The Huge List of Facts

Note: These facts are not verifed, and may be false.

The Natural World

When reflected from bright lights (head lights) deer's eyes are orange, wheras cats and dogs are green. Rabbits eyes remain black. 

Your body temp is lowest at 4 a.m.

Lightning is five times hotter than the Sun. 

Dolphins don't automatically breath, they have to tell themselves to. 

Pigs killed off the dodo bird

Eagles can live in captivity for up to 46 years. 

Forty-five different kinds of antelope can be found in Africa. 

Centipedes have between 28 and 354 legs. 

Carnivorous animals will not eat another animal that has been hit by a lightning strike. 

Reindeer milk has more fat than cow milk. 

The underside of a horse's hoof is called a frog. The frog peels off several times a year with new growth.

A group of geese on the ground is a gaggle, a group of geese in the air is a skein. 

A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.

Most cows give more milk when they listen to music. 

Armadillos can be house broken.

A shark can grow a new set of teeth in a week. 

The Vampire Bat has chemicals in its saliva to prevent the victim's blood from clotting for 2-3 minutes.

The Vampire Bat can live up to 9 years feeding on the blood of domestic animals, particulary cows, pigs, and horses.

In one year a colony of 100 vampire bats consumes the equivalent of the blood in 25 cows.

Given the chance, gray squirrels will eat bird eggs & chicks.

A sparrow has more bones in its neck than a giraffe.

Cochroaches favorite foods are the glue on the back of stamps & envelopes.

Dragonflies have a life span of 24 hours.

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. 

Ancestors of both common short-haired and long-haired domestic cats were not indigenous to the United States and were imported from foreign countries.
The book of Cat Facts by Marcus Schneck and Jill Caravan

The average house cat weighs in at 11 pounds.

Tylenol and chocolate are both poisionous to cats.

The ancestor of all domestic cats is the African Wild Cat which still exists today.

In ancient Egypt, killing a cat was a crime punishable by death. 

In ancient Egypt, mummies were made of cats, and embalmed mice were placed with them in their tombs. In one ancient city, over 300,000 cat mummies were found. 

In the Middle Ages, during the Festival of Saint John, cats were burned alive in town squares. 

The first cat show was in 1871 at the Crystal Palace in London. 

Today there are about 100 distinct breeds of the domestic cat. 

Genetic mutation created the domestic cat which is tame from birth. 

Like birds, cats have a homing ability that uses its biological clock, the angle of the sun, and the Earth's magnetic field. A cat taken far from its home can return to it. But if a cat's owners move far from its home, the cat can't find them. 

Hunting is not instinctive for cats. Kittens born to non-hunting mothers may never learn to hunt. 

Cats bury their feces to cover their trails from predators. 

Mother cats teach their kittens to use the litter box. 

Among other tasks, cats can be taught to use a toilet, come, sit, beg, eat with their paws, heel, jump through a hoop, play a piano, play dead, roll over, open a door, hide food in boxes, shake, and fetch. 

Cats sleep 16 to 18 hours per day.

When cats are asleep, they are still alert to incoming stimuli. If you poke the tail of a sleeping cat, it will respond accordingly.

In Great Britain, black cats are thought to bring good luck. 

Besides smelling with their nose, cats can smell with an additional organ called the Jacobson's organ, located in the upper surface of the mouth. 

The chlorine in fresh tap water irritates sensitive parts of the cat's nose. Let tap water sit for 24 hours before giving it to a cat. 

The average cat food meal is the equivalent to about five mice. 

The catgut formerly used as strings in tennis rackets and musical instruments does not come from cats. Catgut actually comes from sheep, hogs, and horses. 

A large majority of white cats with blue eyes are deaf. White cats with only one blue eye are deaf only in the ear closest to the blue eye. White cats with orange eyes do not have this disability. 

Neutering a cat extends its life span by two or three years. 

Pregnant women are advised not to come in contact with cat feces, because it can contain an organism which can affect the unborn child and even cause miscarriage. 

Ten human years translate to about 60 cat years. A one year old cat is similar in age to an 18 year old human.

Elephants are particularly fond of beer and other forms of alcohol; they are known to seek out fermenting durian fruits in

Male bees will try to attract sex partners with orchid fragrance. 

The typical termite colony is composed of members showing structural characteristics that scientists use to classify the termites. The four groups of termites, workers, soldiers, immature individuals, and reproductives each have particular roles in the colony. The workers, which are sterile, blind, and wingless, tend the eggs, feed the soldiers and the young, and maintain the nest. Protozoans living in the termites digestive tract convert wood to sugars that the termites can use for nourishment. Without these one celled animals, the termites would starve. Soldiers' sole purpose in life is to defend the colony against intruders. The variety of these defense mechanisms that have been evolved in different species will be discussed later. A young individual will develop into a winged reproductive, soldier, or a worker depending on the current needs of the colony. Reproductives obviously supply the colony with new individuals. Only one pair of active reproductives exists in a colony. The king and queen are usually sealed into a chamber where they are tended by workers. The queen also circulates different chemicals among the workers for stimulating the transformation of immature termites into soldiers, workers, or "secondary" reproductives - members who will develop wings and found new colonies. When a worker feeds the queen, the queen immediately knows if a particular group needs replenishing. For example, if a large number of soldiers were killed while repelling an enemy, the queen intercepts this information from the chemicals transferred from a worker. The queen then circulates a greater amount of "soldier chemical" in the colony by exuding the chemical from its body. Workers tending the queen take the chemical to other members and the young who will eventually develop into soldiers. 

Houseflies have a lifespan of two weeks.[Source: Did you ever wonder] 

The termites of the world outweigh humans 10:1

Aramadillo babies are identical quads. (clones that is)

On dry, windy days, pollen can travel up to 500 miles.

Although tornadoes occur throughout the world, including India and Bangladesh, they are most intense and devastating in the United States. Toradoes can strike at any time of day, but they are much more frequent in the afternoon and evening, after the heat of the day has produced the hot air that is a requirement of a tornadic thunderstorm.

Frog-eating bats identify edible from poisonous frogs by listening to the mating calls of male frogs. Frogs counter by hiding and using short, difficult to locate calls.

Mice feeding on colored crayons will produce droppings based on the color of the crayon they were feeding on.

There are believed to be about 300 separate varieties of house mice in the United States.

Mice are more acceptable to humans than rats, possibly because of what is known as the 'Disney influence.'

Some scientists speculate that mice developed from rats under conditions where it was less important to be large and ferocious than to be able to get into a smaller hole.

The word 'mouse' can be traced to the Sanskrit word 'musha' which is derived from a word 'to steal.'

Rats are omnivorous, eating nearly any type of food, including dead and dying members of their own species.

Rats are cautious, and if their food is in an exposed area where it cannot be consumed quickly, they usually carry or drag it to a hiding place.

Rats rely predominantly on smell, taste, touch and hearing as opposed to vision. They move around mainly in the dark, using their long, sensitive whiskers and the guard hairs on their body to guide them.

Rats damage structures, chew wiring and cause electrical fires, eat and urinate on human and animal food, and carry many diseases.

Rats can get into your home through a hole about the size of a quarter.

Rats memorize specific pathways and use the same routes habitually.

A camel can lose up to 30% of its body weight in perspiration and continue to cross the desert. A human would die of heat shock after sweating away only 12% of body weight. 

Alaska is a land of almost unimaginable scale. Stretching across 586,000 square miles of untamed wilderness, Alaska is one-fifth the size of the contiguous United States. It contains the tallest mountain in North America, Mt. McKinley, which many Alaskans simply call "the mountain." And of course, the Land of the Midnight Sun has longer summer days than any other state. This majestic landscape borders two oceans and three seas, with a 47,300 mile coastline. Alaska boasts over three million lakes, 3,000 rivers, 1,800 islands, and more than 100,000 glaciers.

Diamond is the hardest naturally occurring substance, and is also one of the most valuable natural substances. Diamonds are crystals formed almost entirely of carbon. Because of its hardness, the diamond is the most enduring of all gemstones. They are among the most costly jewels in the world, partly because they are rare, Only four important diamond fields have been found - in Africa, South America, India, and the Soviet Union. 

Rennin, the enzyme obtained from the fourth stomach of a cow and used chiefly in the manufacture of cheese, is capable of coagulating more than 25,000 times its weight of fresh milk. 

There is a butterfly in Africa with enough poison in it's body to kill six cats 

Ants are social insects and live in colonies which may have as many as 500,000 individuals.

Tiny ants can lift objects that weigh more than they do. Ants also have remarkably strong jaws and can give a painful nip. When some species bite, they are able to squirt formic acid from the end of their abdomen into the wound -- making it doubly painful.

When ants find food, they lay down a chemical trail, called a pheromone, so that other ants can find their way from the nest to the food source.

Worker ants may live seven years and the queen may live as long as 15 years.

The Midwestern United States has the world's greatest number of tornadoes per year.

A bee's buzz is caused by its wings flapping at the rate of 250 times a second.

The only rocks in the ice of Antarctica are meteorites.

Sailfish can leap out of the water and into the air at a speed of 50 miles per hour.

The earth weighs 13,176,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 pounds (13 septillion, 176 sextillion pounds.)

The earth's revolution time increases .0001 seconds annually.

If the water in the world's reservoirs were allowed passage to the oceans, global sea level would rise 1 1/5 inches.

Because the Antarctic icecap is up to 15,700 feet thick, the continent has the highest average elevation.

Only 2 more blue moons (the saying "only once in a blue moon" refers to the occurrence of two full moons during one calendar month) are to occur between now and 2001. Those times are January 1999 and March 1999.

The bark of the redwood tree is fireproof. Fires in redwood forests take place inside the trees.
2201 Fascinating Facts

The odds against a person being struck by a celestial stone, a meteorite, are ten trillion to one.

The density of the universe is 1 atom per 10 cubic yards.

Methane gas can often be seen bubbling up from the bottom of ponds.  It is produced by the decomposition of dead plants and animals in the mud.

Mosquitos have teeth.

An estimated 80% of animals on Earth have six legs, i.e., are insects. The more than 10 quintillion bugs fall into some 800,000 species.

Almonds are members of the peach family. 

There are 100 different species of large trees in a single acre of rainforest. 

"The Chief" in BC, Canada is the worlds second largest rock.

