Useless facts

[Dibble]

Useless Facts
-In ancient Egypt, Priests plucked EVERY hair from their bodies, including their eyebrows and eyelashes.
-A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.
-The ant always falls over on its right side when intoxicated.
-Polar bears are left-handed.
-The catfish has over 27,000 taste buds, that makes the catfish rank #1 for animal having the most taste buds.
-The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.
-First novel ever written on a typewriter is Tom Sawyer.
-Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.
-Donald Duck comics were banned in Finland because he doesn't wear pants.
-More people are killed by donkeys annually than are killed in plane crashes.
-The name of all the continents end with the same letter that they start with.
-The word "lethologica" describes the state of not being able to remember the word you want.
-If the population of China walked past you in single file, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction.
-The word racecar and kayak are the same whether they are read left to right or right to left.
-A cockroach will live nine days without its head, before it starves to death.
-Butterflies taste with their feet.
-Elephants are the only animals that can't jump.
-An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
-Starfish haven't got brains.
-Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.
-Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.
-The national anthem of Greece has 158 verses. No one in Greece has memorized all 158 verses.
-There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.
-Los Angeles's full name is "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula". And can be abbreviated to 3.63% of its size, "L.A."
-A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.
-Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.
-In most advertisements, including newspapers, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10.
-Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer.
-When the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers play football at home, the stadium becomes the state's third largest city.
-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 microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.
-Mr. Rogers is an ordained minister.
-John Lennon's first girlfriend was named Thelma Pickles.
-The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.
-There are 336 dimples on a regulation golf ball.
-The average secretary's left hand does 56% of the typing.
-A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.
-There are more chickens than people in the world.
-Two-thirds of the world's eggplant is grown in New Jersey.
-A dragonfly has a lifespan of 24 hours.
-A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.
-A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.
-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.
-There are only four words in the English language which end in "- dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.
-The electric chair was invented by a dentist.
-Did you know you share your birthday with at least 9 other million people in the world?
-When it was built in the 1940s, the state of Virginia still had segregation laws requiring separate toilet facilities for blacks and whites.
-The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the body to squirt blood 30 feet.
-Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour.
-On average, people fear spiders more than they do death.
-The strongest muscle in the body is the TONGUE.
"I am." is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.
-You can't kill yourself by holding your breath.
-Americans on the average eat 18 acres of pizza every day.
-Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie.
-You know that you are more likely to be killed by a champagne cork than by a poisonous spider.
-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.
-Cat's urine glows under a black light.
-Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.
-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.
-Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously.
-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.
-One of the reasons marijuana is illegal today is because cotton growers in the 30s lobbied against hemp farmers-they saw it as competition.
-Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.
-The name Wendy was made up for the book "Peter Pan."
-If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days, you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee. If you fart consistently for 6 years and 9 months, enough gas is produced to create the energy of an atomic bomb.
-Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, dogs only have about ten.
-Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.
-In every episode of Seinfeld there is a Superman somewhere.
-If Barbie were life-size her measurements would be 39-23-33. She would stand seven feet, two inches tall and have a neck twice the length of a normal human's neck.
-Feb 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.
-The Pentagon, in Arlington, Virginia, has twice as many bathrooms as is necessary.

[Cem]

Fascinating, Dibs...cheers!

Originally Posted by Dibble

A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.

I'll accept 'goldfish' as my new nickname.

[Dibble]

Why?? Sorry I have forgotten

Obviously some folks here are completely unaware of the show Mythbusters.

Though I must admit to never having known that a polar bear has hands.

[crawjo]

Some interesting things I did not know:

1.) That the state of Virginia was "built" in the 1940s.

2.) That "I am" is the shortest complete sentence in the English language. What about: Yes. or No.

Um. It's been far too long since I was in gradeschool, but doesn't a complete sentence have to contain both a noun and a verb?

Better check with Brother Goodz, or Rita on this one.

[mjb]

I was just reading an article called "Death by Donkey - the not so silent worldwide killer" and there is clear evidence that the problen is worsening.

[Pete C]

"-If Barbie were life-size her measurements would be 39-23-33. She would stand seven feet, two inches tall and have a neck twice the length of a normal human's neck."

What's that suposed to mean? Unless it's based on a scale provided with the doll it's only 1 of numerous possibilities, regardless of any other proportional irregularities.

[Pete C]

"-The name of all the continents end with the same letter that they start with."

If not for the nasty fact that North America and South America are two continents, that might be true.

