For those of you who think you know everything. Here are a few useless facts that you might enjoy.
1. A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.
2. A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.
3. A crocodile cannot stick out its tongue.
4. A dragonfly has a lifespan of 24 hours.
5. A goldfish has amemory span of three seconds. (I have been told that this one is not a true fact that it has been proved wrong.)
6. A "jiffy" is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
7. A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.
8. A snail can sleep for three years.
9. Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer.
10. All 50 states are listed across the top the the Lincoln Memorial on the back of the $5 bill. (I have counted this one and I don't count all 50 states, so it may incorrect as well.)
11. Almonds are a member of the peach family.
12. An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
13. Babies are born without kneecaps. They don't appear until the child reaches 2 to 6 years of age.
14. Butterflies taste with their feet.
15. Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds. Dogs only have about 10.
16. "Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt".
17. February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.
18. In the last 4,000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.
19. If the population of China walked past you, in single file, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction.
20. If you are an average American, in your whole life, you will spend an average of 6 months waiting at red lights.
21. It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
22. Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.
23. Maine is the only state whose name is just one syllable.
24. On a Canadian two dollar bill, the flag flying over the Parliament building is an American flag.
25. Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.
26. Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.
27. Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.
28. "Stewardesses" is the longest word typed with only the left hand; "lollipop" with your right.
29. The average person's left hand does 56% of the typing.
30. The Bible doesn't say there were three wisemen; it only says there were three gifts.
31. The cruise liner, QE2, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.
32. The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.
33. The sentence: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" uses every letter of the alaphabet.
34. The winter of 1932 was so cold that Niagara Falls froze completely solid.
35. The words 'racecar', 'kayak', 'level', and 'radar' are the same whether they are read left to right or right to left (palindromes).
36. There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.
37. There are more chickens than people in the world.
38. There are only four words in the English language which end in "dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.
39. There are two words in the English language that have all five vowels in order: "abstemious" and "facetious".
40. There's no Betty Rubble in the Flinstones Chewables Vitamins.
41. Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.
42. TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard.
43. Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance.
44. Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
45. Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks; otherwise it will digest itself.
46. The average human eats 8 spiders in their lifetime at night.
47. A can of Spam is opened every 4 seconds.
48. You are more likely to be killed by a champagne cork than by a poisonous spider.
49. There are more people alive today than have ever died.
50. Until the 1950s, Tibetans disposed of their dead by taking the body up a hill, hacking it into little pieces, and feeding the remains to the birds.
51. If you try to suppress a sneeze, you can rupture a blood vessel in your head or neck and die.
52. The infamous Black Plague in Europe was due in part to the fact that people believed those with cats were witches. So all the cats were rounded up, caged and burned, leaving the rats (with there disease causing parasites) to run free and multiply. Those that harboured cats were many who survived.
53. Napoleon was terrified of cats.
54. There is a phenomenon called the last laugh. A bullet shot through a victim's heart sometimes precipitates a final laugh before death.
55. 83% of people hit by lightning are men.
56. Elephants have been known to remain standing after they die.
57. Grenade-throwing is an official sporting event in the People's Republic of China.
58. Beelzebub, another name for the devil, is Hebrew for Lord of the Flies, and this is where the book's title comes from.
59. Apart from its vulnerability to fire, human hair is almost impossible to destroy. It decays at a very slow rate, so slow that is almost non-disintegrative. It can't be destroyed by cold, change of climate, water, etc., and it is resistant to many kinds of acids and corrosive materials.
60. A fog belt 50 ft. deep over an area of 104 square miles contains no more moisture than single bucket of water.
61. If you add together all the numbers on a roulette wheel (1 to 36) the total is the mystical number 666.
62. Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously.
63. Foods increase in nutritional value as they decompose.
64. A sport practiced in ancient China consisted of placing two angry male quails in a large glass bowl and watching as the creatures clawed each other to death.
65. A group of ravens is called a murder.
66. Alfred Hitchcock had no belly button, it was eliminated during surgery.
67. A scorpion could survive for three weeks if it was embedded in a block of ice.
68. Albert Einstein's last words will never be known. He spoke them in German, and the attending nurse did not speak German.
69. On average people fear spiders more than they do death.
70. In the 1800's photographs of dead children were often published in collections and called "Sleeping Beauties".
71. Adolph Hitler was Time's Man of the Year for 1938.
72. The Ebola virus kills 4 out of every 5 humans it infects.
73. During the Renaissance, fashionable aristocratic Italian women shaved their hair several inches back from their natural hairlines.
74. 10 percent of all human beings ever born are alive at this very moment.
75. Men have more blood than women. Men have 1.5 gallons versus .875 gallons for women.
76. A rat can go without water longer than a camel can.
77. Astronauts cannot belch. In space there is no gravity to separate liquid from gas in their stomachs.
78. Alfred Hitchcock used chocolate syrup to simulate blood going down the drain in the famous shower scene in "Psycho".
79. If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days, you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.
