Did You Know

5-9-2011

* Barbie's measurements if she were life size: 39-23-33.

* The dollar symbol ($) is a U combined with an S (U.S.)

* Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.

* The Statue of Liberty's tablet is two feet thick.

* There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.

* The slogan on New Hampshire license plates is 'Live Free or Die'. These license plates are manufactured by prisoners in the state prison in Concord.

* The straw was probably invented by Egyptian brewers to taste in-process beer without removing the fermenting ingredients which floated on the top of the container.

* David Prowse, was the guy in the Darth Vader suit in Star Wars. He spoke all of Vader's lines, and didn't know that he was going to be dubbed over by James Earl Jones until he saw the screening of the movie.

* The United States government keeps its supply of silver at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, NY

* There are only thirteen blimps in the world.

* Nine of the thirteen blimps are in the United States.

* The existing biggest blimp is the Fuji Film blimp.

* Naugahyde, plastic "leather" was created in Naugatuck, Connecticut.

* The Swiss flag is square.

* The word 'pound' is abbreviated 'lb.' after the constellation 'libra' because it means 'pound' in Latin, and also 'scales'. The abbreviation for the British Pound Sterling comes from the same source: it is an 'L' for Libra/Lb. with a stroke through it to indicate abbreviation.

* Sames goes for the Italian lira which uses the same abbreviation ('lira' coming from 'libra'). So British currency (before it went metric) was always quoted as "pounds/shillings/pence", abbreviated "L/s/d" (libra/solidus/denarius).

* The three largest land-owners in England are the Queen, the Church of England and Trinity College, Cambridge.

* The monastic hours are matins, lauds, prime, tierce, sext, nones, vespers and compline.

* If you come from Manchester, you are a Mancunian.

* No animal, once frozen solid (i.e., water solidifies and turns to ice) survives when thawed, because the ice crystals formed inside cells would break open the cell membranes. However there are certain frogs that can survive the experience of being frozen. These frogs make special proteins which prevent the formation of ice (or at least keep the crystals from becoming very large), so that they actually never freeze even though their body temperature is below zero Celsius. The water in them remains liquid: a phenomenon known as 'supercooling.' If you disturb one of these frogs (just touching them even), the water in them quickly freezes solid and they die.

* The white part of your fingernail is called the lunula.

* Madrid is the only European capital city not situated on a river.

* The name for fungal remains found in coal is sclerotinite.

* The Boston University Bridge (on Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts) is the only place in the world where a boat can sail under a train driving under a car driving under an airplane.

* Emus cannot walk backwards.

* 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.

* The shopping mall in Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada has the largest water clock in North America.

* Both writer Edgar Allen Poe and LSD advocate Timothy Leary were kicked out of West Point.

* The word posh, which denotes luxurious rooms or accomodations, originated when ticket agents in England marked the tickets of travelers going by ship to the Orient. Since there was no air conditioning in those days, it was always better to have a cabin on the shady side of the ship as it passed through the Mediterranean and Suez area. Since the sun is in the south, those with money paid extra to get cabin's on the left, or port, traveling to the Asia, and on the right, or starboard, when returning to Europe. Hence their tickets were marked with the initials for Port Outbound Starboard Homebound, or POSH.

* The top layer of a wedding cake, known as the groom's cake, traditionally is a fruit cake. That way it will save until the first anniversery.

* The German Kaiser Wilhelm II had a withered arm and often hid the fact by posing with his hand resting on a sword, or by holding gloves.

* The forward pass was created by the football team at Saint Louis University.

* In every show that Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt (The Fantasticks) wrote, there is at least one song about rain.

* A kind of tortoise in the Galapagos Islands has an upturned shell at its neck so it can reach its head up to eat cactus branches.

* The only city whose name can be spelled completely with vowels is Aiea, Hawaii, located approximately twelve miles west of Honolulu.

* Parthenogenesis is the term used to describe the process by which certain animals are able to reproduce themselves in successive female generations without intervention of a male of the species. At least one species of lizard is known to do so.

* Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about ten.

* The word "Checkmate" in chess comes from the Persian phrase "Shah Mat", which means "the king is dead".

* The ship, the Queen Elizabeth 2, should always be written as QE2. QEII is the actual queen.

* "Quisling" is the only word in the English language to start with "quis."

* All of the cobble stones that used to line the streets in New York were originally weighting stones put in the hulls of Belgian ships to keep an even keel.

* Nepal is the only country without a rectangular flag (it looks like two pennants glued on on top of the other)

* Libya has the only flag which is all one color with no writing or decoration on it

* The only borough of New York City that isn't an island (or part of an island) is the Bronx.

* The 1957 Milwaukee Braves were the first baseball team to win the World Series after being relocated.

* The tune for the "A-B-C" song is the same as "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star."

* When a coffee seed is planted, it takes five years to yield it's first consumable fruit.

* The common goldfish is the only animal that can see both infra-red and ultra-violet light.

* Linn's Stamp News is the world's largest weekly newspaper for stamp collectors.

* Tennessee is bordered by more states than any other. The eight states are Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia.

* Des Moines has the highest per capita Jello consumption in the U.S

* The Western-most point in the contiguous United States is Cape Alava, Washington.

* There are only three animals with blue tongues, the Black Bear, the Chow Chow dog and the blue-tongued lizard.

* The first fossilized specimen of Austalopithecus afarenisis was named Lucy after the palentologists' favorite song, Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, by the Beatles.

* Pinocchio is Italian for "pine head."

* The geographical center of North America is near Rugby, North Dakota.

* The infinity sign is called a lemniscate.

* Hacky-sack was invented in Turkey.

* If you stretch a standard Slinky out flat it measures 87 feet long.

* There are six five words in the English language with the letter combination "uu." Muumuu, vacuum, continuum, duumvirate and duumvir, residuum.

* The "Calabash" pipe, most often associated with Sherlock Holmes, was not used by him until William Gillette (an American) portrayed Holmes onstage. Gillette needed a pipe he could keep in his mouth while he spoke his lines.

* Most Americans' car horns beep in the key of F.

* Dirty Harry's badge number is 2211.

* The pupil of an octopus' eye is rectangular.

* The shortest French word with all five vowels is "oiseau" meaning bird.

* Camel's milk does not curdle.

* "Mr. Mojo Risin" is an anagram for Jim Morrison.

* The ball on top of a flagpole is called the truck.

* A person from the country of Nauru is called a Nauruan; this is the only palindromic nationality.

* The word "modem" is a contraction of the words "modulate, demodulate."

* Oliver Cromwell was hanged and decapitated two years after he had died.

* In the last 4000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.

* Iowa has more independent telephone companies than any other state.

* Many hamsters only blink one eye at a time.

* Hamsters love to eat crickets.

* The only "real" food that U.S. Astronauts are allowed to take into space is pecan nuts.

* The word "queueing" is the only English word with five consecutive vowels.

* The first Eagle Scout west of the Mississippi is buried in San Marcos, Texas.

* In every episode of Seinfeld there is a Superman somewhere.

* Roberta Flack wrote "Killing Me Softly" about singer Don McLean.

* The Greek version of the Old Testament is called the Septuagint.

* Spencer Eldon was the name of the naked baby on the cover of Nirvana's album

* All three major 1996 Presidential candidates, Clinton, Dole and Perot, are left-handed.

* The Madagascan Hissing Cockroach is one of the few insects who give birth to live young, rather than laying eggs.

* The book of Esther in the Bible is the only book which does not mention the name of God.

* Sheriff came from Shire Reeve. During early years of feudal rule in England, each shire had a reeve who was the law for that shire. When the term was brought to the United States it was shortned to Sheriff.

* An animal epidemic is called an epizootic.

* Dracula is the most filmed story of all time, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is second and Oliver Twist is third.

* The silhouette on the NBA logo is Jerry West.

* The silhouette on the Major League Baseball logo is Harmon Killebrew.

* The name Jeep came from the abbreviation used in the army for the "General Purpose" vehicle, G.P.

* The little lump of flesh just forward of your ear canal, right next to your temple, is called a tragus.

* Soweto in South Africa ws derived from SOuth WEst TOwnship.

* Murphy's Oil Soap is the chemical most commonly used to clean elephants.

* The Andy Griffth Show was the first spin-off in TV history. It was a spin-off of the Danny Thomas Show.

* Goat's eyes have rectangular pupils.

* Walt Disney's autograph bears no resemblance to the famous Disney logo.

* Other than humans, black lemurs are the only primates that may have blue eyes.

* The United States has never lost a war in which mules were used.

* The two longest one-syllable words in the English language are "screeched" and "strengths."

* Great Britain was the first county to issue postage stamps. Hence, the postage stamps of Britain are the only stamps in the world not to bear the name of the country of origin. However, every stamp carries a relief image or a silhouette of the monarch's head instead.

* Images for picture stamps in the United States are commissioned by the United States Postal Service Department of Philatelic Fulfillment.

* Artist Constantino Brumidi fell from the done of the U.S. Capitol while painting a mural around the rim. He died four months later.

* Since 1896, the beginning of the modern Olympics, only Greece and Australia have participated in every Games.

* There were no squirrels on Nantucket until 1989.

* Cathy Rigby is the only woman to pose nude for Sports Illustrated. (August 1972)

* Blueberry Jelly Bellies were created especially for Ronald Reagan.

* Will Clark of the Texas Rangers is a direct descendant of William Clark of Lewis and Clark.

* When ocean tides are at their highest, they are called "spring tides." When they are at their lowest, they are call "neep tides."

* February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.

* The last NASCAR driver to serve jail time for running moonshine was Buddy Arrington.

* Many Japanese golfers carry "hole-in-one" insurance, because it is traditional in Japan to share one's good luck by sending gifts to all your friends when you get an "ace." The price for what the Japanese term an "albatross" can often reach $10,000.



