To prevent some numbers from occurring more frequently than others, dice used in crap games in Las Vegas are manufactured to a tolerance of 0.0002 inches, less than 1/17 the thickness of a human hair.
Tobacco smoke contains over 4,000 chemicals, including at least 50 that cause, initiate or promote cancer such as tar, ammonia, carbon monoxide, oxides of nitrogen and benzopyrene.
Today's commercial bananas are scientifically classified into the genus Musa of the Musaceae family.
Toilets in Australia flush counter clockwise.
Tokyo is the largest city by population (35million), followed by New York (21 million), then by Seoul (21 million), then Mexico City (20 million).
Tom Cruise, John Travolta and Anne Archer are members of the Church of Scientology
Tommy McDonald, a receiver for the Philadelphia Eagles, was the last NFL player to wear a helmet without a face mask.
Tony Hawk has made more money from video games and tv commercials than from skateboarding.
Toothbrushes should be kept 6 feet away from the toilet to avoid being contaminated by airborne stuff stirred up after flushing
Top corporate executives take separate planes in case one crashes.
Tortoises drink water through their noses.
Tossing coins into fountains, dates back more than 2,000 years ago.
Townsend Speakman of Philadelphia mixed fruit flavor with soda water in 1807, creating the first flavored soda pop, he called it Nephite Julep.
Traces of cocaine were found on 99% of UK bank notes in a survey in London in 2000.
Triskaidekaphobia means fear of the number 13. Paraskevidekatriaphobia means fear of Friday the 13th (which occurs one to three times a year). In Italy, 17 is considered an unlucky number. In Japan, 4 is considered an unlucky number.
Truck driving is the most dangerous occupation by accidental deaths (799 in 2001).Truffles, or mushrooms that grow below the ground, are one of the world's most expensive foods. One variety, Tuber melanosporum, can cost between $800 and $1,500 a pound.
Turkey began to roast and grind the coffee bean in the 13th Century, and some 300 years later, in the 1500's, the country had become the chief distributor of coffee, with markets established in Egypt, Syria, Persia, and Venice, Italy.
Turkeys can reproduce without having sex. It's called parthenogenesis
Turkeys drown in the rain
Turtles can breathe through their butts.
Turtles have no teeth.
Twinkies have a shelf life of about 25 years.
Two in every three car buyers pays the sticker price without arguing.
Two normal kidneys contain 2 million tiny blood filters which filter 50 gallons of blood every day!.
Two thirds of all left-handed people are men.
Two U.S. Presidents with the initials "J.M." followed each other as president.
Two-thirds of the world's coffee comes from Brazil.
Two-thirds of the world's eggplant is grown in New Jersey.
Underfund and underground are the only two English words which start and finish with "und."
Unique animals. Hippopotami cannot swim (ppl have said that a hippo can swim, but i dont think its classified as swimming. I'll check), whales can't swim backwards, tarantulas can't spin webs, crocodiles can't chew and hummingbirds can't walk
Unlike most fish, electric eels cannot get enough oxygen from water. Approximately every five minutes, they must surface to breathe, or they will drown. Unlike most fish, they can swim both backwards and forwards.
Unprosperousness is the longest word in which every letter occurs at least twice.
Until 1896, drivers in Great Britain had to warn of their presence by having a person precede their car on foot, waving a red flag.
Until 1965, driving was done on the left-hand side on roads in Sweden. The conversion to right-hand was done on a weekday at 5 p.m.
Until 1967 it wasn't illegal for Olympic athletes to use drugs to enhance their performance during competition.
Until the 1870s, baseball was played without the use of gloves.
Until the 18th century coffee was almost always boiled.
Until the 18th century India produced almost all the world diamonds.
Until the late 1800's, people roasted their coffee at home. Popcorn poppers and stove-top frying pans were favored.
Until the time of Michelangelo, many sculptors colored their statues, and most from ancient Greece and Rome at one time had been painted or "polychromed." Over the course of years, rain washed the colors off the marble.
Until the time of Michelangelo, many sculptors colored their statues. Most of the statues from ancient Greece and Rome at one time had been painted or polychromed. Rain through the ages washed off the paint and the statues were left in their natural marble.
Up until the early 20th century, New Jersey and Wisconsin had laws allowing the castration of epileptics.
Upper and Lower case letters are so named because when print had to be set by individual letters the upper case letters were stored in a case above the case that held the lower case letters.
URanus' axis is at 97 degrees. which means that it orbits on its side. (Most of the planets spin on an axis nearly perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic but Uranus' axis is almost parallel to the ecliptic.)
Uranus is the only planet that rotates on its side. Venus is the only planet that rotates clockwise.
Uranus was originally called George, in honour of King George III of Britain
US Dollar bills are made out of cotton and linen.
US gold coins used to say "In Gold We Trust".
US Presidents who died on July 4th: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died in 1826, James Monroe died in 1831.
US presidents who have been assassinated: Abraham Lincoln in 1865, James A. Garfield in 1881, William H. McKinley in 1901, and John F. Kennedy in 1963.
US Presidents who never attended college: Grover Cleveland, Abraham Lincoln, Harry S Truman, and George Washington.
US Presidents who never had children: George Washington, known as the "Father of the Country," James Madison, Andrew Jackson, James Polk, James Buchanan, and Warren Harding.
US Presidents who never held any other elective office: U. S. Grant, William H. Taft, Herbert Hoover, Dwight D. Eisenhower.
US Presidents who owned slaves : George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Andrew Jackson, John Tyler, James K. Polk, Zachary Taylor, Andrew Johnson, and Ulysses S. Grant.
US presidents who served an entire term without a vice president: John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, and Chester Arthur.
US presidents who were survived by their fathers: John F. Kennedy and Warren Harding.
US Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina set a filibuster record in the U.S. Senate on August 19, 1957. He spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes.
'Vaimonkanto' or 'Wife Carrying' is a sports event. The 'Carry an Old Gel' championship games are held anually in Sonkajarvi, Finland.
Van Camp's Pork and Beans were a staple food for Union soldiers in the Civil War.
Vanilla is the extract of fermented and dried pods of several species of orchids.
Vaseline was created by Robert Chesebrough in 1870. He developed it after visiting Titusville, PA in 1859. While there he noticed that workers were treating cuts and burns with grease that accumulated on drill rods from the oil fields.
Vatican City is the smallest country in the world. It’s just 0.17 square miles. Monaco is the second smallest at 0.7 square miles.
Vatican City is the smallest country in the world. The whole country is only 108.7 acres, which a population of just 1,000 (approx.).
Venus is the only planet in the solar system to spin backwards.
Venus rotates so slowly that in a typical day lasts approximately 244 Earth days (5,856 hours).
Vermont, admitted as the 14th state in 1791, was the 1st addition to the original 13 colonies.
VHS stands for Video Home System.Victor Hugo's Les Miserables contains one of the longest sentences in the French language 823 words without a period.
Victor Mills, an inventor with Proctor & Gamble, invented the disposable diaper in 1961 because he didn't want to deal with his daughter's soiled (crapped) diapers. You know them as Pampers.
Vincent van Gogh didn't start to draw until he was 27 years old.
Vincent van Gogh is known to have sold only one painting during his lifetime.
Virgina Woolf wrote all of her books standing.
Virginia law forbids bathtubs in the house; tubs must be kept in the yard.
Volkswagen was the first foreign company to open a factory in the United States. The auto plant opened in 1978 in Pennsylvania.
Waldo Hanchett invented the modern dentist's chair in 1848.
Walt Disney got the idea for Mickey Mouse from watching mice play in a garage, where he was forced to work, because he could not afford to rent an art studio.
Walt Disney named Mickey Mouse after Mickey Rooney, whose mother he dated.
Walt Disney provided the voice of Mickey Mouse in Steamboat Willie.
Walt Disney was afraid of mice.
Walt Disney's first cartoon character was called Oswald the Rabbit.
Walt Disney's youngest daughter is named Sharon.
Walter Huston and his son John become the first father-and-son team to win Oscars as director of and an actor in "Treasure of Sierra Madre" in 1949.
Warn your hubby that after lovemaking in Ames, Iowa, he isn't allowed to take more than three gulps of beer while lying in bed with youor holding you in his arms.
Warren Beatty and Shirley McLaine are brother and sister.
Warren G. Harding was the first American President to visit Canada. He stopped in Vancouver, British Columbia while he was on his way to Alaska.
Warren G. Harding's middle name is Gamaliel.
Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt are the four US presidents whose faces are carved on Mt. Rushmore.
Water based mammals like dolphins and whales swish their tails up and down. Only fish move them sideways.
Watermelon is grown in over 96 countries worldwide. Over 1,200 varieties of watermelon are grown worldwide. There are about 200 varieties of watermelon throughout the US.
Watermelon, considered one of America's favorite fruits, is really a vegetable (Citrullus lanatus). Cousin to the cucumber and kin to the gourd, watermelons can range in size from 7 to 100 pounds.
Watermelons grown along the Tigris River have been known to reach as much as 275 pounds.
We [humans] only use 10% of our brains.
We blink eyes 25 times each minute.
We blink our eyes once every six second i.e. in the course of a life time we blink about 250 million times.
We lose half a litre of water a day through breathing. This is the water vapour we see when we breathe onto glass.
Wearing headphones for just an hour will increase the bacteria in your ear by 700 times.
Wedding cake was originally thrown at the bride and groom, instead of eaten by them.
Wesley Snipes has a 5th Degree Black Belt.
Wesley Snipes installed public telephones while struggling to become an actor in New York.
Wet sand weighs less than dry sand.
Whale hunting is strictly prohibitted throughout the entire state of Oklahoma.
Whales can never focus both their eyes on the same object at once
What does a Dead Leaf, Paper Kite, Blue Striped Crow,Julia and Great Egg Fly have in common? They're all butterflies!Thanx Bijou
What we call the sky is merely the limit of our vision into the atmosphere. The sky, like the horizon, is always as far away as one can see.
What word can you take the first letter of, put it as the last letter, and make it the past tence of the original word? Answer: Eat (ate)
Wheat is the world's most widely cultivated plant; grown on every continent except Antarctica.
When a coffee seed is planted, it takes five years to yield consumable fruit.
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.
When a giraffe is born, it has to fall around six feet to the ground.
When a male skier falls down, he tends to fall on his face. A woman skier tends to fall on her back.When a man was hanged in Mississippi in 1894 the noose came undone and the prisoner fell to the ground. He was set free and and since his innocence was later established he was granted ,$5000.
When a person dies, hearing is generally the last sense to go. The first sense lost is usually sight. Then follows taste, smell, and touch.
When a person dies, hearing is the last sense to go. First off would be your sight.
When a person is wide awake, alert, and mentally active, he is still only 25% aware of what various parts of his body are doing. (2-1-04)
When a queen bee lays the fertilized eggs that will develop into new queens, only one of the newly laid queens actually survives. The first new queen that emerges from her cell destroys all other queens in their cells and, thereafter, reigns alone.
When Alexander Graham Bell Was working on the telephone in 1876, he spilled battery acid on his pants and called out to his assistant, "Watson, please come here. I want you." Watson, who was on another floor, heard the call through the instrument he was hooking up, and ran to Bell's room. Bell's words became the first ever successfully communicated using a telephone.
When angered, the ears of the tazmanian devil turn pinkish red.
When ants find food, they lay down a chemical trail, called a pheromone, so that other ants can find their way from the nest to the food source.
When armadillos are pregnant they always have quadruplets of the same sex.
When Bob Marley died they found 19 different species of lice in his dreadlocks.
When Bugs Bunny first appeared in 1935, he was called Happy Rabbit.
When Catherine de Medici married Henry II of France (1533) she brought forks with her, as well as several master Florentine cooks. Foods never before seen in France were soon being served using utensils instead of fingers or daggers. She is said to have introduced spinach (which "à la Florentine" usually means) as well as aspics, sweetbreads, artichoke hearts, truffles, liver crépinettes, quenelles of poultry, macaroons, ice cream, and zabagliones.
When Charles Darwin published his theory on human evolution in The Descent of Man in 1871, not a single fossil that was known to be pre-human had been found to back up his ideas. Although his theory was later proved to be true, it was formulated entirely without physical evidence and based almost completely on speculation.
When Christopher Columbus and crew landed in the New World they observed the natives using a nose pipe to smoke a strange new herb. The pipe was called a "tabaka" by the locals, hence our word tobacco.
When cows lay down, they get up back feet first...so if you get enough people to sit on their rear end, they won't be able to stand again. Doctors use this when operating and giving shots.
When Disneyland opened in 1955, Tomorrowland represented a city from 1986.
When gentlemen in medieval Japan wished to seal an agreement, they urinated together, crisscrossing their streams of urine.
When George Washington ran for the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1757, he was accused of trying to win votes by plying voters with 28 gallons of rum, 50 gallons of rum punch, 46 gallons of beer and 34 gallons of wine.
When George Washington was elected President, there was a King in France, a Czar in Russia, an Emperor in China, and a Shogun in Japan. Only the office of President remained.
When glass breaks, it showers TOWARDS, not away from the force that broke it. To reiterate, I will repeat it again one more time, to recap, TOWARDS the force, not away.
When Henry Aaron hit his 715th Home Run, breaking Babe Ruth's record, the pitcher who served it up was Al Downing of the Los Angeles Dodgers. They were both wearing number 44.
When honey is swallowed, it enters the blood stream within a period of 20 minutes.
When Leonardo Da Vinci was young he drew a picture of a horrible monster and placed near a window in order to surprise his father. Upon seeing the picture his father believed it to be real and set out to protect his family until the boy showed him it was just a picture. Da Vinci's father then enrolled his son in an art class.
When Mahatma Gandhi died, an autopsy revealed that his small intestine contained five gold Krugerrands. (not verified)
When Mount Vesuvius erupted in in the year 79, over 2,000 citizens of Pompeii ran into their cellars to wait until everything had ended. Excavators found them still there 1,800 years later.
When movie directors do not want their names to be seen in the credits, they use the pseudonym "Allen Smithee" instead. It has been used over 50 times, starting with "Death of a Gunfighter" (1969).
When opossums are playing 'possum, they are not "playing," They actually pass out from sheer terror.
When possums are "playing possum" they're not playing they are actually passed out from sheer terror.
When potatoes first appeared in Europe in the seventeenth century, it was thought that they were disgusting, and they were blamed for starting outbreaks of leprosy and syphilis. As late as 1720 in America, eating potatoes was believed to shorten a person's life.
When potatoes were brought from South America over to Spain, it took about 200 years before it was recognized as a food.
When potatoes were first introduced to Europe, people were skeptical and only ate the leaves, which made them sick. They would then throw away the rest, including the actual spud.
When pure gold is beaten with a mallet and made into gold leaf, the average thickness runs between 1/200,000th to 1/250,000th of an inch.
When Scott Paper Co. first started manufacturing toilet paper they did not put their name on the product because of embarrassment.
When sharks bite down, their eyes automatically close in case their prey starts squirming trying to get free, and thereby cause damage to the shark's eyes in the process.
When snakes are born with two heads, they fight each other for food.
When someone commits suicide while jumping off a building, so much adrenaline builds up that you have a heart attack and die before hitting the ground. Thus making this way of commiting usicide basically the easiest.
When Swiss cheese ferments, a bacterial action generates gas. As the gas is liberated, it bubbles through the cheese leaving holes. Cheese-makers call them "eyes."
When the Black Death swept across England one theory was that cats caused the plague. Thousands were slaughtered. Ironically, those that kept their cats were less affected, because they kept their houses clear of the real culprits, rats.
When the English colonists sat down for their first Thanksgiving dinner on February 22, 1630, an Indian chief named Quadoquina offered a deerskin bag filled with freshly popped corn. Thus popcorn made its first appearance to non-native North Americans.
