`Jim Patton's
USELESS FACTS

See also:

Snapple real facts

www.uselessknowledge.com

www.straightdope.com

FACT #1: Some of the facts on this page may be false!

(after all, who trusts the internet?)

FACT#2: Fact #1 may be true!

USELESS FACTS:

Van Gogh started to draw at the age of twenty-seven.

(thanks to Ellen Humphrey):

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 glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.
The longest word in the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary is: pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. The only other word with the same amount of letters is: pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconioses, its plural.
Hydroxydesoxycorticosterone and hydroxydeoxycorticosterones are the largest anagrams.
Los Angeles's full name is "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula."
Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.
An ostrich's eye is bigger than it's brain.
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.
Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer.
The longest recorded flight of a chicken is thirteen seconds.
Wilma Flintstone's maiden name was Wilma Slaghoopal, and Betty Rubble's maiden name was Betty Jean Mcbricker.
A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.
111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321
The Ramses brand condom is named after the great pharaoh Ramses II who fathered over 160 children.
If NASA sent birds into space they would soon die - they need gravity to swallow.
Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.
A pig's orgasm lasts for 30 minutes.
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"
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.
Armored knights raised their visors to identify themselves when they rode past their king. This custom has become the modern military salute.
Sylvia Miles had the shortest performance ever nominated for an Oscar with "Midnight Cowboy." Her entire role lasted only six minutes.
Charles Lindbergh took only four sandwiches with him on his famous transatlantic flight.
Goethe couldn't stand the sound of barking dogs and could only write if he had an apple rotting in the drawer of his desk.
If 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.
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.
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.
'Stewardesses' is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand.
The Baby Ruth candy bar was actually named after Grover Cleveland's baby daughter, Ruth.
A whale's penis is called a dork.
Armadillos have four babies at a time and they are always all the same sex.
Armadillos are the only animals besides humans that can get leprosy.
To escape the grip of a crocodile's jaws, push your thumbs into its eyeballs--it will let you go instantly.
Reindeer like to eat bananas.
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.
Physicist Murray Gell-Mann named the sub-atomic particles known as quarks for a random line in James Joyce, "Three quarks for Muster Mark!"
Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie.
The phrase "sleep tight" derives from the fact that early mattresses were filled with straw and held up with rope stretched across the bed frame. A tight sleep was a comfortable sleep.
"Three dog night" (attributed to Australian Aborigines) came about because on especially cold nights these nomadic people needed three dogs (dingos, actually) to keep from freezing.
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.
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.
Ivory bar soap floating was a mistake. They had been over mixing 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.
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 realize what is occurring, relax and correct itself.
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.
Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks otherwise it will digest itself.
The Sanskrit word for "war" means "desire for more cows."

