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Amusing Irrelevant Facts
In Kentucky, 50 percent of the people who get married for the first time are teenagers.
Einstein couldn’t speak fluently when he was nine. His parents thought he might be retarded.
In Los Angeles, there are fewer people than there are automobiles.
About a third of all Americans flush the toilet while they’re still sitting on it. (Who studied this and why? J.)
You’re more likely to get stung by a bee on a windy day than in any other weather.
An average person laughs about 15 times a day.
Research indicates that mosquitoes are attracted to people who have recently eaten bananas. [ROTFL! -NH]
Penguins can jump as high as 6 feet in the air.
The average person is about a quarter of an inch taller at night.
A sneeze zooms out of your mouth at over 600 m.p.h.
A Saudi Arabian woman can get a divorce if her husband doesn’t give her coffee. [Ah! Women’s liberation! --NH]
The Neanderthal’s brain was bigger than yours is.
Donald Duck comics were banned from Finland because he doesn’t wear pants.
The average bank teller loses about $250 every year.
In 1980, there was only one country in the world with no telephones - Bhutan.
Every person has a unique tongue print. [This could be the basis of an X-Files episode.—NH]
Your right lung takes in more air than your left one does.
Women’s hearts beat faster than men’s.
Pollsters say that 40 percent of dog and cat owners carry pictures of the pets in their wallets.
Bubble gum contains rubber.
You can only smell 1/20th as well as a dog.
Only 55 percent of all Americans know that the sun is a star.
The sound of E.T. walking was made by someone squishing her hands in Jello.
Even if you cut off a cockroach’s head, it can live for several weeks.
Most American car horns honk in the key of F.
The world population of chickens is about equal to the number of people.
Every time Beethoven sat down to write music, he poured ice water over his head.
In 75% of American households, women manage the money and pay the bills.
A monkey was once tried and convicted for smoking a cigarette in South Bend, Indiana.
About 70 percent of Americans who go to college do it just to make more money.
It’s against the law to catch fish with your bare hands in Kansas.
Some toothpaste’s contain antifreeze.
Sigmund Freud had a morbid fear of ferns.
Millie the White House dog earned more than 4 times as much as President Bush in 1991.
Bird droppings are the chief export of Nauru, an island nation in the Western Pacific.
There are more plastic flamingos in America than real ones.
Most lipstick contains fish scales.
Lee Harvey Oswald’s cadaver tag sold at an auction for $6,600 in 1992.
Mosquitoes have teeth.
Spotted skunks do handstands before they spray.
Hypnotism is banned by public schools in San Diego.
The three best-known western names in China: Jesus Christ, Richard Nixon, and Elvis Presley.
When snakes are born with two heads, they fight each other for food.
Most cows give more milk when they listen to music.
27 percent of U.S. male college students believe life is "a meaningless existential hell."
In 1980, a Las Vegas hospital suspended workers for betting on when patients would die.
Aztec emperor Montezuma had a nephew, Cuitlahac, whose name meant "plenty of excrement."
Thomas Edison was afraid of the dark. (Hence, the light bulb?)
"Kemo Sabe" means "soggy shrub" in Navajo.
Another Trivia
Getting ready to head for El Dorado Hills--saw this and thought I would forward it. It came from one of our members down in Ontario, CA.
Be on the air next Monday--
Launch day for the 12 satellites at once is the 9th--getting close!
Believe it or not...
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 renumber the other channel assignments. That is why your TV set has channels 2 and up, but no channel 1.
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."
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?
Lorne Greene had one of his nipples bitten off by an alligator while he was host of "Lorne Greene's Wild Kingdom."
Cat's urine glows under a blacklight.
If you bring a raccoon's head to the Henniker, New Hampshire town hall, you are entitled to receive $0.10 from the town.
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 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 a "A" is Afghanistan.
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. (The engineers responsible for this were actually graduates of Purdue University, Indiana University's most hated rival.)
Beer Trivia
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 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.
In the middle ages, "nunchion" was the word for liquid lunches. It was a combination of the words "noon scheken", or noon drinking. In those days, a large chunk of bread was called lunch. So if you ate bread with your nunchion, you had what we still today call a luncheon.
Why are cigars passed out to celebrate the birth of a child?