When the German army invaded France in WWI, they actually followed the schedules of the local trains to invade (it was faster by rail and they wanted to surprise France), checking the timetable and abiding by it. And France, whose army was waiting at the border, sent taxis to pick up and transport the troops to counter the attack!
When the income tax first started in 1861, the maximum tax was 3%.
When the moon is directly over your head, you weigh slightly less.
When the temperature drops, the eyesight reaction time of insects (like the dragonfly and some animals like tortoises) decrease and thats why they can be caught early in the morning or at night by predators like birds whose eyesight reaction times are unaffected by temperature.
When the Titanic sank, 2228 people were on it. Only 706 survived.
When the Titanic sunk there was 7,500 lbs. of ham on it
When the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers play football at home, the stadium becomes the third largest city in the state.
When the X-ray was discovered, a law in New Jersey was written forbidding the use of "X-ray opera glasses."
When Thomas Edison died in 1941; Henry Ford captured his last dying breath in a bottle.
When you flush a toilet, an invisible cloud of water [full of germs] shoots six feet in the air.
When you give someone roses, the color can have a meaning. The meaning of rose colors: Red = Love and respect, Deep pink = Gratitude, appreciation, Light pink = Admiration, sympathy White = Reverence, humility, Yellow = Joy, gladness,Orange = Enthusiasm, desire, Red & yellow blend = Gaiety, joviality,Pale blended tones = Sociability, friendship
When you put a seashell to your ear, the sound you hear is not the waves, but actually the echo of the blood pulsing in your own ear.
When you see a sign "City of Timbukto 40 miles" it means actually it is 40 miles to the city hall of that city sign.
When you sneeze, all your bodily functions stop, even your heart.
Whenever people accidentally trip over themselves whilst walking, they automatically go into 'survival mode' and try to pretend like they meant it (eg. they start into a jog). How hilarious is it watching someone do that?!
While fighting with the French underground during World War II, Jacques-Yves Cousteau invented the aqualung, the self-contained device that supplies air under pressure for underwater divers.
While many treaties have been signed at or near Paris, France (including many after WWI and WWII), nine are actually known as the "Treaty of Paris": Seven Years' War (1763), American Revolutionary War (1783), French-Swede War (1810), France vs Sixth Coalition (1814), Battle of Waterloo (1815), Crimean War (1856), Spanish-American War (1898), union of Bessarabia and Romania (1920), establishment of European Coal and Steel Community (1951).
While sailing along the Caribbean coast of South America in 1499, the Spanish explorer Alonso de Ojedo saw Indian houses built on stilts over the water. The area reminded him of Venice, and he named it Little Venice, which in Spanish is Venezuela.
While seeking a name and package design for the world's first self-rising pancake mix, creator Chris L. Rutt saw a vaudeville team known as Baker and Farrell whose act included Baker singing the catchy song "Aunt Jemima" dressed as a Southern mammy. Inspired by the wholesome name and image, Rutt appropriated them both to market his new pancake mix.
While sleeping, one man in eight snores, and one in ten grinds his teeth.
While the US government's supply of gold is kept at Fort Knox, its supply of silver is kept at the Military Academy at West Point, NY.
Whiskey was first brewed in the United States in 1640. It was made from a mixture of corn and rye.
Whitcomb L. Judson, the inventor of the zipper, originally intended his invention to save people the trouble of buttoning and unbuttoning their shoes every day. He named it the "Clasp locker and unlocker for shoes."
White out was invented by the mother of Mike Nesmith (Formerly of the Monkees).
Whoever submitted the erroneous Spanish info should be pelted with soggy tacos and refried beans. HOMBRE is "man," HOMBRO is "shoulder," and HOMBURG is a kind of hat just as it is in English.
Whole wheat bread has more iron, vitamins and dietary fiber than white bread.
Why? It is a felony for a wife to open a husband's mail.
Widow is the only female form in the English language that is shorter than its corresponding male term (widower).
Wild Bill Hickok was killed playing poker, holding two pairs aces and eights, which has become known as 'Dead Man's Hand.'
William Fox, the founder of 20th Century Fox, was bankrupt a few years after selling his studio, and served a prison sentence in Pennsylvania for bribing a judge.
William Henry Harrison (1773-1841) was the first US president to die in office. At 32 days, he also had the shortest term in office.
William Howard Taft had a bathtub that could hold four people installed in the white because he couldn't fit into the present one.
William Howard Taft was the first President to own a car.
William Penn purchased a pound of coffee in New York in 1683 for $4.68.
William Shakespeare used a vocabulary of 29,066 different words. By way of comparison, the average person uses about 8,000 different words.
William Shatner is credited for being the first person on TV to say "hell" as well as to have the first inter-racial kiss (with Nichelle Nichols), both in episodes of Star Trek.
William Taft is only man to become President and then chief justice.
Willow bark, which provides the salicylic acid from which aspirin was originally synthesized, has been used as a pain remedy ever since the Greeks discovered its therapeutic power nearly 2,500 years ago.
Windmills always turn counter-clockwise except in one country.
Wine grapes, oranges, figs and olives were first planted in North America by Father Junipero Sera in 1769.
Wine is kept in tinted bottles because it will spoil if it's exposed to light.
Wine will spoil if exposed to light, hence tinted bottles.
Winston Churchill was born in a ladies room during a dance.
Witchcraft was first legalized in the colony of Pennsylvania.
With a 3 by 5 card you can make a paper ring that can go around 3 adults
With the exception of Antarctica, all continents are wider in the north than in the south.
Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
Women burn fat more slowly than men, by a rate of about 50 calories a day.
Women say that the part of a man's body that they admire the most is his buttocks.
Women shoplift more often than men; the statistics are 4 to 1.
Women wear engagement and wedding rings on the third finger of the left hand because an ancient belief held that a delicate nerve runs directly from that finger to the heart.
Women who are housewives are, as a whole, more faithful than working women.Women who respond to sex surveys in magazines have had five times as many lovers as non-respondents.
Women's hearts beat faster than men's.
Wonder Woman was the world's first comic book superheroine. She was introduced in All Star Comics in December 1941 and created by psychologist William Moulton Marston.
Woodbury Soap was the first product to use a picture of a nude woman in its advertisements. In 1936, a photo by Edward Steichen showed a rear full-length view of a woman sunbathing.
Work on St. Peter's Basilica, Rome, began in 1506. Construction took over a century, reaching completion in 1612.
Worker ants may live seven years and the queen may live as long as 15 years.
Worldwide, the most common environmental allergy is dust.
Worn or outdated US Flags are destroyed, preferably by burning.
Would you believe that pigs are smarter than dogs? On the human intelligence scale, pigs are third removed from humans, while dogs are 13th removed, and only primates and dolphines are smarter than pigs. They are quick one time learners, and some learn by watching others. (I dont know how much of this is true, coming from a site called Pig's Peace Sanctuary
Wrigley's gum was the first product to have a bar code on the packaging.
Wrigley's promoted their new spearmint-flavored chewing gum in 1915 by mailing 4 sample sticks to each of the 1.5 million names listed in US telephone books.
Writing in ancient Greece "hadnospacebetweenthewords."
Wyoming was the first state to allow women to vote.
X-ray technology has shown there are 3 different versions of the Mona Lisa under the visible one.
Xylophones(Greek xylon,"wood"; phone,"sound") were actually developed in South East Asia in the 14th centuary
Yellowstone is the world's 1st national park. It was dedicated in 1872.
You are born with 300 bones, but when you get to be an adult you only have 206.
You are more likely to be killed by a champagne cork than by a poisonous spider.
You blink about 25,000 times a day.
You breath 13 pints of air per minute.
You burn more calories sleeping than watching television.
You burn more calories sleeping than you do watching TV.
You can lead a cow upstairs but not downstairs.
You can not kill yourself by holding your breath.
You can now buy a coffin which can be used as a wine rack, table, and / or bookcase before you are buried in it.
You can only smell /20th as well as a dog.
You can only tell the gender of a Macaw through an operation. They lack exterior genetials.
You can see how hydrated you are by checking the color of your urine. If it's a dark yellow to yellowish-green, you are under-hydrated. If it's light yellow to clear, you're very well hydrated.
You can see stars from the bottom of a well even in day light.
You can sometimes tell the hobbies and race of a person by their skeleton.
You can tell how a rabbit is feeling (emotion-wise) through the position of its ears. If the ears are standing tall, pointing forward, the rabbit is happy and curious. If the ears are laid completely flat on its back and are pointing backwards, the rabbit is more than likely pissed off or frightened. If one ear is halfway up and somewhat cocked towards you, and the other one is standing compeltely up, but facing away from you, then the rabbit is confused, and curious as to what the heck you're doing.
You can tell the sex of a turtle by the sound it makes, A male grunts, A female hisses.
You can test for a two way mirror by putting your fingernail on the surface, if there's space between the tip and the image, then its a normal mirror, if not, its two way.
You can usually tell how good the picture of a TV will be by how black the screen is when the TV is off. The blacker, the better.
You can walk from Boston to New York City in fewer than a million steps.
You cannot sneeze with your eyes open.
You can't kill yourself by holding your breath.
You can't sneeze on the streets of Asheville, North Carolina.
You could walk from New York to Boston in less than one million steps.
You forget 80% of what you learn each day.
You have enough red blood cells in your body to circle (the veins) the planet 2.5 times.
You may legally participate in a duel in Paraguay if both participants are registered blood doners.
You may not sell your oragns in Indiana to cover travel expenses.
You need 120 drops of water to fill a teaspoon.
You need approximately 2,000 berries to make one pound of coffee.
You share your birthday with at least 9 million other people in the world.
You share your birthday with at least nine million other people around the world.You sit on the biggest muscle in your body, the gluteus maximus a.k.a the butt. Each of the two cheeky muscles tips the scales at about two pounds (not including the overlying fat layer). The tiniest muscle, the stapedius of the middle ear, is just one-fifth of an inch long.
You speak about 4,800 words per day.
You will have to walk 80 kilometers for your legs to equal the amount of exercise your eyes get daily.
You would need to travel at 6.95 miles per second to escape the Earth’s gravitational pull. This is equivalent to traveling from New York to Philadelphia in about twenty seconds.
Your body releases growth hormones when you sleep.
Your brain will stop growing in size when you are about 15 years old.
Your fingernails can turn yellow from wearing nail polish and from the sun.
Your fingernails grow up to 7 times faster than your toenails.
Your head can be shaved against your will for violating their islamic code.
Your nose smells best when you are about 10 years old.
Your nostrils take turns inhaling.
Your right lung takes in more air than your left one does.
Your skin weighs about 3.2kg
Your stomach produces a new layer of mucus every two weeks so that it doesn't digest itself.
You're born with 300 bones, but when you get to be an adult, you only have 206. (apparently they fuse together such as the parietal, occipital of the skull) thanx Christie
You're more likely to be a target for mosquitoes if you consume bananas.
You're more likely to get stung by a bee on a windy day that in any other weather.
Zebras are members of the Equus genus.
Zebras are not black with white stripes, but are actually white with black stripes, coz if any of you animal lovers happen to stare at it's butt, you'll notice that the black stripes end there.
Zero point energy is a source of energy which is released when atoms stop moving, at -273 Celcius.
Zipporah was the wife of Moses.
Sherlock Holmes archenemy was Professor Moriarty.
There are 225 spaces on a Scrabble board.
Mr. Boddy is the murder victim in the game "Clue."
The first American in space was Alan B. Shepard Jr.
Mario Puzo wrote "The Godfather."
The color black moves first in checkers.
Camera shutter speed "B" stands for bulb.
Three teaspoons make up one tablespoon.
Jean Marie Butler was the first woman graduate from the United States Coast Guard Academy in 1980. She also was the first woman to graduate from any U.S. service academy.
Rebecca Elizabeth Marier was the first woman to graduate "top of the class" at West Point, the U.S. Military Academy. The rankings are based on academic, military, and physical accomplishments.
If you took a standard slinky and stretched it out it would measure 87 feet.
Ghosts appear in 4 Shakespearian plays; Julius Caesar, Richard III, Hamlet and Macbeth.
Charlie Brown hits a game-winning home run on March 30, his first in 43 years. Unfortunately - he NEVER got to kick the football.
Snoopy and Charlie Brown appeared together on the March 17th, 1967 cover of Life Magazine. The Apollo X astronauts took the duo into space in 1969.
Snoopy stood on two legs for the first time in a 1958 strip.
It would take more than 150 years to drive a car to the sun.
The blueprints for the Eiffel Tower covered more than 14,000 square feet of drafting paper.
Young priests of the island of Leukas, Greece, to qualify for service at the temple of Apollo, were required in ancient Greece to don the wings of an eagle and plunge from Cape Dukato into the sea, a dive of 230 feet. It was assumed that the gods would eliminate those unfit, but no diver was ever injured, although the ordeal was performed for centuries.
Little known, and even less appreciated, the United States actually has a mothers-in-law day.
If the Earth was smooth, the ocean would cover the entire surface to a depth of 12,000 feet.
Hallmark makes cards for 105 different relationships.
Two objects have struck the earth with enough force to destroy a whole city. Each object, one in 1908 and again in 1947, struck regions of Siberia. Not one human being was hurt either time.
There are more than 200 different types of Barbie Dolls.
There are 63,360 inches in a mile.
There are 6,272,640 square inches in an acre.
The U.S. Library of Congress has compiled a 232-source bibliography on the subject of when, properly speaking, centuries roll over. Almost all of the sources agree that the twentieth century does not end until December 31, 2000.
The U.S standard railroad gauge (distance between rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches.
The National Lighter Museum in Guthrie, Oklahoma has nearly 20,000 pieces, representing over 85,000 years of lighters and fire starters. The only museum of its kind in the world, it is dedicated to collecting and preserving the history of the evolution of lighters.
At its peak in 1943, the Pentagon had a working population of about 33,000. Today about 23,000 employees work in the building.
Built in only 16 months between 1941 and 1942, the Pentagon is only 71ft tall, yet it has 5 floors, 17.5 miles of corridors, 150 stairways, 280 restrooms, 685 drinking fountains, 7,748 windows and workers replace more than 250 lightbulbs each day.
On dry, windy days, pollen can travel up to 500 miles.
Ever wonder where the term "Work Smarter...Not Harder" originated? Allan F. Mogensen, the creator of Work Simplification, coined the phrase in the 1930s. The 1990s equivalent term is probably Business Process Reengineering.
A "hairbreadth away" is 1/48 of an inch.
The Curly Redwood Lodge is one of northern California’s most unique lodges. It was built from one curly redwood tree that produced 57,000 board feet of lumber. The tree - cut down in 1952 - was 18 feet 2 inches at the trunk. Curly redwood is unique because of the curly grain of the wood, unlike typical straight grained redwood.
The Cairo Opera House was destroyed by fire in 1970. The Cairo fire station was located inside the same building.
The Pentagon building in Arlington, Virginia, has nearly 68,000 miles of telephone lines.
The first drive-in service station in the United States was opened by Gulf Oil Company - on December 1, 1913, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
There is a house in Rockport, Massachusetts, built entirely of newspaper. The Paper House at Pigeon Cove, as it is called, is made of 215 thicknesses of newspaper. According to a 1995 survey, 7 out of 10 British dogs get Christmas gifts from their doting owners.
Superman dates back to June 1938, when he appeared in Action Comics No. 1. Batman arrived on the scene one year later in Detective Comics No. 27, appearing May 1939.
Salt helped build the Erie Canal. A tax of 12 1/2 percent on New York State salt, plus tolls charged for salt shipments, paid for nearly half of the $7 million construction cost.
Roman statues were made with detachable heads, so that one head could be removed and replaced by another.
