- 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 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.