__________

Rene Descartes came up with the theory of coordinate geometry by looking at a fly walk across a tiled ceiling.
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.
Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance.
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.
Ballroom dancing is a major at Brigham Young University.
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.
No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, and purple.
Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them used to burn their houses down - hence the expression "to get fired."
Canada is an Indian word meaning "Big Village".
There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.
Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, John Hancock and Charles Thomson. Most of the rest signed on August 2, but the last signature wasn't added until 5 years later.
"I am." is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.
The term "the whole 9 yards" came from WWII fighter pilots in the South Pacific. When arming their airplanes on the ground, the .50 caliber machine gun ammo belts measured exactly 27 feet, before being loaded into the fuselage. If the pilots fired all their ammo at a target, it got "the whole 9 yards."
The original story from Tales of 1001 Arabian Nights begins, "Aladdin was a little Chinese boy."
The most common name in the world is Mohammed.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard's fish was named Livingston.
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 used the rune "thorn" to represent "th" sounds. With the advent of the printing press the character from the Roman alphabet which closest resembled thorn was the lower case "y".
The word "samba" means "to rub navels together."
The international telphone dialing code for Antarctica is 672.
The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.
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.
Mel Blanc (the voice of Bugs Bunny) was allergic to carrots
Each unit on the Richter Scale is equivalent to a power factor of about 32. So a 6 is 32 times more powerful than a 5! Though it goes to 10, 9 is estimated to be the point of total tetonic destruction (2 is the smallest that can be felt unaided.)
Cinderella's slippers were originally made out of fur. The story was changed in the 1600s by a translator. It was the left shoe that Aschenputtel (Cinderella) lost at the stairway, when the prince tried to follow her.
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.
Donald Duck's middle name is Fauntleroy.
The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin during World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.
Dr. Seuss pronounced "Seuss" such that it rhymed with "rejoice."
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 characters Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street were named after Bert the cop and Ernie the taxi driver in Frank Capra's "Its A Wonderful Life"
The flag of the Philippines is the only national flag that is flown differently during times of peace or war. A portion of the flag is blue, while the other is red. The blue portion is flown on top in time of peace and the red portion is flown in war time.
Armored knights raised their visors to identify themselves when they rode past their king. This custom has become the modern military salute.
The "huddle" in football was formed due a deaf football player who used sign language to communicate and his team didn't want the opposition to see the signals he used and in turn huddled around him.
Goethe couldn't stand the sound of barking dogs and could only write if he had an apple rotting in the drawer of his desk.
If you are locked in a completely sealed room, you will die of carbon dioxide poisoning first before you will die of oxygen deprivation.
Carnivorous animals will not eat another animal that has been hit by a lightning strike.
The term, "It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye" is from Ancient Rome. The only rule during wrestling matches was, "No eye gouging." Everything else was allowed, but the only way to be disqualified is to poke someone's eye out.
Mr. Rogers is an ordained minister. Sir Isaac Newton was an ordained priest in the Church of England.
A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.
Certain frogs can be frozen solid then thawed, and continue living.
The Baby Ruth candy bar was actually named after Grover Cleveland's baby daughter, Ruth.
Hershey's Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it's kissing the conveyor belt.
Steve Young, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback, is the great-great-grandson of Mormon leader Brigham Young.
Money isn't made out of paper, it's made out of linen.
Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie.

THE WORLD'S EASIEST QUIZ? (thanks to Vince Phelan)
1) How long did the Hundred Years War last?
2) Which country makes Panama hats?
3) From which animal do we get catgut?
4) In which month do Russians celebrate the October Revolution?
5) What is a camel's hair brush made of?
6) The Canary Islands in the Pacific are named after what animal?
7) What was King George VI's first name?
8) What color is a purple finch?
9) Where are Chinese gooseberries from?
10) How long did the Thirty Years War last?

ANSWERS:
1) 116 years, from 1337 to 1453.
2) Ecuador.
3) From sheep and horses.
4) November. The Russian calendar was 13 days behind ours.
5) Squirrel fir.
6) The Latin name was Insularia Canaria - Island of the Dogs.
7) Albert. When he came to the throne in 1936 he respected the wish of Queen Victoria that no future king should ever be called Albert.
8) Distinctively crimson.
9) New Zealand.
10) Thirty years, of course. From 1618 to 1648.

LINCOLN & KENNEDY:
FUN WITH CONSPIRACIES! (thanks to Dave Marchinda and Dave Ohlrich)

Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846.
John F. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946.
Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860.
John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960.

Both were particularly concerned with civil rights.

Both wives lost their children while living in the White House.

Both Presidents were shot on a Friday.

Both were shot in the head.

Both were assassinaited by Southerners.
Both were succeeded by Southerens.

The names Lincoln and Kennedy each contain seven letters.
Both successors were named Johnson.
Both successors' first names have 6 letters.
Both assassins were known by first, middle and last names, not just first and last.
Both assasins' full names compromise fifteen letters.
Lincoln's secretary was named Kennedy.
Kennedy's secretary was named Lincoln.

Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808.
Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908.
John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln was born in 1839.
Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated Kennedy was born in 1939.

Booth ran from the theater and was caught in a warehouse.
Oswald ran from a warehouse and was caught in a theater.

Booth and Oswald were assassinated before their trials.

A week before Lincoln was shot, he was in Monroe, Maryland
A week before Kennedy was shot, he was in Marilyn Monroe.

Click HERE to see more about conspiracies.

MORE USELESS FACTS (Thanks to Joe Gruginski)

· The Eisenhower interstate system requires that one mile in every five must be straight. These straight sections are usable as airstrips in times of war or other emergencies.