Buckingham Palace consists of 600 rooms.
If the Earth was smooth, the ocean would cover the entire surface to a depth of 12,000 feet.
Hallmark makes cards for 105 different relationships.
Two objects have struck the earth with enough force to destroy a whole city. Each object, one in 1908 and again in 1947, struck regions of Siberia. Not one human being was hurt either time.
There are more than 200 different types of Barbie Dolls.
There are 63,360 inches in a mile.
There are 6,272,640 square inches in an acre.
The U.S. Library of Congress has compiled a 232-source bibliography on the subject of when, properly speaking, centuries roll over. Almost all of the sources agree that the twentieth century does not end until December 31, 2000.
The U.S standard railroad gauge (distance between rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches.
The National Lighter Museum in Guthrie, Oklahoma has nearly 20,000 pieces, representing over 85,000 years of lighters and fire starters. The only museum of its kind in the world, it is dedicated to collecting and preserving the history of the evolution of lighters.
At its peak in 1943, the Pentagon had a working population of about 33,000. Today about 23,000 employees work in the building.
Built in only 16 months between 1941 and 1942, the Pentagon is only 71ft tall, yet it has 5 floors, 17.5 miles of corridors, 150 stairways, 280 restrooms, 685 drinking fountains, 7,748 windows and workers replace more than 250 lightbulbs each day.
On dry, windy days, pollen can travel up to 500 miles.
Ever wonder where the term "Work Smarter...Not Harder" originated? Allan F. Mogensen, the creator of Work Simplification, coined the phrase in the 1930s. The 1990s equivalent term is probably Business Process Reengineering.
A "hairbreadth away" is 1/48 of an inch.
The Curly Redwood Lodge is one of northern California’s most unique lodges. It was built from one curly redwood tree that produced 57,000 board feet of lumber. The tree - cut down in 1952 - was 18 feet 2 inches at the trunk. Curly redwood is unique because of the curly grain of the wood, unlike typical straight grained redwood.
The Cairo Opera House was destroyed by fire in 1970. The Cairo fire station was located inside the same building.
The Pentagon building in Arlington, Virginia, has nearly 68,000 miles of telephone lines.
The first drive-in service station in the United States was opened by Gulf Oil Company - on December 1, 1913, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
There is a house in Rockport, Massachusetts, built entirely of newspaper. The Paper House at Pigeon Cove, as it is called, is made of 215 thicknesses of newspaper. According to a 1995 survey, 7 out of 10 British dogs get Christmas gifts from their doting owners.
Superman dates back to June 1938, when he appeared in Action Comics No. 1. Batman arrived on the scene one year later in Detective Comics No. 27, appearing May 1939.
Salt helped build the Erie Canal. A tax of 12 1/2 percent on New York State salt, plus tolls charged for salt shipments, paid for nearly half of the $7 million construction cost.
Roman statues were made with detachable heads, so that one head could be removed and replaced by another.
Buckingham Palace consists of 600 rooms.
Nobody knows who built the Taj Mahal. The names of the architects, masons, and designers that have come down to us have all proved to be latter-day inventions, and there is no evidence to indicate who the real creators were.
Nearly a quarter of all U.S. pet owners bring their pet on the job. Last June, 200 American companies participated in the first ever "Take Your Dog to Work Day".
It would take 11 Empire State Buildings, stacked one on top of the other, to measure the Gulf of Mexico at its deepest point.
Flying from London to New York by Concord, due to the time zones crossed, you can arrive 2 hours before you leave.
The name Wendy was made up for the book Peter Pan, there was never a recorded Wendy before.
There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos.
February is Black History Month.
If a person counted at the rate of 100 numbers a minute and kept counting for eight hours a day, five days a week, it would take a little over 4 weeks to count to one million and just over 80 years to reach a billion.
Roger Wrenn was the photographer who took the famous picture of General Douglas MacArthur wading ashore in the Philippines in October 1944.
The orange things that crossing guards, construction and high way workers, etc. wear is called a retroreflective vest, or "International Orange".
In 1970, "MCI" stood for "Microwave Communications, Inc." No longer used as an acronym, it now stands alone.
Catherine de Medici was the first woman in Europe to use tobacco. She took it in a mixture of snuff.
Vellum, a fine-quality writing parchment, is prepared from animal skin: lambs, kids, and very young calves. Coarser, tougher types are made from the skins of male goats, wolves, and older calves. Vellum replaced papyrus and was superseded by paper.
Shampoo was first marketed in the USA in 1930 by John Breck, who was the captain of a volunteer fire department.
Four of the first six presidents of the U.S. were 57 years old when they were inaugurated. No other presidents have been inaugurated at that age.
Every queen named Jane has either been murdered, imprisoned, gone mad, died young, or been dethroned.
Mary Stuart became Queen of Scotland when she was only six days old.
Liberace Museum has a mirror-plated Rolls Royce; jewel-encrusted capes, and the largest rhinestone in the world, weighing 59 pounds and almost a foot in diameter.
World Tourist day is observed on September 27.
The 3rd year of marriage is called the leather anniversary.
Each of the suits on a deck of cards represents the four major pillars of the economy in the middle ages: heart represented the Church, spades represented the military, clubs represented agriculture, and diamonds represented the merchant class.
The Colgate Company started out making starch, soap, and candles.
Some china is called "bone" china because some powdered animal bone is mixed in with the clay used to make this china: it gives the china a special kind of strength, whiteness, and translucency.
In order to sell his sets of Shakespeare door-to-door, David McConnell offered free perfume to his customers. He realized the perfume was more popular and began selling cosmetics door-to-door. This began the company that grew into Avon.
"Fine turkey" and "honeycomb" are terms used for different qualities and textures of sponges.
The Metro subway of Washington, DC, has several really deep stations. Its Forrest Glen station - in the Maryland suburbs - is 196 feet deep and has the longest subway escalator in the Western Hemisphere. But MOST of the subway stations in Leningrad are deeper than that.
A 17th-century Swedish philologist claimed that in the Garden of Eden God spoke Swedish, Adam spoke Danish, and the serpent spoke French.
The United States government keeps its supply of silver at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York.
The Grand Coulee Dam in the state of Washington in the U.S., completed in 1942, was hailed in its time as a structure more massive than the Great Pyramid of Cheops.
In the game Monopoly, the most money you can lose in one travel around the board (normal game rules, going to jail only once) is $26,040. The most money you can lose in one turn is $5070.
Alcoholics are twice as likely to confess a drinking problem to a computer than to a doctor, say researchers in Wisconsin.
The gesture of a nose tap, in Britain, means secrecy or confidentiality. In Italy, a tap to the nose signifies a friendly warning.
A 41-gun salute is the traditional salute to a royal birth in Great Britain.
To prevent some numbers from occurring more frequently than others, dice used in crap games in Las Vegas are manufactured to a tolerance of 0.0002 inches, less than 1/17 the thickness of a human hair.
A car uses 1.6 ounces of gas idling for one minute. Half an ounce is used to start the average automobile.
A car that shifts manually gets 2 miles more per gallon of gas than a car with automatic shift.
A car operates at maximum economy, gas-wise, at speeds between 25 and 35 miles per hour.
Owing to a faulty cornerstone, the church of St. John in Barmouth, Wales, crashed in ruins a minute after it was finished. It was rebuilt, and the new edifice has endured to the present day.
Nobody knows where the body of Voltaire is. It was stolen in the nineteenth century and has never been recovered. The theft was discovered in 1864, when the tomb was opened and found empty.
The height and width of modern American battleships was originally determined by insuring they had to be able to go beneath the Brooklyn Bridge and through the Panama Canal.
Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a spacesuit damages them.
On June 10, 1958, a tornado was crashing through El Dorado, Kansas. The storm pulled a woman out of her house and carried her sixty feet away. She landed, relatively unharmed, next to a phonograph record titled "Stormy Weather."
If you need to dial the telephone and your dial is disabled, you can tap the button in the cradle. If, for example, you need to dial 911, you can tap the button 9 times, then pause, then tap once, then again.
The Nike "swoosh" logo was designed by University of Oregon student Carolyn Davidson in 1964, four years after business undergraduate Phil Knight and track coach Bill Bowerman founded the company they originally called Blue Ribbon Sports. Ms. Davidson was paid $35 dollars for her design.
Kate "God Bless America" Smith sold more U.S. war bonds than anyone else during World War II. She sold $600 million worth.
The first person selected as the Time Magazine Man of the Year - Charles Lindbergh in 1927.
Studebaker was the only major car company to stop manufacturing cars while making a profit on them.
According to suicide statistics, Monday is the favored day for self-destruction.
St. Stephen is the patron saint of bricklayers.
The Dome could contain two Wembley Stadiums or the Eiffel Tower on its side. You could even fit the Great Pyramid of Giza inside it.
The translucent roof is 50 meters high at the center and strong enough to support a jumbo jet.
The Dome is supported by 43 miles of high-strength cable which holds up 100,000 square meters of fabric.
Woodbury Soap was the first product to show a nude woman in its advertisements. The year - 1936. The photo, by Edward Steichen, showed a rear full-length view of a woman sunbathing - wearing only sandals.
1960 was the last model year for Edsel and Desoto.
A lead pencil is good for about 50,000 words.
The earliest recorded case of a man giving up smoking was on April 5, 1679, when Johan Katsu, Sheriff of Turku, Finland, wrote in his diary "I quit smoking tobacco." He died one month later.
The newspaper serving Frostbite Falls, Minnesota, the home of Rocky and Bullwinkle, is the Picayune Intellegence.
The official time ball for the U.S. is on top of the U.S. naval Observatory in Washington, DC As early as 1845, the U.S. Navy dropped a time ball every noon from atop a building on a hill overlooking Washington, DC. People from many miles could set their watches at noon. Ships anchored in the Potomac River could check their chronometers.
The Times Square "time ball" is named the "Star of Hope". It was specially made for this year and contains 504 glass crystals cut into triangles, 600 light bulbs, 96 big lights, and 92 mirrors.
The U.S. Library of Congress has compiled a 232-source bibliography on the subject of when, properly speaking, centuries roll over. Almost all of the sources agree that the twentieth century will not end until December 31, 2000.
It is believed that Shakespeare was 46 around the time that the King James Version of the Bible was written. In Psalms 46, the 46th word from the first word is shake and the 46th word from the last word is spear.
According to Scientific American magazine: if you live in the northern hemisphere, odds are that every time you fill your lungs with air at least one molecule of that air once passed thru Socrates lungs.
The name of the dog on the Cracker Jack box is Bingo.
Electric Christmas tree lights were first used in 1895. The idea for using electric Christmas lights came from an American, Ralph E. Morris. The new lights proved safer than the traditional candles.
Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer was conceived by author Robert May in 1939. Two other names he thought of before deciding on Rudolph were Reginald and Rollo.
- Zawadi: Gifts
- Kikombe Cha Umoja: The Unity Cup
- Kinara: The Candleholder
- Mishumaa Saba: The Seven Candles
- Vibunzi: Ear of Corn
- Mkeka: Place Mat
- Mazao: Fruits, Nuts, and Vegetables
Kwanzaa has seven basic symbols, which represent values and concepts reflective of African culture.
Before settling on the name of Tiny Tim for his character in "A Christmas Carol", three other alliterative names were considered by Charles Dickens. They were: Little Larry, Puny Pete and Small Sam.
In 1997 a Menorah was built in Latrun, near the main Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway. It was more than 60-feet tall, weighed 17 metric tons, and took up an area of 600-square meters. A rabbi was lifted in a crane each night of the holiday to light the candles on the menorah, which was made of metal pipes.
A gator in the road is a huge piece of tire from a blow out on a truck, called a gator because the fly up when a truck runs one over and take out your air lines causing you to lose air and forcing your spring brakes to come on which causes a rather abrupt stop.
In the Catholic church, St. Gabriel, an archangel, is the patron saint of telecommunications.
The first transatlantic wedding took place on December 2, 1933.The groom was in Michigan. The bride, in Sweden. The ceremony took seven minutes and cost $47.50.
Sometimes, early telephone operators would get to know their customers so well, the customers would ask for a reminder call when it was time to remove a cake from the oven, leave the phone off the hook near their sleeping child when they left the house, hoping the operator would hear any cries of distress, request a wake up call before taking a long nap.
The use of telephone answering machines became popular in 1974.
Northern Telecom, Alcatel N.V. and NEC all had roots in Western Electric.
Western Electric mass-produced color telephones for the first time in 1954.
The first "Hello" badge used to identify guests and hosts at conventions, parties, etc. was traced back to September 1880. It was on that date that the first Telephone Operators Convention was held at Niagara Falls and the "Hello" badge was created for that event.
Jane Barbie was the woman who did the voice recordings for the Bell System.
BAND-AID Brand Adhesive Bandages first appeared on the market in 1921, however, the little red string that is used to open the package did not get added until 1940.
The original IBM punch-card is the same size as a Civil War era dollar bill.
7.5 million toothpicks can be created from a cord of wood.
Studebaker still exists, but is now called Worthington.
Ivory Soap was originally named P&G White Soap. In 1879, Harley Proctor found the new name during a reading in church of the 45th Psalm of the Bible: "All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of ivory palaces, whereby they have made thee glad."
The official soft drink of the state of Nebraska - Kool-Aid.
The Holland and Lincoln Tunnels under the Hudson River connecting New Jersey and New York are an engineering feat. The air circulators in the tunnels circulate fresh air completely every ninety seconds.
The roads on the island of Guam are made with coral. Guam has no sand. The sand on the beaches is actually ground coral. When concrete is mixed, the coral sand is used instead of importing regular sand from thousands of miles away.
Police dogs are trained to react to commands in a foreign language; commonly German but more recently Hungarian.
The foundations of the great European cathedrals go down as far as forty or fifty feet. In some instances, they form a mass of stone as great as that of the visible building above the ground.
The first revolving restaurant, The Top of the Needle, was located at the 500-foot level of the 605-foot-high steel-and-glass tower at the Century 21 Exposition in Seattle, Washington. It contained 260 seats and revolved 360 degrees in an hour. The state-of-the-art restaurant was dedicated on May 22, 1961.
The first manager of the Seattle Space Needle, Hoge Sullivan, was acrophobic - fearful of heights. The 605 foot tall Space Needle is fastened to its foundation with 72 bolts, each 30 feet long. The Space Needle sways approximately 1 inch for every 10 mph of wind. It was built to withstand a wind velocity of 200 miles-per-hour.
In 1931, an industrialist named Robert Ilg built a half-size replica of the Leaning Tower of Pisa outside Chicago and lived in it for several years. The tower is still there.
If you lace your shoes from the inside to the outside the fit will be snugger around your big toe.
A standard 747 Jumbo Jet has 420 seats.
The number 4 is the only number that has the same number of letters in its name as its meaning.
Revolvers cannot be silenced because of all the noisy gasses which escape the cylinder gap at the rear of the barrel.
A man named John Bellavia has entered over 5000 contests, and has never won a thing.
In 1982, the last member of a group of people who believed the Earth was hollow died.
The roar that we hear when we place a seashell next to our ear is not the ocean, but rather the sound of blood surging through the veins in the ear. Any cup-shaped object placed over the ear produces the same effect.
There are 52 cards in a standard deck and there are 52 weeks in a year. There are 4 suits in a deck of cards and 4 seasons in a year. If you add the values of all the cards in a deck (jack=11 queen=12, etc.) you get a total of 365 the same as the number of days in a year.
The Douglas DC-3 passenger airplane was the first to make a profit carrying people.
The book of Esther in the Bible is the only book which does not mention the name of God.
Carnegie Mellon University offers bag piping as a major. The instructor James McIntosh, who is a member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, and who began bag piping at the age 11.