* The difference between male and female blue crabs is the design located on their apron (belly.) The male blue crab has the Washington Monument while the female apron is shaped like the U.S. Capitol.

* It takes a lobster approxiamately seven years to grow to be one pound.

* The ridges on the sides of coins are called reeding.

* The lot numbers for the cyanide-tainted Tylenol capsules scare back in 1982 were MC2880 and 1910MD.

* Montpelier, Vermont is the only U.S. state capital without a McDonalds.

* The Roman emperor Caligula made his horse a senator.

* At latitude 60 degrees south you can sail all the way around the world.

* A Chinese checkerboard has 121 holes.

* The hyoid bone, in your throat, is the only bone in the body not attached to another bone.

* Mice, whales, elephants, giraffes and man all have seven neck vertebra.

* Sunbeams that shine down through the clouds are called crespucular rays.

* Very small clouds that look like they have been broken off of bigger clouds are called scuds.

* On a dewy morning, if you look at your shadow in the grass, the dew drops shine light back to your eye creating a halo called a heilgenschein (German for halo.)

* The correct response to the Irish greeting, "Top of the morning to you," is "and the rest of the day to yourself."

* Giraffes have no vocal cords.

* Joe DiMaggio had more home runs than strikeouts during his career.

* All porcupines float in water.

* Hang On Sloopy is the official rock song of Ohio.

* A-1 Steak Sauce contains both orange peel and raisins.

* Many northern parishes (counties) of Louisiana did not agree with the Confederate movement. To show their disapproval, they changed their names. That's why there is a Union Parish, Jefferson Parish, etc.

* The Pentagon, in Arlington, Virginia, has twice as many bathrooms as is necessary. When it was built in the 1940s, the state of Virginia still had segregation laws requiring separate toilet facilities for blacks and whites.

* Residents of the island of Lesbos are Lesbosians, rather than Lesbians. (Of course, lesbians are called lesbians because Sappho was from Lesbos.)

* The Chinese ideogram for 'trouble' symbolizes 'two women living under one roof'.

* German has a wood for the peace offerings brought to your mate when you've committed some conceived slight. This is "drachenfutter" or dragon's food.

* In Chinese, the words for crisis and opportunity are the same.

* No word in the English language rhymes with month.

* Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them use to burn their houses down - hence the expression "to get fired."

* The poisonous copperhead smells likefresh cut cucumbers.

* In Disney's "Fantasia", the Sorcerer's name is "Yensid" (Disney backwards.)

* The smallest mushroom's name is "Hop-low."

* Anne Boleyn had six fingernails on one hand.

* Mustard gas was invented in the McKinley Building on the American University campus. Additionally, preliminary work on the Manhattan Project was done in that building. The government used the McKinley Building because of its unusual archticture. If there would be any type of large explosion inside the building, the building would implode onto itself, containing any lethal gas or nuclear material. The building now houses the Physics Department.

* When angered, the ears of Tazmanian devils turn a pinkish-red.

* The cruise liner, Queen Elizabeth II, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.

* The naval rank of "Admiral" is derived from the Arabic phrase "amir al bahr", which means "lord of the sea".

* The Les Nessman character on the TV series WKRP in Cincinnati wore a band-aid in every episode. Either on himself, his glasses, or his clothing.

* A coat hanger is 44 inches long if straightened

* 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.

* Mt. Vernon Washington grows more tulips than the entire country of Holland.

* Jamie Farr (who played Klinger on M*A*S*H) was the only member of the cast who actually served as a soldier in the Korean war.

* The southern most city in the United States is Na'alehu, Hawaii.

* Alaska was the only part of the United States that was invaded by the Japanese during WWII. The territory was the island of Adak in the Aleutian Chain.

* Woodward Ave in Detroit, Michigan carries the designation M-1, named so because it was the first paved road anywhere.

* Michigan was the first state to plow it's roads and the first to adopt a yellow dividing line.

* Canada is an Indian word meaning "Big Village".

* The longest chapter in the Bible is Psalm 119.

* The shortest verse in the Bible is "Jesus wept."

* Way back when they were using marble columns, the people selling the columns would carve out the centers and fill it with wax.So the people buying them started asking "Is it without wax?" Or in other words "Are you sincere?"

* Zaire is the world leader in cobalt mining, producing two-thirds of the world's cobalt supply.

* No modern language has a true concept of "I am." It is always used linked with are in reference of another verb.

* Little known Cathedral Caverns near Grant, Alabama has the world's largest cave opening, the largest stalagmite (Goliath), and the largest stalagmite forest in the World.

* The only person ever to decline a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction was Sinclair Lewis for his book Arrowsmith.

* Maine is the only state that borders on only one state.

* There are almost twice as many people in Rhode Island than there are in Alaska.

* Kudzu is not indigenous to the South, but in that climate it can grow up to six inches a day.

* Did you know that there are coffee flavored PEZ?

* The word 'byte' is a contraction of 'by eight.'

* The word 'pixel' is a contraction of either 'picture cell' or 'picture element.'

* Ralph Lauren's original name was Ralph Lifshitz.

* Bananas do not grow on trees, but on rhizomes.

* Astronauts in the Space Shuttle are weightless not because there is no gravity in space, but because they are in free fall around the Earth.

* St. Augustine was the first major proponent of the "missionary" position.

* Lizzie Borden was acquitted.

* Alexander Hamilton was shot by Aaron Burr in the groin.

* Isaac Asimov is the only author to have a book in every Dewey-decimal category.

* Roger Ebert is the only film critic to have ever won the Pulitzer prize.

* A scholar who studies the Marquis de Sade is called a Sadian, not a Sadist (of course).

* Tribeca in Manhattan stands for TRIangle BElow CAnal street. Soho stands for SOuth of HOuston street.

* Columbia University is the second largest landowner in New York City, after the Catholic Church.

* Theworld's largest wine cask is in Heidleberg, Germany.

* Lorne Greene had one of his nipples bitten off by an aligator while he hosted "Lorne Greene's Wild Kingdom."

* Cat's urine glows under a blacklight.

* Seven Olympic gold medal winners eventually went on to win the Heavyweight Championship of the World

* Kerimski Church in Finland is world's biggest church made of wood.The St. Louis Gateway Arch had a

* projected death toll while it was being built. No one died. The average ear of corn has eight-hundred kernels arranged in sixteen rows.

* A cat has four rows of whiskers.

* Vincent Van Gogh comitted suicide while painting Wheat Field with Crows.

* An iguana can stay under water for 28 minutes.

* Jelly Belly jelly beans were the first jelly beans in outer space when they went up with astronauts in the June 21, 1983 voyage of the space shuttle Challenger (the same voyage as the first American woman in space, Sally Ride).

* Baseballer Connie Mack's real name was Cornelius McGilicuddy.

* If you were standing in the northernmost point in the contiguous (48) states, you'd be standing in Minnesota.

* Only thirty percent of the famous Maryland blue crabs are actually from Maryland, the rest are from North Carolina and Virginia.

* Back in the mid to late 80's, an IBM compatible computer wasn't considered a hundred percent compatible unless it could run Microsoft's Flight Simulator.

* Not all of West Virginia voted to go with the North. When the State of West Virginia was formed from Virginia in 1863 the three western counties in Virginia voted to go with West Virginia, but West Virginia didn't take them because they were poor. Instead they took three counties that voted to stay with Virginia, because they were richer and they had the B&O railroad. Those counties since split and are 5 Jefferson, Hampshire, Berkley, Mineral, and Morgan.

* The first Ford cars had Dodge engines.

* The Dodge brothers Horace and John were Jewish, that's why the first Dodge emblem had a star of David in it.

* Studebaker was the only major car company to stop making cars while making a profit from them.

* Studebaker still exists, but is now called Worthington.

* Chrysler built B-29's that bombed Japan, Mitsubishi built Zeros that tried to shoot them down. Both companies now build cars in a joint plant call Diamond Star.

* On the new hundred dollar bill the time on the clock tower of Independence Hall is 4:10.

* The top three cork-producing countries are Spain, Portugal and

* Algeria. (Cork comes from trees.)

* In the Wizard of Oz Dorothy's last name is Gail. It is shown on the mail box.

* If you bring a raccoon's head to the Henniker, New Hampshire town hall, you are entitled to receive $.10 from the town New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and the late M*A*S*H star McLean Stevenson were both once assistant football coaches at Northwestern University.

* The letter W is the only letter in the alphabet that doesn't have 1 syllable... it has three.

* All swans and all sturgeons in England are property of the Queen. Messing with them is a serious offense.

* Michael Di Lorenzo, who plays Eddie Torres on New York Undercover is one of the lead dancers in Michael Jackson's "Beat It" video.

* Only two people signed the Decleration of Independence on July 4th, John Hancock and Charles Thomson. Most of the rest signed on Augest 2, but the last signature wasn't added until 5 year later.

* October 4, 1957 is a historic date to be remembered, it is the day both "Leave it to Beaver" and the Russian satellite Sputnik 1 were launched.

* Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.

* It takes about a half a gallon of water to cook macaroni, and about a gallon to clean the pot.

* The antifungal, nystatin, which is sometime used for treating thrush, is named after New York State Institute for Health (Acronym)

* QANTAS, the name of the Australian national airline, is a (former) acronym, for Queensland And Northern

* Territories Air Service.

* The world's largest four-faced clock sits atop the Allen-Bradley plant in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

* Almonds are members of the peach family.

* The first video ever played on MTV Europe was "Money For Nothing" by Dire Straits.

* If you add up the numbers 1-100 consecutively (1+2+3+4+5 etc) the total is 5050

* The "Grinch" singer and voice of Tony the Tiger is a charming man named Thurl Ravenscroft.