80. You lose a pound every time you donate blood? You do so because a pint is a pound.
81. By some unknown means, an iguana posesses the ability to end its own life.
82. Certain frogs can be frozen solid then thawed, and continue living.
83. Bats fly with their hands, not their arms, and can achieve speeds of up to 60 mph.
84. The fastest speed a falling raindrop can hit you is 18mph.
85. If you take one pound of cobwebs and spread them out in one straight line, it will go around the earth 2 times.
86. When opossums are playing 'possum, they are not playing. They actually pass out from sheer terror.
87. American poet Emily Dickinson used to talk to visitors from an adjoining room, because she was so self-conscious about her appearance.
88. The reason for male shirts having the buttons on the right side, and female shirts the left side is because in Victorian times, the men were right handed and buttoned their own shirts, but women had a maid to dress them and the buttons were on the correct side for the maids to do up.
89. Dirty snow melts faster than white snow because it's darker and absorbs more heat.
90. You can have a permanent record of snowflakes if you freeze a piece of glass and some hairspray before the next snowfall. (Both may be stored in the freezer until you need them.) When you're ready to collect some snowflakes, spray your chilled glass with the chilled hairspray and go outside and let some snowflakes settle on the glass. When you have enough flakes bring the glass indoors and allow it to thaw at room temperature for about 15 min. Now you have a permanent record of your snowflakes!
91. The star fish is one of the few animal who can turn its stomach inside - out.
92. Modern embalming is designed to retard tissue decomposition long enough for a viewing but has been known to keep a body intact for decades.
93. If you place a tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death.
94. The electric chair was invented by a dentist.
95. Bats always turn left when exiting a cave.
96. The largest pumpkin weighed 377 pounds.
97. Cat urine glows under a black light.
98. Crocodiles kill 2,000 people each year.
99. It would take 27,000 spiders, each spinning a single web, to produce a pound of web.
100. A hippopotamus can open its mouth wide enough to accommodate a 4-foot-tall child.
101. A shark can detect one part of blood in 100 million parts of water.
102. Bela Lugosi was buried, as he requested, in his famous Dracula cape.
103. 2,500 lefties die each year using products designed for righties.
104. Black metal band Mayhem was forever committed to infamy when lead singer, “Death” committed suicide in 1991. Immediately upon discovering the body of their comrade, the band's initial conclusion was to snap a photo of the body for later use as cover art to one of their later releases, the Dawn of the Black Hearts LP. Hellhammer (another Mayhem bandmate) reputedly gathered Death's skull fragments, and fashioned a necklace from them, while Euronymous (also of the band Mayhem) cooked a stew of the remaining brain matter.
105. The termites of the world outweigh humans by 10 to 1.
106. If you have your head chopped off (all the rage this season) you can expect seven seconds of consciousness before all the blood drains from your brain. You would have time to view the world from a bodiless perspective.
107. A person will die from total lack of sleep sooner than from starvation. Death will occur about 10 days without sleep, while starvation takes a few weeks.
108. The distance between your elbow and wrist is the same length as your foot.
109. Tigers are the only striped Wild Cat. Not only is their fur striped, so is their skin.
110. When an adult lion roars, it can be heard up to 5 miles away.
111. Electric Eels can produce enough energy in one shock to light up a whole house.
112. If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.
113. If you passed gas consistently for 6 years and 9 months, enough gas is produced to create the energy of an atomic bomb.
114. The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the body to sqyirt blood 30 feet.
115. A pig's orgasm lasts 30 minutes.
116. A cockroach will live nine days without its head before it starves to death. (Creepy.)
117. Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories a hour.
118. The male praying mantis cannot copulate while its head is attached to its body. The female initiates sex by ripping the male's head off.
119. The flea can jump 350 times its body length. It's like a human jumping the length of a football field.
120. The catfish has over 27,000 taste buds.
121. Some lions mate over 50 times a day.
122. Butterflies taste with their feet.
123. The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue.
124. Right-handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people.
125. Elephants are the only animals that cannot jump.
126. A cat's urine glows under a black light.
127. An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
128. Starfish have no brains.
129. Polar bears are left-handed.
130. Humans and dolphins are the only species that have sex for pleasure.
Now you know everything and you've smiled at least once.
The next time you are washing your hands and complain the water temperature isn't just how you like it, think about how things use to be.
Here are some facts about the 1500's:
1) Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May and still smelled pretty good by June. However, they were starting to smell so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.
2) Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children - last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually loose someone in it. Hence the sayint, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water."
3) Houses had thatched roofs - thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the dogs, cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Hence the saying "It's raining cats and dogs."
4) There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could really mess up your nice clean bed. Hence. a bed with big posts had a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into existence.
5) The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying "dirt poor."
6) The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on the floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they kept adding more thresh until when you opened the door it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entranceway. Hence the saying "thresh hold."
7) In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Everyday they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes the stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme, "Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old."
8) Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man "could bring home the bacon." They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and "chew the fat."
9) Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content cause some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisioning and death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.
10) Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top or "upper crust."
11) Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock them out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custon of holding a "wake."
12) England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a "bone-house" and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they thought they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the "graveyard shift") to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be "saved by the bell" or was considered a "dead ringer."
And that's the truth.... Now whoever said that History was boring!!!!!!
