Funny, little-known, or unusual facts

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A snail can sleep for three years.
Ninety percent of New York City cabbies are recently arrived immigrants.
In 10 minutes, a hurricane releases more energy than all of the world's nuclear weapons combined.
Turtles can breathe through their butts.
Pearls melt in vinegar.
Walt Disney was afraid of mice.
You burn more calories sleeping than you do watching television.
Donkeys kill more people annually than plane crashes.
Most lipstick contains fish scales.
Rats multiply so quickly that in 18 months, two rats could have over a million descendants.
Close to 80% of people who watch the Super Bowl on television, only do so to view the commercials.
In the 1800's, people believed that gin could cure stomach problems.
It took approximately 2.5 million blocks to build the Pyramid of Giza, which is one of the Great Pyramids.
Thomas Edison designed a helicopter that would work with gunpowder. It ended up blowing up and also blew up his factory.
McDonalds calls frequent buyers of their food heavy users.
Americans ate eight million more orders of french fries and almost six million more hamburgers this year compared to last.
The Netherlands has built 800 miles of massive dikes and sea walls to hold back the sea.
One pair of rats has the potential for 15,000 descendants in a year. A female can produce up to twelve litters of twenty rats a year.
Male and female rats may have sex twenty times a day.
The rat has been called the world's most destructive mammal - other than man.
Rats destroy an estimated 1/3 of the world's food supply each year.
25% of all fires of unknown origin are rat-caused.
26% of all electric cable breaks and 18% of all phone cable disruptions are caused by rats.
The USA has more personal computers than the next 7 countries combined.
Members of the armed forces and the police cannot vote in the Dominican Republic.
US tops the world in plastic surgery procedures. Next comes Mexico.
22% of American women aged 20 gave birth while in their teens. In Switzerland and Japan, only 2% did so.
Mexican women spend 15.3% of their life in ill health.
Most Zambians don't live to see their 40th birthday.
The Mall in Washington, D.C. is 1.4 times larger than Vatican City.
The women of Iceland earn two-thirds of their nation's university degrees.
American adults have been educated for the longest time.
The ten most generous countries are all in Europe.
72% of people in Mali earn less than $1 per day.
The top 8 most developed countries all speak Germanic languages. Every such country is in the top 20.
More than 20% of the votes in the 2001 elections in Argentina were invalid.
You can be imprisoned for not voting in Fiji, Chile and Egypt - at least in theory.
0.7% of Americans are currently in prison.
Saudi diplomats have 367 outstanding parking fines in Britain.
The average criminal sentence length is 137 years in Colombia.
Two-thirds of the world's kidnappings occur in Colombia.
America puts many more of its citizens in prison than any other nation.
Two-thirds of the world's executions occur in China.
Former enemies, America and Russia now have a great deal in common - they both lead the world in locking people up.
You're 66 times more likely to be prosecuted in the USA as in France.
The Chico, California, City Council enacted a ban on nuclear weapons, setting a $500.00 fine for anyone detonating one within city limits.
Sex is the safest tranquilizer in the world. It is 10 times more effective than valium!
All humans Are 99.9% genetically identical and 98.4% of human genes are the same as the genes of a chimpanzee.
For every 'normal' webpage, there are five porn pages.
Sex is biochemically no different from eating large quantities of chocolate.
A man's beard grows fastest when he anticipates sex.
Male bats have the highest rate of homosexuality of any mammal.
The average shelf-life of a latex condom is about two years.
Consuming chocolate was once considered a sin during the 16th and 17th century.
Coca-Cola used to contain cocaine when it was initially introduced.
Acorns were used as a coffee substitute during the American Civil War.
Chocolate was used as medicine during the 18th century. It was believed that chocolate could cure a stomach ache.

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Reyn, what is the source?

This one caught my eye

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25% of all fires of unknown origin are rat-caused.

I guess the reason is really known then, eh. :-)

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The average shelf-life of a latex condom is about two years.

Uh, oh!

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America puts many more of its citizens in prison than any other nation.

Must be good for the economy

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0.7% of Americans are currently in prison.

Must be a slow year

Quote:

The Chico, California, City Council enacted a ban on nuclear weapons, setting a $500.00 fine for anyone detonating one within city limits

Only in California...

Laughing

1 Reply

Intrepid wrote:

Reyn, what is the source?