Oceans cover 71% of the Earth's surface - 360 million square km 
Ocean Voice International

The average depth of the ocean is 4 km 

The area of the Pacific Ocean exceeds that of all the land 

The world's oceans contain 328 million cubic miles of sea water 

The deepest spot in the ocean is in the Mariana Trench at 11.7 km 

There may be as many as 6 million diatoms, tiny floating plants in a cubic foot of sea water 

Turtles have special sacs (or bursae) located in the cloaca, a pouch near the tail which contains the rectal and urogenital openings. These bursae are covered with thousands of tiny, fingerlike projections called villi, each filled with tiny blood vessels which absorb oxygen. By drawing water into and out of the cloaca, the turtle can absorb more than enough oxygen to survive. This is how most turtles breathe underwater. 

Pigs can become alcoholics.

Elephants are the only animal that can't jump.

Bamboo (the tallest grass in the world) can grow up to 90 cm in a day.

The lightest calf ever born weighed in at 14 pounds, 5 ounces.

The solid central core of the earth seems to rotate at a slightly different rate than the rest of the earth.

On Tahiti, high tides occur every day at noon and midnight, regardless of where the moon is.

Every bird and mammal except the spiny anteater experiences REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. 

Canaries can grow NEW brain cells. 

Antarctica is actually a desert. 

The world's most active volcano is Kilauea, in Hawaii. [Boston Globe]

Angel Falls in Venezuela is the world's highest waterfall, at 3,212 feet.

The shock waves from earthquakes travel faster in a north-south direction through the Earth's inner core than they do east-west. The effect is called anisotropy.

A clitoris is a type of flower

Penguins are found in the Antarctic, not Arctic.

A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds. 

When opossums are playing 'possum, they are not 'playing.' They actually pass out from sheer terror. 

The 1983 eruption of Krakatoa in Indonesia was heard in Australia 2,400 miles way. Pieces of pumice from this eruption were found on beaches in Madagascar 4,200 miles away. Ash rose 50 miles into the atmosphere. Tsunamis, or giant waves, were created as the volcano collapsed on itself. 

There are over 500,000 craters on the moon that can be seen from the planet Earth.

A rainbow can occur only when the sun is 40 degrees or less above the horizon.

Penguins can jump as high as 6 feet in the air.

Tigers have round pupils and yellow irises (except for the blue eyes of white tigers).  Due to a retinal adaptation that reflects light back to the retina, the night vision of tigers is six times better than that of humans.

No one knows exactly why tigers are striped, but scientists think that the stripes act as camouflage, and help tigers hide from their prey. The Sumatran tiger has the most stripes of all the tiger subspecies, and the Siberian tiger has the fewest stripes. Tiger stripes are like human fingerprints; no two tigers have the same pattern of stripes.
The Tiger Information Center

If the Loch Ness monster exists at all, he (or she) could only be about as big as a sixth grader. A new study shows that there is only enough fish in the loch to feed a 31 kg (about 67 lb.) creature. The scientists used sonar to estimate the number of fish in the lake and came up with an annual food supply of 93 kg. Since a cold-blooded animal like Nessie would need to eat about three times its body weight each year, it could only weigh about 31 kg.
Access Excellence

The average ice berg weighs 20,000,000 tons.

The longest sperm ever recorded is 10,000-times longer than a human spermatozoon and belongs to the fruit fly Drosophila bifurca. The typical Drosophila bifurca male sperm is approximately 60 millimeters long, 20 times the length of the fly itself.

Apples are more efficient than caffeine in keeping people awake in the mornings.

Smelling bananas and/or green apples (smelling, not eating) can help you lose weight.

Africanized honeybees are no more venomous than their northern cousins, they are just meaner and more likely to swarm. Two deaths have been attributed to the 'killer bees" since their arrival in the U.S. in 1990. In contrast, more than 60 people die each year as a result of the stings of ordinary honeybees.

There was a prehistoric horse breed (called eohippus) that was about the size of a housecat.

Ants do not sleep.

Some birds use stars to orientate themselves during migration. 

The wettest spot in the world is located on the island of Kauai. Mt. Waialeale consistently records rainfall at the rate of nearly 500 inches per year.

Vampire bats have fewer teeth than any other bat because they do not have to chew their food.

Along with flying, vampire bats can run, jump, and hop with great speed, using their chest muscles to fling themselves skyward.

Vampire bats in the same colony support their roostmates by regurgitating blood to bats that are unable to find food.

Vampire bats don't suck blood. They make a small incision and lap up the blood of their hosts.

A single little brown bat can catch 600 mosquitoes in just one hour.

The Amazon region contains the largest body of fresh water and the largest rain forest in the world. It is home to at least 15,000 documented animal species, 8,000 of which were new to biology when they were discovered. At least 40% of the world's freshwater fish and 25% of the world's bird species reside there.
[Agronomy Department of the University of Wisconsin, Madison ]

The elephant snout, an African fish, communicates with other fish by emitting an electrical signal -- sort of a fish's version of Morse Code.

On average, the United States experiences 100,000 thunderstorms each year, causing about 1,000 tornadoes. The National Weather Service says an average of 42 people are killed by tornadoes annually.

It is possible to lead a cow upstairs, but not downstairs.

Try to catch a cockroach and it seems very elusive. They are among the fastest runners, reaching 30 cm per second, but this is only 1.88 KIT /h. But, they lack endurance. The centipede("thousand legger") can move at 50 centimeters a second, 24 miles per hour.
The National Pest Control Association

A German cockroach can survive a month or more without food, but less than two weeks without water.

A tiny biting midge, or "no-seeum," Forcipomyia, beats its hairy wings 62,760 times a minute.

When provoked, a bombardier beetle swivels the tip of its abdomen and shoots a jet of boiling chemicals at its attacker. The chemicals are produced in a "reaction chamber" with an explosion you can hear. The spray of foul-smelling, burning vapor is a result of rapid firing. It shoots out at 500-1,000 pulses per second at a temperature of 100?C.

The stings of ants, bees and wasps are modified (egg laying tools), used to inject poison in defense or to paralyze prey. More than 50 different chemicals have been identified from various species. Some cause itching, pain, swelling and redness; others destroy cells and spread poison. Honey bees cannot pull their barbed stingers from human skins, and will eventually tear themselves away leaving their stingers behind, dying soon afterwards.

Never squash a yellowjacket wasp near the nest. A dying yellowjacket releases an alarm pheromone that alerts its comrades. In less than 15 seconds, yellowjackets within a 15-foot radius will rally to the victim's aid.

Butterfly wings are covered with tiny over-lapping scales. The beautiful, iridescent colors are the result from the way some scales reflect light, and depend on structure, not pigment.

The largest known butterfly is Queen Alexandra's Birdwing from New Guinea which has a wingspan of approximately 11 inches; the smallest butterfly, the Dwarf Blue from Africa has a wingspan of only one-half inch.

Most Monarch butterflies spend the winter in Mexico. Only one roost is known, and more than 14 million Monarchs cluster on branches and trunks of an area that only measures 140 yards wide. Incidentally, the two-way flight averages 2,500 rniles.

Each day some forty-five thousand thunderstorms occur worldwide, resulting in as many as one hundred lightning strikes every second. 

Lightning strikes the earth somewhere more than seventeen million times every day, or about two hundred times every second. 

A bolt of lightning travels at speeds of up to one hundred million feet per second, or seventy-two million miles per hour. 

A lightning bolt generates temperatures five times hotter than those found at the sun's surface.

The red giant star Betelgeuse has a diameter larger than that of the Earth's orbit around the sun.









The Human Body

Humans are the only animals that cry tears.

Six percent of all American men are killed by either their wife or girlfriend - or wife who caught them with their girlfriend. 

From the Middle Ages up until the end of the 19th century, barbers performed a number of medical duties including bloodletting, wound treatment, dentistry, minor operations and bone-setting. The barber's striped red pole originates in the Middle Ages, when it was a staff the patient would grip while the barber bled the patient.

Approximately 1 out of 25 people suffers from asthma.

When you eat meat and drink milk in the same meal, your body does not absorb any of the milk's calcium. It is best to have 2 hours between the milk and meat intake. (Meat from animals, not peanuts or eggs.)

Head injuries occur about every 15 seconds in the United States.

On January 13, 1981, a young girl in Great Britain began sneezing and continued to sneeze for 977 consecutive days. She sneezed an estimated one million times in the first 365 days alone.

Each square inch of human skin consists of twenty feet of blood vessels. 

Nerve impulses to and from the brain travel as fast as 170 miles per hour.

The average human will pump 48 million gallons of blood in their lifetime.

The average human body contains enough:
Sulphur to kill all fleas on an average dog
Carbon to make 900 pencils
Potassium to fire a toy cannon
Fat to make 7 bars of soap
Phosphorus to make 2,200 match heads
Water to fill a ten gallon tank

Brain damage occurs at an internal temperature of 105 degrees Fahrenheit.

One square inch of skin on the human hand contains some 72 feet of nerve fiber.

An average person flatulates 14 times a day.

The average heart beats 100,000 each day.

Two million Americans go to the doctor with heartburn every day. 

Ever been laying in bed, almost asleep and your leg jerks? It's a conditiion called "hypnagogic myoclonus". 






More people are killed annually by donkeys than die in air crashes.

When spelt phonetically, Esso means stalled car in Japan.

In 1949, forecasting the relentless march of science, Popular Mechanics said, "Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."

There are more than 1,000 chemicals in a cup of coffee. Of these, only 26 have been tested, and half, caused cancer in rats.

Orville Wright was involved in the first aircraft accident. His passenger, a Frenchman, was killed. Orville was injured.
TLC

Born on November 3, 1718, British politician, John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich, is credited with naming the "sandwich." He developed a habit of eating beef between slices of toast so he could continue to play cards uninterrupted.
Oscar Mayer Homepage

Fresca, the soft drink, had problems when it was sold in Mexico. Fresca is slang for lesbian.

TYPEWRITER, is the longest word that can be made using the letters on only one row of the keyboard.

In Italy, a campaign for Schweppes Tonic Water translated the name into Schweppes Toilet Water.

The list of ingredients that make up lipstick include...fish scales.

Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called Cue, the name of a notorious porno magazine.

In Germany, Sunbeam's Mist-Stick curling iron was translated into manure wand.

In Brazil, Pinto, the same name as the Ford car, is a slang term meaning a small male appendage.