* The famous split-fingered Vulcan salute is actually intended to represent the first letter ("shin," pronounced "sheen") of the word "shalom." As a small boy, Leonard Nimoy observed his rabbi using it in a benediction and never forgot it; eventually he was able to add it to "Star Trek" lore.

* The symbol on the "pound" key (#) is called an octothorpe.

* Ham radio operators got the term "ham" coined from the expression "ham-fisted operators", a term used to describe early radio users who sent Morse code (i.e. pounded their fists).

* While the Chinese invented gunpowder, they were not the first to develop firearms. Sam Colt invented the

* "revolving pistol." Therefore, all revolvers are correctly called pistols.

* A 12 gauge "rifled slug" does not spin, even though there are grooves on it's bearing surface. A slug actually travels like a dart.

* Revolvers cannot be silenced, due all the noisy gasses which escape the cylinder gap at the rear of the barrel.

* A bullet fired from the 7.62x51mm NATO cartridge (also called the .308 Winchester) is still supersonic at 1000 yards.

* The term "the whole 9 yards" came from WWII fighter pilots in the South Pacific. When arming their airplanes on the ground, the .50 caliber machine gun ammo belts measured exactly 27 feet, before being loaded into the fuselage. If the pilots fired all their ammo at a target, it got "the whole 9 yards."

* The home team must provide the referee with 24 footballs for each National Football League game.

* The maximum weight for a golf ball is 1.62 oz.

* A flea expert is a pullicologist.

* A bear has 42 teeth.

* M&M's stands for the last names of Forrest Mars, Sr., then candymaker, and his associate Bruce Murrie.

* The only domestic animal not mentioned in the Bible is the cat.

* The dot over the letter 'i' is called a tittle.

* Table tennis balls have been known to travel off the paddle at speeds up to 105.6 miles per hour.

* In Irian Jaya exists a tribe of tall, white people who use parrots as a warning sign against intruders.

* In the Dutch province of Twente people live on average half a year shorter than in the rest of the Netherlands.

* Spiral staircases in medieval castles are running clockwise. This is because all knights used to be

* right-handed. When the intruding army would climb the stairs they would not be able to use their right hand which was holding the sword because of the difficulties in climbing the stairs. Left-handed knights would have had no troubles except left-handed people could never become knights because it was assumed that they were descendants of the devil.

* Duddley DoRight's Horses name was "Horse."

* If the Spaceship Earth ride at EPCOT was a golf ball, to be the proportional size to hit it, you'd be two miles tall.

* On Sesame Street, Bert's goldfish were named Lyle and Talbot, presumably after the actor Lyle Talbot.

* The word "hangnail" comes from Middle English: ang- (painful) + nail. Nothing to do with hanging.

* Louis IV of France had a stomach the size of two regular stomachs.

* Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain smoked forty cigars a day for the last years of his life.

* Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain was born on a day in 1835 when Haley's Comet came into veiw. When

* He died in 1910, Haley's Comet came into view again.

* Pepsi originally contained pepsin, thus the name.

* Babies are born without knee caps. They don't appear until the child reaches 2-6 years of age.

* The highest point in Pennsylvania is lower than the lowest point in Colorado.

* If you were born in Los Alamos, New Mexico during the Manhattan project (where they made the atomic bomb), your birthplace was listed as a post office box in Albequerque.

* Robert Kennedy was killed in the Ambassador Hotel, the same hotel that housed Marilyn Monroe's first modelling agency.

* Ronald Regan sent out the army phoyographer who first discovered Marilyn Monroe.

* Carbonated water, with nothing else in it,can dissolve limestone, talc, and many other low-Moh's hardness minerals. Coincidentally, carbonated water is the main ingredient in soda pop.

* Ethernet is a registered trademark of Xerox, Unix is a registered trademark of AT&T.

* The newest dog breed is the Bull Boxer, first bred in the United states in 1990-91.

* The first hard drive available for the Apple ][ had a capacity of 5 megabytes.

* South of Tucson, Arizona, all road signs are in the Metric System.

* In many cases, the amount of storage space on a recordable CD is measured in minutes. 74 minutes is about 650 megabytes, 63 minutes is 550 megabytes.

* The real name of Astro (the dog fromThe Jetsons) is "Tralfaz" -- his real owner appeared one day to claim him but wound up giving him back to the Jetsons.

* Charlie Brown's father was a barber.

* The original story from Tales of 1001 Arabian Nights begins, "Aladdin was a little Chinese boy."

* Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intraveinously

* When a film is in production, the last shot of the day is the "martini shot", the next to last one is the "Abby Singer".

* Of the six men who made up the Three Stooges, three of them were real brothers (Moe, Curly and Shemp.) Ohio is listed as the 17th state in the U.S., but technically it is number 47. Until August 7, 1953, Congress forgot to vote on a resolution to admit Ohio to the Union.

* It is a misdemeanor to kill or threaten a butterfly -- so says City Ordinance No. 352 in Pacific Grove, California.

* 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.

* Other than fruit, honey is the only natural food that is made without destroying any kind of life! What about milk, you say? A cow has to eat grass to produce milk and grass is living!

* When Saigon fell the signal for all Americans to evacuate was Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" being played on the radio.

* The Fort George Point in Belize City was formed by the silt runoff of Hurricane Hattie.

* If you lace your shoes from the inside to the outside the fit will be snugger around your big toe.

* Only 1/3 of the people that can twitch their ears can twitch only one at a time.

* The expression "What in tarnation" comes from the original meaning: "What in eternal damnation"

* Gary Burgough who played Walter Radar O'Reily on M*A*S*H has a deformed left thumb. If you watch closely you will see that he never shows his left hand.

* Only two states' names begin with double consonants: Florida and Rhode Island.

* The volume of the Earth's moon is the same as the volume of the Pacific Ocean

* Ingrown toenails are hereditary.

* The Cincinnati Reds baseball team name was officially changed to the Redlegs during the anti-communist movement.

* Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance.

* "Xmas" does not begin with the Roman letter X. It begins with the Greek letter "chi," which was used in medieval manuscripts as an abbreviation for the word "Christ" (xus = christus, etc.)

* The ampersand (&) is actually a stylised version of the Latin word "et," meaning and."

* The largest city in the United States with a one syllable name is Flint, Michigan.

* The most common name in the world is Mohammed.

* Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than all of the Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined.

* On the cartoon show 'The Jetsons', Jane is 33 years old and her daughter Judy is 15.

* In Mel Brooks' 'Silent Movie,' mime Marcel Marceau is the only person who has a speaking role.

* Only humans and horses have hymens.

* No NFL team which plays it's home games in a domed stadium has ever won a Superbowl. (Texas Stadium, home of the Cowboys, is not a dome, there is a large hole in the roof.)

* The word "set" has more definitions than any other word in the English language.

* The first toilet ever seen on television was on "Leave It To Beaver". Wally and Beaver had a baby alligator which they kept in the toilet.

* In the great fire of London in 1666 half of London was burnt down but only 6 people were injured

* The most eastern part of the western world is located in Ilomantsi, Finland.

* "Hara kiri" is an impolite way of saying the Japanese word "seppuku" which means, literally, "belly splitting."

* The term the "Boogey Man will get you" comes from the Boogey people,who still inhabit an area of Indonesia. These people still act as pirates today and attack ships that pass. Thus the term spread "if you don't watch out the Boogey man will get you."

* The Saturn V moon rocket consumed 15 tons of fuel per second.

* The state with the longest coastline in the US is Michigan.

* Race car is a palindrome.

* We will have four consecutive full moons making two blue moons in 1999 (January 2 and 31, March 2 and 31.) The only other time it happened this century was in 1915 (January 1 and 31, March 1 and 31.)

* The Basset Horn, a kind of alto clarinet, was named after its inventor -- a man named Horn. "Basset" is from "Basetto," or "little bass" in Italian.

* There are more bald eagles in the province of British Columbia then there are in the whole United States.

* Lincoln Logs were invented by Frank Lloyd Wright's son.

* The "second unit" films movie shots that do not require the presence of actors.

* Pulp Fiction cost $8 million to make - $5 million going to actor's salaries.

* The world's second largest pipe organ is located at the Organ Grinder on 82nd avenue in Portland, Oregon.

* Games Slayter, a Purdue graduate, invented fiberglass.

* One of the reasons marijuana is illegal today because cotton growers in the 30s lobbied against hemp farmers -- they saw it as competition. It is not chemically addictive as is nicotine, alcohol, or caffeine.

* Olympic Badminton rules say that the bird has to have exactly fourteen feathers

* The music group Simply Red is named because of its love for the football team, Manchester United, who have a red home strip.

* In case you ever find yourself piloting a dogsled, shout "Jee!" to make the dogs turn left and "Ha!" to go right.

* Richard Nixon left instructions for "California, Here I Come" to be the last piece of music played at his funeral ("softly and slowly") were he to die in office.

* The earliest document in Latin in a woman's handwriting (it is from the first century A.D.) is an invitation to a birthday party.

* Spot, Data's cat on Star Trek: The Next Generation, was played by six different cats.

* Captain Jean-Luc Picard's fish was named Livingston.

* Hydrogen gas is the least dense substance in the world, at 0.08988 g/cc

* Hydrogen solid is the most dense substance in the world, at 70.6 g/cc

* The longest U.S. highway is route 6 starting in Cape Cod, Massachusetts going through 14 states, and ending in Bishop, California...

* The movie "Paris, Texas" was banned in the city of Paris, Texas, shorty after its box office release.

* The 'y' in signs reading "ye olde.." is properly pronounced with a 'th' sound, not 'y'. The "th" sound does not exist in Latin, so ancient Roman occupied (present day) England use the rune "thorn" to represent "th" sounds. With the advent of the printing press the character from the Roman alphabet which closest resembled thorn was the lower case "y".

