to state that
the passengers "were hasted ashore and made to drink water that the seamen might have the
more beer".
After consuming a bucket or two of vibrant brew they called aul, or ale, the Vikings would
head fearlessly into battle often without armor or even shirts. In fact, the term "berserk" means
"bare shirt" in Norse, and eventually took on the meaning of their wild battles.
In 1740 Admiral Vernon of the British fleet decided to water down the navy's rum. Needless
to say, the sailors weren't too pleased and called Admiral Vernon, Old Grog, after the stiff
wool grogram coats he wore. The term "grog" soon began to mean the watered down drink
itself. When you were drunk on this grog, you were "groggy", a word still in use today.
Many years ago in England, pub frequenters had a whistle baked into the rim or handle of their
ceramic cups. When they needed a refill, they used the whistle to get some service. "Wet your
whistle", is the phrase inspired by this practice.
Stewardesses and reverberated are the two longest words (12 letters each) that can be typed
using only the left hand. The longest word that can be typed using only the right hand is lollipop.
Skepticisms is the longest word that alternates hands.
A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why.
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 is why your
TV set has channels 2 and up, but no channel 1.
A group of geese on the ground is a gaggle, a group of geese in the air is a skein.
The underside of a horse's hoof is called a frog. The frog peels off several times a year with
new growth.
The San Francisco Cable cars are the only mobile National Monuments.
The "save" icon on Microsoft Word shows a floppy disk, with the shutter on backwards.
The combination "ough" can be pronounced in nine different ways. The following sentence
contains them all: "A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the
streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed."
The verb "cleave" is the only English word with two synonyms which are antonyms of each
other: adhere and separate.
The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.
Facetious and abstemious contain all the vowels in the correct order, as does arsenious,
meaning "containing arsenic."
The shape of plant collenchyma cells and the shape of the bubbles in beer foam are the same -
they are orthotetrachidecahedrons.
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. Sames 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).
Emus and kangaroos cannot walk backwards, and are on the Australian coat of arms for that
reason.
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".
Pinocchio is Italian for "pine head."
Camel's milk does not curdle.
In every episode of Seinfeld there is a Superman somewhere.
An animal epidemic is called an epizootic.
Murphy's Oil Soap is the chemical most commonly used to clean elephants.
The United States has never lost a war in which mules were used.
Blueberry Jelly Bellies were created especially for Ronald Reagan.
All porcupines float in water.
Hang On Sloopy is the official rock song of Ohio.
Did you know that there are coffee flavored PEZ?
The world's largest wine cask is in Heidelberg, Germany.
If you bring a raccoon's head to the Henniker, New Hampshire town hall, you are entitled to
receive $.10 from the town.
St. Stephen is the patron saint of bricklayers.
The first song played on Armed Forces Radio during operation Desert Shield was "Rock the
Casba" by the Clash.
The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days of yore when the engines were
pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and figured out how to walk up
straight staircases.
Non-dairy creamer is flammable.
The airplane Buddy Holly died in was the "American Pie." (Thus the name of the Don McLean
song.)
Texas is also the only state that is allowed to fly its state flag at the same height as the U.S. flag.
The only nation who's name begins with an "A", but doesn't end in an "A" is Afghanastan.
The names of the three wise monkeys are: Mizaru: See no evil, Mikazaru: Hear no evil, and
Mazaru: Speak no evil.
When opossums are playing 'possum, they are not "playing." They actually pass out from sheer
terror.
The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it was
built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the
building.
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.
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