Oh sure, if I knew there was going to be a test, I would have studied! Laughing

1 Reply

0 Replies

More "unsourced" facts.... Laughing

A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.
A cat's urine glows under a blacklight.
A cockroach will live nine days without it's head, before it starves to death.
A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.
A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.
A dragonfly has a lifespan of 24 hours.
A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.
A pig's orgasm lasts for 30 minutes.
A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.
Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer.
All 50 states are listed across the top of the Lincoln Memorial on the back of the $5 bill.
All of the clocks in the movie "Pulp Fiction" are stuck on 4:20.
Almonds are a member of the peach family.
Americans on the average eat 18 acres of pizza every day.
Amount American Airlines saved in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in first class: $40,000.
An ostrich's eye is bigger than it's brain.
Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour.
Chances of a white Christmas in New York: 1 in 4.
Chances that an American lives within 50 miles of where they grew up: 1 in 2.
City with the most Rolls Royce's per capita: Hong Kong.
Coca-cola was originally green.
Did you know that you are more likely to be killed by a champagne cork than by a poisonous spider?
Dreamt is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt."
Elephants are the only animals that can't jump.
Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than for the US Treasury.
Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie.
Humans and dolphins are the only species that have sex for pleasure.
If you fart consistently for 6 years and 9 months, enough gas is produced to create the energy of an atomic bomb.
If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days, you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.
In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak.
In ancient Egypt, Priests plucked EVERY hair from their bodies, including their eyebrows and eyelashes.
In most advertisements, including newspapers, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10.
It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
John Lennon's first girlfriend was named Thelma Pickles.
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."
Maine is the only state whose name is just one syllable.
Men can read smaller print than women; women can hear better.
Mr. Rogers is an ordained minister.
No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, or purple.
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.
On average people fear spiders more than they do death.
Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.
Polar bears are left handed.
Right-handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people do.
Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.
Smartest dogs: 1) border collie; 2) poodle; 3) golden retriever. Dumbest dog: Afghan.
Some lions mate over 50 times a day.
Starfishes haven't got brains.
State with the highest percentage of people who walk to work: Alaska.
Stewardesses is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand.
The Hawaiian alphabet has 12 letters.
The ant can lift 50 times its own weight, can pull 30 times its own weight and always falls over on its right side when intoxicated.
The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.
The average person's left hand does 56% of the typing.
The catfish has over 27,000 taste buds, that makes the catfish rank #1 for animal having the most taste buds.
The characters Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street were named after Bert the cop and Ernie the taxi driver in Frank Capra's "It's A Wonderful Life."
The flea can jump 350 times its body length, that is like a human jumping the length of a football field.
The giant squid has the largest eyes in the world.
The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the body to squirt blood 30 feet.
The longest one-syllable word in the English language is "screeched."
The male praying mantis cannot copulate while its head is attached to its body. The female initiates sex by ripping the males head off.
The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.
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."
The national anthem of Greece has 158 verses. No one in Greece has memorized all 158 verses.
The only real person to be a Pez head was Betsy Ross.
The strongest muscle in the body is the TONGUE.
There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.
There are 336 dimples on a regulation golf ball.
There are more chickens than people in the world.
There are only four words in the English language which end in "-dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.
Tigers have stripped skin, not just stripped fur.
Two-thirds of the world's eggplant is grown in New Jersey.
When the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers play football at home, the stadium becomes the state's third largest city.
Who's that playing the piano on the "Mad About You" theme? Paul Reiser himself.
Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance.
You can't kill yourself by holding your breath.

1 Reply

Reyn wrote:

More "unsourced" facts....

[quote]
A cat's urine glows under a blacklight.

This could be useful at a party

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[*]A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.

Enough to have a debate with George Bush

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[*]A pig's orgasm lasts for 30 minutes.

No wonder they sleep so much

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[*]Americans on the average eat 18 acres of pizza every day.

Hence the term...fat cat

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

Another Bush joke in the making

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[*]Elephants are the only animals that can't jump.

They are also the only animals that don't have to.

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

No surpise there

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

That's what we would have them believe Laughing

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[*]Polar bears are left handed.

And I always thought that they had paws

Quote:

[*]Starfishes haven't got brains.

Yet another Bush joke in the making

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[*]The ant can lift 50 times its own weight, can pull 30 times its own weight and always falls over on its right side when intoxicated.

Who studies these things? :-D

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[*]The average person's left hand does 56% of the typing.

That is probably why right handed people live an average of 7 years longer than left handed people '-)

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

There are actually 5. They forgot annelidous

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I'm still stuck on "Turtles can breath through their butts."

Who figured that out?

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squinney wrote:

I'm still stuck on "Turtles can breath through their butts."

Who figured that out?

Probably the guy who needed artificial respiration and awoke to find a turtle sitting on his face Laughing

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I knew you guys would love these and have fun with them! :wink:

Say 'trep', I gotta ask you this pressing question. Everybody else feels self-conscious about asking, so I guess I gotta to be the one!