* Pickled herrings were invented in 1375.

* The number of the trash compactor in Star Wars (20th Century Fox, 1977) is 3263827.

* Each year there is one ton of cement poured for each man, woman, and child in the world.

* At McDonalds in New Zealand, they serve apricot pies instead of cherry ones.

* The word "samba" means "to rub navels together."

* The only two days of the year in which there are no professional sports games (MLB, NBA, NHL, or NFL) are the day before and the day after the Major League Baseball All-Star Game.

* The international telphone dialing code for Antarctica is 672.

* A byte, in computer terms, means 8 bits. A nibble is half that: 4 bits. (Two nibbles make a byte!)

* A full seven percent of the entire Irish barley crop goes to the production of Guinness beer.

* Bank robber John Dillinger played professional baseball.

* If you toss a penny 10000 times, it will not be heads 5000 times, but more like 4950. The heads picture weighs more, so it ends up on the bottom.

* The airport in La Paz, Bolivia is the world's highest airport.

* The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.

* The housefly hums in the middle octave, key of F.

* Chicago is closer to Moscow than to Rio de Janeiro.

* Original copy of the Declaration of Independence is lost. The copy in Washington D.C. is what is referred to as a holograph. That is a term for a handmade copy of a document and is not the same as a laser produced hologram.

* Singpore is the only country with one train station.

* The little bags of netting for gas lanterns (called 'mantles') are radioactive--so much so that they will set of an alarm at a nuclear reactor.

* When measuring fonts 'point size' refers to the height of capital letters (one point being one 72nd of an inch). 'Pitch' is a horizontal measurement of the number of letters which can be printed in an inch.

* The only capital letter in the Roman alphabet with exactly one endpoint is P.

* In the movie "the Right Stuff" there is a scene where a government recruiter for the Mercury astronaut program (played by Jeff Goldblum) is in a bar at Muroc Dry Lake, California. His partner suggests Chuck Yeager as a good astronaut candidate. Jeff proceeds to badmouth Yeager claiming they need someone who went to college. During the conversation the real Chuck Yeager is playing a bartender who is standing behind the recruiters eavesdropping. General Yeager is listed low in the movie credits as 'Fred.'

* "Speak of the Devil" is short for "Speak of the Devil and he shall come". It was believed that if you spoke about the Devil it would attract his attention. That's why when your talking about someone and they show up people say "Speak of the Devil"

* Maine is the only state whose name is just one syllable.

* There are only four words in the English language which end in "-dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.

* Nauru is the only country in the world with no official capital. (Its government offices are all in Yaren

* District, but there's no official capital.)

* South Africa is the only country with three official capitals: Pretoria, Cape Town, and Bloemfontein.

* Lucy Ricardo's maiden name was McGillicudy.

* Mickey Mouse is known as "Topolino" in Italy.

* The red giant star Betelgeuse has a diameter larger than that of the Earth's orbit around the sun.

* If your eyes are six feet above the surface of the ocean, the horizon wil be about three statute miles away.

* The one-hundred eleventh element is known as "unnilenilenium"

* The longest muscle name is the "levator labii superioris alaeque nasi" and Elvis popularized it with his lip motions.

* The longest time someone has typed on a typewriter continuously is 264 hrs., set by Violet Gibson Burns.

* The Dutch town of Leeuwarden can be spelled 225 different ways.

* There was once a town named "6" in West Virginia.

* Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older

* A cat has 32 muscles in each ear

* An ostrich's eye is bigger than it's brain.

* The oldest word in the English language is "town"

* The sea wasp is half an inch long at best and more poisonous than any other jellyfish known to man.

* Tigars have striped skin, not just striped fur.

* Gerald Ford pardoned Robert E. Lee posthumously of all crimes of treason.

* The band Duran Duran got their name from an astronaut in the 1968 Jane Fonda movie Barbarella.

* There are 22 stars surrounding the mountain on the Paramount Pictures logo.

* After human death, post-mortem rigidity starts in the head and travels to the feet, and leaves the same way it came -- head to toe.

* Police dogs are trained to react to commands in a foreign language; commonly German but more recently

* Hungarian or some other Slavic tongue.

* A Laforte fracture is a fracture of all facial bones. It would allow one to pull on another face and remove it like a mask if not held on by skin.

* Debra Winger was the voice of E.T.

* Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt were all cousins through one connection or another. (FDR and Eleanor were about five times removed.)

* The Earth-Moon size ratio is the largest in the our solar system, excepting Pluto-Charon.

* Each unit on the Richter Scale is equivalent to a power factor of about 32. So a 6 is 32 times more powerful than a 5! Though it goes to 10, 9 is estimated to be the point of total tetonic destruction (2 is the smallest that can be felt unaided.)

* Most snakes have either only one lung, or in some cases, two, with one much reduced in size. This apparently serves to make room for other organs in the highly-elongated bodies of snakes.

* A twelve-foot anaconda can catch, kill, and eat a six-foot caiman, a close relative of crocodles and alligators. While these snakes are not usually considered to be the *longest* snake in the world, they are the heaviest, exceeding the reticulated python in girth.

* Cinderella's slippers were originally made out of fur. The story was changed in the 1600s by a translator.

* It was the left shoe that Aschenputtel (Cinderella) lost at the stairway, when the prince tried to follow her.

* Cinderella is known as Tuhkimo in Finland.

* If you come from Birmingham, you are a Brummie.

* The names of all the continents end with the same letter that they start with, e.g. Asia, Europe.

* There is a word in the English language with only one vowel, which occurs six times: Indivisibility.

* The dome on Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home, conceals a billiards room. In Jefferson's day, billiards were illegal in Virginia.

* According to Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, it is possible to go slower than light and faster than light, but it is impossible to go at the speed of light.

* In most advertisments, including newspapers, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10 because then the arms frame the brand of the watch.

* Cleo and Caesar were the early stage names of Cher and Sonny Bono.

* Ben and Jerry's send the waste from making ice cream to local pig farmers to use as feed. Pigs love the stuff, except for one flavor: Mint Oreo.

* The "heat" of peppers is rated on the Scoville scale.

* 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 5pm. All traffic stopped as people switched sides. This time and day were chosen to prevent accidents where drivers would have gotten up in the morning and been too sleepy to realize *this* was the day of the changeover.

* In left hand drive countries, such as the UK, Ireland, Japan, and Australia, drivers sit on the right hand side of the car. Except for Sweden, where drivers sat on the left, as in North-America.

* Japan is the third most densely populated country in the world. First is the Netherlands, followed by Belgium.

* Alfred Hitchcock didn't have a belly button. It was eliminated when he was sewn up after surgery.

* The "D" in D-day means "Day". The French term for "D-Day" is "J-jour".

* Female orcas live twice as long as male orcas. The larger numbers of female orcas in a pod are because of the female's longer lifespan, not because the males have collected a harem.

* Most spiders belong to the orb weaver spider family, Family Aranidae. This is pronounced "A Rainy Day."

* The Mongol emperor Genghis Khan's original name was Temujin.

* Genghis Khan started out life as a goatherd.

* The type specimen for the human species is the skull of Edward Drinker Cope, an American paleontologist of the late 1800's. A type specimen is used in paleontology as the best example of that species.

* The first word spoken by an ape in the movie Planet of the Apes was "Smile".

* The two lines that connect your top lip to the bottom of your nose are known as the philtrum.

* Facetious and abstemious contain all the vowels in the correct order.

* The name Wendy was made up for the book "Peter Pan"

* Hummingbirds are the only animals able to fly backwards

* All the dirt from the foundation to build the World Trade Center in NYC was dumped into the Hudson River to form the community now known as Battery City Park.

* 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 dirt road that General Washington and his soldiers took to fight off General Clinton during the Battle of Monmouth was called the Burlington Path.

* The only social fraternity founded during the Civil War was Theta Xi fraternity, at Rensselear Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York in 1864.

* The Hudson River along the island of Manhattan flows in either direction depending upon the tide.

* Several buildings in Manhattan have their own zip code! The World Trade Center has several.

* Lucifer is latin for "Light Bringer". It is a translation of the Hebrew name for Satan, Halael. Satan means

* "adversary", devil means "liar".

* A cat's jaws cannot move sideways.

* Geller and Huchra have made three-dimensional maps of the distrubution of galaxies. In each layer of the map some galaxies are grouped together in such a way that they resemble a human being.

* Avocado is derived from the Spanish word 'aguacate' which is derived from 'ahuacatl' meaning testicle.

* The company providing the liability insurance for the Republican National Convention in San Diego is the same firm that insured the maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic.

* Telly Savalas and Louis Armstrong died on their birthdays.

* Donald Duck's middle name is Fauntleroy.

* Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer.

* The smallest port in Canada is Port Williams, Nova Scotia.

* The Canadian province of Newfoundland has its own time zone, which is half an hour behind Atlantic standard time.

* Cats in Halifax, Nova Scotia, have a very high probability of having six toes.

* The second longest word in the English language is "antidisestablishmenterianism".

* Rats like boiled sweets better than they like cheese. Big Ben was slowed five minutes one day when a passing group of starlings decided to take a rest on the minute hand of the clock.

* The Velvet Underground was named after a book on the S&M culture.

* The Velvet Underground's first manager was Andy Warhol, who also produced their first album and designed the cover artwork. The cover artwork for the album (called "The Velvet Underground and Nico") featured a bright yellow banana that could be peeled off to reveal a bright pink banana underneath, with the label "Peel Slowly and See." "Peel Slowly and See" is the title of the Velvet Underground comprehensive boxed set, which is the only currently-available Velvet Underground recording to feature a peelable banana. The peelable banana caused substantial delays in the production of the VU's first album and contributed to Lou Reed's firing Andy Warhol as the group's manager.