When Hunt-Wesson introduced its Big John brand into French-speaking Canada, it was translated into Gros Jos, slang for a woman with big breasts.

A can of SPAM is opened every 4 seconds.

An American t-shirt maker in Miami printed shirts for the Spanish market which promoted the Pope's visit. Instead of the desired "I Saw the Pope" in Spanish, the shirts proclaimed "I Saw the Potato."

Advertisers need take care ---- the "thumbs up" sign, signifying everything is ok. and used in many ads in the United States, has an offensive meaning in many eastern European countries.

The name Coca-Cola in China was first rendered as Ke-kou-ke-la. Unfortunately, the Coke company did not discover until after thousands of signs had been printed that the phrase means "bite the wax tadpole" or "female horse stuffed with wax" depending on the dialect. Coke then researched 40,000 Chinese characters and found a close phonetic equivalent, "ko-kou-ko-le," which can be loosely translated as "happiness in the mouth."

On the stone temples of Madura in southern India, there are more than 30 million carved images of gods and goddesses.

The Twelve Days of Christmas represent the length of time that the three wise men from the East took to reach the manger of Jesus Christ after his birth. Their arrival on the twelfth day was celebrated in the form of the Feast of Epiphany in medieval France, and later in other countries.

27% of U.S. male college students believe life is "a meaningless existential hell."

According to a market research survey done some time ago, 68% of consumers receiving junk mail actually open the envelopes.

A bowl of Wheaties contains twice as much sodium as a bowl of potato chips

Flying once around the moon is the equivalent with a round trip from New York to London. (Earth is about four times the size of the moon.)

The cheese mozzarella was originally made from the milk of the water buffalo.

According to the World Health Organization, there are approximately 100 million acts of sexual intercourse each day.

Texas. Yee-haa.

In Texas, it's illegal to put graffiti on someone else's cow.

According to Texas law, in some places, running a bakery is considered to be an agricultural business.

Texas law forbids carrying around a fence cutter or a pair of pliers that could cut fence.

More popcorn is sold in Dallas than anywhere in the U.S.

The total value of Texas wildlife is $94,000,000.

There are actually (to date) five state flowers. There was a debate over which species of Blue Bonnet would be the state flower. All were chosen.

Texas was once a country.

The average smell weighs 760 nanograms report Japanese researchers. The researchers weighed odors by dissolving them in fat and using an ultra-sensitive quartz crystal microbalance.
SOURCE: "Bizarre Moments in Science" by Dr. Karl Kruszelnicki

One-third of black men in the US between 20 and 29 years old were in prison, on parole or on probation. The number increased from one-fourth five years ago. - The Key , April 1996

One-sixth of all Americans, an estimated 43 million people, move each year. (U.S. Census Bureau)

The average American moves 12 times in a lifetime. (U.S. Census Bureau)

The Czech communist government at its doctrinaire peak was so zealous in its censorship that it once censured bubblegum singer Karel Gott for using this lyric: "I may as well flip a coin when I ask if you're sincere when you say you love me." Why? Because they said it was an insult to the value of the Czech currency! (From Ramet, editor: Rocking the State, Westview Press.)

Tornadoes are more likely to occur on May 16 than any other day of the year, sometime after 1:00 pm, according to a review of 304 twisters that occurred in the US between 1950 and 1991.

Honey does not spoil.

Canadian and Japanese mathematicians have calculated the value of pi to a new world record of almost 4,294,967,286 decimal places. At 4,294,967,286 decimal places, a print-out of the number , expressed at six digits per centimeter, would stretch more than 7,000 kilometers. The calculation was completed on a HITAC S-3900/480 vector supercomputer and took 56 hours.

The earth experiences 50,000 earthquakes each year.

The poison-arrow frog has enough poison to kill about 2,200 people.

In 1719, Eilean Donan Castle held 343 barrels of gunpowder which the British "accidentally" set off, destroying a large part of the castle.  However, it was later rebuilt.

The Hundred Years War lasted for 116 years.

A lump of pure gold the size of a matchbox can be flattened into a sheet the size of a tennis court.

After eating, a housefly regurgitates its food and then eats it again.

In Michigan, USA, a man legally owns his wife's hair.

The USA bought Alaska from Russia for 2 cents an acre.

In Tennessee, USA, a man must walk in front of any car driven by a woman, while waving a red flag as a warning.

There is a 1/4 pound of salt in every gallon of seawater.

Spiral staircases in medieval castles are running clockwise.  This is because all knights used to be right-handed. When the intruding army would climb the stairs they would not be able to us e their right hand which was holding the sword because of the difficulties in climbing the stairs. Left-handed knights would have had no troubles except left-handed people could never become knights because it was assumed that they were descendants of the devil.

Christmas Lights - long before the first Christmas, it was customary in northern Europe to light a candle at the winter solstice in celebration of the rebirth of light. Homage was paid to t he sun god, Mithras, and the sun was encouraged to reappear in the new year. The Christian Church adopted the custom and, throughout the Middle Ages, a large candle was lit at Christmas time. The light from the candle symbolised the Star of Bethlehem and, as Christ was the 'Light of the World', the candle flame represented his influence. This single candle was replaced by several over time - as many as four hundred on an 18th-century German fir tree - and for health and safety reasons they were rep laced by electric replicas in 1882. Christmas lights in Regent Street, London, are traditionally switched on in mid-November each year by a celebrity. 

In ancient Egyptian Priests plucked every hair from their bodies, including their eyebrows and eyelashes.

On the cartoon show 'The Jetsons,' Jane is 33 years old and her daughter Judy is 15.  Meaning Jane gave birth at age 18!

Only humans and horses have hymens.

The human genome can be contained in the equivalent of a 750 megabyte hard drive.  The human genome contains 3 billion base pairs.  Each base pair contains 2 binary 'bits' of information.  Finally, there are eight 'bits' in a byte, thus six billion bits of information in the genome.

Working people are 25% more likely to suffer back injuries on Monday than any other day.  Similarly, the risk of having a heart attack is 33% greater on Monday than other days.)

Interesting facts about Tasmania, Australia:
Tasmania has the cleanest air in the inhabited world.
The finest, most expensive wool in the world is grown in Tasmania.
The most advanced, large catamarans in the world are manufactured in Tasmania.
Over a quarter of the world's abalone comes from Tasmania.

The English word "soup" comes from the Middle Ages word "sop," which means a slice of bread over which roast drippings were poured.  The first archaeological evidence of soup being consumed dates back to 6000 B.C., with the main ingredient being Hippopotamus bones!

Top Ten Soup Towns (ranked by consumption rate)

1) Spokane, WA
2) Salt Lake City, UT
3) Grand Rapids, MI
4) Green Bay, WI
5) Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN
6) Seattle/Tacoma, WA
7) Des Moines, IA
8) Albany, NY
9) Buffalo/Rochester, NY
10) Knoxville, TN

St. Paul, Minnesota was originally called Pigs Eye after a man who ran a saloon there.

"Speak of the Devil" is short for "Speak of the Devil and he shall come".  It was believed that if you spoke about the Devil it would attract his attention.  That's why when you're talking about someone and they show up people say "Speak of the Devil."

The first letters of the months July through November, in order, spell the name JASON.

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 pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconioses, its plural.

In classical Vietnamese music-theatre (Tuong), there is a 100-act play ("Von Buu Trinh Tuong") in which all of the characters are personified medications!  The stronger the medication, the stronger the character, and vice-versa.  Another fun fact about Tuong: At performances, a drum was placed in front of the stage, which audience members played in order to criticize the performers.  The number of beats played and the pitch of the drumbeats indicated whether the audience felt the play was good or bad, or if perhaps they wished to discuss the performance with the manager.  One beat on the drum, for instance, told the performers to wind up whatever they were singing and get on to the next part!
 (From Pham Duy, Musics of Vietnam, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, 1975.)

Mickey Mouse is known as "Topolino" in Italy.

Sixties Czech rock band the Primitives was known for its in-concert audience participation "celebrations" of the four elements. Especially attention-getting was their celebration of water, known as fishfest, in which they hurled buckets of water into the audience and then threw live fish over them (From Rocking the State.)

The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin during World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.

The letter "I" is used exactly one-hundred and nine times in Act IV of Shakespeare's Macbeth.

The real name of the "I've fallen and I can't get up" lady is Edith Fore.

All the dirt from the foundation to build the World Trade Center in New York City was dumped into the Hudson River to form the community now known as Battery City Park.

An atmospheric oxygen content approaching 35% some 290 million years ago may have been responsible for the evolution of extraordinary creatures, such as a dragonfly as large as a pigeon.  A subsequent drop in oxygen content to 15% some 40 million years later may also account for the disappearance of such giants. Present day air is 21% oxygen.  SOURCE: NATURE

Anne Boleyn, Queen Elizabeth I's mother, had six fingers on one hand.

There are 18 doctors in the US called Dr. Doctor, and one called Dr. Surgeon.  There is also a dermatologist named Dr. Rash, a psychiatrist called Dr. Couch and an anesthesiologist named Dr. Gass.

While not their preferred recreation activity, sheep can swim when confronted with flooding or other water emergencies.  There swimming style can best be described as a dog-paddle.

If we had the same mortality rate now as in 1900, more than half the people in the world today would not be alive.

In 1990, a 64-year old Hartsville, Tennessee, woman entered a hospital for surgery for what doctors diagnosed as a tumor on her buttocks.  What surgeons found, however, was a four-inch pork chop bone, which they removed.  They estimated that it had been inplace for five to ten years.  The woman could not remember sitting on it, or eating it, for that matter.  The Book of Lists (D.Wallechinsky & A. Wallace, 1993)

One of the most studied antioxidants in vegetables and fruits thought to protect against cancer is beta-carotene, concentrated in deep green, yellow and orange vegetables such as carrots, sweet potatoes, and spinach. Fruits high in beta-carotene include apricots and cantaloupes.  In test tube studies at Harvard University in Massachusetts, beta-carotene had a direct toxic effect on cells taken from malignant tumors.  It also shows that beta-carotene can change in the body to retinoic acid, a substance used in clinical trials to treat certain cancers.
 
There are almost 800 different brands of bottled water for sale in the United States.

Seven thousand people die from food poisoning every year in the U.S., and another seven million get ill from eating contaminated food. Eggs, unwashed produce and rotten meat are the main culprits.