It's hard to imagine what connection could possibly exist between a newborn baby and a tightly wrapped stogie, but this tradition has endured since the late seventeenth century. At that time, cigars were rare, expensive commodities--so much so that they were sometimes used as currency. Similarly, baby boys were a precious commodity, expected to spend their lives working the fields and earning money for the family. As a token of celebration, cigars were given out when they were born.
In contrast, baby girls were seen as little more than a financial drain on the household, so the valuable cigars weren't given out when they were born. As centuries passed, times changed, and cigar prices dropped, it became customary to hand out a cigar no matter what the sex of the child.
From the book---"WHEN DO FISH SLEEP?" By David Feldman
Interesting but Useless
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 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.
Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about ten.
Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.
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.
Many hamsters only blink one eye at a time.
In every episode of Seinfeld there is a Superman somewhere.
Barbie's measurements if she were life size: 39-23-33.
February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.
Montpelier, Vermont is the only U.S. state capital without a McDonalds.
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.
There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.
Isaac Asimov is the only author to have a book in every Dewey-decimal category.
Columbia University is the second largest landowner in New York City, after the Catholic Church.
Cat's urine glows under a black light.
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.
The first Ford cars had Dodge engines.
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.
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 highest point in Pennsylvania is lower than the lowest point in Colorado.
Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously
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.
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.
No NFL team which plays it's home games in a domed stadium has ever won a Superbowl
The first toilet ever seen on television was on "Leave It To Beaver".
In the great fire of London in 1666 half of London was burnt down but only 6 people were injured
Lincoln Logs were invented by Frank Lloyd Wright's son.
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.
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 All-Star Game.
Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older
The name Wendy was made up for the book "Peter Pan"
Lo-oo-ng Trivia List
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.
Barbie's measurements if she were life size: 39-23-33.
All of the clocks in Pulp Fiction are stuck on 4:20.
No word in the English language rhymes with month.
A coat hanger is 44 inches long if straightened
Canada is an Indian word meaning "Big Village".
"Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt".
The word 'byte' is a contraction of 'by eight.'
The word 'pixel' is a contraction of either'picture cell' or 'picture element.'
Isaac Asimov is the only author to have a book in every Dewey-decimal category.
Cat's urine glows under a blacklight.
The average ear of corn has eight-hundred kernels arranged in sixteen rows.
The first Ford cars had Dodge engines.
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.
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.
If you add up the numbers 1-100 consecutively, (1+2+3+4+5 etc) the total is 5050
The symbol on the "pound" key (#) is called an octothorpe.
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." (NOTE: I’m heard a number of other explanations for this expression – nobody seems sure where it comes from, except the people championing a particular theory. TM)
The maximum weight for a golf ball is 1.62 oz.
The dot over the letter 'i' is called a tittle.
Duddley DoRight's Horses name was "Horse."
Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain was born on a day in 1835 when Haley's Comet came into veiw. When He died in 1910, Haley's Comet came into view again.
Ethernet is a registered trademark of Xerox, Unix is a registered trademark of AT&T.
The first hard drive available for the Apple ][ had a capacity of 5megabytes.
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.
Charlie Brown's father was a barber.
Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intraveinously
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.
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.
Only 1/3 of the people that can twitch their ears can twitch only one at a time.
The volume of the Earth's moon is the same as the volume of the Pacific Ocean
Ingrown toenails are hereditary.
Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance.
The largest city in the United States with a one syllable name is Flint, Michigan.
The most common name in the world is Mohammed.
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.
The word "set" has more definitions than any other word in the English anguage.
The state with the longest coastline in the US is Michigan.
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.)
Pulp Fiction cost $8 million to make - $5 million going to actor's salaries.
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.
The longest U.S. highway is route 6 starting in Cape Cod, Massachusetts going through 14 states, and ending in Bishop, California...
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 number of the trash compactor in Star Wars (20th Century Fox, 1977) is 3263827.
"Underground" is the only word in the English language that begins and ends with the letters "und."
The international telphone dialing code for Antarctica is 672.
A full seven percent of the entire Irish barley crop goes to the production of Guinness beer.
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 housefly hums in the middle octave, key of F.
Mr. Snuffleupagas' first name was Alyoisus.
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.
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.'
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.
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 pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconioses, its plural.
The longest place-name still in use is Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu, a New Zealand hill.