How valuable is the penny you found laying on the ground? If it takes just a second to pick it up, a person could make $36.00 per hour just picking up pennies.
The names of the two stone lions in front of the New York Public Library are Patience and Fortitude. They were named by then-mayor Fiorello LaGuardia.
When wearing a Kimono, Japanese women wear socks called "Tabi". The big toe of the sock is separated from the rest of the toes, like a thumb from a mitten.
Cleveland spelled backwards is "DNA level C".
The father of the Pink Flamingo (the plastic lawn ornament) is Don Featherstone of Massachusetts. Featherstone graduated from art school and went to work as a designer for Union Products, a Leominster, Mass., company that manufactures flat plastic lawn ornaments. He designed the pink flamingo in 1957 as a follow up project to his plastic duck. Today, Featherstone is president and part owner of the company that sells an average of 250,000 to 500,000 plastic pink flamingos a year."I did it to keep from starving." - Don Featherstone (flamingo creator)
acetwothreefourfivesixseveneightninetenjackqueenking Excluding the joker, if you add up the letters in all the names of the cards in the deck (Ace, two, three, four,...,king). the total number of letters is 52, the same as the number of cards in the deck.
George Washington is the only man whose birthday is a legal holiday in every state of the U.S as of a few years ago.
The largest crossword puzzle ever published had 2631 clues across and 2922 clues down. It took up 16 sq. feet of space.
The hardest crossword puzzles according to experts appear in two British papers: "The London Times" and "Observer." Only few readers can complete these and it takes them 2 to 3 hours. The record time for completing a "Times" puzzle was an incredible 3 minutes and 45 seconds by a British diplomat named Roy Dean in 1970.
Some 30,000,000 Americans slave over crosswords in newspaper, journals, and paperback books.
The first crossword puzzle appeared in 1913 in an American paper called "World." It was devised by its editor Arthur Wynne. It was of 32 words and diamond shaped. There were no black boxes in the puzzle.
The average ice berg weighs 20,000,000 tons.
Success magazine recently declared bankruptcy.
Zip code 12345 is assigned to General Electric in Schenectady, NY.
If you had enough water to fill one million goldfish bowls, you could fill an entire stadium.
The external tank on the space shuttle is not painted.
203 million dollars is spent on barbed wire each year in the U.S.
Eskimos never gamble.
The San Francisco Cable cars are the only mobile National Monuments.
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 glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.
The Chinese national anthem is called "the march of volunteers."
The "Calabash" pipe, most often associated with Sherlock Holmes, was not used by him until William Gillette (an American) portrayed Holmes on stage. Gillette needed a pipe he could keep in his mouth while he spoke his lines.
The Hoover Dam was built to last 2,000 years. The concrete in it will not even be fully cured for another 500 years.
The St. Louis Gateway Arch had a projected death toll while it was being built. No one died.
If you were born in Los Alamos, New Mexico during the Manhattan project (where they made the atomic bomb), your birth place is listed as a post office box in Albuquerque.
The numbers on opposite sides of a die always add up to 7.
On average, there are 333 squares of toilet paper on a roll.
Public typists work at typewriters charging about 14 cents per page. On a good day, a public typist earns about $3.50.
People generally say there are 365 days in a year. By a year, I mean this is the time period it takes the earth to travel around the sun: 365 days. Actually, however, it takes the Earth 365.25 days to make this trip. In other words, for every year we gain one-fourth of a day and every for years we gain an extra day. If nothing was done about this, our calendar would move backwards one full day every four years in relation to our seasons.
The diameter of the wire in a standard paper clip is 1 millimeter - or about 0.04 inch.
The surface area of an average-sized brick is 79 cm squared.
In Britain’s House of Commons, the government and opposition sides of the House are separated by two red lines. The distance between the lines is two swords’ lengths, a reminder of just how seriously the Brits used to take their politics.
In the name of art, Chris Burden arranged to be shot by a friend while another person photographed the event. He sold the series of pictures to an art dealer. He made $1750 on the deal, but his hospital bill was $84,000.
It took Leo Tolstoy six years to write "War & Peace".
Calvin and Hobbes: Hobbes originally had pads on his hands and feet but Bill Waterson (the creator) found them too distracting and removed them.
Parker Brothers prints about 50 billion dollars worth of Monopoly money in one year.
On the new hundred dollar bill the time on the clock tower of Independence Hall is 4:10.
The Boeing 767 aircraft is a collection of 3.1 million parts from 800 different suppliers around the world: fuselage parts from Japan, center wing section from Southern California, flaps from Italy.
Approximately sixty circus performers have been shot from cannons. At last report, thirty-one of these have been killed.
The largest Great White Shark ever caught measured 37 feet and weighed 24,000 pounds. It was found in a herring weir in New Brunswick in 1930. The harmless Whale Shark, holds the title of largest fish, with the record being a 59-footer captured in Thailand in 1919.
The oldest domestic cat was a male named Grandpa that lived to be 34 years, 2 months, and 4 hours.
The Angel of the North, Gateshead, UK, with a wingspan of 177 ft/54 m, is the largest sculpture of an angel in the world.
The surface speed record on the moon is 10.56 miles per hour. It was set in a lunar rover.
The oldest public park in the U.S. is Boston Common.
The Sahara desert has the highest sand dunes.
The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world.
The CN Tower, in Toronto, is the tallest free standing structure in the world.
Tom Wolfe was paid $5 million for the film rights to his novel, Bonfire of the Vanities, the most ever earned by an author.
When stuntman and parachutist Dar Robinson leaped from the ledge of the 1,170 foot high CN Tower in Toronto, he was paid $150,000, the most ever for a single stunt.
Most insects used in a film: 22 million bees in The Swarm.
At 840,000 square miles, Greenland is the largest island in the world. It is 3 times the size of Texas. By comparison Iceland is only 39,800 square miles.
The most powerful earthquake to strike the United States occurred in 1811 in New Madrid, Missouri. The quake shook more than one million square miles, and was felt as far as 1,000 miles away.
Diane Sheer holds the record for licking the most stamps in a five minute period. She slobbered on 225 of the little things.
In 1935, Jesse Owens set six track and field world records in less than one hour.
The greatest snowfall ever in a single storm was 189 inches at the Mount Shasta Ski Bowl in February, 1959.
The largest stained-glass window in the world is at Kennedy International Airport in New York City. It can be seen on the American Airlines terminal building and measures 300 feet long by 23 feet high.
The largest pyramid in the world is not in Egypt but in Cholulu de Rivadahia, Mexico. It is 177 feet tall and covers 25 acres. It was built sometime between 6 and 12 AD.
The largest movie theater in the world, Radio City Music Hall in New York City, opened in December, 1932. It originally had 5,945 seats.
New York City has the most skyscrapers of any city in the world with 140. Chicago is a distant second at 68. The term "skyscraper" technically describes all habitable buildings with a height of more than 500 ft (152m).
Lang Martin balanced seven golf balls vertically without adhesive at Charlotte, NC on 9 February 1980.
The company, Kodak, is the largest user of silver.
The first skyscraper in the United States was built in Chicago.
The greatest measured water discharge was an estimated 740,000-1,000,000 gallons by the Giant Geyser, in Yellowstone National Park. However, this estimate made in the 1950s, was only a rough calculation.
The total area of Denver International Airport is 53 square miles, twice the size of Manhattan Island, New York, and larger than the city boundary of Boston, Miami or San Francisco.
Jackie Bibby holds the record for sitting in a bathtub with the most live rattlesnakes. He sat in a tub with 35 of them.
The largest incense stick ever made was almost fifteen-feet long and six-inches thick.
The Corinthian columns in the National Building Museum in Washington, DC, are among the tallest in the world at 75 feet high, 8 feet in diameter, 25 feet in circumference, each built of 70,000 bricks.
Christianity has over a billion followers. Islam is next in representation with half this number.
The A & P was the first chain-store business to be established. It began in 1842.
As of September 1998, the highest recorded mileage for a car was 1,615,000 miles for a 1966 Volvo P-1800.
The escalator in the CNN Center in Atlanta, Georgia is the longest freestanding escalator in the world, rising 160 feet or approximately eight stories in height.
The mother of all mothers? The largest number of children born to one woman is recorded at 69. From 1725-1765 a Russian peasant woman gave birth to 16 sets of twins, 7 sets of triplets and 4 sets of quadruplets.
The longest bout of sneezing recorded was by Donna Griffith. It began in January 1981 and continued until September 1983. It lasted for 978 days, and 4,687,514 gesundheits.
The deepest canyon in the USA is Kings Canyon, East Fresno, CA, which runs through Sierra and Sequoia National Forests. The deepest point, that measures 8,200 ft, is in the Sierra National Park Forest section of the canyon.
Behram, an Indian thug, holds the record for most murders by a single individual. He strangled 931 people between 1790-1840 with a piece of yellow and white cloth, called a ruhmal. The most by a woman is 610, by Countess Erzsebet Bathory of Hungary.
The Bingham Canyon copper mine in Utah is the biggest manmade hole on Earth. It is more than a half-mile deep and 2.5 miles across. An astronaut can see this hole from the space shuttle with his bare eyes.
The longest street in the world is Yonge Street, which starts in Toronto, on the north shore of Lake Ontario, and winds its way north then west to end at the Ontario-Manitoba-Minnesota border.
Bernard Clemmens of London managed to sustain a fart for an officially recorded time of 2 minutes 42 seconds.
The largest employer in the world is the Indian railway system, employing over a million people.
The smallest volcano in the world is Taal.
The Stratosphere Hotel and Casino is 1,149 feet tall, making it the tallest building west of the Mississippi River.
At the turn of the last millennium, Dublin Ireland had the largest slave market in the world, run by the Vikings.
Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from Public Libraries.
On March 16, 1970, a bidder at Sotheby & Company in London paid $20,000 for one glass paperweight.
Did you know that the beam of light shining from the top of the Luxor hotel is the most powerful in the world. The equivalent of 40 billion candle power, the beam is visible to airplanes from a distance of 250 miles.
The duration record for a face-slapping contest was set in Kiev, USSR, in 1931 when a draw was declared between Bezbordny and Goniusch after 30 hours.
The Bible is the number one shoplifted book in America.
The shopping mall in Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada has the largest water clock in North America.
Never mind what you saw in the film "The Poseidon Adventure." The biggest wave on record, reported by a reliable source, was estimated to have attained a height of 112 feet. It was measured, at some distance, I hope, by a tanker traveling between Manila and San Diego in 1933. The wind was blowing at 70 mph at the time.
The biggest hog ever recorded was a creature named Big Boy who weighed in at 1, 904 pounds.
France had the first supermarket in the world. It was started by relatives of the people who started the Texas Big Bear supermarket chain.
The largest school in the world is a k-12 school in the Philippines, with an enrollment of about 25,000.
The biggest bell is the "Tsar Kolokol" cast in the Kremlin in 1733. It weighs 216 tons, but alas, is cracked and has never been rung. The bell was being stored in a Moscow shed which caught fire. To "save" it, caretakers decided to throw water on the bell. This did not succeed, as the water hit the superheated metal and a giant piece immediately cracked off, destroying the bell forever.
In 1968, Steve McPeak traveled from Chicago to Los Angeles on a unicycle. The trip took him six weeks, but he planned for the long bike journey. He brought an extra tire and a spare heinie.
Toronto, Ontario was home to the biggest swimming pool in the world in 1925. It held 2000 swimmers, and was 300ft x 75ft. It is still in operation.
At 12 years old, an African named Ernest Loftus made his first entry in his diary and continued everyday for 91 years.
On July 31, 1994, Simon Sang Sung of Singapore turned a single piece of dough into 8,192 noodles in 59.29 seconds!
The largest web-footed bird is the albatross.
Howard Kinsey and Mrs. R. Roark, during a game of tennis, batted the ball back and forth 2001 consecutive times.
The highest wind velocity ever recorded in the United States was 231 miles per hour, on Mount Washington, New Hampshire, in 1934.
The longest Monopoly game in a bathtub was 99 hours long.
The Tokyo World Lanes Bowling Center is the largest bowling establishment in the world. It has 252 lanes and one very tired pinsetter.
The word "puppy" comes from the French poupee, meaning "doll."
Samuel Clemens, the creator of the adventuresome Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, took "Mark Twain" as his pen name. This was not because he WAS a riverboat captain, but because he once wanted very badly to be one.
"Doubleheader," which refers to two baseball games played back to back, was originally a railroad term that referred to two engines in a switching yard hooked up back to back on a single train. The train could also be called a "two-header."
Would you believe that "on the nose" comes from radio? When broadcasting began, directors had to communicate with people on the air without making noise, so they developed hand signals. Time is always a key element in live broadcasts. The person at the mike needed to know if the program was on schedule. If things were "just right," the director signaled with a finger to the side of his or her nose.
"Acre" literally means the amount of land plowable in one day.
Ukulele means "little jumping flea" in Hawaiian.
The abbreviation e.g. stands for "Exempli gratia", or "For example."
A phrenologist feel and interpret skull features.
A notaphile collects bank notes.
Xenophobia is the fear of strangers or foreigners.
The name of the point at which condensation begin is called the dew point.
A male witch is called a warlock.
Women who wink at men are known as "nictitating" women.
A deltiologist collects postcards.
Scatologists are experts who study poop (a.k.a. crap, dung, dookie, dumps, feces, excrement, etc...).
The explative, "Holy Toledo," refers to Toledo, Spain, which became an outstanding Christian cultural center in 1085.
The Ouija board is named for the French and German words for yes - oui and ja.
The study of nose picking is called "rhinotillexomania."
The word constipation (con sta PAY shun) comes from a Latin word that means "to crowd together."
A greenish facial tint has long been associated with illness, as suggested by the phrase "green around the gills." As a person who is very envious is considered by many folks to be unwell, these people have been described as "green (or sick) with envy."
Ekistics is the science of human settlements, including city or community planning and design.
A "clue" originally meant a ball of thread. This is why one is said to "unravel" the clues of a mystery.
The American Heritage Dictionary was once banned from the Eldon, Missouri library because it contained 39 "objectionable" words.
Hoi polloi is a Greek phrase meaning "the many". Hoi polloi are the masses.
Graffito is the little-used singular of the much used plural word graffiti.
"Yakka" means "hard work" in Australian slang.
"Toboggan" is derived from the Algonquin language and loosely meant "instrument with which to drag a cord."
"Romanji" is a system of writing Japanese using the Latin alphabet.
"Turnip" used to be a U.S. slang expression for a pocket watch.
"To whinge" is Australian slang for "to complain constantly."
"Mrs." is the abbreviation of Mistress, which originally was a title and form of address for a married woman. It was always capitalized.
"Lobster shift" is a colloquial term for the night shift of a newspaper staff.
"Kemo Sabe" reportedly means "soggy shrub" in Navajo.
"I am" is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.
"Hagiology" is the branch of literature dealing with the lives and legends of saints.
"E" is the most frequently used letter in the English alphabet, "Q" is the least.
"Almost" is the longest word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order.
Hairy people are called "hirsute."
A horologist measures time.
German is considered the sister language of English.
The food of the Greek gods was called Ambrosia.
A phonophobe fears noise.
A community of ants is called a colony.
A gynephobic man fears women.
A nihilist believes in nothing.
The boundary between two air masses is called a "front."
Narcissism is the psychiatric term for self-love.
A chiropodist treats hands and feet.
Hydroxydesoxycorticosterone and hydroxydeoxycorticosterones are the largest anagrams.
Kyoto, which was the Japanese capital before Tokyo, means "old capital".
A "quidnunc" is a person who is eager to know the latest news and gossip, otherwise, a busybody.
Mountains are formed by a process called orogeny.