One third of all cancers are sun-related.

Polls show that 75% of American adults do not know that antibiotics kill bacteria but not viruses.

Ancient Romans ate flamingo tongues and considered them a delicacy.

ENIAC, the first electronic computer, appeared 50 years ago.  The original ENIAC was about 80 feet long, weighed 30 tons, had 17,000 tubes.  By comparison, a desktop computer today can store a million times more information than an ENIAC, and 50,000 times faster.

Yeast is a single-cell plant.  A living organism.  Over 160 species of yeast exist.  The strain used for baking breads, which enables them to rise, is the same yeast used by breweries to make beer.  Before the existence of the packets and bottles of yeast that we can buy today, bakers use to obtain their yeast from the local brewery.

A Turtles shell is nothing more than its ribs and spine fused together over many years of evolution.

Bob Dylan's real name is Robert Zimmerman, he changed it in honor of Dylan Thomas.

Andy Warhol created the Rolling Stone's emblem depicting the big tongue. It first appeared on the cover of the 'Sticky Fingers' album.

Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr were the two left-handed Beatles.

Over the last three decades, civic participation in America has decreased. Two-thirds of all eligible voters under the age of 25 did not vote in the last election.

The world's fastest ship weighs 112 tons and travels at 102 mph.

Driving 55 m.p.h. instead of 65 m.p.h. increases your cars mileage by about 15%.

Airbags explode at 200 m.p.h.

The first car accident occurred in 1896.

May 9th, 1995, is the 35th anniversary of the original FDA approval for the oral contraceptive popularly known as 'the pill'.  Used by nearly 10 million American women under age 45, the pill is the most popular method of reversible contraception in the U.S. Since 1960 it has become clear that the pill also has many non-contraceptive benefits including: prevention of benign breast diseases; prevention of some ovarian and endometrial cancers; increased bone mineral density.

School busses in the United States are Chrome Yellow and used to be Omaha Orange.

Under a two mile thick layer of ice at the south pole is an unfrozen lake the size of lake Ontario.

The tailless dinner jacket was invented in Tuxedo Park, New York.  Thus it is called the "tuxedo dinner jacket" and is named after the town...not the other way around.

The average person flexes the joints in their fingers 24 million times during a lifetime.

Each person inhales about seven quarts of air every minute.

A cargo of flatulent pigs caused an international passenger jet en route to South Africa to make an emergency landing in London.  The prize porkers generated so much heat from their natural gases that they caused a fire alarm to go off in the cockpit.

On average, we breathe between 12 and 18 times a minute.

Women's hearts generally beat faster than mens.

The state of Maryland has no natural lakes.

Cranberries are sorted for ripeness by bouncing them; a fully ripened cranberry can be dribbled like a basketball.

In the United States in 1995, KFC sold 11 pieces of chicken for every man, woman and child in the country.

Laid head to claw, KFC chickens consumed worldwide would stretch some 275,094 miles.  They would circle the Earth at the equator 11 times or stretch from the Earth approximately 50,094 miles past the moon.

No other animal gives us more by-products than the hog.  These by-products include pig suede, buttons, glass, paint brushes, crayons, chalk, and insulation to name a few.

The world's number one producer and consumer of fresh pork is China.

Hogs were first introduced to North America in 1539 when the Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto brought them to the mainland.

The largest known kidney stone weighed 1.36 kilograms.

Kidney stones come in virtually any color; most are yellow to brown

Louis Napoleon, nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, lost the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 due wholly or in part from impaired kidney function resulting from kidney stone formation.

Most stones are formed and excreted singly.

The practice of calling cowards "lily-livered" has an interesting origin.  During the middle ages, it was believed that everything was made of four elements: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water.  It was also believed that in humans, the Four Contraries: hot, cold, dry, and moist, would combine to form the Four Humors: cholor, blood, melancholy, and phlegm.  If someone had demonstrated that they were cowardly, they would be thought of as not having any cholor, or yellow bile, the humor thougt to control courage.  Since at the time people thought an absence of cholor in the liver would leave it white, the color of the lily, cowards would be called lily-livered.

There are 22 nuclear reactors in Canada called CANDU reactors, they supply 65% of the electricity for Ontario and 16% in total for Canada.

Napoleon Bonaparte was afraid of cats.

It would take 7 billion particles of fog to fill a teaspoon.

Every photograph of an American atomic bomb detonation was taken by Harold Edgerton.

The topknot that quails have is called a hmuh.

Dr. Samuel A. Mudd was the physician who set the leg of Lincoln's assassin John Wilkes Booth ... and whose shame created the expression for ignominy, "His name is Mudd."

The longest recorded flight of a chicken is thirteen seconds.

The muzzle of a lion is like a fingerprint -- no two lions have the same pattern of whiskers.

New Zealand is also the only country that contains every type of climate in the world.

Cockroaches' favorite food is the glue on envelopes and on the back of postage stamps

Q and Z are the two letters not on a touch tone phone.

In 1969, the last Corvair was painted gold.

Way back in 1709 AD, this guy named Bart from Florence, Italy thought, "Man, these harpsichords sound tinny and nasty! And on top of that, you can't control the loudness of each note! Hmm, if only I could change the string-plucking mechanism to something more desirable, the worries of thousands of musicians and composers everywhere would be alleviated." And so good old Bartolommeo Christofori created an instrument that makes sounds by striking strings with felt-covered wooden hammers. This allowed the player to control the loudness of each note, so Bart called his invention a gravicembalo col piano e forte, literally meaning a harpsichord with loud and soft. Eventually this was short ened to piano.

Hollowed out lemon halves were used as a primitive diaphragm in the Middle Ages.

The capitol of Honduras is Tegucigalpa.

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.

Alexander the Great is the only argument people ever need to make in support of gays in the military.

Lemons contain more sugar than strawberries do.

The jugular vein is an artery, not a vein.

David Prowse, was the guy in the Darth Vader suit in Star Wars. He spoke all of Vader's lines, and didn't know that he was going to be dubbed over by James Earl Jones until he saw the screening of the movie.

In Baltimore, USA, it is illegal to wash or scrub a sink, regardless of how dirty it is.

Have you ever wondered what causes those freaky red eyes in your family's photographs? The light from the flash of the camera penetrates the eyeball, bounces off of the retina (the inside back of the eyeball) and is reflected out the front of the eye. Because the retina has a large grouping of arteries, the light reflected back is red.

Flush toilets date back to 2000 B.C.

The first traffic light was installed in England in 1868 in front of the Houses of Parliment.

There are approximately 450 million chickens in the United States.

The average man sweats 2 1/2 quarts every day.

Every day in the United States, people steal $20,000 from coin-operated machines.

Americans spend $300 million on clothes every day!

Toilet Paper dates all the way back to 1857.

The first stall in a public bathroom is least often occupied and is the cleanest.

The largest object ever found in the Los Angeles sewer system was a motorcycle.

Every 24 hours a leaking water faucet with an opening the size of a pin will waste 170 gallons.

The phrase "rule of thumb" is taken from an old English law stating that a husband could not beat his wife with anything thicker than his thumb.

The flatulation from domesticated cows produce about 30% of the methane on this planet.

Before it blew up in 1986, the space shuttle Challenger was hit by a flake of paint, measuring 0.2 millimeters, which damaged a window during one of its missions. (the dangers of lead paint)

Your brain weighs around 3 pounds.  All but ten ounces is water.

Every year, Americans dispose of 1.6 billion pens, 2 billion razors and blades, 18 billion diapers and 30 billion steel and tin cans. They are all sitting in landfills somewhere.

Ogdensburg, New York is the only city in the United States situated on the St. Lawrence River.

Rene Descartes came up with the theory of coordinate geometry by looking at a fly walk across a tiled ceiling.

14th Century Crusaders defending the city of Caffa in Crimea were horrified when the Tartars began catapulting the dead bodies of plague victims over the city walls.  The Tartars themselves died of plague, after which the Crusaders returned to Italy, bringing plague with them.  Within two decades the bubonic plague had wiped out 25% of the population of Europe from Yugoslavia to Greenland. Four-fifths of the population of Marseilles died in this way.

The Earl of Condom was a knighted personal physician to England's King Charles II in the mid-1600's.  The Earl was requested to produce a method to protect the King from syphillis.(Charles the II's pleasure-loving nature was notorious.) The result should be obvious.

Moisture, not air, causes superglue to dry.

Charles Lindbergh took only four sandwiches with him on his famous transatlantic flight.

Sarsaparilla is the root that flavors root beer.

The U.S. Mint in Denver, Colorado is the only mint that marks its pennies.

Many Japanese golfers carry "hole-in-one" insurance, because it is traditional in Japan to share one's good luck by sending gifts to all your friends when you get an "ace."  The price for what the Japanese term an "albatross" can often reach $10,000.

Gold, in its pure form, never tarnishes, dulls or decomposes.  This is why the early Egyptians used it so much in their culture (the wealthy ruling pharaohs, not the peons, grunts & slaves).  Gold represented stability and the eternal.

Do you think snowflakes appear out of thin air?  They don't.  They need something to form around. At the center of every snowflake is a single piece of dust.

If you gave each human on earth an equal portion of dry land, (including the uninhabitable areas) everyone would get roughly 100 sq.ft.

The birth control method of "infanticide" is still practiced in many third world nations. Infanticide is the killing of newborn humans.

Another recent study shows that computer users blink an average of 7 times per minute. The average persons blinks 22 times per minute.

By 1995 8 million U.S. households had computers with CD-ROM drives, a 1600% increase over 1990.

Caviar (sturgeon roe) was a common food in California during the gold rush days, until over harvesting led to the decline of sturgeon and its eventual protection.  Until recently, most of the world's caviar has come from areas bordering the Caspian Sea.  However, these countries are now cutting exports by 80% because of short supplies.  To complete the circle, California fish farmers have now developed a way to farm sturgeon and are preparing to ship their first harvest.

FM Stereo has been around since 1961.

Sylvia Miles had the shortest performance ever nominated for an Oscar with "Midnight Cowboy."  Her entire role lasted only six minutes.

Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them use to burn their houses down - hence the expression "to get fired."

Canada is an Indian word meaning "Big Village".

15% of American males are color blind.

130 million cups of coffee are consumed every day in the United States alone!

The average U.S. high school graduate has a vocabulary of about 60,000 words.