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

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

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

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

· Many hamsters only blink one eye at a time.

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

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

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

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

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

· No word in the English language rhymes with month.

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

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

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

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

· Cat's urine glows under a black light.

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

· The first Ford cars had Dodge engines.

· Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.

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

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

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

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

· Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously

· If you have three quarters, four dimes, and four pennies, you have $1.19. You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar.

· The most common name in the world is Mohammed.

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

· No NFL team which plays it's home games in a domed stadium has ever won a Superbowl

· The first toilet ever seen on television was on "Leave It To Beaver".

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

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

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

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

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

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

Still More (thanks to Tim Ackermann)

· Coca-cola was originally green.

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

· Smartest dogs: 1) border collie; 2)poodle; 3)golden retriever;

· Dumbest--afghan

· Hawaiian alphabet has 12 letters.

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

· Chances that an American lives within 50 miles of where they grew up: 1 in 2

· Amount American Airlines saved in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served first class: $40,000

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

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

· Chances of a white Christmas in New York: 1 in 4

· Portion of US annual rainfall that falls in April: 1/12

· Percentage of Africa that is wilderness: 28

· Percentage of North America that is wilderness: 38

· Estimated percentage of American adults who go on a diet each year: 44

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

· Average number of days a West German goes without washing his underwear: 7

· Percentage of Americans who say that God has spoken to them: 36

· Percentage of Americans who regularly attend religious services: 43

· City with the highest per capita viewership of television evangelists: Washington DC

· Percentage of American men who say they would marry the same woman if they had it to do all over again: 80

· Percentage of American women who say they would marry the same man: 50

· Percentage of men who say they are happier after their divorce or separation: 58

· Percentage of women who say they are happier: 85

· Number of different family relationships for which Hallmark makes cards: 105

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

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

· Percentage of Americans who have visited Disneyland or Disney World: 70

· Average life span of a major league baseball: 7 pitches.

· Portion of ice cream sold that is vanilla: 1/3

· Portion of potatoes sold that are French fried: 1/3

· Percentage of Americans that eat at McDonalds each day: 7

· Percentage of bird species that are monogamous: 90

· Percentage of mammal species that are: 3

· Number of US states that claim test scores in their elementary schools are above national average: 50

· Portion of Harvard students who graduate with honors: 4/5

· Chances that a burglary in the US will be solved: 1 in 7.

· Portion of land in the US owned by the government: 1/3

· Only President to remain a bachelor: James Buchanon

· Only first lady to carry a loaded revolver: Eleanor Roosevelt

· Only President to win a Pulitzer: John F. Kennedy for Profiles in Courage

· Only President awarded a patent: Abe Lincoln, for a system of buoying vessels over shoals

· Only food that does not spoil: honey

· Only person to win $64,000 Challenge and $64,000 Question: Dr. Joyce Brothers (subject is boxing)

· Only bird that can fly backwards: Hummingbird

· Only continent without reptiles or snakes: Antartica

· Only animals besides human that can get sunburn: the pig and the walrus

· Ostriches stick their heads in the sand to look for water.

· An eagle can kill a young deer and fly away with it.

· In the Caribbean there are oysters that can climb trees.

· Polar bears are left-handed.

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

· Eskimos never gamble.

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

· The youngest pope was 11 years old.

· Mark Twain didn't graduate from elementary school.

· Proportional to their weight, men are stronger than horses.

· Pilgrims ate popcorn at the first Thanksgiving dinner.

· Your nose and ears never stop growing.

· Jupiter is bigger than all the other planets in our solar system combined.

· Hot water is heavier than cold.

· The parachute was invented by da Vinci in 1515.

· They have square watermelons in Japan...they stack better.

· Cream does not weigh as much as milk.

· Starfish have eight eyes--one at the end of each leg.

· Iceland consumes more Coca-cola per capita than any other nation.

· First novel ever written on a typewriter was Tom Sawyer.

· There are more collect calls on Father's Day than any other day of the year.

· Heinz Catsup leaving the bottle travels at 25 miles per year.

· It is possible to lead a cow upstairs but not downstairs.

· Men get hiccups more often than woman.

· Armadillos can be housebroken.