* The "wild" horses of western North America are actually feral, not wild.

* Native speakers of Japanese learn Spanish much more easily than they learn English. Native speakers of English learn Spanish much more easily than they learn Japanese.

* New Zealand kiwis lay the largest eggs with respect to their body size of any bird.

* Elephants have been found swimming miles from shore in the Indian Ocean.

* When two words are combined to form a single word (e.g., motor + hotel = motel, breakfast + lunch = brunch) the new word is called a "portmanteau."

* Sting got his name because of a yellow-and-black striped shirt he wore until it literally fell apart.

* Every photograph of an American atomic bomb detonation was taken by Harold Edgerton.

* The topknot that quails have is called a hmuh.

* Dr. Samuel A. Mudd was the physician who set the leg of Lincoln's assassin John Wilkes Booth ... and whose shame created the expression for ignominy, "His name is Mudd."

* The longest recorded flight of a chicken is thirteen seconds.

* The muzzle of a lion is like a fingerprint -- no two lions have the same pattern of whiskers.

* There is a type of parrot in New Zealand that likes to eat the rubber strips that line car windows.

* New Zealand is also the only country that contains every type of climate in the world.

* Cockroaches' favorite food is the glue on envelopes and on the back of postage stamps

* In 1969, the last Corvair was painted gold.

* Ralph Kramden made 62 dollars a week.

* The only way to stop the pain of the flathead fish's sting is by rubbing the same fish's slime on the wound it gave you.

* Betsy Ross was born with a fully formed set of teeth.

* Betsy Ross's other contribution to the American Revolution, beside sewing the first American flag, was running a munitions factory in her basement.

* Devo's original name was going to be De-evolution. They shortened it to Devo.

* Steely Dan got their name from a sexual device depicted in the book 'The Naked Lunch'.

* Bob Dylan's real name is Robert Zimmerman.

* Andy Warhol created the Rolling Stone's emblem depicting the big tongue. It first appeared on the cover of the 'Sticky Fingers' album.

* Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr were the two left-handed Beatles.

* Chris Ford scored the first ever NBA three-point shot.

* Of all the East Coast States, New Hampshire has the shortest coastline, about fourteen miles.

* New Hampshire is also the only State name the has four consecutive consonants in it (in the same word).

* Ontario is the only Canadian Province that borders the Great Lakes.

* Alaska has the longest border with Canada of all the fifty states.

* Montana has the longest border with Canada of the lower forty-eight States.

* Montana also borders the most Canadian Provinces of all the fifty states. It borders three of them.

* Arkansas is the only US State that begins with "a" but does not end with "a". All the other States that begin with "a", Arizona, Alabama and Alaska, also end with "a".

* Only three angels are mentioned by name in the Bible: Gabriel, Michael, and Lucifer.

* Dr. Seuss pronounced "Seuss" such that it rhymed with "rejoice."

* Wilma Flinestone's maiden name was Wilma Slaghoopal, and Betty Rubble's Maiden name was Betty Jean Mcbricker.

* Lenny Kravitz's mother played the part of "Helen" on "The Jeffersons."

* The term "devil's advocate" comes from the Roman Catholic church. When deciding if someone should

* become a saint, a devil's advocate is always appointed to give an alternative view.

* Compact discs read from the inside to the outside edge, the reverse of how a record works.

* The term "Mayday" used for signaling for help (after SOS), it comes from the French term "M'aidez" which is pronounced "MayDay" and means, "Help Me"

* Grapes explode when you put them in the microwave.

* The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 did start in a barn belonging to Patrick and Katherine O'Leary. The O'Leary's house was one of the few that survived the fire. The O'Leary's house had to be guarded by soldiers for weeks afterwards, however, because many enraged residents wanted to burn it down.

* The biggest bell is the "Tsar Kolokol" cast in the Kremlin in 1733. It weighs 216 tons, but alas, it is cracked and has never been rung. The bell was being stored in a Moscow shed which caught fire. To "save" it the caretakers decided to throw water on the bell. This did not succeed in -- the water hit the superheated metal and a giant piece immediately cracked off, destroying the bell forever.

* A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.

* The smallest mountain range in the world is outside of Marysville, California and is named the Sutter Buttes.

* The Ramses brand condom is named after the great phaoroh Ramses II who fathered over 160 children.

* Many species of bird copulate in the air. In general, a couple will fly to a very high altitude, and then drop. During their descent, the birds mate. Sometimes the couple gets too involved and SPLAT!

* If NASA sent birds into space they would soon die because they need gravity to swallow.

* There is a seven letter word in the English language that contains ten words without rearranging any of its letters, "therein": the, there, he, in, rein, her, here, here, ere, therein, herein.

* You would have to count to one thousand to use the letter "A" in the English language to spell a whole number.

* The only member of the band ZZ Top without a beard has the last name Beard.

* Ants cannot chew their food, they move their jaws sidewards, like a scissor, to extract the juices from the food.

* The letters H I O X in the latin alphabet is the only ones that look the same if you turn them upside down or see them from behind.

* The little hole in the sink that lets the water drain out, instead of flowing over the side, is called a "porcelator".

* When the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers play football at home to a sellout crowd, the stadium becomes the state's third largest city.

* In Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart never said "Play it again, Sam."

* Sherlock Holmes never said "Elementary, my dear Watson."

* Captain Kirk never said "Beam me up, Scotty," but he did say, "Beam me up, Mr. Scott".

* Duelling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.

* More people are killed annually by donkeys than die in air crashes.

* The metal part of a lamp that surrounds the bulb and supports the shade is called a harp.

* The metal part at the end of a pencil is twenty percent sulfur.

* John Larroquette of "Night Court" and "The John Larroquette Show" was the narrator of "The Texas

* Chainsaw Massacre."

* Vietnamese currency consists only of paper money; no coins.

* Vincent Van Gogh sold exactly one painting while he was alive, Red Vineyard at Arles.

* A pig's orgasm lasts for 30 minutes.

* A pig's penis is shaped like a corkscrew.

* It is physically impossible for pigs to look up into the sky.

* Skin is thickest is at the back -- 1/6 of an inch.

* The most sensitive finger is the forefinger.

* Alaska is the most northern, western and eastern state; it also has the highest latitude,the most eastern longitude and the most western longitude.

* Some of Beethoven's symphonies were performed in Kentucky before they were performed in Paris, France.

* The word denim comes from 'de Nimes', or from Nimes, a place in France.

* Dublin comes from the Irish Dubh Linn which means Blackpool

* Scottish is the language called Gaelic, whereas Irish is actually called Gaeilge.

* The characters Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street were named after Bert the cop and Ernie the taxi driver in Frank Capra's "Its A Wonderful Life"

* A penguin only has sex twice a year.

* Mr. Spock's (of Star Trek) blood type was T-Negative

* The Dutch town of Abcoude is the only reasonably sized town/city in the world whose name begins with ABC.

* A dragonfly has a lifespan of 24 hours.

* A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.

* New Jersey has a spoon museum featuring over 5,400 spoons from every state and almost every country.

* Eleven square miles of southwest Kentucky (Fulton County) is cut off from the rest of the state by the

* Mississippi River. If you wish to travel from this cut off section to the rest of the state or vice-versa, you must first cross a bordering state.

* Point Roberts in Washington State is cut off from the rest of the state by British Columbia, Canada. If you wish to travel from Point Roberts to the rest of the state or vice versa, you must pass through Canada, including Canadian and U.S. customs

* A quarter has 119 grooves around the edge.

* A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.

* The only city in the United States to celebrate Halloween on the October 30 instead of October 31 is

* Carson City, Nevada. October 31 is Nevada Day and is celebrated with a large stret party.

* On an American one-dollar bill, there is an owl in the upper left-hand corner of the "1" encased in the

* "shield" and a spider hidden in the front upper right-hand corner.

* No words in the English language rhyme with orange, silver or purple.

* A peanut is not a nut; it is a legume.

* It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

* "Evian" spelled backvards is naive.

* The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets.

* Maine is the toothpick capital of the world.

* "Bookkeeper" and "bookkeeping" are the only words in the English language with three consecutive double letters.

* Paul McCartney's mother was a midwife.

* The flag of the Philippines is the only national flag that is flown differently during times of peace or war.

* The phrase "sleep tight" originated when mattresses were set upon ropes woven through the bed frame. To remedy sagging ropes, one would use a bed key to tighten the rope.

* It was discovered on a space mission that a frog can throw up. The frog throws up it's stomach first, so the stomach is dangling out of it's mouth. Then the frog uses it's forearms to dig out all of the stomach's contents and then swallows the stomach back down again.

* The A&W of root beer fame stands for Allen and Wright.

* A baby eel is called an elver, a baby oyster is called a spat.

* Bingo is the name of the dog on the Cracker Jack box.

* The arteries and veins surrounding the brain stem called the "circle of Willis" looks like a stick person with a large head.

* Welsh mercenary bowmen in the medieval period only wore one shoe at a time.

* On a trip to the South Sea islands, French painter Paul Gauguin stopped off briefly in Central America, where he worked as a laborer on the Panama Canal.

* The Ganges River in India boasts the only genuine fresh-water sharks in the entire world.

* The gene for the Siamese coloration in animals such as cats, rats or rabbits is heat sensitive. Warmth produces a lighter color than does cold. Putting tape temporarily on Siamese rabbit's ear will make the fur on that ear lighter than on the other one.

* There are only 12 letters in the Hawaiian alphabet.

* Charles de Gaulle's final words were, "It hurts."

* The words 'sacrilegious' and 'religion' do not share the same etymological root.

* "John has a long moustache" was the coded-signal used by the French Resistance in WWII to mobilize their forces once the Allies had landed on the Normandy beaches.