Fourteenth century physicians didn't know what caused the plague, but they knew it was contagious.  As a result they wore an early kind of bioprotective suit which included a large beaked head piece. The beak of the head piece, which made them look like large birds, was filled with vinegar, sweet oils and other strong smelling compounds to counteract the stench of the dead and dying plague victims.

The average person makes about 1,140 telephone calls each year.

On any given day, Americans spend over $33 million buying lottery tickets.

Kitsap County, Washington, was originally called Slaughter County, and the first hotel there was called the Slaughter House.

Seattle, Washington, like Rome, was built on seven hills.

Dinosaur droppings are called coprolites, and are actually fairly common.

Annual growth of WWW traffic is 341,000%

Computer Crime adds up to more than 10 billion dollars per year.

This year, engineers at The University of Pennsylvania created ENIAC on a chip. The chip was the size of a fingernail and could perform the same tasks as the 30 ton ENIAC could 50 years ago.

Experts at Intel say that microprocessor speed will double every 18 months for at least 10 years.

Radiation from radio transmitting towers sometimes causes people to here the broadcast in their plumbing & toaster.

The straw was probably invented by Egyptian brewers to taste in-process beer without removing the fermenting ingredients which floated on the top of the container

The Pentagon, in Arlington, Virginia, has twice as many bathrooms as is necessary.  When it was built in the 1940s, the state of Virginia still had segregation laws requiring separate toilet facilities for blacks and whites.

Mustard gas was invented in the McKinley Building on the American University campus.  Additionally, preliminary work on the Manhattan Project was done in that building.  The government used the McKinley Building because of its unusual archticture.  If there would be any type of large explosion inside the building, the building would implode onto itself, containing any lethal gas or nuclear material.  The building now houses the Physics Department.

Driving at 75 miles per hour, it would take 258 days to drive around one of Saturn's rings.

If there was an ocean big enough to hold Saturn, it would float.

Skin temperature does not go much above 95F even on the hottest days.

314 Americans had buttock lift surgery in 1994.

New Mothers can produce 1 gallon of breast milk per day.

Hitler and Napolean both had only one testical.

Sex burns 360 calories per hour.

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.

The Professor's real name was Roy Hinkley, Mary Ann's last name was Summers and Mrs. Howell's maiden name was Wentworth.

The phrase "sleep tight" originated when mattresses were set upon ropes woven through the bed frame. To remedy sagging ropes, one would use a bed key to tighten the rope.

The average human will walk the distance of 160 billion millimeters in his or her lifetime.

We always come across the term 'hard' or 'soft' water.  However, many people may be aware of it, but not many people know what exactly it is.  In addition, both types of water have many disadvantages.  Hard water becomes 'hard' because of the presence of carbonates, sulfates, chlorides of calcium, magnesium, and iron.  These chemical items are what causes water to be hard.  However, with the presence of these chemical nuisance, hard water is not harmful to human health.  Water is also considered hard if its calcium level is above 250ppm.  (ppm means parts per million). Its alkalinity must also be over 150 ppm in order to be considered hard.  pH levels are usually relatively stable in hard water, but we can actually use acidic chlorine to achieve a normal pH balance in water.  However, hard water ions could also form an insoluble compound.  Soft water, on the other hand, is considered soft if its calcium carbonate level is under 50ppm.  The alkalinity level should also be under 30ppm.  Most soft water has an unstable pH value and alkaline chlorine could help to balance its pH value.  The most significant difference between soft and hard water can be found in cleaning and bathing.  Soft water is usually widely used in Asian countries, for example, Malaysia.  Hard water is used in other countries, especially in England and the U.S.A.  To most of us, we may find that hard water would cause us to lose hair.  Besides, it will also wash off the 'hair conditioner' that we use, although we apply a large amount during shower.  When we use soft water, it does not make our hair drop but will also leave our hair soft after using hair conditioners.  Hard water would also leave a lot of side effects on our washing processes.  It fades our colored clothing, yellowing the whites, and could shorten the lifespan of the fabric.  However, it is also true that the hotter the water, the cleaner the laundry and this is especially true in hard water.  A study from Purdue University found that fabrics tend to become washed out more often, about 15 percent faster in hard water than in soft water.  The study also states that hard water has a bad effect on color and white fabrics.  Washing materials used with hard water was also believed to clog pipes and cause excessive wear on moving parts.  The best way to avoid fabric worn out is to use soft water.  Hard water can cause us a lot of problems, so it is always wise to stick to using soft water.

The last Coast Guard radio navigation station still using Morse code transmitted its last message on March 31, 1995 from Chesapeake, Virginia.  Morse first demonstrated his telegraph to Congress in 1844, sending the famous message from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore, Md., "What hath God wrought?"  Morse's sequence of dots and dashes resembles the modern digital code which forms the basis of modern computer programs. 

Air pollution may contribute to two percent of all deaths in the US, some 50,000 cases per year.  A nine-year study of US cities showed a strong correlation between death rates and periods of significant pollution.  SOURCE: Study by Dr. George Thurston, NYU Medical School, presented at the 1995 conference of the American Thoracic Society and American Lung Association.

Czar Paul I banished soldiers to Siberia for marching out of step.

Shock treatment for epilepsy was once administered by electric catfish.

Michael Tolotos, who died at the age of 80, never saw a woman.

Hairstylist Anthony Silvestri cuts hair while underwater.

Wyoming was the first state to allow women to vote.

Catherine de Medici was the first woman in Europe to use tobacco.  She took it in a mixture of snuff.

Orthorhombic perskovite is the predominant mineral found in Earth's lower mantle and the most abundant mineral on Earth.

The A&P was the first chain-store business to be established.  It began in 1842.

Charles Dickens earned no more for his twenty novels than he did from his lectures.

About one-third of American adults are at least 20 percent above their recommended weight.

One third of 95 developing countries have a waiting period of six years or more for a telephone connection, compared with less than a month in developed nations.

The average talker sprays about 300 microscopic saliva droplets per minute, about 2.5 droplets per word.

Scientists first began to study the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere about 100 years ago.  The ozone spectrophotometer that first alerted scientists to the ozone hole over Antarctica in the early 1980's has changed very little since its invention by Gordon Dobson in 1927.

County sheriff's deputies in Cumberland County, North Carolina have been instructed to conduct house-to-house searches for unvaccinated pets in the midst of the worst rabies epidemic in the past 40 years.  SOURCE: Wireservices

Although a good portion of their forebrains are dedicated to the sense of smell, sharks are not the "swimming noses" they were once believed to be.  Rather, their brains are involved with all six of their senses: vision, hearing, lateral line and touch sense, smell, taste and electroreception.

The state legislature of Mississippi has at last voted to ratify the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  The state is the last of the 36 states in the union in 1865 to ratify the amendment abolishing slavery. 

More than 35,000 leeches were sold for medical purposes in the US last years at a cost of $6.00 for each leech.  Totaling $210,000 on leeches.

Over the last 30 years, the availability of freshwater in Africa has halved.  This can be attributed to a combination of climate change and poor resource management

Chimpanzees used in AIDS vaccine studies get a pension of more than $100,000 to pay for their care and containment for the duration of their natural lives.  While it is possible to infect chimpanzees with HIV, they do not appear to get AIDS.

Although banned in the developed world for more than 20 years, DDT is still widely used in the developing world, primarily for control of malaria.  For example, Mexico and Brazil each used n early 1,000 tons of DDT in 1992.  The chemical has a half-life of more than 100 years and can be found in the tissues of almost all humans.

Some plants pollinate others by making themselves look like insects, thus attracting mating insects to pollinate other flowers.

The first telephone book ever issued contained only fifty names.  It was published in New Haven, Connecticut, by the New Haven District Telephone Company in February, 1878.

To strengthen a Damascus sword, the blade was plunged into a slave.

WWI flying ace Jean Navarre attacked a zeppelin armed with only a kitchen knife!

The town of Tidikelt in the Sahara Desert once went ten years without a rainfall.

It snows more in the Grand Canyon than it does in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The sound of E.T. walking was made by someone squishing her hands in Jello.

Even if you cut off a cockroach's head, it can live for several weeks.

In 75% of American households, women manage the money and pay the bills.

A monkey was once tried and convicted for smoking a cigarette in South Bend, Indiana.

About 70% of Americans who go to college do it just to make more money.  [The rest of us are avoiding reality for four more years.]

It's against the law to catch fish with your bare hands in Kansas.

Dr. Seuss pronounced "Seuss" such that it rhymed with "rejoice."

Some toothpastes contain antifreeze.

Sigmund Freud had a morbid fear of ferns.

Millie the White House dog earned more than 4 times as much as President Bush in 1991.

Bird droppings are the chief export of Nauru, an island nation in the western Pacific.

In 1989 the Russian phobos craft arrived in martian orbit and took pictures and made measurements and then mysteriously died.  Orthodox Russian priests were invited to the phobos control center to see pictures of mars and discuss creation.

Most lipstick contains fish scales.

Lee Harvey Oswald's cadaver tag sold at an auction for $6,600 in 1992.


When Christopher Columbus and crew landed in the New World they observed the natives using a nose pipe to smoke a strange new herb.  The pipe was called a 'tabaka' by the locals, hence our word tobacco.

While it is true spinach contains plenty of iron, it also contains plenty of oxalic acid which binds to the iron, making less than five percent of it available to your body.  Nonetheless, spinach remains a great source of beta carotene.

In train wrecks the number of passengers in damaged cars is less than average by so much and so often that it cannot be a chance occurrence.  Somehow we know not to get on them.  (Work done by William Cox and reported by lyall Watson)

There are only 12 letters in the Hawaiian alphabet.

Armored knights raised their visors to identify themselves when they rode past their king.  This custom has become the modern military salute.

ABBA got their name by taking the first letter from each of their first names (Agnetha, Bjorn, Benny, Anni-frid.)

Charles de Gaulle's final words were, "It hurts."

The words 'sacrilegious' and 'religion' do not share the same etymological root.

"John has a long moustache" was the coded-signal used by the French Resistance in WWII to mobilize their forces once the Allies had landed on the Normandy beaches.

Gatorade was named for the University of Florida Gators where it was first developed.

Michigan was the first state to have roadside picnic tables.

Elvis had a twin brother named Garon, who died at birth, which is why Elvis' middle name was spelled Aron; in honor of his brother.