About the US Standard Railroad Gauge (thanks to Tim Ackermann and Tom O'Hare)

The US Standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet,
8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used?

Because that's the way they built them in England, and the US railroads
were built by English expatriates. Why did the English people build them like
that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built
the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.

Why did "they" use that gauge then? Because the people who built the
tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons,
which used that wheel spacing. Okay! Why did the wagons use that odd
wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing the wagons
would break on some of the old, long distance roads, because that's the
spacing of the old wheel ruts.

So who built these old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in
Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of their legions. The
roads have been used ever since. And the ruts? The initial ruts, which
everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagons, were
first made by Roman war chariots. Since the chariots were made for
or by Imperial Rome they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

Thus, we have the answer to the original questions. The United States
standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original
specification for an Imperial Roman army war chariot. Specs and
Bureaucracies live forever. So, the next time you are handed a
specification and wonder what horse's a** came up with it, you may be
exactly right. Because the Imperial Roman chariots were made to be
just wide enough to accommodate the back-ends of two war horses.

Professor Tom O'Hare, University of Texas at Austin

GENIUS QUIZ (Thanks to James Fuqua and Tim Ackermann again)
1. Do they have a 4th of July in England?
2. How many birthdays does the average man have?
3. Some months have 31 days; how many have 28?
4. A woman gives a beggar 50 cents; the woman is the beggar's sister, but the beggar is not the woman's brother. How come?
5. Why can't a man living in the USA be buried in Canada?
6. How many outs are there in an inning?
7. Is it legal for a man in California to marry his widow's sister? Why?
8. Two men play five games of checkers. Each man wins the same number of games. There are no ties. Explain this.
9. Divide 30 by 1/2 and add 10. What is the answer?
10. A man builds a house rectangular in shape. All sides have southern exposure. A big bear walks by, what color is the bear? Why?
11. If there are 3 apples and you take away 2, how many do you have?
12. I have two US coins totaling 55 cents. One is not a nickel. What are the coins?
13. If you have only one match and you walked into a room where there was an oil burner, a kerosene lamp, and a wood burning stove, which one would you light first?
14. How far can a dog run into the woods?
15. A doctor gives you three pills telling you to take one every half hour. How long would the pills last?
16. A farmer has 17 sheep, and all but 9 die. How many are left?
17. How many animals of each sex did Moses take on the ark?
18. A clerk in the butcher shop is 5' 10'' tall. What does he weigh?
19. How many two cent stamps are there in a dozen?
20. What was the President's name in 1960?

****************** Answers ****************
1.     Yes
2.     One
3.     All of them (12)
4.     The beggar is her sister.
5.     He can't be buried if he isn't dead.
6.     6
7.     No - because he is dead.
8.     They aren't playing each other.
9.     70
10.     White. The house is at the North Pole so it is a polar bear.
11.     2
12.     50 cent piece and a nickel. (one is a nickel, the other is not)
13.     The match.
14.     Half way. Then he is running out of the woods.
15.     1 Hour
16.     9
17.     None - Noah took them on the ark, not Moses.
18.     Meat
19.     12
20.     Same as it is now.

The size of a county in the United States is dictated by the distance that someone could walk to the county seat (typically at the center) in a day.

MORE? (Thanks again to Tim Ackermann)

· Stewardesses and reverberated are the two longest words (12 letters each) that can be typed using only the left hand. The longest word that can be typed using only the right hand is lollipop. Skepticisms is the longest word that alternates hands.

· A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why.

· In the 1940s, the FCC assigned television's Channel 1 to mobile services (two-way radios in taxicabs, for instance) but did not re-number the other channel assignments. That is why your TV set has channels 2 and up, but no channel 1.

· A group of geese on the ground is a gaggle, a group of geese in the air is a skein.

· The underside of a horse's hoof is called a frog. The frog peels off several times a year with new growth.

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

· The "save" icon on Microsoft Word shows a floppy disk, with the shutter on backwards.

· The letter combination "ough" can be pronounced in nine different ways. The following sentence contains them all: "A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed."

· The verb "cleave" is the only English word with two synonyms which are antonyms of each other: adhere and separate.

· The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is un-copyrightable.