* Gatorade was named for the University of Florida Gators where it was first developed.

* Brooklyn is the Dutch name for "broken valley"

* There are four states where the first letter of the capital city is the same letter as the first letter of the state: Dover, Delaware; Honolulu, Hawaii; Indianapolis, Indiana; and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

* There are four cars and eleven lightposts on the back of a ten-dollar bill.

* Venetian blinds were invented in Japan.

* The Battle of Bunker Hill was fought at neighbouring Breed's Hill.

* Former US Senator Barry Goldwater attended the opening night ceremonies and festivities at Bugsy Siegel's famous Las Vegas casino. They left him out of the movie Bugsy. He is pissed.

* Armored knights raised their visors to identify themselves when they rode past their king. This custom has become the modern military salute.

* ABBA got their name by taking the first letter from each of their first names (Agnetha, Bjorn, Benny, Anni-frid.)

* The first electric Christmas lights were created by a telephone company PBX installer. Back in the old days, candles were used to decorate Christmas trees. This was obviously very dangerous. Telephone employees are trained to be safety concious. This installer took the lights from an old switchboard, connected them together, strung them on the tree, and hooked them to a battery.

* White Out was invented by the mother of Mike Nesmith (Formerly of the Monkees)

* The "huddle" in football was formed due a deaf football player who used sign language to communicate and his team didn't want the opposition to see the signals he used and in turn huddled around him.

* There is no such thing as naturally blue food, even blueberries are purple.

* In the 1983 film "JAWS 3D" the shark blows up. Some of the shark guts were the stuffed ET dolls being sold at the time.

* Walt Disney had wooden teeth.

* The hundred billionth crayon made by Crayola was Perriwinkle Blue.

* Montana mountain goats will butt heads so hard their hooves fall off.

* The coast line around Lake Sakawea in North Dakota is longer than the California coastline along the

* Pacific Ocean

* Sylvia Miles had the shortest performance ever nominated for an Oscar with "Midnight Cowboy." Her entire role lasted only six minutes.

* The legbones of a bat are so thin that no bat can walk.

* Kitsap County, Washington, was originally called Slaughter County, and the first hotel there was called the Slaughter House.

* Seattle, Washington, like Rome, was built on seven hills.

* Dinosaur droppings are called coprolites, and are actually fairly common.

* School busses in the United States are Chrome Yellow and used to be Omaha Orange.

* The Beatles song "Dear Prudence" was written about Mia Farrow's sister, Prudence, when she wouldn't come out and play with Mia and the Beatles at a religious retreat in India.

* The tailless dinner jacket was invented in Tuxedo Park, New York. Thus it is called the "tuxedo dinner jacket" and is named after the town...not the other way around.

* The state of Maryland has no natural lakes.

* Cranberries are sorted for ripeness by bouncing them; a fully ripened cranberry can be dribbled like a basketball.

* The giant squid has the largest eyes in the world.

* Rhode Island is the smallest state with the longest name. The official name, used on all state documents, is Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.

* The chemical formula for Rubidium Bromide is RbBr. It is the only chemical formula known to be a palindrome!

* St. Paul, Minnesota was originally called Pigs Eye after a man who ran a saloon there.

* The first letters of the months July through November, in order, spell the name JASON.

* The first letters of the names of the Great Lakes spell HOMES.

* The numbers '172' can be found on the back of the U.S. $5 dollar bill in the bushes at the base of the Lincoln Memorial.

* Soldiers from every country salute with their right hand.

* Moisture, not air, causes superglue to dry.

* Charles Lindbergh took only four sandwiches with him on his famous transatlantic flight.

* Sarsaparilla is the root that flavors root beer.

* The U.S. Mint in Denver, Colorado is the only mint that marks its pennies.

* A full moon always rises at sunset.

* If you are locked in a completely sealed room, you will die of carbon dioxide poisoning first before you will die of oxygen deprivation.

* Moon was Buzz Aldrin's mother's maiden name. (Buzz Aldrin was the second man o n the moon in 1969.)

* The only two Southern state capitals not occuppied by Northern troops during the American Civil War were Austin, Texas and Tallahasse, Florida.

* Rabbits love licorice.

* Ogdensburg, New York is the only city in the United States situated on the St. Lawrence River.

* Rene Descartes came up with the theory of coordinate geometry by looking at a fly walk across a tiled ceiling.

* Kelsey Grammar sings and plays the piano for the theme song of Fraiser.

* Alan Thicke, the father in the TV show GrowingPains wrote the theme songs for The Facts of Life and Diff'rent Strokes.

* If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds recieved in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.

* In 1963, baseball pitcher Gaylord Perry remarked, "They'll put a man on the moon before I hit a home run." On July 20, 1969, a few hours after Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, Gaylord Perry hit his first, and only, home run.

* The language Malayalam, spoken in parts of India, is the only language whose name is a palindrome.

* Panama hats come from Ecuador not Panama.

* Urea is found in humnan urine and dalmatian dogs and nowhere else.

* Human birth control pills work on gorillas.

* The Earl of Condom was a knighted personal physician to England's King Charles II in the mid-1600's. The Earl was requested to produce a method to protect the King from syphillis.(Charles the II's pleasure-loving nature was notorious.) The result should be obvious.

* Cheryl Ladd (of Charlie's Angels fame) played the voice, both talking and singing, of Joise in the 70s Saturday morning cartoon "Josie and the Pussycats."

* Lynyrd Skynard was the name of the gym teacher of the boys who went on to form that band. He once told them, "You boys ain't never gonna to nothin'."

* M & M's were developed so that soldiers could eat candy without getting their fingers sticky.

* Richard Nixon's favorite drink was a dry martini.

* The Grateful Dead were once called The Warlocks.

* The license plate number of the Volkswagon that appeared on the cover of the Beatles Abbey Road album was 281F.

* Pinocchio was made of pine.

* An ant lion is neither an ant nor a lion.

* Jethro Tull is not the name of the rock singer/flautist responsible for such songs as "Aqualung" and "Thick as a Brick." Jethro Tull is the name of the band. The singer is Ian Anderson. The original Jethro Tull was an English horticulturalist who invented the seed drill.

* Gilligan of Gilligan's Island had a first name that was only used once, on the never- aired pilot show. His first name was Willy.

* The skipper's real name on Gilligan's Island is Jonas Grumby. It was mentioned once in the first episode on their radio's newscast about the wreck.

* The Professor's real name was Roy Hinkley, Mary Ann's last name was Summers and Mrs. Howell's maiden name was Wentworth.

* Neck ties were first worn in Croatia. That's why they were called cravats (CRO-vats).

* Alma mater means bountiful mother.

* A Holstein's spots are like fingerprints -- no two cows have the same pattern of spots.

* Glass flutes do not expand with humidity so their owners are spared the nuisance of tuning them.

* Jersey (in the Channel Islands, UK) was the only place that the Nazi's occupied in Great Britain during

* World War II.

* Top English soccer club Liverpool were formed because their local enemies, Everton, couldn't pay the rent for their stadium. Therefore Liverpool took over at the stadium (Anfield) and became England's top soccer team ever.

* The male gypsy moth can "smell" the virgin female gypsy moth from 1.8 miles away.

* In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak.

* Playing cards were issued to British pilots in WWII. If captured, they could be soaked in water and unfolded to reveal a map for escape.

* The "Hallelujah Chorus" fits into the Easter portion of Handel's Messiah, not Christmas.

* Over 30 million people in the US "suffer" from Diastima. Diastima is having a gap between your front teeth.

* In 1976 Sarah Caldwell became the first woman to conduct the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.

* Carnivorous animals will not eat another animal that has been hit by a lightning strike.

* Reindeer milk has more fat than cow milk.

* The "L.L." in L.L. Bean stands for Leon Leonwood.

* Libya is the only country in the world with a solid, single-colored flag -- it's green.

* Seoul, the South Korean capital, just means "the capital" in the Korean language.

* Ivory bar soap floating was a mistake. They had been overmixing the soap formula causing excess air bubbles that made it float. Customers wrote and told how much they loved that it floated, and it has floated ever since.

* The original fifty cent piece in Australian decimal currency had around $2.00 worth of silver in it before it was replaced with a less expensive twelve sided coin.

* "Studies show that if a cat falls off the seventh floor of a building it has about thirty percent less chance of surviving than a cat that falls off the twentieth floor. It supposedly takes about eight floors for the cat to realise what is occuring, relax and correct itself. At about that height it hits maximum speed and when it hits the ground it's rib cage absorbs most of the impact. So throw your cat off a building today!"

* There are eight different sizes of champagne bottle and the largest is called a Nebuchadnezzar (after the Biblical king who put Daniel's three friends into the oven).

* The letters KGB stand for Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti.

* The female ferret is referred to as a `jill'.

* The word rodent comes from the Latin word `rodere' meaning to gnaw.

* Australian Rules Football was originally designed to give cricketers something to play during the off season.

* Alexander the Great was an epileptic.

* The lead singer of The Knack, famous for "My Sharona," and Jack Kevorkian's lead defense attorney are brothers, Doug & Jeffrey Feiger.

* Elizabeth Bacon Custer, wife of "The Boy General" is one of the few women buried at the U.S. Military academy at West Point, New York.

* "Freelance" comes from a knight whose lance was free for hire, i.e. not pledged to one master.)

* The only bone not broken so far during any ski accident is one located in the inner ear.

* The name for Oz in the "Wizard of Oz" was thought up when the creator, Frank Baum, looked at his filing cabinet and saw A-N, and O-Z, hence "Oz."

* There are ten human body parts that are only three letters long: Eye, Ear, Leg, Arm, Jaw, Gum, Toe, Lip, Hip and Rib.

* Michigan was the first state to have roadside picnic tables.