Until 1965, driving was done on the left-hand side on roads in Sweden.  The conversion to right-hand was done on a weekday at 5pm.  All traffic stopped as people switched sides.  This time and day were chosen to prevent accidents where drivers would have gotten up in the morning and been too sleepy to realize that *this* was the day of the changeover.

Bulls are colorblind, therefore will usually charge at a matador's waving cape no matter what color it is -- be it red or neon yellow.

Ancient maps of the south pole show land features now covered with ice and only recently mapped by modern seismic cartography.

Varicella has been known as chicken pox since the 18th century.  One theory holds that it was so named because of the mildness of the disease compared with other poxes.  Another hypotheses is that it was so called because the lesions resembled chick-peas.

The Centers for Disease Control sends investigators to more than 100 outbreak locations throughout the world each year.

Once the largest port of the world, the city of Antwerp has always been of very high importance for any army operating in Northwest Europe, if supplied overseas, and for any continental army preparing an invasion of Britain.  In WWII it was hit by more V-1s than London (2448 against 2419), a large number of V-2s and even approx. 200 'Rheinbote' missiles.

The soldiers of World War I were the first people to use the modern flushing toilet.  The inventor: Thomas Crapper.

A typical bed usually houses over 6 billion dust mites.  (Not bedbugs.)

Ernest Vincent Wright wrote a novel, "Gadsby", which contains over 50,000 words -- none of them with the letter E .

The great revelation about Einstein's special theory of relativity WAS NOT that everything is relative.  Everyone in science new that.  The interesting new awareness that Einstein gave the world was that NOT EVERYTHING is relative.  Specifically the speed of light is absolute; i.e. the same for all observers no matter how they are moving when they perform the measurement.

Titanium is the most corrosion resistant material suitable for boat building.  It is stronger than steel and weighs only half as much.

In the early 1970s, Playboy magazine sold more then 7 million copies a month.  Its circulation now is around 4.8 million copies.

32% of American six- to seven-year-olds have a television in their own room, as do 50% of eight- to twelve-year-olds and 64% of thirteen- to seventeen-year-olds.

There are 3 times as many private policemen in the USA as public ones.

One in four people with a science degree now living in America were born abroad.

98% of Japanese are cremated 

The word midwife in old English means 'With Woman'.
 
The births of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were attended by the same midwife, even though she had to travel from Germany to England to 'catch' both.

Mary Breckinridge's grandfather was vice president of both the United States (under Buchanan) and of the Confederacy (under Davis)? Mary Breckinridge is the 'mother' of nurse-midwifery in the United States. 

There was a midwife on the Mayflower.  History has it that Bridget Lee Fuller attended two births while the ship traveled across the Atlantic Ocean on its quest to bring the pilgrims to the new world.

Every 45 seconds, a house catches fire in the United States.

Theodore Roosevelt's wife and mother died on the same day.

A person who smokes one pack of cigarettes a day inhales a half cup of tar everyday.

In ancient Rome it was considered a sin to eat the flesh of a wood pecker.

There are 10 million bricks in the Empire State building.

All the planets in our solar system could be placed inside the planet Jupiter.

Rubber is one of the ingredients of bubble gum, it is the substance that allows the chewer to blow a bubble.

A mosquito's wings move at the rate of one 1000 times per second.

The opposite sides of a dice cube always add up to seven.

Sight accounts for 90-95% or all sensory perceptions.  The pupil of the eye expands as much as 45% when a person looks at something pleasant.

William Howard Taft is the only man ever to have been both president of the U.S. and chief justice of the supreme court.


The chow is the only dog with a black tongue.  The rest of the dogs have pink tongues.

Haggis, a traditional scottish dish, is made from the lungs, heart, and liver of a sheep, choped with onions, seasonings, fat, and oatmeal, and then oatmeal, and ten boiled in a bag made from the sheep's stomach.

In medieval England beer was often served with breakfast.

Before World War II Blacks were not allowed to enlist in the U.S. Navy.

In 1880 there were approx. 2 billion passenger pigeons in the U.S.  By 1914 the species was extinct.

More Americans have died in automoblie accidents than have died in all the wars ever fought by the U.S.

The snail mates only once in its entire life.  When it does mate, however, it may take as long as 12 hours to consemate the act.

The Pyramid in Egypt contain enough stone and mortar to construct a wall 10 feet high and 5 feet wide running from New York to Los Angeles.

There is a disease called ichthyosis that turns the skin scaly like a fish.

In 1976, a Los Angeles woman married a 50 pound rock.  The ceremony was witnessed by more than 20 people.

When a man died in Ancient Egypt, the females in his family would smear their heads and faces with mud and wander through the city beating themselves and tearing off their clothes.

Celery has negative calories (It takes more to eat a piece of celery than has in it to begin with).

Three-fourths of household water is used to flush the toilet and take baths and showers.

Though they seem white through a telescope, the hottest stars are blue, and the coolest are red.

Some scientists estimate that 10 percent of all species of fish are endangered.

The toothbrush was invented in China in 1498.

Americans eat 228,000 onions every day.

In 1985, two people played checkers for 138 hours without stopping.

The world's record for rocking nonstop in a rocking chair is 440 hours.

If you haven't cooked fish a lot before, (or if you're squeamish about fish guts!) you should ask for it 'Pan-Dressed' -- this means they've cleaned it and it's all ready to put in the pan.

'Fresh fish should never smell 'fishy'.  A good way to test if the fish is fresh is to press on it gently.  If it leaves an indentation, don't buy that fish -- it's not good.  Look for shiny skin, clear eyes, and gills that are bright pink to red in color.

When Elvis Presley died, he'd earned nearly a quarter billion dollars, but had 'only' $4 million left - and maintaining Graceland was consuming over a quarter million/year.  Today, decades after his ignominious death from self abuse, Elvis Presley Enterprises Inc. makes over $50 million/year from licensing 'The King's' image.

92% of on the job fatalities are men while only 8% are women, even though men make up only a little more than 50% of the work force.  According to the Labor Department this disparity in fatality statistics is because men are commonly employed in the more dangerous occupations in construction and industry.

Over 90% of the sculpting on Mount Rushmore was done with dynamite.

The first automatic turn signal was an illuminated human like mechanical hand on the Hispano-Suiza Alfonso that extended to indicate right and left turns.

Out of the 23,000 Japanese soldiers who died on Guadalcanal, only 10% died from bullets. The overwhelming majority died from fever, malaria and hunger - the secondary but even more deadly effects of war.

It takes the interaction of 72 different muscles to produce human speech.

Microsoft spends over $500 million/year to answer phone calls from users with problems - more than it spends on developing the software products people are calling about.

Lightning is very sensitive to temperature.  Lightning activity increases 3-4 fold for every degree centigrade of temperature rise.

Those who promote mass transit often quote the statistic that motor vehicles are the primary cause of smog - implying that private automobiles are the main problem.  According to a recent American Automobile Association study, automobiles and light trucks are no longer the main cause of smog in the United States.  2/3rds of the smog in the 10 major cities in the study came from smokestacks, refineries, big trucks, and busses.  Since mass transit is a greater cause of pollution than the 'problem' it claims to solve, could it be that our independent freedom of movement is the real 'enemy' the self appointed social engineers are attacking?  Its awfully hard to divide and conquer if the 'conquered' keep moving around and mingling.

The annual cost of unauthorized software duplication is estimated at $4 Billion.

According to the March/April 1993 D & B report, the US loses an estimated 6 million jobs per year due to information stolen through industrial espionage.  The annual US revenue loss due to information stolen through industrial espionage is estimated at $200 Billion.

The hottest temperature ever recorded was 136 degrees (Fahrenheit) in Libya on Sept. 13, 1922. The coldest temperature of -128 degrees was recorded in Antarctica on July 21, 1983.

On average, Americans throw away 20,000 televisions, 150,000 tons of packaging materials, and 43,000 tons of food per day.

The only married couple to fly together in space were Jan Davis and Mark Lee, who flew aboard the Endeavour space shuttle from September 12-20, 1992.  However ,don't plan on such an excursion with your future husbands!  NASA made an exception for these two, because they weren't married when they started training for the mission and they had no children.

In the past 60 years, the groundhog has only predicted the weather correctly 28% of the time.  The rushing back and forth from burrows is believed to indicate sexual activity, not shadow seeking.

Celestially speaking, Groundhog Day on Feb. 2 is a 'cross-quarter' day, about halfway between the winter solstice in December and the vernal equinox in March, and is celebrated in some cultures as the midpoint of winter.

Lincoln's Secretary was named Kennedy, while Kennedy's Secretary was named Lincoln. Both presidents were succeeded by Southerners.  Both successors were named Johnson.

The first known heart medicine was discovered in an English garden.  In 1799, physician John Ferriar noted the effect of dried leaves of the common foxglove plant, digitalis purpurea, on heart action.  Still used in heart medications, digitalis slows the pulse and increases the force of heart contractions and the amount of load pumped per heartbeat.

55,700 people in the US are injured by jewelry each year.

In Kentucky, 50% of the people who get married for the first time are teenagers.

50% of bank robberies take place on Friday's. 

The Atlantic Ocean is saltier than the Pacific Ocean.

The world's longest game of Monopoly lasted more than 660 hours.

Kentucky produces more whiskey than the other US states combined.

Ringo Starr was born during a WWII air raid.

American astronauts must be under 6 feet tall.

The words 'assassination' and 'bump' were invented by Shakespeare.

One billion seconds is about 31.7 years.

Luke Skywalker's last name was changed at the last minute from Starkiller, in order to make it less violent.

The only contemporary words that end in gry are angry and hungry.

The Statue of Liberty's mouth is only 3 feet wide.

The average fingernail grows 4 times as fast as the average toenail. 

Willard Scott was the first RonaldMcDonald. 

A pound of termites has more nutrients than a pound of beef or pork,' says Frank French of Georgia Southern University.  He teaches his students that there are more food sources around them than they think.  Students are urged to create new recipes using foods such as wild plants, but more points are given if the students use bugs.  The catch: students have to eat their creations as part of their assignment.  French doesn't shirk his responsibilities: he eats them too.  He notes that roast crickets, for instance, 'taste like a fat-laden hors d'oeuvre.'  However, 'the legs aren't very palatable, and the heads are quite objectionable.'