· Facetious and abstemious contain all the vowels in the correct order, as does arsenious, meaning "containing arsenic."

· The shape of plant collenchyma cells and the shape of the bubbles in beer foam are the same - they are orthotetrachidecahedrons.

· The word 'pound' is abbreviated 'lb.' after the constellation 'Libra' because it means 'pound' in Latin, and also 'scales'. The abbreviation for the British Pound Sterling comes from the same source: it is an 'L' for Libra/Lb. with a stroke through it to indicate abbreviation. Same goes for the Italian lira which uses the same abbreviation ('lira' coming from 'libra'). So British currency (before it went metric) was always quoted as "pounds/shillings/pence", abbreviated "L/s/d" (libra/solidus/denarius).

· Emus and kangaroos cannot walk backwards, and are on the Australian coat of arms for that reason.

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

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

· Pinocchio is Italian for "pine head."

· Camel's milk does not curdle.

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

· An animal epidemic is called an epizootic.

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

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

· Blueberry Jelly Bellies were created especially for Ronald Reagan.

· All porcupines float in water.

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

· Did you know that there are coffee flavored PEZ?

· The world's largest wine cask is in Heidelberg, Germany.

· Marlin Thomas had one of his nipples bitten off by an alligator while he was host of "Marlin Thomas's Wild Kingdom." [Marlin Perkins, maybe?]

· Cat's urine glows under a blacklight.

· If you bring a racoon's head to the Henniker, New Hampshire town hall, you are entitled to receive $.10 from the town.

· St. Stephen is the patron saint of bricklayers.

· The first song played on Armed Forces Radio during operation Desert Shield was "Rock the Casba" by the Clash.

· The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days of yore when the engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and figured out how to walk up straight staircases.

· Non-dairy creamer is flammable.

· The airplane Buddy Holly died in was the "American Pie." (Thus the name of the Don McLean song.)

· Texas is the only state that is allowed to fly its state flag at the same height as the U.S. flag.

· The only nation who's name begins with an "A", but doesn't end in an "A" is Afghanistan.

· The names of the three wise monkeys are: Mizaru: See no evil, Mikazaru: Hear no evil, and Mazaru: Speak no evil.

· When opossums are playing 'possum, they are not "playing." They actually pass out from sheer terror.

· 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.

· the Miata exhaust pipe had 15 engineers assigned to designing the appropriate sound it would make.

MORE! (Thanks to Matt Connolly)

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

-Coca-Cola was originally green.

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

-Men can read smaller print than women; women can hear & smell better.

-The state with the highest percentage of people who walk to work is Alaska.

-The percentage of Africa that is wilderness: 28%

-The percentage of North America that is wilderness: 38%

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

-The average number of people airborne over the US any given hour is 61,000.

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

-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;

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.

"I am" is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.

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."

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

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

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

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

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

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"). The 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"). Furthermore, 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").

Q. What occurs more often in December than any other month?

A. Conception.

Q. What separates "60 Minutes" on CBS from every other TV show?

A. No theme song.

Q. Half of all Americans live within 50 miles of what?

A. Their birthplace.

Q. Most boat owners name their boats. What is the most popular boat name requested?

A. Obsession

Q. If you were to spell out numbers, how far would you have to count until you found the letter "A"?

A. One thousand

Q. What do bulletproof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers, and laser printers all have in common?

A. All invented by women.

Q. What is the only food that doesn't spoil?

A. Honey

Q. There are more collect calls on this day than any other day of the year?

A. Father's Day

Q. What trivial fact about MLE Blanc (voice of Bugs Bunny) is the most ironic?

A. He was allergic to carrots.

Q. What is an activity performed by 40% of all people at a party?

A. Snoop in your medicine cabinet.

Why are the lights on police cars now often blue instead of red? (Thanks to Mike Kositsky)

The blue lights are to clearly differentiate police cars from other emergency vehicles, thereby correcting a longstanding problem. It used to be that drivers who decided to flee from the police could later claim that they thought the red light behind them belonged to some other emergency vehicle. That meant that they could be charged only with failing to yield to an emergency vehicle. To avoid confusion and remove this as a possible alibi, the lights on police cars were changed to a different color. Blue was chosen because of its excellent visibility and uniqueness.

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