* Elvis had a twin brother named Jesse Garon, who died at birth, which is why Elvis' middle name was spelled Aron; in honor of his brother.

* Fitchburg, Massachusetts is the second hillest city in the US.

* During WWII the city of Leningrad underwent a seventeen month German seige. Unable to access the city by roads, the Russians built a railroad across the ice on Lake Lagoda to get food and supplies to the citizens.

* The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.

* Thomas Edison got patents for a method of making concrete furniture and a cigar which was supposed to burn forever

* Elton John's real name is Reginald Dwight. Elton comes from Elton Dean, a Bluesology sax player. John comes from Long John Baldry, founder of Blues Inc. They were the first electric white blues band ever seen in England--1961

* Elton John's uncle was a professional soccer player. He broke his leg playing for Nottingham Forest in the 1959 English FA Cup Final.

* The saying "it's so cold out there it could freeze the balls off a brass monkey" came from when they had old cannons like ones used in the Civil War. The cannonballs were stacked in a pyramid formation, called a brass monkey. When it got extremely cold outside they would crack and break off... Thus the saying.

* Horses cannot vomit.

* Rabbits cannot vomit.

* The word "Boondocks" comes from the Tagalog (Filipino) word "Bundok," which

* means mountain.

* Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks otherwise it will digest itself.

* The "chapters" of the New Testament were not there originally. When monks in medieval times translated it

* from the Greek, they numbered the pages in each "book."

* Coca-Cola contains neither coca nor cola.

* Yucatan, as in the peninsula, is from Maya "u" + "u" + "uthaan," meaning "listen to how they speak," what the Maya said when they first heard the Spaniards.

* The term, "It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye" is from Ancient Rome.

* The only rule during wrestling matches was, "No eye gouging." Everything else was allowed, but the only way to be disqualified is to poke someone's eye out.

* The original plan for Disneyland included a Lilliputland.

* S.O.S. doesn't stand for "Save Our Ship" or "Save Our Souls" -- It was just chosen by an 1908 international

* conference on Morse Code because the letters S and O were easy to remember and just about anyone could key it and read it, S = dot dot dot, O = dash dash dash..

* The word "moose" was originally Algonquin.

* The Sanskrit word for "war" means "desire for more cows."

* The "ZIP" in Zip Code stands for "Zone Improvement Plan."

* Pocahontas appeared on the back of the $20 bill in 1875.

* When a female horse and male donkey mate, the offspring is called a mule, but when a male horse and female donkey mate, the offspring is called a hinny.

* The way to get more mules is to mate a male donkey with a female horse.

* A donkey will sink in quicksand but a mule won't.

* Crickets hear through their knees.

* Turnips turn green when sunburnt.

* Pigs, walruses and light-colored horses can be sunburned.

* A type of jellyfish found off the coast of England is the longest animal in the world.

* When Voyager 2 visited Neptune it saw a small irregular white cloud that zips around Neptune every sixteen hours or so now known as "The Scooter".

* Crows have the largest cerebral hemispheres, relative to body size, of any avian family.

* Martha's Vineyard once had its own dialect of Sign Language. One deaf person arrived in 1692 and after that there was a relatively large genetically deaf population that had their own particular dialect of sign language. From 1692-1910 nearly all hearing people on the island were bilingual in sign language and English.

* Mr. Rogers is an ordained minister.

* Hugh "Ward Cleaver" Beaumont was an ordained minister.

* Sir Isaac Newton was an ordained priest in the Church of England.

* St. Bernard is the patron saint of skiers.

* The Old English word for "sneeze" is "fneosan."

* John Lennon's first girlfriend was named Thelma Pickles.

* According to the ceremonial customs of Orthodox Judaism, it is officially sundown when you cannot tell the difference between a black thread and a red one.

* A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.

* Woodpecker scalps, porpoise teeth and giraffe tails have all been used as money.

* Cyano-acrylate glues (Super glues) were invented by accident. The researcher was trying to make optical coating materials, and would test their properties by putting them between two prisms and shining light through them. When he tried the cyano-acrylate, he couldn't get the prisms apart

* Most of the little schoolhouses in the U.S. of yesteryear were painted red because red was the least expensive paint color.

* Elizabeth I of England suffered from anthophobia, a fear of roses.

* Almost half the bones in your body are in your hands and feet.

* A flamingo can eat only when its head is upside down.

* Dalmatian dogs are born pure white, they don't start getting spots until they are three or four days old.

* The growth rate of some bamboo plants can reach three feet (91.44 cm) per day.

* The Los Angeles Rams were the first U.S. football team to introduce emblems on their helmets.

* The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.

* The average garden variety caterpillar has 248 muscles in its head.

* An elephant can be pregnant for up to two years.

* The two quickest goals scored in the NHL were three seconds apart.

* Dartboards are made out of horsehairs.

* Your left lung is smaller than your right lung to make room for your heart.

* 'Crack' gets it name because it crackles when you smoke it.

* (This useless fact is dedicated, with love, to A.G.)

* Heroin is the brand name of morphine once marketed by Bayer.

* Marijuana is Spanish for 'Mary Jane.'

* One of the many Tarzans, Karmuela Searlel, was mauled to death on the set by a raging elephant.

* Slinkys were invented by an airplane mechanic; he was playing with engine parts and realized the possible secondary use of one of the springs.

* U.S. Interstates which go north-south are numbered sequentially starting from the west with odd numbers, and Interstates which go east-west are numbered sequentially starting from the south with even numbers.

* Today's cattle are descended from two species: wild aurochs -- fierce and agile herd animals that populated

* Asia, North Africa and Europe -- and eotragus -- an antelope-like, Asian forest creature.

* Ballroom dancing is a major at Brigham Young University.

* Professional ballerinas use about twelve pairs of toe shoes per week. The anteater, aardvark, spiny anteater (echidna), and scaly anteater (pangolin) are completely unrelated - in fact, the closest relatives to anteaters are sloths and armadillos, the closest relative to the spiny anteater is the platypus, and the aardvark is in an order all by itself.

* There are 336 dimples on a regulation golf ball.

* Octopi have gardens.

* The Beatles song "Martha My Dear" was written by Paul McCartney about his sheepdog Martha.

* "Ever think you're hearing something in a song, but they're really singing something else? The word formis-heard lyrics is 'mondegreen,' and it comes from a folk song in the '50's. The singer was actually singing "They slew the Earl of Morray and laid him on the green," but this came off sounding like 'They slew the Earl of Morray and Lady Mondegreen.'"

* A walla-walla scene is one where extras pretend to be talking in the background -- when they say "walla-walla" it looks like they are actually talking.

* The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from an old English law which stated that you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.

* The youngest letters in the English language are "j," "v" and "w."

* The Australian $5, $10, $20, $50 and $100 notes are made out of plastic.

* Cranberry Jello is the only jello flavor that comes from real fruit, not artificial flavoring.

* The oldest exposed surface on earth is New Zealand's south island.

* John Lennon's assassin was carrying a copy of "The Catcher in the Rye" when he shot the famous Beatle in 1980.

* Don MacLean's song "American Pie" was written about Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens. All three were on the same plane that crashed.

* A game of pool is referred to as a "frame."

* Impotence is legal grounds for divorce in 24 American states.

* The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper.

* Some biblical scholars believe that Aramaic (the language of the ancient Bible) did not contain an easy way

* to say "many things" and used a term which has come down to us as 40. This means that when the bible -- in many places -- refers to "40 days," they meant many days.

* 101 Dalmatians and Peter Pan (Wendy ) are the only two Disney cartoon features

* with both parents that are present and don't die throughout the movie.

* The Soviet Sukhoi-34 is the first strike fighter with a toilet in it.

* They Might Be Giants is the first modern band with an Accordion and a Glockenspiel

* Napoleon constructed his battle plans in a sandbox.

* 'Strengths' is the longest word in the English language with just one vowel.

* 'Stewardesses' is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand.

* One of the longest English words that can be typed using the top row of a typewriter (allowing multiple uses of letters) is 'typewriter.'

* When a giraffe's baby is born it falls from a height of six feet, normally without being hurt.

* Virgina Woolf wrote all her books standing.

* The tango originated as a dance between two men (for partnering practice).

* Leon Trotsky, the seminal Russian Communist, was assassinated in Mexico with an ice-pick.

* The Bronx, New York got its name from explorer Henry Bronk.

* The Kentucky Derby is the oldest continually held sports event in the United States (1875); the second oldest is the Westminister Kennel Club Dog Show (1876.)

* "Video Killed the Radio Star" was the very first video ever played on MTV.

* The pitches that Babe Ruth hit for his last-ever homerun and that Joe DiMaggio hit for his first-ever homerun where thrown by the same man.

* The native tribe of Tierra del Fuego has a language so guttural it cannot have an alphabet.

* A family of six died in Oregon during WWII as a result of a Japanese balloon bomb.

* AM and PM stand for "Ante-Meridian" and "Post-Meridian," respectively, and A.D. actually stands for "Anno Domini" rather than "After Death."

* The penguins that inhabit the tip of South America are called jackass penguins.

* To "testify" was based on men in the Roman court swearing to a statement made by swearing on their testicles.

* During conscription for WWII, there were nine documented cases of men with three testicles.

* Avocado is derived from the Spanish word 'aguacate' which is derived from 'ahuacatl' meaning testicle.

* Benito Mussolini would ward off the evil eye by touching his testicles.

* Both Hitler and Napoleon were missing one testicle

* Stalin was only five feet, four inches tall.

* Stalin's left foot had webbed toes, and his left arm is noticably shorter than his right.

* Scientists found a whole new phylum of animal on a lobster's lip.

* The Baby Ruth candy bar was actually named after Grover Cleveland's baby daughter, Ruth.