If college costs continue their present 6% annual upward climb, a freshman in 2012 could need $112,250 to $235,000 to cover four years of college.

Number of wisdom teeth extracted by oral surgeons in the U.S each year: 2,250,000. 

Percentage of all celebrities who respond to mail requests for their autographs, 77. 

Average acceleration time from zero to 60 mile per hour for American six-cylinder cars in 1975: 15.7 seconds; for 1991 models: 11 seconds. 

Percentage of Americans in 1981 who expected to be better off than their parents: 67; today: 25. 

Percentage of American who wore seat belts while driving an automobile in 1992: 62; in 1982: 12. 

Percentage of women who wash their hands before leaving the restroom: 80. Percentage of men who wash before leaving: 55. 

Percentage of Americans who didn't know Serbs were the group that attacked Bosnia: 79; who didn't know the reasons for the fighting: 68; who didn't know the meaning of ethnic cleansing: 66. 

$600,000 is the size of the fine levied by the FCC on Howard Stern's employer for his discussion on masturbation, erections, and homosexual sex during his show.  $10,000 was the size of the fine issued to Charles Barkley by the NBA for accidentally spitting on an eight year old girl.  $7500 was the size of the fine issued by the French Open to John McEnroe for swearing during his loss in the tournament's first round.  $1000 was the fine issued by the state of Texas on a man arrested for possession of four automatic weapons and five silencers.

Out of the top 50 all-time-top-rated television shows, number that are Super Bowls: 18.

The Automated Teller Machine (ATM) was introduced in England in 1965.  Number of ATM's in the U.S. in 1995: 105,000.  Average number of times per year a cardholder uses an ATM: 78. 

Percentage of U.S. women born blonde: 16.  Percentage of women who are blonde today: 33.  Percentage of TV newscasters who are blonde: 64.  Percentage of Miss Americas who are blonde: 65. 

Results of a poll of 7000 people in six countries, percentage who could recognize the McDonald's sign and the Shell Oil logo: 88.  Percentage who could identify the Christian cross: 54. 

Average speed of Heinz ketchup from the mouth of an opened bottle: 25 miles per year. 

The world's population is expected to double by 2050, at the current growth rate.

An increase of 3 degrees C may not seem like much, but around 1000 AD a climate slightly warmer than today enabled the vikings to settle Iceland and Greenland, while generally the mid-latitudes became drier.  By about 500 years later, that colony had disappeared, at least in part due to a temperature drop of about one degree.

The human body is comprised of 80% water

The average automatic dishwasher uses 68 liters of water per wash cycle.

Water is reusable and not renewable.

Acid rain originates with emissions from coal-fired generators, iron and steel mills, pulp and paper mills, and from motor vehicle exhaust.  The released sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides are converted to sulfuric and nitric acids in the atmosphere.  These acids return to earth through wet sulfate or nitrate deposition.

Over 10,000 new chemicals are created each week.

Water is purified in large part by the routine actions of living organisms.  Energy from sunlight drives the process of photosynthesis in aquatic plants, which produces oxygen as a by-product.  Bacteria use this oxygen to break down organic material such as plant and animal waste.  This produces carbon dioxide.

Of the ten most highly valued species of fish in Lake Ontario, seven have now almost totally vanished.

Over 360 chemical compounds have been identified in the great lakes.  Many are persistent toxic chemicals.  Various species of fish now suffer from various tumours and lesions, and their reproductive capacities are decreasing.

Calcium and magnesium - both essential elements for man - account for most water hardness.  Death rates for certain types of cardiovascular disease have been found to be higher in soft water areas than in hard water areas in many parts of the world.

One gram of PCBs can make up to one billion liters of water unsuitable for freshwater aquatic life.

One gram of 2,4-D, a common household herbicide can contaminate ten million liters of drinking water.

One drop of oil can render up to 25 liters of water unfit for drinking.

Of all Canadians, 26% rely on groundwater for domestic use.

In developing nations, 80% of diseases are water related.

Approximately 57% of Canadians are served by wastewater treatment plants, compared with 74% of Americans, 86.5% of Germans, and 99% of Swedes.

In ancient China, doctors received their fees only if their patients were kept healthy.  If the patient's health failed, the doctor sometimes paid the patient.

Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated. 

At 90 degrees (F) below zero your breath will freeze in midair and fall to the ground. 

Of the seven wonders of the world noted in the Antipater of Sidon in the second century B.C. only the Pyramids of Egypt (the oldest of the seven) remain.  The other six are: the hanging gardens of Babylon, the statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the Colossus of Rhodes, the Pharos (Lighthouse) at Alexandria.

It costs twice as much to send a kid to jail, as it does to send a kid to Yale

There are three times as many shelters for battered animals, as there are for battered women

The Great Auk, Steller's Sea Cow, Panamanian Fire Coral, San Diego Mud Snail & Eelgrass Limpet are now extinct. 

15 of the world's 17 largest fisheries are overfished or in trouble 

Global fish production exceeds that of cattle, sheep, poultry or eggs, and is the biggest source of wild or domestic protein in the world. 

The deepest spot in the ocean is in the Mariana Trench at 11.7 km 

There may be as many as 6 million diatoms, tiny floating plants in a cubic foot of sea water 

The average depth of the ocean is 4 km 

The world's oceans contain 328 million cubic miles of sea water 

The word mercy (and merci, French for thanks) come from the same linguistic root as mercenary, merchant, commerce, and market (they all derive from the god Mercury).

Every year, about 98% of the atoms in your body are replaced. [Lynn Margulis & Dorion Sagan, 'What is Life?']

The majority of fossil hominid specimens are teeth, because enamel and dentine are very durable.

Mutations accumulate at the rate of about 100 per genome [i.e. person] per generation in mammals.

The cigarette lighter was invented before the match. 

Daniel Boone detested coonskin caps. 

Men leave their hotel rooms cleaner than women do.

When Italy was founded in 1861, only 3% of Italians spoke Italian fluently. 

About 2/3 of men's clothing bought in the U.S. is purchased by women. 

90% of New York City cabbies are recently arrived immigrants. 

One in five Americans cannot say which president is on the $1 bill without looking. 

While performing her duties as queen, Cleopatra sometimes wore a fake beard. 

Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married. 

In 1980, the yellow pages accidentally listed a Texas funeral home under Frozen Foods. 

Only about a third of 'Gilligan's Island' episodes are actually about getting off the island. 

The largest painting on earth is a 72,437-square-foot smiley face. 

According to a booze bill for a celebration party thrown September 15, 1787, the 55 people who were designing the United States Constitution drank 54 bottles of Madeira, 60 bottles of claret, 8 bottles of whiskey, 22 bottles of port, 8 bottles of cider, 12 bottles of beer, and 7 large bowls of alcoholic punch large enough 'that ducks could swim in them.'  There were 16 musicians at the party.  I think we all know now why the Constitution was signed on the 17th of September and not of the 16th. 

Barbie sold more Corvettes in 1984 than General Motors.

Barbie is the single most successful and enduring toy line in the industry.

Some collectors of Barbie own between 300 to 7000 Barbie dolls!

Barbie has, to this day, over a billion pair of shoes.

In Canada and the US , little girls between 3 and 10 own, on average, eight Barbie dolls.  In Italy the average is seven, and in France and Germany it's five. 

Did you know that some of Barbie's friends aren't called the same way in Europe?  For example, Kelly is called Shelly, Melodie (Kelly's friend) is called Susie, Jenny (Kelly's friend) is called Julie, Kira is Marina and Whitney is Laura.

Barbie and Ken are named after the children of Ruth and Elliot Handler, founder of Mattel.

Black and green tea drinkers reduce the risk of esophageal cancer, according to a study in shanghai by 50%.  A study by the university of chicago medical school showed that long-term tea drinkers reduced their pancreatic cancer risk by 60%.  [Source: World Health Network]

Reported in a 1990 issue of science magazine.  If heart disease, cancer, and diabetes were eliminated, the life expectancy for both men and women would leap to 99.2 years.  [Source: World Health Network]

Shigechio isumi, an Okinawan fisherman, lived to almost 121 years.  [Source: World Health Network]

The number of individuals who are aged 100+ years was 50,000 in 1994.  It is projected that this number will be 110,000 in 2004.  [Source: World Health Network]

In 1900, 75% of the population died before age 65; today there is almost a 75% increase in population by age 65.  [Source: World Health Network]

Bone density: bones lose mineral content and become weaker with age.  Control factors are proper calcium and stress exercise.  [Source: World Health Network]

Calories: at age 70 a person needs 500 fewer calories per day to maintain body weight.  [Source: World Health Network]

In the year 2025, the number of Americans over 65 will outnumber teenagers by more than two to one.  [Source: World Health Network]

Our current median age is 32, and is projected to be 36 by the turn of the century. In 1776 it was 16.  [Source: World Health Network]

The national institute for health projects that by the year 2040 the average life expectancy will be 86 for men and 91.5 for women.  [Source: World Health Network]

Colon cancer is the second leading cancer in men at age 85 and in women at age 75  [Source: World Health Network]

An epidemiological anomaly is that japan, with the highest smoking rate, has the lowest lung-cancer rate. The u.s. has the second highest smoking rate with 400,000 related deaths per year compared to japan's 110,186 deaths.  [Source: World Health Network]

The incidence of prostrate cancer exceeds that of all other cancers in men by age 65 and rises to an incidence of greater than 1/100/yr. After age 80.  [Source: World Health Network]

There are more extremely fat people (40% or more above their recommended body weight) in the us than in any other country in the world.  [Source: World Health Network]

Heart disease is the #1 american death threat  [Source: World Health Network]

Life expectancy has increased for all ages. This increase in largely attributable to substantial declines in the number of deaths from heart disease and stroke since the late 1960s.  [Source: World Health Network]

In 1990, more than 31 million americans were over 65 years old, nearly twice the number as in 1960. By 2020, when a large part of the baby boomer generation has passed age 65, there will be more than 50 million older americans.  [Source: World Health Network]

The u.s. spends less than 5% of its health care budget on preventive medicine.  [Source: World Health Network]

The congressional budget office projects that medicare will grow about 10% a year, consuming more than 17% of the budget by the year 3005, up from 12% in 1996.  [Source: World Health Network]

In the u.s., the average price of a day in the hospital is $360, in japan one day its $60.  [Source: World Health Network]