>Is it my imagination, or is the head on your avatar shrinking everytime I see it? Shocked

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The life cycle of the dragonfly, from egg to death of adult, is from six months to as much as six or seven years. Female dragonflies lay eggs in or near water, often in or on floating or emergent plants. Most of their life cycle is spent in the larval (nymph) form, beneath the water surface, using internal gills to breathe, catching other invertebrates or even vertebrates such as tadpoles and fish. In the adult (flying) stage, larger species of dragonfly can live as long as four months. Dragonflies have very good eyesight due to their unique eye structure. Dragonflies have up to 30,000 facets to their eyes, each one is a separate light-sensing organ or ommatidia, arranged to give them nearly a 360° field of vision.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly

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Nice one, Bob! Thanks for adding to the list. Very Happy

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Reyn wrote:

I knew you guys would love these and have fun with them! :wink:

Say 'trep', I gotta ask you this pressing question. Everybody else feels self-conscious about asking, so I guess I gotta to be the one!

>Is it my imagination, or is the head on your avatar shrinking everytime I see it?

Never mind about my head, what happened to your "signature" signature Avatar? Shocked

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Wait... wait... wait.

I think that the donkeys are getting a bum steer here.

"More people killed by donkeys than airplane crashes?"

I'm not buying that one!!! Very Happy

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squinney wrote:

I'm still stuck on "Turtles can breath through their butts."

Who figured that out?

I'm pretty sure that's a mere rumor...

I used to care for turtles, and I do believe that this question was proposed on the forum-community (complete with Herptologists, vets, etc) and was de-frauded. However, don't go on this, it could be a shakey memory. I do recall lots of young kids getting online and asking if this was possible. Laughing

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I have my doubts about the accuracy of this list, since the only one I know about definitely is not true:

Quote:

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

No he wasn't.

He was born in one of the spare bedrooms in Blenheim Palace on Oxfordshire, the home of the Dukes of Marlborough, which was being used for ball guests to leave their coats and cloaks in.

The confusion has arisen because the word "cloakroom" in British English means what it says (a room to put cloaks and coats in) but in America means a toilet.

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Intrepid wrote:

Never mind about my head, what happened to your "signature" signature Avatar?

I dunno. I woke up this morning....and there was this...guy...there! Shocked

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Piffka wrote:

Wait... wait... wait.

I think that the donkeys are getting a bum steer here.

"More people killed by donkeys than airplane crashes?"

I'm not buying that one!!!

Sanctuary wrote:

squinney wrote:
I'm still stuck on "Turtles can breath through their butts."

Who figured that out?

I'm pretty sure that's a mere rumor...

I used to care for turtles, and I do believe that this question was proposed on the forum-community (complete with Herptologists, vets, etc) and was de-frauded. However, don't go on this, it could be a shakey memory. I do recall lots of young kids getting online and asking if this was possible.

syntinen wrote:

I have my doubts about the accuracy of this list, since the only one I know about definitely is not true:

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

No he wasn't.

He was born in one of the spare bedrooms in Blenheim Palace on Oxfordshire, the home of the Dukes of Marlborough, which was being used for ball guests to leave their coats and cloaks in.

The confusion has arisen because the word "cloakroom" in British English means what it says (a room to put cloaks and coats in) but in America means a toilet.

Excellent! It's good to question! It gets the mental juices flowing!

The lists brings good points for discussion....

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Most Kicks to the Head in One Minute

The record for the most consecutive kicks to one's own head in one minute is held by Michael Lloyd of Midland, Texas, USA who kicked himself in the forehead 42 times in a row on October 7, 2003.

To find the witnesses necessary to submit his application to Guinness World Records, Lloyd drove through his local streets, finally stopping at an optometrists, where he found two willing, if probably confused, eyewitnesses.

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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 housefly hums in the middle octave, key of F.
If your eyes are six feet above the surface of the ocean, the horizon will be about three statute miles away.
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 its plural, pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconioses.
Ben and Jerry's sends the waste from making ice cream to local pig farmers to use as feed. Pigs love the stuff, except for one flavor: Mint Oreo.
The longest recorded flight of a chicken is thirteen seconds.
The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin during World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.
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.
It was discovered on a space mission that a frog can throw up. The frog throws up its stomach first, so the stomach is dangling out of its mouth. Then the frog uses its 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
Charles Lindbergh took only four sandwiches with him on his famous transatlantic flight.
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.
Armadillos are the only animal besides humans that can get leprosy.
Reindeer like to eat bananas.

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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.

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.

Almonds are members of the peach family.

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.

The only real person to be a Pez head was Betsy Ross.

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

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."

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.

The giant squid has the largest eyes in the world.

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.

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."

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.

There are 336 dimples on a regulation golf ball.

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

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