[Pete C]

"-If the population of China walked past you in single file, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction."

What do you call that position?

[Pete C]

"If you fart consistently for 6 years and 9 months, enough gas is produced to create the energy of an atomic bomb."

And consider the effects of kim chee.

[Uli]

"-Americans on the average eat 18 acres of pizza every day."

deep dish?

[SinginSumo]

Originally Posted by Pete C

"-If the population of China walked past you in single file, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction."

What do you call that position?

You may find your answer in the Kama Sutra.

[crawjo]

Originally Posted by Scott Dolan

Um. It's been far too long since I was in gradeschool, but doesn't a complete sentence have to contain both a noun and a verb?

Better check with Brother Goodz, or Rita on this one.

No, a complete sentence does not have to have a noun and a verb. For instance a command: Run! can be a complete sentence.

Originally Posted by crawjo

No, a complete sentence does not have to have a noun and a verb. For instance a command: Run! can be a complete sentence.

Crawjo, can you refer me to some sources that back this up? I've been looking into complete sentences on Google for a half hour now, and every site I have visited has clearly stated that a complete sentence must consist of a noun and a verb.

[chuckyd4]

I believe Crawjo is right in that an imperative (i.e. "Run!") counts as a sentence, because the subject (you) is implied. I don't think one-word answers like "Yes" or "No" would count, though. Wouldn't Tom Storer be the guy to check with on this one?

[crawjo]

What would "Yes" and "No" be, if not sentences? They aren't incomplete sentences. They aren't sentence fragments.

[Brian Olewnick]

"Is not a complete sentence" is not a complete sentence.

This sentence no verb.

Maybe Correct English Storer is just the person we need. Good call Chucky.

This is somewhat humorous, found it while searching Google:

Grammar Rules for the Unenlightened
Or: How to Write Good


Don't use no double negatives.
Don't never use no triple negatives.
No sentence fragments
Corollary: Complete sentences: important.
Stamp out and eliminate redundancy.
Avoid cliches like the plague.
All generalizations are bad.
Corollary: All statements must be specific.
Never listen to advice.
Take care that your verb and subject is in agreement.
A preposition is a bad thing to end a sentence with.
Anarchy should be the law.
Corollary: I will establish democracy by dictatorial decree.
Everyone should be a non-conformist.
People who insult others are jerks.
Always be sincere, even if you don't mean it.
Death to intolerance.
Down with categorical imperatives.
Avoid those run-on sentences that just go on, and on, and on, they never stop, they just keep rambling, and you really wish the person would just shut up, but no, they just keep going, they're worse than the Energizer Bunny, they babble incessantly, and these sentences, they just never stop, they go on forever...if you get my drift...
Nobody has a right to his opinion.
Never contradict yourself always.
Good people like I are never self-righteous.
You should never use the second person.
The passive voice should never be used.
We Scorpios don't believe in astrology.
When dangling, watch your participles.
Why no, Ossifer, I'm not under the alcofluence of incohol.
Never go off on tangents, which are lines that intersect a curve at only one point and were discovered by Euclid, who lived in the sixth century, which was an era dominated by the Goths, who lived in what we now know as Poland...
Always do what is right, even if it's wrong.
As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "I hate quotations."
Excessive use of exclamation points can be disastrous!!!!!
Remember to end each sentence with a period
Don't use commas, which aren't necessary.
Don't use question marks inappropriately?
Don't be terse.
Don't obfuscate your theses with extraneous verbiage.
Never use that totally cool, radically groovy out-of-date slang.
Stop calling me immature or I'll tell on you.
Avoid tumbling off the cliff of triteness into the black abyss of overused metaphors.
Keep your ear to the grindstone, your nose to the ground, take the bull by the horns of a dilemma, and stop mixing your metaphors.
We will fight to the death for our pacifist aims.
Avoid those abysmally horrible, outrageously repellent exaggerations.
Avoid any awful anachronistic aggravating antediluvian alliterations.
Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.

[Al in NYC]

Originally Posted by crawjo

Some interesting things I did not know:

1.) That the state of Virginia was "built" in the 1940s.

I think that this was somehow related to the later tidbit regarding bathrooms in the Pentagon. But I may be wrong, perhaps Virginia was created in the '40's (certainly before my time...) by an evil segregationist scientist, and we've all been duped somehow into believing that it has been there since colonial times.

[gonzo]

useless facts are my life!!!

[clinthopson]

If you travel north long enough, eventually you will travel south.

OTOH, if you travel west, you will always be going west.