Dr. Seuss coined the word "nerd" in his 1950 book "If I Ran The Zoo"
The phrase "jet lag" was once called "boat lag", back before airplanes existed.
Tobacco smoke contains over 4,000 chemicals, including at least 50 that cause, initiate or promote cancer such as tar, ammonia, carbon monoxide, oxides of nitrogen and benzopyrene.
Today's commercial bananas are scientifically classified into the genus Musa of the Musaceae family.
Toilets in Australia flush counter clockwise.
Tokyo is the largest city by population (35million), followed by New York (21 million), then by Seoul (21 million), then Mexico City (20 million).
Tom Cruise, John Travolta and Anne Archer are members of the Church of Scientology
Tommy McDonald, a receiver for the Philadelphia Eagles, was the last NFL player to wear a helmet without a face mask.
Tony Hawk has made more money from video games and tv commercials than from skateboarding.
Toothbrushes should be kept 6 feet away from the toilet to avoid being contaminated by airborne stuff stirred up after flushing
Top corporate executives take separate planes in case one crashes.
Tortoises drink water through their noses.
Tossing coins into fountains, dates back more than 2,000 years ago.
Townsend Speakman of Philadelphia mixed fruit flavor with soda water in 1807, creating the first flavored soda pop, he called it Nephite Julep.
Traces of cocaine were found on 99% of UK bank notes in a survey in London in 2000.
Triskaidekaphobia means fear of the number 13. Paraskevidekatriaphobia means fear of Friday the 13th (which occurs one to three times a year). In Italy, 17 is considered an unlucky number. In Japan, 4 is considered an unlucky number.
Truck driving is the most dangerous occupation by accidental deaths (799 in 2001).Truffles, or mushrooms that grow below the ground, are one of the world's most expensive foods. One variety, Tuber melanosporum, can cost between $800 and $1,500 a pound.
Turkey began to roast and grind the coffee bean in the 13th Century, and some 300 years later, in the 1500's, the country had become the chief distributor of coffee, with markets established in Egypt, Syria, Persia, and Venice, Italy.
Turkeys can reproduce without having sex. It's called parthenogenesis
Turkeys drown in the rain
Turtles can breathe through their butts.
Turtles have no teeth.
Twinkies have a shelf life of about 25 years.
Two in every three car buyers pays the sticker price without arguing.
Two normal kidneys contain 2 million tiny blood filters which filter 50 gallons of blood every day!.
Two thirds of all left-handed people are men.
Two U.S. Presidents with the initials "J.M." followed each other as president.
Two-thirds of the world's coffee comes from Brazil.
Two-thirds of the world's eggplant is grown in New Jersey.
Underfund and underground are the only two English words which start and finish with "und."
Unique animals. Hippopotami cannot swim (ppl have said that a hippo can swim, but i dont think its classified as swimming. I'll check), whales can't swim backwards, tarantulas can't spin webs, crocodiles can't chew and hummingbirds can't walk
Unlike most fish, electric eels cannot get enough oxygen from water. Approximately every five minutes, they must surface to breathe, or they will drown. Unlike most fish, they can swim both backwards and forwards.
Unprosperousness is the longest word in which every letter occurs at least twice.
Until 1896, drivers in Great Britain had to warn of their presence by having a person precede their car on foot, waving a red flag.
Until 1965, driving was done on the left-hand side on roads in Sweden. The conversion to right-hand was done on a weekday at 5 p.m.
Until 1967 it wasn't illegal for Olympic athletes to use drugs to enhance their performance during competition.
Until the 1870s, baseball was played without the use of gloves.
Until the 18th century coffee was almost always boiled.
Until the 18th century India produced almost all the world diamonds.
Until the late 1800's, people roasted their coffee at home. Popcorn poppers and stove-top frying pans were favored.
Until the time of Michelangelo, many sculptors colored their statues, and most from ancient Greece and Rome at one time had been painted or "polychromed." Over the course of years, rain washed the colors off the marble.
Until the time of Michelangelo, many sculptors colored their statues. Most of the statues from ancient Greece and Rome at one time had been painted or polychromed. Rain through the ages washed off the paint and the statues were left in their natural marble.
Up until the early 20th century, New Jersey and Wisconsin had laws allowing the castration of epileptics.
Upper and Lower case letters are so named because when print had to be set by individual letters the upper case letters were stored in a case above the case that held the lower case letters.
URanus' axis is at 97 degrees. which means that it orbits on its side. (Most of the planets spin on an axis nearly perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic but Uranus' axis is almost parallel to the ecliptic.)
Uranus is the only planet that rotates on its side. Venus is the only planet that rotates clockwise.
Uranus was originally called George, in honour of King George III of Britain
US Dollar bills are made out of cotton and linen.
US gold coins used to say "In Gold We Trust".
US Presidents who died on July 4th: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died in 1826, James Monroe died in 1831.
US presidents who have been assassinated: Abraham Lincoln in 1865, James A. Garfield in 1881, William H. McKinley in 1901, and John F. Kennedy in 1963.
US Presidents who never attended college: Grover Cleveland, Abraham Lincoln, Harry S Truman, and George Washington.
US Presidents who never had children: George Washington, known as the "Father of the Country," James Madison, Andrew Jackson, James Polk, James Buchanan, and Warren Harding.
US Presidents who never held any other elective office: U. S. Grant, William H. Taft, Herbert Hoover, Dwight D. Eisenhower.
US Presidents who owned slaves : George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Andrew Jackson, John Tyler, James K. Polk, Zachary Taylor, Andrew Johnson, and Ulysses S. Grant.
US presidents who served an entire term without a vice president: John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, and Chester Arthur.
US presidents who were survived by their fathers: John F. Kennedy and Warren Harding.
US Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina set a filibuster record in the U.S. Senate on August 19, 1957. He spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes.
'Vaimonkanto' or 'Wife Carrying' is a sports event. The 'Carry an Old Gel' championship games are held anually in Sonkajarvi, Finland.
Van Camp's Pork and Beans were a staple food for Union soldiers in the Civil War.
Vanilla is the extract of fermented and dried pods of several species of orchids.
Vaseline was created by Robert Chesebrough in 1870. He developed it after visiting Titusville, PA in 1859. While there he noticed that workers were treating cuts and burns with grease that accumulated on drill rods from the oil fields.
Vatican City is the smallest country in the world. It’s just 0.17 square miles. Monaco is the second smallest at 0.7 square miles.
Vatican City is the smallest country in the world. The whole country is only 108.7 acres, which a population of just 1,000 (approx.).
Venus is the only planet in the solar system to spin backwards.
Venus rotates so slowly that in a typical day lasts approximately 244 Earth days (5,856 hours).
Vermont, admitted as the 14th state in 1791, was the 1st addition to the original 13 colonies.
VHS stands for Video Home System.Victor Hugo's Les Miserables contains one of the longest sentences in the French language 823 words without a period.
Victor Mills, an inventor with Proctor & Gamble, invented the disposable diaper in 1961 because he didn't want to deal with his daughter's soiled (crapped) diapers. You know them as Pampers.
Vincent van Gogh didn't start to draw until he was 27 years old.
Vincent van Gogh is known to have sold only one painting during his lifetime.
Virgina Woolf wrote all of her books standing.
Virginia law forbids bathtubs in the house; tubs must be kept in the yard.
Volkswagen was the first foreign company to open a factory in the United States. The auto plant opened in 1978 in Pennsylvania.
Waldo Hanchett invented the modern dentist's chair in 1848.
Walt Disney got the idea for Mickey Mouse from watching mice play in a garage, where he was forced to work, because he could not afford to rent an art studio.
Walt Disney named Mickey Mouse after Mickey Rooney, whose mother he dated.
Walt Disney provided the voice of Mickey Mouse in Steamboat Willie.
Walt Disney was afraid of mice.
Walt Disney's first cartoon character was called Oswald the Rabbit.
Walt Disney's youngest daughter is named Sharon.
Walter Huston and his son John become the first father-and-son team to win Oscars as director of and an actor in "Treasure of Sierra Madre" in 1949.
Warn your hubby that after lovemaking in Ames, Iowa, he isn't allowed to take more than three gulps of beer while lying in bed with youor holding you in his arms.
Warren Beatty and Shirley McLaine are brother and sister.
Warren G. Harding was the first American President to visit Canada. He stopped in Vancouver, British Columbia while he was on his way to Alaska.
Warren G. Harding's middle name is Gamaliel.
Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt are the four US presidents whose faces are carved on Mt. Rushmore.
Water based mammals like dolphins and whales swish their tails up and down. Only fish move them sideways.
Watermelon is grown in over 96 countries worldwide. Over 1,200 varieties of watermelon are grown worldwide. There are about 200 varieties of watermelon throughout the US.
Watermelon, considered one of America's favorite fruits, is really a vegetable (Citrullus lanatus). Cousin to the cucumber and kin to the gourd, watermelons can range in size from 7 to 100 pounds.
Watermelons grown along the Tigris River have been known to reach as much as 275 pounds.
We [humans] only use 10% of our brains.
We blink eyes 25 times each minute.
We blink our eyes once every six second i.e. in the course of a life time we blink about 250 million times.
We lose half a litre of water a day through breathing. This is the water vapour we see when we breathe onto glass.
Wearing headphones for just an hour will increase the bacteria in your ear by 700 times.
Wedding cake was originally thrown at the bride and groom, instead of eaten by them.
Wesley Snipes has a 5th Degree Black Belt.
Wesley Snipes installed public telephones while struggling to become an actor in New York.
Wet sand weighs less than dry sand.
Whale hunting is strictly prohibitted throughout the entire state of Oklahoma.
Whales can never focus both their eyes on the same object at once
What does a Dead Leaf, Paper Kite, Blue Striped Crow,Julia and Great Egg Fly have in common? They're all butterflies!Thanx Bijou
What we call the sky is merely the limit of our vision into the atmosphere. The sky, like the horizon, is always as far away as one can see.
What word can you take the first letter of, put it as the last letter, and make it the past tence of the original word? Answer: Eat (ate)
Wheat is the world's most widely cultivated plant; grown on every continent except Antarctica.
When a coffee seed is planted, it takes five years to yield consumable fruit.
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.
When a giraffe is born, it has to fall around six feet to the ground.
When a male skier falls down, he tends to fall on his face. A woman skier tends to fall on her back.When a man was hanged in Mississippi in 1894 the noose came undone and the prisoner fell to the ground. He was set free and and since his innocence was later established he was granted ,$5000.
When a person dies, hearing is generally the last sense to go. The first sense lost is usually sight. Then follows taste, smell, and touch.
When a person dies, hearing is the last sense to go. First off would be your sight.
When a person is wide awake, alert, and mentally active, he is still only 25% aware of what various parts of his body are doing. (2-1-04)
When a queen bee lays the fertilized eggs that will develop into new queens, only one of the newly laid queens actually survives. The first new queen that emerges from her cell destroys all other queens in their cells and, thereafter, reigns alone.
When Alexander Graham Bell Was working on the telephone in 1876, he spilled battery acid on his pants and called out to his assistant, "Watson, please come here. I want you." Watson, who was on another floor, heard the call through the instrument he was hooking up, and ran to Bell's room. Bell's words became the first ever successfully communicated using a telephone.
When angered, the ears of the tazmanian devil turn pinkish red.
When ants find food, they lay down a chemical trail, called a pheromone, so that other ants can find their way from the nest to the food source.
When armadillos are pregnant they always have quadruplets of the same sex.
When Bob Marley died they found 19 different species of lice in his dreadlocks.
When Bugs Bunny first appeared in 1935, he was called Happy Rabbit.
When Catherine de Medici married Henry II of France (1533) she brought forks with her, as well as several master Florentine cooks. Foods never before seen in France were soon being served using utensils instead of fingers or daggers. She is said to have introduced spinach (which "à la Florentine" usually means) as well as aspics, sweetbreads, artichoke hearts, truffles, liver crépinettes, quenelles of poultry, macaroons, ice cream, and zabagliones.
When Charles Darwin published his theory on human evolution in The Descent of Man in 1871, not a single fossil that was known to be pre-human had been found to back up his ideas. Although his theory was later proved to be true, it was formulated entirely without physical evidence and based almost completely on speculation.
When Christopher Columbus and crew landed in the New World they observed the natives using a nose pipe to smoke a strange new herb. The pipe was called a "tabaka" by the locals, hence our word tobacco.
When cows lay down, they get up back feet first...so if you get enough people to sit on their rear end, they won't be able to stand again. Doctors use this when operating and giving shots.
When Disneyland opened in 1955, Tomorrowland represented a city from 1986.
When gentlemen in medieval Japan wished to seal an agreement, they urinated together, crisscrossing their streams of urine.
When George Washington ran for the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1757, he was accused of trying to win votes by plying voters with 28 gallons of rum, 50 gallons of rum punch, 46 gallons of beer and 34 gallons of wine.
When George Washington was elected President, there was a King in France, a Czar in Russia, an Emperor in China, and a Shogun in Japan. Only the office of President remained.
When glass breaks, it showers TOWARDS, not away from the force that broke it. To reiterate, I will repeat it again one more time, to recap, TOWARDS the force, not away.
When Henry Aaron hit his 715th Home Run, breaking Babe Ruth's record, the pitcher who served it up was Al Downing of the Los Angeles Dodgers. They were both wearing number 44.
When honey is swallowed, it enters the blood stream within a period of 20 minutes.
When Leonardo Da Vinci was young he drew a picture of a horrible monster and placed near a window in order to surprise his father. Upon seeing the picture his father believed it to be real and set out to protect his family until the boy showed him it was just a picture. Da Vinci's father then enrolled his son in an art class.
When Mahatma Gandhi died, an autopsy revealed that his small intestine contained five gold Krugerrands. (not verified)
When Mount Vesuvius erupted in in the year 79, over 2,000 citizens of Pompeii ran into their cellars to wait until everything had ended. Excavators found them still there 1,800 years later.
When movie directors do not want their names to be seen in the credits, they use the pseudonym "Allen Smithee" instead. It has been used over 50 times, starting with "Death of a Gunfighter" (1969).
When opossums are playing 'possum, they are not "playing," They actually pass out from sheer terror.
When possums are "playing possum" they're not playing they are actually passed out from sheer terror.
When potatoes first appeared in Europe in the seventeenth century, it was thought that they were disgusting, and they were blamed for starting outbreaks of leprosy and syphilis. As late as 1720 in America, eating potatoes was believed to shorten a person's life.
When potatoes were brought from South America over to Spain, it took about 200 years before it was recognized as a food.
When potatoes were first introduced to Europe, people were skeptical and only ate the leaves, which made them sick. They would then throw away the rest, including the actual spud.
When pure gold is beaten with a mallet and made into gold leaf, the average thickness runs between 1/200,000th to 1/250,000th of an inch.
When Scott Paper Co. first started manufacturing toilet paper they did not put their name on the product because of embarrassment.
When sharks bite down, their eyes automatically close in case their prey starts squirming trying to get free, and thereby cause damage to the shark's eyes in the process.
When snakes are born with two heads, they fight each other for food.
When someone commits suicide while jumping off a building, so much adrenaline builds up that you have a heart attack and die before hitting the ground. Thus making this way of commiting usicide basically the easiest.
When Swiss cheese ferments, a bacterial action generates gas. As the gas is liberated, it bubbles through the cheese leaving holes. Cheese-makers call them "eyes."
When the Black Death swept across England one theory was that cats caused the plague. Thousands were slaughtered. Ironically, those that kept their cats were less affected, because they kept their houses clear of the real culprits, rats.
When the English colonists sat down for their first Thanksgiving dinner on February 22, 1630, an Indian chief named Quadoquina offered a deerskin bag filled with freshly popped corn. Thus popcorn made its first appearance to non-native North Americans.
