Perth-WRX.com - 301 Useless Facts - Kept me amused at work this morning :p

[url="http://www.singlegrain.com/blog/301-useless-facts/"]301 Useless Facts[/url]

1. Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) was born on and died on days when Halley’s Comet can be seen. During his life he predicted that he would die when it could be seen.

2. US Dollar bills are made out of cotton and linen.

3. The “57″ on the Heinz ketchup bottle represents the number of pickle types the company once had.

4. Americans are responsible for about 1/5 of the world’s garbage annually. On average, that’s 3 pounds a day per person.

5. Giraffes and rats can last longer without water than camels.

6. Your stomach produces a new layer of mucus every two weeks so that it doesn’t digest itself.

7. 98% of all murders and rapes are by a close family member or friend of the victim.

8. A B-25 bomber crashed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building on July 28, 1945.

9. The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp (marijuana) paper.

10. The dot over the letter “i” is called a tittle.

11. A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continuously from the bottom of the glass to the top.

12. Benjamin Franklin was the fifth in a series of the youngest son of the youngest son.

13. Triskaidekaphobia means fear of the number 13. Paraskevidekatriaphobia means fear of Friday the 13th (which occurs one to three times a year). In Italy, 17 is considered an unlucky number. In Japan, 4 is considered an unlucky number.

14. A female ferret will die if it goes into heat and cannot find a mate.

15. All the chemicals in a human body combined are worth about 6.25 euro (if sold separately).

16. In ancient Rome, when a man testified in court he would swear on his testicles.

17. The ZIP in “ZIP code” means Zoning Improvement Plan.

18. Coca-Cola contained Coca (whose active ingredient is cocaine) from 1885 to 1903.

19. A “2 by 4″ is really 1 1/2 by 3 1/2.

20. It’s estimated that at any one time around 0.7% of the world’s population is drunk.

21. Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history: Spades = David ; Clubs = Alexander the Great ; Hearts = Charlemagne ; Diamonds = Caesar

22. 40% of McDonald’s profits come from the sales of Happy Meals.

23. Every person, including identical twins, has a unique eye and tongue print along with their finger print.

24. The “spot” on the 7-Up logo comes from its inventor who had red eyes. He was an albino.

25. 315 entries in Webster’s 1996 dictionary were misspelled.

26. The “save” icon in Microsoft Office programs shows a floppy disk with the shutter on backwards.

27. Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin both married their first cousins (Elsa Löwenthal and Emma Wedgewood respectively).

28. Camel’s have three eyelids.

29. On average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents every day.

30. John Wilkes Booth’s brother once saved the life of Abraham Lincoln’s son.

31. Warren Beatty and Shirley McLaine are brother and sister.

32. Chocolate can kill dogs; it directly affects their heart and nervous system.

33. Daniel Boone hated coonskin caps.

34. 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.

35. 55.1% of all US prisoners are in prison for drug offenses.

36. Most lipstick contains fish scales.

37. Orcas (killer whales) kill sharks by torpedoing up into the shark’s stomach from underneath, causing the shark to explode.

38. Dr. Seuss pronounced his name “soyce”.

39. Slugs have four noses.

40. Ketchup was sold in the 1830s as medicine.

41. The Three Wise Monkeys have names: Mizaru (See no evil), Mikazaru (Hear no evil), and Mazaru (Speak no evil).

42. India has a Bill of Rights for cows.

43. If you sneeze too hard, you can fracture a rib. If you try to suppress a sneeze, you can rupture a blood vessel in your head or neck and die. If you keep your eyes open by force, they can pop out. (DON’T TRY IT, DUMBASS)

44. During the California gold rush of 1849, miners sent their laundry to Honolulu for washing and pressing. Due to the extremely high costs in California during these boom years, it was deemed more feasible to send their shirts to Hawaii for servicing.

45. American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by taking out an olive from First Class salads.

46. About 200,000,000 M&Ms are sold each day in the United States.

47. Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made of wood.

48. Over a course of about eleven years, the sun’s magnetic poles switch places. This cycle is called “Solarmax”.

49. There are 318,979,564,000 possible combinations of the first four moves in Chess.

50. Upper and lower case letters are named “upper” and “lower” because in the time when all original print had to be set in individual letters, the upper case letters were stored in the case on top of the case that stored the lower case letters.

51. There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos.

52. The numbers “172″ can be found on the back of the US 5 dollar bill, in the bushes at the base of the Lincoln Memorial.

53. Coconuts kill about 150 people each year. That’s more than sharks.

54. Half of all bank robberies take place on a Friday.

55. The name Wendy was made up for the book Peter Pan. There was never a recorded Wendy before it.

56. The international telephone dialing code for Antarctica is 672.

57. The first bomb the Allies dropped on Berlin in WWII killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.

58. The average raindrop falls at 7 miles per hour.

59. It took Leonardo Da Vinci 10 years to paint Mona Lisa. He never signed or dated the painting. Leonardo and Mona had identical bone structures according to the painting. X-ray images have shown that there are 3 other versions under the original.

60. If you put a drop of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death.

61. Bruce Lee was so fast that they had to slow the film down so you could see his moves.

62. The largest amount of money you can have without having change for a dollar is $1.19 (3 quarters, 4 dimes, and 4 pennies cannot be divided into a dollar).

63. The first CD pressed in the US was Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA”.

64. IBM’s motto is “Think”. Apple later made their motto “Think different”.

65. The mask used by Michael Myers in the original “Halloween” was actually a Captain Kirk mask painted white, due to low budget.

66. The original name for butterfly was flutterby.

67. 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.

68. One in fourteen women in America is a natural blonde. Only one in sixteen men is.

69. The Olympic was the sister ship of the Titanic, and she provided twenty-five years of service.

70. When the Titanic sank, 2228 people were on it. Only 706 survived.

71. In America, someone is diagnosed with AIDS every 10 minutes. In South Africa, someone dies due to HIV or AIDS every 10 minutes.

72. Every day, 7% of the US eats at McDonald’s.

73. 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, which Motorola got their name from.

74. In the US, about 127 million adults are overweight or obese; worldwide, 750 million are overweight and 300 million more are obese. In the US, 15% of children in elementary school are overweight; 20% are worldwide.

75. In Disney’s Fantasia, the Sorcerer to whom Mickey played an apprentice was named Yensid (Disney spelled backward).

76. During his entire life, Vincent Van Gogh sold exactly one painting, “Red Vineyard at Arles”.

77. By raising your legs slowly and lying on your back, you cannot sink into quicksand.

78. One in ten people live on an island.

79. It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with.

80. 28% of Africa is classified as wilderness. In North America, its 38%.

81. Charlie Chaplin once won third prize in a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest.

82. Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.

83. Sherlock Holmes NEVER said “Elementary, my dear Watson”, Humphrey Bogart NEVER said “Play it again, Sam” in Casablanca, and they NEVER said “Beam me up, Scotty” on Star Trek.

84. An old law in Bellingham, Washington, made it illegal for a woman to take more than 3 steps backwards while dancing.

85. Sharon Stone was the first Star Search spokes model.

86. The sound you here when you put a seashell next to your ear is not the ocean, but blood flowing through your head.

87. More people are afraid of open spaces (kenophobia) than of tight spaces (claustrophobia).

88. The glue on Israeli postage is certified kosher.

89. There is a 1 in 4 chance that New York will have a white Christmas.

90. The Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from Public Libraries.

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