A COMPLETELY USELESS PIECE OF TRIVIA

Among adicts -- including alcoholics -- the word "user" denotes one who uses drugs other than alcohol. This is a particularly common expression among adicts in recovery.

The can opener was invented after the can

In a secret place in the Masai Mara, there is an elephants' graveyard, which is full of bones and ivory tusks, worth a fortune.
When the old elephants go there to die, the hoovers of the Masai Mara, the hyenas and the jackals and the lions and the tigers and the jaguars come out to clean up. There are no vultures however, as vultures have always been told that bull elephants had one glass eye. Which, of course, is a complete misunderstanding and they misheard two hyenas saying that an elephant was one massive pie.

Anyway, as you know, all birds have crops. This, as we learned in Biology 101, was to store ingested rocks and other hard materials in, to assist the bird concerned in digestion of any dead bodies lying about. The vuluture is no exception. And it will tackle enthusiastically any dead body lying about. It always goes for the eyes first and should that body happen to have a glass eye and it accidentally ingests it, it goes "tcha, tcha", trying to spit it out, but without success. It's no use as a grinding aid to digestion as it is too smooth, so ole Vinnie the Vulture has to go pass it through the stomach and out the other end. When Vinnie knows when he is due to defecate marbles he goes to a certain spot on the Serengeti Plain and delivers the marble or marbles to the already existing pile. This has given rise to that well known phrase or saying, "Marbles are Crap".

Oh - but what of the Indian vulture? Where do they crap their marbles?


Australia exports disease-free camels to the Middle East - or did.

They are the wild descendants of the camels used by the Afghan traders who used to use them for carrying goods in the outback.

These traders, and, I suppose, their camels, are immortalised in the name of the legendary train which now carries out much of their old work of supplying remote settlements - "The Ghan".


http://www.railaustralia.com.au/ghan.htm
http://www.gsr.com.au/ghan
http://www.gsr.com.au/
http://www.oztravel.com.au/travel_mall/tours/The_Ghan_AdelaGHAAME.html
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~fliranre/ghan.htm
http://www.northernterritory.visitorsbureau.com.au/redcentre/todo/ghan

Still does export camels - Australia has the only population of wild camels (ferals) left in the world. These are the only ones suited for the sport of camel racing, so the evil-tempered, evil-smelling creatures are rounded up and sent BACK to Arabia for tiny little boy jockeys to ride.

Austrade is now hoping to market sand to the Arabs, ice to the Finns, cigars to Cuba, cookbooks to Tuscany and soap to the English.

And why not, Mr. Stillwater? They're already exporting movie stars to Hollywood.

Indeed, Mr Stillwater, after all, their origin and long history makes them ideal salespersons of the unsellable - except for the soap, which they should hang onto for personal use.

Found in obscure Australian Dictionary between 'Jesuits Bark' and 'Jesus Freak':

"Jesus Christ - Founder of Christianity (c.6BC - c.Ad30)."

Liechtenstein is the World's largest exporter of false teeth.

Despite being only 161 square kilometers, Liechtenstein lays claim to about 1,600 square kilometers of land in the Czech Republic.

Many scholars believe Pontius Pilate was born in Britain.

The name "Chechnya" was in fact coined by Russians, and is named after the once-upon-a-time border village Chechen-aul, beyond which the Russians knew this yet unknown, but troublesome people to live. When the Chechens rushed to declare their independence in 1990, they realised the country had no native name of its own, and a fierce debate ensued.

The only grammatically correct, native names would be Nokhchi-Mokhk or Nokhchi-cho. But since Chechen head of state General Dudayev realised that nobody in the world would be able to pronounce either of those names, he had the name be Ichkeria instead, which actually means "that place over there" in Kumyk (which is not spoken in Chechnya).

Ichkeria is how the Russian 19th century poet Lermontov called that general corner of the empire, and Dudayev, having spent most of his life in army garrisons around the Soviet Union, happened to love Lermontov's poems and know them by heart. "Any objection to the fact that Lermontov was a European romantic who regarded the Chechen warriors as magnificent untamed beasts was dismissed as pedantry by Dudayev". (source)

The Vandals were the particular "barbarian" tribe which conquered and lay claim to a large portion of the Iberian Peninsula ca. 400-500 c.e. Hence, the name Andalusia which is merely a later corruption of Vandalusia.

Speaking of Vandals,

Thugs were members of a religious sect of Kali in India, who would use a coin wrapped in cloth as a garrotte to kill enemies

Assassins were a particular sect of Islam in the near East active during the Crusades. They not only killed Crusaders but other Muslims who did not agree with them politically.

Right, Equus. And I'm sure you already know the fascinating derivation of that word -- assassins.

Talk about coincidence - I was just reading about this yesterday! Evidently the word comes from the Arabic "Hashashin" and means "those who use hashish" - because this group would get stoned before they went on their killing spree.

Right you are, lezzles. Yhey'd get these dudes high and then send them out to kill whomever they were told to kill.

The hottest temperature ever recorded in Alaska is the same as the hottest temperature ever recorded in Hawaii: 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Now, that I find fascinating! A lot more than just "useless trivia."

Reno, Nevada is further west than Los Angeles, California

How true. And if you fly directly due south from the Detroit International Airport, the first foreign country whose borders you will cross is Canada. Think that 'un over.

...and you head southeast as you pass through the Panama Canal from the Atlantic to the Pacific....