When the German army invaded France in WWI, they actually followed the schedules of the local trains to invade (it was faster by rail and they wanted to surprise France), checking the timetable and abiding by it. And France, whose army was waiting at the border, sent taxis to pick up and transport the troops to counter the attack!
When the income tax first started in 1861, the maximum tax was 3%.
When the moon is directly over your head, you weigh slightly less.
When the temperature drops, the eyesight reaction time of insects (like the dragonfly and some animals like tortoises) decrease and thats why they can be caught early in the morning or at night by predators like birds whose eyesight reaction times are unaffected by temperature.
When the Titanic sank, 2228 people were on it. Only 706 survived.
When the Titanic sunk there was 7,500 lbs. of ham on it
When the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers play football at home, the stadium becomes the third largest city in the state.
When the X-ray was discovered, a law in New Jersey was written forbidding the use of "X-ray opera glasses."
When Thomas Edison died in 1941; Henry Ford captured his last dying breath in a bottle.
When you flush a toilet, an invisible cloud of water [full of germs] shoots six feet in the air.
When you give someone roses, the color can have a meaning. The meaning of rose colors: Red = Love and respect, Deep pink = Gratitude, appreciation, Light pink = Admiration, sympathy White = Reverence, humility, Yellow = Joy, gladness,Orange = Enthusiasm, desire, Red & yellow blend = Gaiety, joviality,Pale blended tones = Sociability, friendship
When you put a seashell to your ear, the sound you hear is not the waves, but actually the echo of the blood pulsing in your own ear.
When you see a sign "City of Timbukto 40 miles" it means actually it is 40 miles to the city hall of that city sign.
When you sneeze, all your bodily functions stop, even your heart.
Whenever people accidentally trip over themselves whilst walking, they automatically go into 'survival mode' and try to pretend like they meant it (eg. they start into a jog). How hilarious is it watching someone do that?!
While fighting with the French underground during World War II, Jacques-Yves Cousteau invented the aqualung, the self-contained device that supplies air under pressure for underwater divers.
While many treaties have been signed at or near Paris, France (including many after WWI and WWII), nine are actually known as the "Treaty of Paris": Seven Years' War (1763), American Revolutionary War (1783), French-Swede War (1810), France vs Sixth Coalition (1814), Battle of Waterloo (1815), Crimean War (1856), Spanish-American War (1898), union of Bessarabia and Romania (1920), establishment of European Coal and Steel Community (1951).
While sailing along the Caribbean coast of South America in 1499, the Spanish explorer Alonso de Ojedo saw Indian houses built on stilts over the water. The area reminded him of Venice, and he named it Little Venice, which in Spanish is Venezuela.
While seeking a name and package design for the world's first self-rising pancake mix, creator Chris L. Rutt saw a vaudeville team known as Baker and Farrell whose act included Baker singing the catchy song "Aunt Jemima" dressed as a Southern mammy. Inspired by the wholesome name and image, Rutt appropriated them both to market his new pancake mix.
While sleeping, one man in eight snores, and one in ten grinds his teeth.
While the US government's supply of gold is kept at Fort Knox, its supply of silver is kept at the Military Academy at West Point, NY.
Whiskey was first brewed in the United States in 1640. It was made from a mixture of corn and rye.
Whitcomb L. Judson, the inventor of the zipper, originally intended his invention to save people the trouble of buttoning and unbuttoning their shoes every day. He named it the "Clasp locker and unlocker for shoes."
White out was invented by the mother of Mike Nesmith (Formerly of the Monkees).
Whoever submitted the erroneous Spanish info should be pelted with soggy tacos and refried beans. HOMBRE is "man," HOMBRO is "shoulder," and HOMBURG is a kind of hat just as it is in English.
Whole wheat bread has more iron, vitamins and dietary fiber than white bread.
Why? It is a felony for a wife to open a husband's mail.
Widow is the only female form in the English language that is shorter than its corresponding male term (widower).
Wild Bill Hickok was killed playing poker, holding two pairs aces and eights, which has become known as 'Dead Man's Hand.'
William Fox, the founder of 20th Century Fox, was bankrupt a few years after selling his studio, and served a prison sentence in Pennsylvania for bribing a judge.
William Henry Harrison (1773-1841) was the first US president to die in office. At 32 days, he also had the shortest term in office.
William Howard Taft had a bathtub that could hold four people installed in the white because he couldn't fit into the present one.
William Howard Taft was the first President to own a car.
William Penn purchased a pound of coffee in New York in 1683 for $4.68.
William Shakespeare used a vocabulary of 29,066 different words. By way of comparison, the average person uses about 8,000 different words.
William Shatner is credited for being the first person on TV to say "hell" as well as to have the first inter-racial kiss (with Nichelle Nichols), both in episodes of Star Trek.
William Taft is only man to become President and then chief justice.
Willow bark, which provides the salicylic acid from which aspirin was originally synthesized, has been used as a pain remedy ever since the Greeks discovered its therapeutic power nearly 2,500 years ago.
Windmills always turn counter-clockwise except in one country.
Wine grapes, oranges, figs and olives were first planted in North America by Father Junipero Sera in 1769.
Wine is kept in tinted bottles because it will spoil if it's exposed to light.
Wine will spoil if exposed to light, hence tinted bottles.
Winston Churchill was born in a ladies room during a dance.
Witchcraft was first legalized in the colony of Pennsylvania.
With a 3 by 5 card you can make a paper ring that can go around 3 adults
With the exception of Antarctica, all continents are wider in the north than in the south.
Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
Women burn fat more slowly than men, by a rate of about 50 calories a day.
Women say that the part of a man's body that they admire the most is his buttocks.
Women shoplift more often than men; the statistics are 4 to 1.
Women wear engagement and wedding rings on the third finger of the left hand because an ancient belief held that a delicate nerve runs directly from that finger to the heart.
Women who are housewives are, as a whole, more faithful than working women.Women who respond to sex surveys in magazines have had five times as many lovers as non-respondents.
Women's hearts beat faster than men's.
Wonder Woman was the world's first comic book superheroine. She was introduced in All Star Comics in December 1941 and created by psychologist William Moulton Marston.
Woodbury Soap was the first product to use a picture of a nude woman in its advertisements. In 1936, a photo by Edward Steichen showed a rear full-length view of a woman sunbathing.
Work on St. Peter's Basilica, Rome, began in 1506. Construction took over a century, reaching completion in 1612.
Worker ants may live seven years and the queen may live as long as 15 years.
Worldwide, the most common environmental allergy is dust.
Worn or outdated US Flags are destroyed, preferably by burning.
Would you believe that pigs are smarter than dogs? On the human intelligence scale, pigs are third removed from humans, while dogs are 13th removed, and only primates and dolphines are smarter than pigs. They are quick one time learners, and some learn by watching others. (I dont know how much of this is true, coming from a site called Pig's Peace Sanctuary
Wrigley's gum was the first product to have a bar code on the packaging.
Wrigley's promoted their new spearmint-flavored chewing gum in 1915 by mailing 4 sample sticks to each of the 1.5 million names listed in US telephone books.
Writing in ancient Greece "hadnospacebetweenthewords."
Wyoming was the first state to allow women to vote.
X-ray technology has shown there are 3 different versions of the Mona Lisa under the visible one.
Xylophones(Greek xylon,"wood"; phone,"sound") were actually developed in South East Asia in the 14th centuary
Yellowstone is the world's 1st national park. It was dedicated in 1872.
You are born with 300 bones, but when you get to be an adult you only have 206.
You are more likely to be killed by a champagne cork than by a poisonous spider.
You blink about 25,000 times a day.
You breath 13 pints of air per minute.
You burn more calories sleeping than watching television.
You burn more calories sleeping than you do watching TV.
You can lead a cow upstairs but not downstairs.
You can not kill yourself by holding your breath.
You can now buy a coffin which can be used as a wine rack, table, and / or bookcase before you are buried in it.
You can only smell /20th as well as a dog.
You can only tell the gender of a Macaw through an operation. They lack exterior genetials.
You can see how hydrated you are by checking the color of your urine. If it's a dark yellow to yellowish-green, you are under-hydrated. If it's light yellow to clear, you're very well hydrated.
You can see stars from the bottom of a well even in day light.
You can sometimes tell the hobbies and race of a person by their skeleton.
You can tell how a rabbit is feeling (emotion-wise) through the position of its ears. If the ears are standing tall, pointing forward, the rabbit is happy and curious. If the ears are laid completely flat on its back and are pointing backwards, the rabbit is more than likely pissed off or frightened. If one ear is halfway up and somewhat cocked towards you, and the other one is standing compeltely up, but facing away from you, then the rabbit is confused, and curious as to what the heck you're doing.
You can tell the sex of a turtle by the sound it makes, A male grunts, A female hisses.
You can test for a two way mirror by putting your fingernail on the surface, if there's space between the tip and the image, then its a normal mirror, if not, its two way.
You can usually tell how good the picture of a TV will be by how black the screen is when the TV is off. The blacker, the better.
You can walk from Boston to New York City in fewer than a million steps.
You cannot sneeze with your eyes open.
You can't kill yourself by holding your breath.
You can't sneeze on the streets of Asheville, North Carolina.
You could walk from New York to Boston in less than one million steps.
You forget 80% of what you learn each day.
You have enough red blood cells in your body to circle (the veins) the planet 2.5 times.
You may legally participate in a duel in Paraguay if both participants are registered blood doners.
You may not sell your oragns in Indiana to cover travel expenses.
You need 120 drops of water to fill a teaspoon.
You need approximately 2,000 berries to make one pound of coffee.
You share your birthday with at least 9 million other people in the world.
You share your birthday with at least nine million other people around the world.You sit on the biggest muscle in your body, the gluteus maximus a.k.a the butt. Each of the two cheeky muscles tips the scales at about two pounds (not including the overlying fat layer). The tiniest muscle, the stapedius of the middle ear, is just one-fifth of an inch long.
You speak about 4,800 words per day.
You will have to walk 80 kilometers for your legs to equal the amount of exercise your eyes get daily.
You would need to travel at 6.95 miles per second to escape the Earth’s gravitational pull. This is equivalent to traveling from New York to Philadelphia in about twenty seconds.
Your body releases growth hormones when you sleep.
Your brain will stop growing in size when you are about 15 years old.
Your fingernails can turn yellow from wearing nail polish and from the sun.
Your fingernails grow up to 7 times faster than your toenails.
Your head can be shaved against your will for violating their islamic code.
Your nose smells best when you are about 10 years old.
Your nostrils take turns inhaling.
Your right lung takes in more air than your left one does.
Your skin weighs about 3.2kg
Your stomach produces a new layer of mucus every two weeks so that it doesn't digest itself.
You're born with 300 bones, but when you get to be an adult, you only have 206. (apparently they fuse together such as the parietal, occipital of the skull) thanx Christie
You're more likely to be a target for mosquitoes if you consume bananas.
You're more likely to get stung by a bee on a windy day that in any other weather.
Zebras are members of the Equus genus.
Zebras are not black with white stripes, but are actually white with black stripes, coz if any of you animal lovers happen to stare at it's butt, you'll notice that the black stripes end there.
Zero point energy is a source of energy which is released when atoms stop moving, at -273 Celcius.
Zipporah was the wife of Moses.
Sherlock Holmes archenemy was Professor Moriarty.
There are 225 spaces on a Scrabble board.
Mr. Boddy is the murder victim in the game "Clue."
The first American in space was Alan B. Shepard Jr.
Mario Puzo wrote "The Godfather."
The color black moves first in checkers.
Camera shutter speed "B" stands for bulb.
Three teaspoons make up one tablespoon.
Jean Marie Butler was the first woman graduate from the United States Coast Guard Academy in 1980. She also was the first woman to graduate from any U.S. service academy.
Rebecca Elizabeth Marier was the first woman to graduate "top of the class" at West Point, the U.S. Military Academy. The rankings are based on academic, military, and physical accomplishments.
If you took a standard slinky and stretched it out it would measure 87 feet.
Ghosts appear in 4 Shakespearian plays; Julius Caesar, Richard III, Hamlet and Macbeth.
Charlie Brown hits a game-winning home run on March 30, his first in 43 years. Unfortunately - he NEVER got to kick the football.
Snoopy and Charlie Brown appeared together on the March 17th, 1967 cover of Life Magazine. The Apollo X astronauts took the duo into space in 1969.
Snoopy stood on two legs for the first time in a 1958 strip.
It would take more than 150 years to drive a car to the sun.
The blueprints for the Eiffel Tower covered more than 14,000 square feet of drafting paper.
Young priests of the island of Leukas, Greece, to qualify for service at the temple of Apollo, were required in ancient Greece to don the wings of an eagle and plunge from Cape Dukato into the sea, a dive of 230 feet. It was assumed that the gods would eliminate those unfit, but no diver was ever injured, although the ordeal was performed for centuries.
Little known, and even less appreciated, the United States actually has a mothers-in-law day.
If the Earth was smooth, the ocean would cover the entire surface to a depth of 12,000 feet.
Hallmark makes cards for 105 different relationships.
Two objects have struck the earth with enough force to destroy a whole city. Each object, one in 1908 and again in 1947, struck regions of Siberia. Not one human being was hurt either time.
There are more than 200 different types of Barbie Dolls.
There are 63,360 inches in a mile.
There are 6,272,640 square inches in an acre.
The U.S. Library of Congress has compiled a 232-source bibliography on the subject of when, properly speaking, centuries roll over. Almost all of the sources agree that the twentieth century does not end until December 31, 2000.
The U.S standard railroad gauge (distance between rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches.
The National Lighter Museum in Guthrie, Oklahoma has nearly 20,000 pieces, representing over 85,000 years of lighters and fire starters. The only museum of its kind in the world, it is dedicated to collecting and preserving the history of the evolution of lighters.
At its peak in 1943, the Pentagon had a working population of about 33,000. Today about 23,000 employees work in the building.
Built in only 16 months between 1941 and 1942, the Pentagon is only 71ft tall, yet it has 5 floors, 17.5 miles of corridors, 150 stairways, 280 restrooms, 685 drinking fountains, 7,748 windows and workers replace more than 250 lightbulbs each day.
On dry, windy days, pollen can travel up to 500 miles.
Ever wonder where the term "Work Smarter...Not Harder" originated? Allan F. Mogensen, the creator of Work Simplification, coined the phrase in the 1930s. The 1990s equivalent term is probably Business Process Reengineering.
A "hairbreadth away" is 1/48 of an inch.
The Curly Redwood Lodge is one of northern California’s most unique lodges. It was built from one curly redwood tree that produced 57,000 board feet of lumber. The tree - cut down in 1952 - was 18 feet 2 inches at the trunk. Curly redwood is unique because of the curly grain of the wood, unlike typical straight grained redwood.
The Cairo Opera House was destroyed by fire in 1970. The Cairo fire station was located inside the same building.
The Pentagon building in Arlington, Virginia, has nearly 68,000 miles of telephone lines.
The first drive-in service station in the United States was opened by Gulf Oil Company - on December 1, 1913, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
There is a house in Rockport, Massachusetts, built entirely of newspaper. The Paper House at Pigeon Cove, as it is called, is made of 215 thicknesses of newspaper. According to a 1995 survey, 7 out of 10 British dogs get Christmas gifts from their doting owners.
Superman dates back to June 1938, when he appeared in Action Comics No. 1. Batman arrived on the scene one year later in Detective Comics No. 27, appearing May 1939.
Salt helped build the Erie Canal. A tax of 12 1/2 percent on New York State salt, plus tolls charged for salt shipments, paid for nearly half of the $7 million construction cost.
Roman statues were made with detachable heads, so that one head could be removed and replaced by another.
Buckingham Palace consists of 600 rooms.