* Grover Cleveland's real first name is Stephen, Grover is his middle name.

* Every two thousand frowns creates one wrinkle.

* During WWII, Americans tried to train bats to drop bomb.

* Swans are the only birds with penises.

* A whale's penis is called adork.

* Some carnivores, rodents, bats and insectivores have a penis bone, called a baculum.

* A barnacle has the largest penis of any other animal in the world in relation to its size.

* Iguanas, koalas and Komodo dragons all have two penises.

* "I'd like clarify the comment about iguanas and komodo dragons having two penises. In fact, they have a single penis, but it is split in two (pretty much 'Y'-shaped.) This organ is known as a hemipenes. Snakes also share this interesting feature. Apparently, the dual penis is for ease of left-handed or right-handed mating.

* Opossums have forked penises.

* Some female hyenas have a pseudo-penis.

* A winged penis was the city symbol of Pompeii, the ancient Roman resort town destroyed by Mt. Vesuvius' eruption.

* One way to tell seals and sea lions apart is that, sea lions have external ears and testicles.

* Swahili is a combination of African tribal languages, Arabic and Portuguese.

* A person from Glasgow, is called a Glaswegian.

* An enneahedron is solid with nine faces.

* Most armadillos seen dead on the road did not get hit by the wheels. When an armidillo is frightened it jumps

* straight into the air.

* Armadillos can be housebroken.

* Armadillos have four babies at a time, always all the same sex. They are perfect quadruplets, the fertilized cell split into quarters, resulting in four identical armadillos.

* Armadillos get an average of 18.5 hours of sleep per day.

* Armadillos can walk underwater.

* Armadillos are the only animal besides humans that can get leprosy.

* Jet lag was once called boat lag, back before jets existed.

* Sirimauo Bandranaike of Sri Lanka became the world's first popularly elected female head of state in 1960.

* There are more beetles than any other kind of creature in the world.

* Velcro was invented by a Swiss guy who was inspired by the way burrs attached to clothing.

* The hieroglyph for 100,000 is a tadpole.

* The Phillips-head screwdriver was invented in Oregon.

* Tomb robbers believed that knocking Egyptian sarcophagi's noses off would and therefore forstall curses.

* The allele for six fingers and toes is dominant in humans. (Watch out Inigo Montoya...)

* Polar bears' fur is not white, it's clear. Polar bear skin is actually black. Their hair is hollow and acts like fiber optics, directing sunlight to warm their skin.

* Polar bears camouflage themselves more completely during a hunt by covering their black noses with their

* paws.

* The amount of tropical rainforest cut down each year is an area the size of Tennessee.

* The face of a penny can hold about thirty drops of water.

* Medieval knights put sharkskin on their swordhandles to give them a more secure grip; they would dig the sharp scales into their palms.

* Orcas (killer whales) kill sharks by torpedoing up into the shark's stomach from underneath, causing the shark to explode.

* The only planet without a ring is earth.

* Wayne's World was filmed in two weeks.

* Cleopatra used pomegranate seeds for lipstick.

* Cleopatra's last name was Ptolemy, and she was Greek rather than Egyptian.

* The Red sea in the Bible is a long-perpetuated mistranslation of the Reed sea.

* If you feed a seagull Alka-Seltzer, its stomach will explode.

* The raised reflective dots in the middle of highways are called Botts dots.

* The Amazon rainforest produces half the world's oxygen supply.

* The concerti on the two Voyager probes' information discs are performed by famed Canadian pianist Glenn Gould.

* Reindeer like to eat bananas.

* Chia Pets are only sold in December.

* Between 1947 and 1959, 42 nuclear devices were detonated in the Marshall Islands.

* Boris Karloff is the narrator of the seasonal television special "How the Grinch Stole Christmas."

* A group of unicorns is called a blessing.

* Twelve or more cows are known as a "flink."

* A group of frogs is called an army.

* A group of rhinos is called a crash.

* A group of kangaroos is called a mob.

* A group of whales is called a pod.

* A group of geese is called a gaggle.

* A group of ravens is called a murder.

* A group of officers is called a mess.

* A group of larks is called an exaltation.

* A group of owls is called a parliament.

* Hershey's Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it's kissing the conveyor

* belt.

* The physically smallest post office in the United States is in Ochopee, Florida in the heart of the everglades.

* Physicist Murray Gell-Mann named the sub-atomic particles known as quarks for a random line in James Joyce, "Three quarks for Muster Mark!"

* Samuel Clemens's pseudonym "Mark Twain" was the nickname of a riverboat pilot about whom Clemens wrote a needless nasty satirical piece. Apparently, Clemens felt guilt later and adopted the name as a nom de plume as some sort of expiation. The phrase does not mean measuring the depth of the river; it means a specific depth, to wit, two fathoms (twelve feet.)

* Steve Young, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback, is the great-great-grandson of Mormon leader Brigham Young.

* Money is made of woven linen, not paper

* A rhinoceros's horn is made of hair.

* Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie.

* The 80s song "Rosanna" from the Eighties was written about Rosanna Arquette, the actress.

* Warren Beatty and Shirley MacLaine are brother and sister.

* Jean Harlow was the first actress to appear on the cover of Life magazine.

* Sylvia Plath was a famous poet who killed herself at age 31 by sticking her head in an oven.

* Sylvia Plath's husband, Ted Hughes, was married three times, and two of the women he married committed suicide.

* Jesus Christ died at age 33.

* Starfish don't have brains.

* Shrimps' hearts are in their heads.

* The derivation of the word trivia comes from the Latin "tri-" + "via", which means three streets. This is because in ancient times, at an intersection of three streeets in Rome (or some other Italian place), they would have a type of kiosk where ancillary information was listed. You might be interested in it, you might not, hence they were bits of "trivia."

* The first couple to be shown in bed together on prime time television were Fred and Wilma Flintstone.

* Coca-Cola was originally green.

* Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than the US Treasury.

* Hawaiian alphabet has 12 letters.

* Men can read smaller print than women; women can hear better.

* City with the most Rolls Royce's per capita: Hong Kong

* State with the highest percentage of people who walk to work: Alaska

* Percentage of Africa that is wilderness: 28%

* Percentage of North America that is wilderness: 38%

* Barbie's measurements if she were life size: 39-23-33

* Cost of raising a medium-size dog to the age of eleven: $6,400

* Average number of people airborne over the US any given hour: 61,000.

* Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.

* The world's youngest parents were 8 and 9 and lived in China in 1910.

* The youngest pope was 11 years old.

* First novel ever written on a typewriter: Tom Sawyer.

* The San Francisco Cable cars are the only mobile National Monuments

* Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history: Spades - King David, Clubs - Alexander the Great, Hearts - Charlemagne, and Diamonds - Julius Caesar.

* If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.

* Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, John Hancock and Charles Thomson. Most of the rest signed on August 2, but the last signature wasn't added until 5 years later.

* Hershey's Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it's kissing the conveyor belt.

* No NFL team which plays its home games in a domed stadium has ever won a Superbowl. (Guess that explains the Saints!)

* The nursery rhyme Ring Around the Rosey is a rhyme about the plague. Infected people with the plague would get red circular sores ("Ring around the rosey..."), these sores would smell very badly so common folks would put flowers on their bodies somewhere (inconspicuously), so that it would cover the smell of the sores ("...a pocket full of posies..."), People who died from the plague would be burned so as to reduce the possible spread of the disease ("...ashes, ashes, we all fall down!")



Now the Test



Write down your answers to check them at the end.



1. On a standard traffic light, is the green on the top or bottom?

2. How many states are there?

3. In which hand is the Statue of Liberty's torch?

4. What 6 colors are on the classic Campbell's soup label?

5. What 2 letters don't appear on the telephone dial?

6. What 2 #'s on the telephone dial don't have letters by them?

7. When you walk does your left arm swing w/ your right or left leg?

8. How many matches are in a standard pack?

9. On our flag, is the top stripe red or white?

10. What is the lowest # on the FM dial?

11. Which way does water go down the drain, clockwise or counter-clockwise?

12. Which way does a "no smoking" sign's slash run?

13. How many channels on a VHF TV dial?

14. Which side of a woman's blouse are the buttons on?

15. On a NY license plate, is New York on the top or bottom?

16. Which way do fans rotate?

17. Whose face is on a dime?

18. How many sides does a stop sign have?

19. Do books have even # pages on the right or left side?

20. How many lug nuts are on a standard car wheel?

21. How many sides are there on a standard pencil?

22. Sleepy, Happy, Sneezy, Grumpy, Dopey, Doc. Who's missing?

23. How many hot dog buns are in a standard package?

24. On which card in a deck, is the cardmaker's trademark?

25. On which side of a venetian blind is the cord that adjusts the opening between the slats?

26. On the back of a $1 bill, what is in the center?

27. There are 12 buttons on a touch tone phone. What 2 symbols bear no digits?

28. How many curves are in a standard paper clip?

29. Does a merry-go-round turn clockwise or counter-clockwise?



Answers:

1. Bottom

2. 50

3. Right

4. Blue, red, white, yellow, black, and gold

5. Q, Z

6. 1, 0

7. Left

8. 20

9. Red

10. 88

11. Counter-clockwise (unless you happen to be south of the equator)

12. Towards the bottom right

13. 12 (no #1)

14. Left

15. Top

16. Clockwise as you look at it

17. Roosevelt

18. 8

19. Left

20. 5

21. 6

22. Bashful

23. 8

24. Ace of spades

25. Left

26. ONE

27. *, #

28. 3

29. Counter-clockwise



Scoring:

30-28 Genius...Mensa is calling!

25-27 Not too shabby!

20-24 You could do better!

16-19 McDonald's is calling!

15 or below.. Being blind wouldn't affect you one bit!!