Useless Facts

September 7, 2006 at 9:57 am (Entrance)

• A rat can last longer without water than a camel.  
• Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks or it will digest itself.   
• The dot over the letter “i” is called a tittle.   
• A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continuously from the bottom of the glass to the top.   
• A female ferret will die if it goes into heat and cannot find a mate.  
• Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.  
• A 2 X 4 is really 1-1/2″ by 3-1/2″.  
• During the chariot scene in “Ben Hur,” a small red car can be seen in the distance (and Heston’s wearing a watch).  
• On average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily!  
• Sherlock Holmes NEVER said, “Elementary, my dear Watson.”  
•  Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made of wood.  
• The number of possible ways of playing the first four moves per side in a game of chess is 318,979,564,000.  
• There are no words in the dictionary that rhyme with orange, purple and silver.  
• Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a spacesuit damages them.  
• The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin in World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.  
• If one places a tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death. (Who was the sadist who discovered this?) 
• Bruce Lee was so fast that they actually had to s-l-o-w film down so you could see his moves. That’s the opposite of the norm.  
• The first CD pressed in the US was Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA.”  
• The original name for butterfly was flutterby.  
• 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 first product Motorola started to develop was a record player for automobiles. At that time, the most known player on the market was Victrola, so they called themselves Motorola.  
• Roses may be red, but violets are indeed violet.  
• By raising your legs slowly and lying on your back, you cannot sink into quicksand.  
• Celery has negative calories. It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with.  
• Charlie Chaplin once won third prize in a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest.  
• An old law in Bellingham, Washington, made it illegal for a woman to take more than three steps backwards while dancing!  
• The Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from public libraries.  
• The glue on Israeli postage is certified kosher.  
• EMU’s and kangaroos cannot walk backwards, and are on the Australian coat of arms for that reason. 
• Bats always turn left when exiting a cave!  
• 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. 
• Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older. 
• A duck’s quack does not echo, and no one knows why.  
• It is impossible to lick your elbow.
• The only man-made structure visible from space is the
  Great Wall of China.
• A crocodile can’t stick it’s tongue out.
• 40 people are sent to the hospital for dog bites every minute.
• A shrimp’s heart is in it’s head.
• Most car horns honk in the key of ‘F’.
• People say ‘Bless you’ when you sneeze because your heart stops for a millisecond.
• The most common name in world is Mohammed.
• A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.
• The serial number of the first MAC ever produced was 2001.
• Rats and horses can’t vomit.
• Most people button their shirt upwards.
• In every episode of Seinfeld there is a Superman somewhere.
• The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.
• The last time American Green cards were actually green was 1964.
• 35% of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married.
• 23% of all photocopier breakdowns are caused by people sitting on them while photocopying their rears.
• Most lipstick contains fish scales.
• There are 2,598,960 possible hands in a five-card poker game.
• More than half the people who read this will try to lick their elbow.

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