Los Angeles's full name is "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula" and can be abbreviated to 3.63% of its size, "L.A."
A cat has 32 muscles in each ear
An ostrich's eye is bigger than it's brain.
Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.
After the Civil War the U.S. sued Great Britain for damages that were caused by them building ships for the Confederacy. We originally asked for $1 billion but settled on $25 Million.
There are 22 stars surrounding the mountain on the Paramount Pictures logo.
Deborah Winger did the voice of E.T.
There is a word in the English language with only one vowel, which occurs six times: Indivisibility.
In most advertisments, including newspapers, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10.
The only Dutch word to contain eight consecutive consonants is 'angstschreeuw'.
Alfred Hitchcock didn't have a belly button. It was eliminated when he was sewn up after surgery.
The Mongol emperor Genghis Khan's original name was Temujin.
The first word spoken by an ape in the movie Planet of the Apes was "Smile".
Facetious and abstemious contain all the vowels in the correct order.
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.
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 second longest word in the English language is "antidisestablishmenterianism".
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."
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 muzzle of a lion is like a fingerprint - no two lions have the same pattern of whiskers.
In 1969, the last Corvair was painted gold.
The real name of the "I've fallen and I can't get up" lady is Edith Fore.
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.
The only real person to be a Pez head was Betsy Ross.
Steely Dan got their name from a sexual device depicted in the book 'The Naked Lunch'.
Bob Dylan's real name is Robert Zimmerman.
Wilma Flinestone'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."
Grapes explode when you put them in the microwave.
A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.
111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321
The Ramses brand condom is named after the great phaoroh Ramses II who fathered over 160 children.
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.
Canola oil is actually grapeseed oil but the name was changed in Canada for marketing reasons.
When the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers play football at home, the stadium becomes the state's third largest city.
Duelling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.
John Larroquette of "Night Court" and "The John Larroquette Show" was the narrator of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre."
A pig's orgasm lasts for 30 minutes.
A pig's penis is shaped like a corkscrew.
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 quarter has 119 grooves around the edge.
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.
No words in the English language rhyme with orange, silver or purple.
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.
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.
Lake Nicaragua boasts the only fresh-water sharks in the entire world.
Charles de Gaulle's final words were, "It hurts."
There are four cars and ten lightposts on the back of a ten-dollar bill.
ABBA got their name by taking the first letter from each of their first names (Agnetha, Bjorn, Benny, Anni-frid.)
What five digit number, when multiplied by the number 4, is the same number with the digits in reverse order? 21978; 21978 x 4 = 87912.
It was illegal to sell ET dolls in France because there is a law against selling dolls without human faces.
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.
Montana mountain goats will butt heads so hard their hooves fall off.
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.
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.
St. Paul, Minnesota was originally called Pigs Eye after a man who ran a saloon there.
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.
Moon was Buzz Aldrin's mother's maiden name. (Buzz Aldrin was the second man on the moon in 1969.)
Who's that playing the piano on the "Mad About You" theme? It's Paul Reiser himself.. And Greg Evigan sang the "My Two Dads" theme.
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.
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 Grateful Dead were once called The Warlocks.
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.
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.
Reindeer milk has more fat than cow milk.
The "L.L." in L.L. Bean stands for Leon Leonwood.
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.
The letters KGB stand for Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti.
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.
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 oven was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.
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
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.
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.
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.
Mr. Rogers is an ordained minister (and he lives in Pittsburgh - Tom).
Hugh "Ward Cleaver" Beaumont was an ordained minister.
The Old English word for "sneeze" is "fneosan."
John Lennon's first girlfriend was named Thelma Pickles.
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.
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.
Certain frogs can be frozen solid then thawed, and continue living.
Dartboards are made out of horsehairs.
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.
There are 336 dimples on a regulation golf ball.
Octopi have gardens.
"Ever think you're hearing something in a song, but they're really singing something else? The word for mis-heard lyrics 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.'"
Some biblical scholars believe that Aramaic (the language of the ancient Bible) did not contain an easy way to say "many things" andused 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.
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 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.
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.
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 noticeably shorter than his right.
Swans are the only birds with penises.
A whale's penis is called a dork.
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.
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...)
The face of a penny can hold about thirty drops of water.