If the Earth was smooth, the ocean would cover the entire surface to a depth of 12,000 feet.
Hallmark makes cards for 105 different relationships.
Two objects have struck the earth with enough force to destroy a whole city. Each object, one in 1908 and again in 1947, struck regions of Siberia. Not one human being was hurt either time.
There are more than 200 different types of Barbie Dolls.
There are 63,360 inches in a mile.
There are 6,272,640 square inches in an acre.
The U.S. Library of Congress has compiled a 232-source bibliography on the subject of when, properly speaking, centuries roll over. Almost all of the sources agree that the twentieth century does not end until December 31, 2000.
The U.S standard railroad gauge (distance between rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches.
The National Lighter Museum in Guthrie, Oklahoma has nearly 20,000 pieces, representing over 85,000 years of lighters and fire starters. The only museum of its kind in the world, it is dedicated to collecting and preserving the history of the evolution of lighters.
At its peak in 1943, the Pentagon had a working population of about 33,000. Today about 23,000 employees work in the building.
Built in only 16 months between 1941 and 1942, the Pentagon is only 71ft tall, yet it has 5 floors, 17.5 miles of corridors, 150 stairways, 280 restrooms, 685 drinking fountains, 7,748 windows and workers replace more than 250 lightbulbs each day.
On dry, windy days, pollen can travel up to 500 miles.
Ever wonder where the term "Work Smarter...Not Harder" originated? Allan F. Mogensen, the creator of Work Simplification, coined the phrase in the 1930s. The 1990s equivalent term is probably Business Process Reengineering.
A "hairbreadth away" is 1/48 of an inch.
The Curly Redwood Lodge is one of northern California’s most unique lodges. It was built from one curly redwood tree that produced 57,000 board feet of lumber. The tree - cut down in 1952 - was 18 feet 2 inches at the trunk. Curly redwood is unique because of the curly grain of the wood, unlike typical straight grained redwood.
The Cairo Opera House was destroyed by fire in 1970. The Cairo fire station was located inside the same building.
The Pentagon building in Arlington, Virginia, has nearly 68,000 miles of telephone lines.
The first drive-in service station in the United States was opened by Gulf Oil Company - on December 1, 1913, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
There is a house in Rockport, Massachusetts, built entirely of newspaper. The Paper House at Pigeon Cove, as it is called, is made of 215 thicknesses of newspaper. According to a 1995 survey, 7 out of 10 British dogs get Christmas gifts from their doting owners.
Superman dates back to June 1938, when he appeared in Action Comics No. 1. Batman arrived on the scene one year later in Detective Comics No. 27, appearing May 1939.
Salt helped build the Erie Canal. A tax of 12 1/2 percent on New York State salt, plus tolls charged for salt shipments, paid for nearly half of the $7 million construction cost.
Roman statues were made with detachable heads, so that one head could be removed and replaced by another.
Buckingham Palace consists of 600 rooms.
Nobody knows who built the Taj Mahal. The names of the architects, masons, and designers that have come down to us have all proved to be latter-day inventions, and there is no evidence to indicate who the real creators were.
Nearly a quarter of all U.S. pet owners bring their pet on the job. Last June, 200 American companies participated in the first ever "Take Your Dog to Work Day".
It would take 11 Empire State Buildings, stacked one on top of the other, to measure the Gulf of Mexico at its deepest point.
Flying from London to New York by Concord, due to the time zones crossed, you can arrive 2 hours before you leave.
The name Wendy was made up for the book Peter Pan, there was never a recorded Wendy before.
There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos.
February is Black History Month.
If a person counted at the rate of 100 numbers a minute and kept counting for eight hours a day, five days a week, it would take a little over 4 weeks to count to one million and just over 80 years to reach a billion.
Roger Wrenn was the photographer who took the famous picture of General Douglas MacArthur wading ashore in the Philippines in October 1944.
The orange things that crossing guards, construction and high way workers, etc. wear is called a retroreflective vest, or "International Orange".
In 1970, "MCI" stood for "Microwave Communications, Inc." No longer used as an acronym, it now stands alone.
Catherine de Medici was the first woman in Europe to use tobacco. She took it in a mixture of snuff.
Vellum, a fine-quality writing parchment, is prepared from animal skin: lambs, kids, and very young calves. Coarser, tougher types are made from the skins of male goats, wolves, and older calves. Vellum replaced papyrus and was superseded by paper.
Shampoo was first marketed in the USA in 1930 by John Breck, who was the captain of a volunteer fire department.
Four of the first six presidents of the U.S. were 57 years old when they were inaugurated. No other presidents have been inaugurated at that age.
Every queen named Jane has either been murdered, imprisoned, gone mad, died young, or been dethroned.
Mary Stuart became Queen of Scotland when she was only six days old.
Liberace Museum has a mirror-plated Rolls Royce; jewel-encrusted capes, and the largest rhinestone in the world, weighing 59 pounds and almost a foot in diameter.
World Tourist day is observed on September 27.
The 3rd year of marriage is called the leather anniversary.
Each of the suits on a deck of cards represents the four major pillars of the economy in the middle ages: heart represented the Church, spades represented the military, clubs represented agriculture, and diamonds represented the merchant class.
The Colgate Company started out making starch, soap, and candles.
Some china is called "bone" china because some powdered animal bone is mixed in with the clay used to make this china: it gives the china a special kind of strength, whiteness, and translucency.
In order to sell his sets of Shakespeare door-to-door, David McConnell offered free perfume to his customers. He realized the perfume was more popular and began selling cosmetics door-to-door. This began the company that grew into Avon.
"Fine turkey" and "honeycomb" are terms used for different qualities and textures of sponges.
The Metro subway of Washington, DC, has several really deep stations. Its Forrest Glen station - in the Maryland suburbs - is 196 feet deep and has the longest subway escalator in the Western Hemisphere. But MOST of the subway stations in Leningrad are deeper than that.
A 17th-century Swedish philologist claimed that in the Garden of Eden God spoke Swedish, Adam spoke Danish, and the serpent spoke French.
The United States government keeps its supply of silver at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York.
The Grand Coulee Dam in the state of Washington in the U.S., completed in 1942, was hailed in its time as a structure more massive than the Great Pyramid of Cheops.
In the game Monopoly, the most money you can lose in one travel around the board (normal game rules, going to jail only once) is $26,040. The most money you can lose in one turn is $5070.
Alcoholics are twice as likely to confess a drinking problem to a computer than to a doctor, say researchers in Wisconsin.
The gesture of a nose tap, in Britain, means secrecy or confidentiality. In Italy, a tap to the nose signifies a friendly warning.
A 41-gun salute is the traditional salute to a royal birth in Great Britain.
To prevent some numbers from occurring more frequently than others, dice used in crap games in Las Vegas are manufactured to a tolerance of 0.0002 inches, less than 1/17 the thickness of a human hair.
A car uses 1.6 ounces of gas idling for one minute. Half an ounce is used to start the average automobile.
A car that shifts manually gets 2 miles more per gallon of gas than a car with automatic shift.
A car operates at maximum economy, gas-wise, at speeds between 25 and 35 miles per hour.
Owing to a faulty cornerstone, the church of St. John in Barmouth, Wales, crashed in ruins a minute after it was finished. It was rebuilt, and the new edifice has endured to the present day.
Nobody knows where the body of Voltaire is. It was stolen in the nineteenth century and has never been recovered. The theft was discovered in 1864, when the tomb was opened and found empty.
The height and width of modern American battleships was originally determined by insuring they had to be able to go beneath the Brooklyn Bridge and through the Panama Canal.
Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a spacesuit damages them.
On June 10, 1958, a tornado was crashing through El Dorado, Kansas. The storm pulled a woman out of her house and carried her sixty feet away. She landed, relatively unharmed, next to a phonograph record titled "Stormy Weather."
If you need to dial the telephone and your dial is disabled, you can tap the button in the cradle. If, for example, you need to dial 911, you can tap the button 9 times, then pause, then tap once, then again.
The Nike "swoosh" logo was designed by University of Oregon student Carolyn Davidson in 1964, four years after business undergraduate Phil Knight and track coach Bill Bowerman founded the company they originally called Blue Ribbon Sports. Ms. Davidson was paid $35 dollars for her design.
Kate "God Bless America" Smith sold more U.S. war bonds than anyone else during World War II. She sold $600 million worth.
The first person selected as the Time Magazine Man of the Year - Charles Lindbergh in 1927.
Studebaker was the only major car company to stop manufacturing cars while making a profit on them.
According to suicide statistics, Monday is the favored day for self-destruction.
St. Stephen is the patron saint of bricklayers.
The Dome could contain two Wembley Stadiums or the Eiffel Tower on its side. You could even fit the Great Pyramid of Giza inside it.
The translucent roof is 50 meters high at the center and strong enough to support a jumbo jet.
The Dome is supported by 43 miles of high-strength cable which holds up 100,000 square meters of fabric.
Woodbury Soap was the first product to show a nude woman in its advertisements. The year - 1936. The photo, by Edward Steichen, showed a rear full-length view of a woman sunbathing - wearing only sandals.
1960 was the last model year for Edsel and Desoto.
A lead pencil is good for about 50,000 words.
The earliest recorded case of a man giving up smoking was on April 5, 1679, when Johan Katsu, Sheriff of Turku, Finland, wrote in his diary "I quit smoking tobacco." He died one month later.
The newspaper serving Frostbite Falls, Minnesota, the home of Rocky and Bullwinkle, is the Picayune Intellegence.
The official time ball for the U.S. is on top of the U.S. naval Observatory in Washington, DC As early as 1845, the U.S. Navy dropped a time ball every noon from atop a building on a hill overlooking Washington, DC. People from many miles could set their watches at noon. Ships anchored in the Potomac River could check their chronometers.
The Times Square "time ball" is named the "Star of Hope". It was specially made for this year and contains 504 glass crystals cut into triangles, 600 light bulbs, 96 big lights, and 92 mirrors.
The U.S. Library of Congress has compiled a 232-source bibliography on the subject of when, properly speaking, centuries roll over. Almost all of the sources agree that the twentieth century will not end until December 31, 2000.
It is believed that Shakespeare was 46 around the time that the King James Version of the Bible was written. In Psalms 46, the 46th word from the first word is shake and the 46th word from the last word is spear.
According to Scientific American magazine: if you live in the northern hemisphere, odds are that every time you fill your lungs with air at least one molecule of that air once passed thru Socrates lungs.
The name of the dog on the Cracker Jack box is Bingo.
Electric Christmas tree lights were first used in 1895. The idea for using electric Christmas lights came from an American, Ralph E. Morris. The new lights proved safer than the traditional candles.
Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer was conceived by author Robert May in 1939. Two other names he thought of before deciding on Rudolph were Reginald and Rollo.
- Zawadi: Gifts
- Kikombe Cha Umoja: The Unity Cup
- Kinara: The Candleholder
- Mishumaa Saba: The Seven Candles
- Vibunzi: Ear of Corn
- Mkeka: Place Mat
- Mazao: Fruits, Nuts, and Vegetables
Kwanzaa has seven basic symbols, which represent values and concepts reflective of African culture.
Before settling on the name of Tiny Tim for his character in "A Christmas Carol", three other alliterative names were considered by Charles Dickens. They were: Little Larry, Puny Pete and Small Sam.
In 1997 a Menorah was built in Latrun, near the main Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway. It was more than 60-feet tall, weighed 17 metric tons, and took up an area of 600-square meters. A rabbi was lifted in a crane each night of the holiday to light the candles on the menorah, which was made of metal pipes.
A gator in the road is a huge piece of tire from a blow out on a truck, called a gator because the fly up when a truck runs one over and take out your air lines causing you to lose air and forcing your spring brakes to come on which causes a rather abrupt stop.
In the Catholic church, St. Gabriel, an archangel, is the patron saint of telecommunications.
The first transatlantic wedding took place on December 2, 1933.The groom was in Michigan. The bride, in Sweden. The ceremony took seven minutes and cost $47.50.
Sometimes, early telephone operators would get to know their customers so well, the customers would ask for a reminder call when it was time to remove a cake from the oven, leave the phone off the hook near their sleeping child when they left the house, hoping the operator would hear any cries of distress, request a wake up call before taking a long nap.
The use of telephone answering machines became popular in 1974.
Northern Telecom, Alcatel N.V. and NEC all had roots in Western Electric.
Western Electric mass-produced color telephones for the first time in 1954.
The first "Hello" badge used to identify guests and hosts at conventions, parties, etc. was traced back to September 1880. It was on that date that the first Telephone Operators Convention was held at Niagara Falls and the "Hello" badge was created for that event.
Jane Barbie was the woman who did the voice recordings for the Bell System.
BAND-AID Brand Adhesive Bandages first appeared on the market in 1921, however, the little red string that is used to open the package did not get added until 1940.
The original IBM punch-card is the same size as a Civil War era dollar bill.
7.5 million toothpicks can be created from a cord of wood.
Studebaker still exists, but is now called Worthington.
Ivory Soap was originally named P&G White Soap. In 1879, Harley Proctor found the new name during a reading in church of the 45th Psalm of the Bible: "All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of ivory palaces, whereby they have made thee glad."
The official soft drink of the state of Nebraska - Kool-Aid.
The Holland and Lincoln Tunnels under the Hudson River connecting New Jersey and New York are an engineering feat. The air circulators in the tunnels circulate fresh air completely every ninety seconds.
The roads on the island of Guam are made with coral. Guam has no sand. The sand on the beaches is actually ground coral. When concrete is mixed, the coral sand is used instead of importing regular sand from thousands of miles away.
Police dogs are trained to react to commands in a foreign language; commonly German but more recently Hungarian.
The foundations of the great European cathedrals go down as far as forty or fifty feet. In some instances, they form a mass of stone as great as that of the visible building above the ground.
The first revolving restaurant, The Top of the Needle, was located at the 500-foot level of the 605-foot-high steel-and-glass tower at the Century 21 Exposition in Seattle, Washington. It contained 260 seats and revolved 360 degrees in an hour. The state-of-the-art restaurant was dedicated on May 22, 1961.
The first manager of the Seattle Space Needle, Hoge Sullivan, was acrophobic - fearful of heights. The 605 foot tall Space Needle is fastened to its foundation with 72 bolts, each 30 feet long. The Space Needle sways approximately 1 inch for every 10 mph of wind. It was built to withstand a wind velocity of 200 miles-per-hour.
In 1931, an industrialist named Robert Ilg built a half-size replica of the Leaning Tower of Pisa outside Chicago and lived in it for several years. The tower is still there.
If you lace your shoes from the inside to the outside the fit will be snugger around your big toe.
A standard 747 Jumbo Jet has 420 seats.
The number 4 is the only number that has the same number of letters in its name as its meaning.
Revolvers cannot be silenced because of all the noisy gasses which escape the cylinder gap at the rear of the barrel.
A man named John Bellavia has entered over 5000 contests, and has never won a thing.
In 1982, the last member of a group of people who believed the Earth was hollow died.
The roar that we hear when we place a seashell next to our ear is not the ocean, but rather the sound of blood surging through the veins in the ear. Any cup-shaped object placed over the ear produces the same effect.
There are 52 cards in a standard deck and there are 52 weeks in a year. There are 4 suits in a deck of cards and 4 seasons in a year. If you add the values of all the cards in a deck (jack=11 queen=12, etc.) you get a total of 365 the same as the number of days in a year.
The Douglas DC-3 passenger airplane was the first to make a profit carrying people.
The book of Esther in the Bible is the only book which does not mention the name of God.
Carnegie Mellon University offers bag piping as a major. The instructor James McIntosh, who is a member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, and who began bag piping at the age 11.
How valuable is the penny you found laying on the ground? If it takes just a second to pick it up, a person could make $36.00 per hour just picking up pennies.