Medieval knights put sharkskin on their swordhandles 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.
If you feed a seagull Alka-Seltzer, its stomach will explode.
The raised reflective dots in the middle of highways are called Botts dots.
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.
The 80s song "Rosanna" from the Eighties was written about Rosanna Arquette, the actress.
Warren Beatty and Shirley MacLaine are brother and sister.
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 streeets 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."
More Trivia
Getting ready to head for El Dorado Hills--saw this and thought I would forward it. It came from one of our members down in Ontario, CA.
Be on the air next Monday--
Launch day for the 12 satellites at once is the 9th--getting close!
Believe it or not...
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 renumber the other channel assignments. That is why your TV set has channels 2 and up, but no channel 1.
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."
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?
Lorne Greene had one of his nipples bitten off by an alligator while he was host of "Lorne Greene's Wild Kingdom."
Cat's urine glows under a blacklight.
If you bring a raccoon's head to the Henniker, New Hampshire town hall, you are entitled to receive $0.10 from the town.
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 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 a "A" is Afghanistan.
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. (The engineers responsible for this were actually graduates of Purdue University, Indiana University's most hated rival.)
Trivia Odds and Ends
from gweidner
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."
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.
In Shakespeare's time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes-- when you pulled on the ropes the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on. that's where the phrase, "good night, sleep tight" came from.
The sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." uses every letter in the alphabet. (developed by Western Union to test telex/twx communications).
The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.
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.
The term "the whole 9 yards" came from W.W.II fighter pilots in the 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." (Note: I have also heard several other explanations for this one. TM)
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.
An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
The name Jeep came from the abbreviation used in the army for the "General Purpose" vehicle, G.P.
The cruise liner, Queen Elizabeth II, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.
Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously.
No NFL team which plays its home games in a domed stadium has ever won a Super Bowl.
The first toilet ever seen on television was on "Leave It To Beaver."
Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.
In Cleveland, Ohio, it's illegal to catch mice without a hunting license.
It takes 3,000 cows to supply the NFL with enough leather for a year's supply of footballs.
Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married.
There are an average of 178 sesame seeds on a McDonald's Big Mac bun.
The world's termites outweigh the world's humans 10 to 1.
The 3 most valuable brand names on earth: Marlboro, Coca-Cola, and Budweiser, in that order.
When Heinz ketchup leaves the bottle, it travels at a rate of 25 miles per year.
Ten percent of the Russian government's income comes from the sale of vodka.
On average, 100 people choke to death on ball-point pens every year.
In 10 minutes, a hurricane releases more energy than all the world's nuclear weapons combined.
Fred added:
I can add one---- Blimp -- Part of the Military nomenclature ".....bag, limp, cloth.,." or "B-limp" as it was sometimes entered into the inventory ledger.
Trivia Treasures
Little things you probably didn't know you didn't know
Coca-Cola was originally green.
Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than the US Treasury.
It is possible to lead a cow upstairs but not downstairs.
Smartest dogs: 1) Scottish border collie; 2) Poodle; 3) Golden Retriever.
Dumbest: Afghan hound.
The Hawaiian alphabet has 12 letters.
Men can read smaller print than women; women can hear better.
Amount American Airlines saved in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served first class: $40,000
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.
Average number of days a West German goes without washing his underwear: 7
Percentage of American men who say they would marry the same woman if they had it to do all over again: 80% Percentage of American women who say they'd marry the same man: 50%
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.
Percentage of Americans who have visited Disneyland/Disney World: 70%
Average life span of a major league baseball: 7 pitches.
Only President to win a Pulitzer: John F. Kennedy for Profiles in Courage
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.
Iceland consumes more Coca-Cola per capita than any other nation.
First novel ever written on a typewriter: Tom Sawyer.
A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why.
In the 1940s, the FCC assigned 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.
The San Francisco Cable cars are the only mobile National Monuments.
The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is 'uncopyrightable'.
Did you know that there are coffee flavored PEZ?
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.
The airplane Buddy Holly died in was the "American Pie." (Thus the name of the Don McLean song.)
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.
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.
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."
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 W.W.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."
Hershey's Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it's kissing the conveyor belt.
The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from and old English law which stated that you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.
An ostrich's eye is bigger that it's brain.
The longest recorded flight of a chicken is thirteen seconds.