The names of the two stone lions in front of the New York Public Library are Patience and Fortitude. They were named by then-mayor Fiorello LaGuardia.
When wearing a Kimono, Japanese women wear socks called "Tabi". The big toe of the sock is separated from the rest of the toes, like a thumb from a mitten.
Cleveland spelled backwards is "DNA level C".
The father of the Pink Flamingo (the plastic lawn ornament) is Don Featherstone of Massachusetts. Featherstone graduated from art school and went to work as a designer for Union Products, a Leominster, Mass., company that manufactures flat plastic lawn ornaments. He designed the pink flamingo in 1957 as a follow up project to his plastic duck. Today, Featherstone is president and part owner of the company that sells an average of 250,000 to 500,000 plastic pink flamingos a year."I did it to keep from starving." - Don Featherstone (flamingo creator)
acetwothreefourfivesixseveneightninetenjackqueenking Excluding the joker, if you add up the letters in all the names of the cards in the deck (Ace, two, three, four,...,king). the total number of letters is 52, the same as the number of cards in the deck.
George Washington is the only man whose birthday is a legal holiday in every state of the U.S as of a few years ago.
The largest crossword puzzle ever published had 2631 clues across and 2922 clues down. It took up 16 sq. feet of space.
The hardest crossword puzzles according to experts appear in two British papers: "The London Times" and "Observer." Only few readers can complete these and it takes them 2 to 3 hours. The record time for completing a "Times" puzzle was an incredible 3 minutes and 45 seconds by a British diplomat named Roy Dean in 1970.
Some 30,000,000 Americans slave over crosswords in newspaper, journals, and paperback books.
The first crossword puzzle appeared in 1913 in an American paper called "World." It was devised by its editor Arthur Wynne. It was of 32 words and diamond shaped. There were no black boxes in the puzzle.
The average ice berg weighs 20,000,000 tons.
Success magazine recently declared bankruptcy.
Zip code 12345 is assigned to General Electric in Schenectady, NY.
If you had enough water to fill one million goldfish bowls, you could fill an entire stadium.
The external tank on the space shuttle is not painted.
203 million dollars is spent on barbed wire each year in the U.S.
Eskimos never gamble.
The San Francisco Cable cars are the only mobile National Monuments.
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 glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.
The Chinese national anthem is called "the march of volunteers."
The "Calabash" pipe, most often associated with Sherlock Holmes, was not used by him until William Gillette (an American) portrayed Holmes on stage. Gillette needed a pipe he could keep in his mouth while he spoke his lines.
The Hoover Dam was built to last 2,000 years. The concrete in it will not even be fully cured for another 500 years.
The St. Louis Gateway Arch had a projected death toll while it was being built. No one died.
If you were born in Los Alamos, New Mexico during the Manhattan project (where they made the atomic bomb), your birth place is listed as a post office box in Albuquerque.
The numbers on opposite sides of a die always add up to 7.
On average, there are 333 squares of toilet paper on a roll.
Public typists work at typewriters charging about 14 cents per page. On a good day, a public typist earns about $3.50.
People generally say there are 365 days in a year. By a year, I mean this is the time period it takes the earth to travel around the sun: 365 days. Actually, however, it takes the Earth 365.25 days to make this trip. In other words, for every year we gain one-fourth of a day and every for years we gain an extra day. If nothing was done about this, our calendar would move backwards one full day every four years in relation to our seasons.
The diameter of the wire in a standard paper clip is 1 millimeter - or about 0.04 inch.
The surface area of an average-sized brick is 79 cm squared.
In Britain’s House of Commons, the government and opposition sides of the House are separated by two red lines. The distance between the lines is two swords’ lengths, a reminder of just how seriously the Brits used to take their politics.
In the name of art, Chris Burden arranged to be shot by a friend while another person photographed the event. He sold the series of pictures to an art dealer. He made $1750 on the deal, but his hospital bill was $84,000.
It took Leo Tolstoy six years to write "War & Peace".
Calvin and Hobbes: Hobbes originally had pads on his hands and feet but Bill Waterson (the creator) found them too distracting and removed them.
Parker Brothers prints about 50 billion dollars worth of Monopoly money in one year.
On the new hundred dollar bill the time on the clock tower of Independence Hall is 4:10.
The Boeing 767 aircraft is a collection of 3.1 million parts from 800 different suppliers around the world: fuselage parts from Japan, center wing section from Southern California, flaps from Italy.
Approximately sixty circus performers have been shot from cannons. At last report, thirty-one of these have been killed.
The largest Great White Shark ever caught measured 37 feet and weighed 24,000 pounds. It was found in a herring weir in New Brunswick in 1930. The harmless Whale Shark, holds the title of largest fish, with the record being a 59-footer captured in Thailand in 1919.
The oldest domestic cat was a male named Grandpa that lived to be 34 years, 2 months, and 4 hours.
The Angel of the North, Gateshead, UK, with a wingspan of 177 ft/54 m, is the largest sculpture of an angel in the world.
The surface speed record on the moon is 10.56 miles per hour. It was set in a lunar rover.
The oldest public park in the U.S. is Boston Common.
The Sahara desert has the highest sand dunes.
The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world.
The CN Tower, in Toronto, is the tallest free standing structure in the world.
Tom Wolfe was paid $5 million for the film rights to his novel, Bonfire of the Vanities, the most ever earned by an author.
When stuntman and parachutist Dar Robinson leaped from the ledge of the 1,170 foot high CN Tower in Toronto, he was paid $150,000, the most ever for a single stunt.
Most insects used in a film: 22 million bees in The Swarm.
At 840,000 square miles, Greenland is the largest island in the world. It is 3 times the size of Texas. By comparison Iceland is only 39,800 square miles.
The most powerful earthquake to strike the United States occurred in 1811 in New Madrid, Missouri. The quake shook more than one million square miles, and was felt as far as 1,000 miles away.
Diane Sheer holds the record for licking the most stamps in a five minute period. She slobbered on 225 of the little things.
In 1935, Jesse Owens set six track and field world records in less than one hour.
The greatest snowfall ever in a single storm was 189 inches at the Mount Shasta Ski Bowl in February, 1959.
The largest stained-glass window in the world is at Kennedy International Airport in New York City. It can be seen on the American Airlines terminal building and measures 300 feet long by 23 feet high.
The largest pyramid in the world is not in Egypt but in Cholulu de Rivadahia, Mexico. It is 177 feet tall and covers 25 acres. It was built sometime between 6 and 12 AD.
The largest movie theater in the world, Radio City Music Hall in New York City, opened in December, 1932. It originally had 5,945 seats.
New York City has the most skyscrapers of any city in the world with 140. Chicago is a distant second at 68. The term "skyscraper" technically describes all habitable buildings with a height of more than 500 ft (152m).
Lang Martin balanced seven golf balls vertically without adhesive at Charlotte, NC on 9 February 1980.
The company, Kodak, is the largest user of silver.
The first skyscraper in the United States was built in Chicago.
The greatest measured water discharge was an estimated 740,000-1,000,000 gallons by the Giant Geyser, in Yellowstone National Park. However, this estimate made in the 1950s, was only a rough calculation.
The total area of Denver International Airport is 53 square miles, twice the size of Manhattan Island, New York, and larger than the city boundary of Boston, Miami or San Francisco.
Jackie Bibby holds the record for sitting in a bathtub with the most live rattlesnakes. He sat in a tub with 35 of them.
The largest incense stick ever made was almost fifteen-feet long and six-inches thick.
The Corinthian columns in the National Building Museum in Washington, DC, are among the tallest in the world at 75 feet high, 8 feet in diameter, 25 feet in circumference, each built of 70,000 bricks.
Christianity has over a billion followers. Islam is next in representation with half this number.
The A & P was the first chain-store business to be established. It began in 1842.
As of September 1998, the highest recorded mileage for a car was 1,615,000 miles for a 1966 Volvo P-1800.
The escalator in the CNN Center in Atlanta, Georgia is the longest freestanding escalator in the world, rising 160 feet or approximately eight stories in height.
The mother of all mothers? The largest number of children born to one woman is recorded at 69. From 1725-1765 a Russian peasant woman gave birth to 16 sets of twins, 7 sets of triplets and 4 sets of quadruplets.
The longest bout of sneezing recorded was by Donna Griffith. It began in January 1981 and continued until September 1983. It lasted for 978 days, and 4,687,514 gesundheits.
The deepest canyon in the USA is Kings Canyon, East Fresno, CA, which runs through Sierra and Sequoia National Forests. The deepest point, that measures 8,200 ft, is in the Sierra National Park Forest section of the canyon.
Behram, an Indian thug, holds the record for most murders by a single individual. He strangled 931 people between 1790-1840 with a piece of yellow and white cloth, called a ruhmal. The most by a woman is 610, by Countess Erzsebet Bathory of Hungary.
The Bingham Canyon copper mine in Utah is the biggest manmade hole on Earth. It is more than a half-mile deep and 2.5 miles across. An astronaut can see this hole from the space shuttle with his bare eyes.
The longest street in the world is Yonge Street, which starts in Toronto, on the north shore of Lake Ontario, and winds its way north then west to end at the Ontario-Manitoba-Minnesota border.
Bernard Clemmens of London managed to sustain a fart for an officially recorded time of 2 minutes 42 seconds.
The largest employer in the world is the Indian railway system, employing over a million people.
The smallest volcano in the world is Taal.
The Stratosphere Hotel and Casino is 1,149 feet tall, making it the tallest building west of the Mississippi River.
At the turn of the last millennium, Dublin Ireland had the largest slave market in the world, run by the Vikings.
Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from Public Libraries.
On March 16, 1970, a bidder at Sotheby & Company in London paid $20,000 for one glass paperweight.
Did you know that the beam of light shining from the top of the Luxor hotel is the most powerful in the world. The equivalent of 40 billion candle power, the beam is visible to airplanes from a distance of 250 miles.
The duration record for a face-slapping contest was set in Kiev, USSR, in 1931 when a draw was declared between Bezbordny and Goniusch after 30 hours.
The Bible is the number one shoplifted book in America.
The shopping mall in Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada has the largest water clock in North America.
Never mind what you saw in the film "The Poseidon Adventure." The biggest wave on record, reported by a reliable source, was estimated to have attained a height of 112 feet. It was measured, at some distance, I hope, by a tanker traveling between Manila and San Diego in 1933. The wind was blowing at 70 mph at the time.
The biggest hog ever recorded was a creature named Big Boy who weighed in at 1, 904 pounds.
France had the first supermarket in the world. It was started by relatives of the people who started the Texas Big Bear supermarket chain.
The largest school in the world is a k-12 school in the Philippines, with an enrollment of about 25,000.
The biggest bell is the "Tsar Kolokol" cast in the Kremlin in 1733. It weighs 216 tons, but alas, is cracked and has never been rung. The bell was being stored in a Moscow shed which caught fire. To "save" it, caretakers decided to throw water on the bell. This did not succeed, as the water hit the superheated metal and a giant piece immediately cracked off, destroying the bell forever.
In 1968, Steve McPeak traveled from Chicago to Los Angeles on a unicycle. The trip took him six weeks, but he planned for the long bike journey. He brought an extra tire and a spare heinie.
Toronto, Ontario was home to the biggest swimming pool in the world in 1925. It held 2000 swimmers, and was 300ft x 75ft. It is still in operation.
At 12 years old, an African named Ernest Loftus made his first entry in his diary and continued everyday for 91 years.
On July 31, 1994, Simon Sang Sung of Singapore turned a single piece of dough into 8,192 noodles in 59.29 seconds!
The largest web-footed bird is the albatross.
Howard Kinsey and Mrs. R. Roark, during a game of tennis, batted the ball back and forth 2001 consecutive times.
The highest wind velocity ever recorded in the United States was 231 miles per hour, on Mount Washington, New Hampshire, in 1934.
The longest Monopoly game in a bathtub was 99 hours long.
The Tokyo World Lanes Bowling Center is the largest bowling establishment in the world. It has 252 lanes and one very tired pinsetter.
The word "puppy" comes from the French poupee, meaning "doll."
Samuel Clemens, the creator of the adventuresome Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, took "Mark Twain" as his pen name. This was not because he WAS a riverboat captain, but because he once wanted very badly to be one.
"Doubleheader," which refers to two baseball games played back to back, was originally a railroad term that referred to two engines in a switching yard hooked up back to back on a single train. The train could also be called a "two-header."
Would you believe that "on the nose" comes from radio? When broadcasting began, directors had to communicate with people on the air without making noise, so they developed hand signals. Time is always a key element in live broadcasts. The person at the mike needed to know if the program was on schedule. If things were "just right," the director signaled with a finger to the side of his or her nose.
"Acre" literally means the amount of land plowable in one day.
Ukulele means "little jumping flea" in Hawaiian.
The abbreviation e.g. stands for "Exempli gratia", or "For example."
A phrenologist feel and interpret skull features.
A notaphile collects bank notes.
Xenophobia is the fear of strangers or foreigners.
The name of the point at which condensation begin is called the dew point.
A male witch is called a warlock.
Women who wink at men are known as "nictitating" women.
A deltiologist collects postcards.
Scatologists are experts who study poop (a.k.a. crap, dung, dookie, dumps, feces, excrement, etc...).
The explative, "Holy Toledo," refers to Toledo, Spain, which became an outstanding Christian cultural center in 1085.
The Ouija board is named for the French and German words for yes - oui and ja.
The study of nose picking is called "rhinotillexomania."
The word constipation (con sta PAY shun) comes from a Latin word that means "to crowd together."
A greenish facial tint has long been associated with illness, as suggested by the phrase "green around the gills." As a person who is very envious is considered by many folks to be unwell, these people have been described as "green (or sick) with envy."
Ekistics is the science of human settlements, including city or community planning and design.
A "clue" originally meant a ball of thread. This is why one is said to "unravel" the clues of a mystery.
The American Heritage Dictionary was once banned from the Eldon, Missouri library because it contained 39 "objectionable" words.
Hoi polloi is a Greek phrase meaning "the many". Hoi polloi are the masses.
Graffito is the little-used singular of the much used plural word graffiti.
"Yakka" means "hard work" in Australian slang.
"Toboggan" is derived from the Algonquin language and loosely meant "instrument with which to drag a cord."
"Romanji" is a system of writing Japanese using the Latin alphabet.
"Turnip" used to be a U.S. slang expression for a pocket watch.
"To whinge" is Australian slang for "to complain constantly."
"Mrs." is the abbreviation of Mistress, which originally was a title and form of address for a married woman. It was always capitalized.
"Lobster shift" is a colloquial term for the night shift of a newspaper staff.
"Kemo Sabe" reportedly means "soggy shrub" in Navajo.
"I am" is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.
"Hagiology" is the branch of literature dealing with the lives and legends of saints.
"E" is the most frequently used letter in the English alphabet, "Q" is the least.
"Almost" is the longest word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order.
Hairy people are called "hirsute."
A horologist measures time.
German is considered the sister language of English.
The food of the Greek gods was called Ambrosia.
A phonophobe fears noise.
A community of ants is called a colony.
A gynephobic man fears women.
A nihilist believes in nothing.
The boundary between two air masses is called a "front."
Narcissism is the psychiatric term for self-love.
A chiropodist treats hands and feet.
Hydroxydesoxycorticosterone and hydroxydeoxycorticosterones are the largest anagrams.
Kyoto, which was the Japanese capital before Tokyo, means "old capital".
A "quidnunc" is a person who is eager to know the latest news and gossip, otherwise, a busybody.
Mountains are formed by a process called orogeny.
Dr. Seuss coined the word "nerd" in his 1950 book "If I Ran The Zoo"
The phrase "jet lag" was once called "boat lag", back before airplanes existed.