Americans are the most x-rayed, cat-scanned, and operated people on earth, which helps explains why u.s. health care costs are so high.  [Source: World Health Network]

In 1987, if the u.s. had spent the same share of the gnp on health care as our international competitors, we could have saved $158 billion.  [Source: World Health Network]

Only 40% of people in the u.s. are eligible for government funded hospital care. Compare this to 77% for Netherlands, 92% for Germany, 98% for Switzerland, Spain, and Belgium, 99% for France and Austria, and 100% for all other countries.  [Source: World Health Network]

According to a 1990 harvard survey, 60% of people in the us believe that their health-care system needs fundamental change compared to 38% of canadians.  [Source: World Health Network]

Compared to the rest of the world, americans pay the most for healthcare and get the least--30 to 40 million people, two-thirds of them children, are excluded.  [Source: World Health Network]

According to the us. Census bureau, a woman who reaches 50 years and remains free of cancer and heart disease can expect to live to her 91st birthday. An average healthy male who is 65 years today will most likely live to see age 81.  [Source: World Health Network]

Only about 30% of the characteristics of aging are genetically determined. The other 70% are linked to lifestyle.  [Source: World Health Network]

The first book of crosswords was introduced on April 10, 1924 for a steep $1.35 per book and each one came with a freshly sharpened pencil.  The publishers, Simon and Schuster, were advised to use an alias for their first run because their advisors were skeptical and thought it might fail, ruining them in the publishing industry.  They took the advice and named themselves Plaza Printing Company.  Within three months, book sales reached an astonishing 40,000!  Needless to say, the editions of crossword puzzle books that followed bore their real name.  [Source: Custom Crosswords]

Horace and Shaq wear new shoes every game[Source: NBA]

Shaq wears a size 22EEE shoe[Source: NBA]

The 345 billion Oreo cookies sold to date would fill up the world's largest freight train, consisting of 660 freight cars, more than 45 times.[Source: Nabisco]

The St. Louis Arch (630 feet) is 15,120 Oreo cookies high.  [Source: Nabisco]

The Golden Gate Bridge (4,200 feet) is 28,800 Oreo cookies long.  [Source: Nabisco]

If every Oreo cookie ever made were stacked on top of each other (more than 345 billion...), the pile would reach to the moon and back more than five times. Then again, if placed side-by-side, they would encircle the earth 381 times at the equator.  [Source: Nabisco]

If every Oreo cookie eaten in a year were dunked, cows would have to work overtime to produce the extra 42.2 million gallons of milk needed to accommodate the extra dunkers.  [Source: Nabisco]

In order to keep up with this voluminous demand, the Oreo cookie recipe calls for 18 million pounds of cocoa and 47 million pounds of creme filling. An Oreo cookie is 29% creme, 71% cookie.  [Source: Nabisco]

The Oreo cookie has been America's most popular cookie since it was introduced in 1912. More than 345 billion Oreo cookies have been consumed to date.  More than 7.5 billion Oreo cookies are consumed each year, which comes out to 625 million per month and 20.5 million per day.  [Source: Nabisco]

It takes approximately 190,400 pounds of milk to make 40,000 pounds of butter.[Source: Chicago Mercantile Exchange]

You could butter approximately 2.5 million pieces of toast with a CME Butter contract (if you used one teaspoon of butter for each slice).  [Source: Chicago Mercantile Exchange]

40,000 pounds of butter would make 80,000 batches of chocolate chip cookies. If each batch yields approximately 30 cookies, that's 2.4 million cookies!  [Source: Chicago Mercantile Exchange]

Alaska's State Bird: Alaska Willow Ptarmigan (Lagopus lagopus alascensis Swarth) It can change it's color from light brown to snow white. The willow ptarmigan was named Alaska's state bird in 1955.  [Source: Alaska's Best]

Alaska's State Flower: Forget-me-not.  [Source: Alaska's Best]

The search for gold played a major role in shaping the history of Alaska, from the discovery of gold in Juneau to the great gold rush at Nome. Gold was named the state mineral in 1968.[Source: Alaska's Best]

Alaska has a large deposit of jade, including an big mountain filled with dark green jade on the Seward Peninsula. Jade is the state's gem.  [Source: Alaska's Best]

'PHYTHOLOGNYRRH' spells 'Turner' phonetically: Phyh as in phythsic olo as in colonel gn as in gnat yrrh as in myrrh[Source: Ripley's Believe it or not!]

A woman called Mum-Zi was a grand mother when she was 17. She was in Cheif AkKiri's Harem on the island of Calabar.  She joined the harem when she was less than eight years old, she had a baby when she was 8 years and 4 months old, and her daughter became a mother at 8 too![Source: Ripley's Believe it or not!]

A pound of feathers weighs more than a pound of gold. (Because feathers are weighed by 'avoirdupois' weight, which has 16 ounces to a pound, while gold is weighed in 'troy' weight, which only has 12 ounces to a pound).[Source: Ripley's Believe it or not!]

(This is a fact from the 30's, so it might not be true now, although, with the rise in population, it is probably even more true!)  If someone got murdered at midnight, and everyone who knew about it told 2 other people within 12 miuites, and _they_ told 2 people within 12 minuites, etc., etc., then everyone on earth would know about it before midnight![Source: Ripley's Believe it or not!]

Erwin, TN is the first (and only) place where an elephant has been hanged for murder.

You can tell the temperature in farenheight by counting the number of 'clicks' a cricket makes in fifteen seconds and then adding 37.

In Hitchcock's film 'North by Northwest', during the scene with the gunshot towards the end, in the background a young boy put's his fingers in his ears because he knew what was comming up due to lots of retakes.  [Source: The film!]

The human eye is so sensitive that, in perfect darkness, it can see a lit match 10 miles away. 

President James Buchanun was the only bachelor president. He used his niece as the First Lady.

In a deck of cards, all four Kings have beards, but only three of them also have mustaches. The one without a mustache is the King of Hearts.

Alaska, the largest state in the U.S., has more area than Texas, California & Montana, the next three largest states, put together.

The first two primes, or numbers divisible only by themselves and 1, are 2 and 3. All other primes are either one less than or one greater than a multiple of 6, which is the product of 2 and 3. The first three 'pairs' of primes are 5 and 7, 11 and 13, 17 and 19. 23 stands without a prime partner, since 25 is the square of 5, the next prime after 3. The higher the multiple of 6, the greater the chance of either number before & after being divisible by a lower prime number.

The Acronym 'TWAIN' actually stands for 'Tool Without An Interesting Name'

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.' 

It is illegal to sell an ET doll in France. They have a law forbidding the sale of dolls that do not have human faces.

100% of all commercially bred Turkeys are Artificially Inseminated. Why? The Toms have been bred to have abnormally large breasts (chests). Because of this they can no longer come close enough to mate.

The longest word in the English language is 'pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis' - which describes a lung disease caused by breathing in particles of volcanic matter or a similar fine dust.  [Source: Did you ever wonder...]

Manhole covers are round so that they cannot fall through the opening of the hole when being removed.  [Source: Did you ever Wonder....]

The term 'Chicken Pox' didn't come from people believing that they came from chickens, it came from the Old English term 'gican pox' - which means the itching pox.

Cowboys wear high heels to keep their shoes from falling out of the stirrups.  [Source: Did you ever wonder....]

Charlotte Bartholdi, the mother of the designer of the Statue of Liberty, was the model for the face of the statue, while the sculptor's girlfriend, Jeanne-Emilie, was the model for the statue's arms and body.  [Source: Did you ever wonder.... series]

Every 28th year has the same calendar. As an example of coincidence: 1961, the year in which the Berlin Wall was put up, would have had the same calendar dates as 1989, the year in which it was torn down. Your twenty-eighth birthday falls on the same day as when you were born. Also, in a period of 28 years, the same calendar will reappear 3 more times in between, either in whole or in part, starting somewhere in this cycle: six years after the first, then eleven years later, then six years later, then five years later, totalling twenty eight years. This pattern has only been broken at the dawnings of the 20th, 19th and 18th centuries, because of a 15th-c rule declaring that years ending in 00 that are not divisible by 400 will not be leap years. But 2000 will have the same calendar as 1972.  [Source: World Almanac, perpetual calendar section]

Toy Story, the first 100% computer-animated feature, created by PIXAR and directed by John Lasseter, is infamous for its meticulous attention to detail, which would include several subliminal references to PIXAR history. In one of the early scenes where Woody is holding a staff meeting with the other toys, the books in the bookshelf behind where Woody is standing have titles of previous PIXAR short films, such as 'Red's Dream,' 'Luxo Jr.,' 'Knick Knack', etc. The license plate number of the car that Andy and his family drive away in is the same as the room number of an animation department studio at the California Institute of the Arts, from which Lasseter and other staff members graduated.  [Source: November premiere of Toy Story, in Valencia, CA]

If you dug a hole directly through the center of the earth starting anywhere in the U.S., you would not wind up in China. You wouldn't even wind up on dry land, but somewhere in the Indian Ocean. The only place where you could technically 'dig through to China' would be in Argentina or Chile, in South America. In geography, 'polar opposites' are coordinates that are on opposite ends of the earth, i.e. the earth's core would lie between them. Two other countries that are exact polar opposites are Spain and New Zealand. (Note: Land-to-land 'polar coordinate' possibilities can only be affected by continental shifting)

In the U.S., more Monopoly money has been printed than real money.

Las Vegas is the #1 most dangerous city--by crime. The city with the most unlisted phone numbers in the phone book is.....Las Vegas!  [Source: Pop Up Video, on VH1]

The capital of Zimbabwe is Zimbabwe

Nine out of thirteen blimps in this world are in Found in The United States.

In the novel, 'The seven percent solution', Sherlock Holmes meets Sigmund Freud, gets cured of his cocaine addiction, delays the onset of WW I, and furthermore Moriarty turns out to *actually* be the Maths whiz that he claims to be with Holmes suffering from the illusion that he is a criminal mastermind because, Moriarty had seduced Holmes' mother!

Titanic had only three funnels on the original plans. The fourth ('dummy') one was added later as a decoration, therefore it could not smoke.

The synthetic hormone estrogen has a Brand Name of 'Premarin'. It is named this because it is synthesized from PRegnant MARe's urINe. [Source: Well known in the pharmaceutical industry]

Liszt, Sarasate, Brahms, Schubert, and other great composers have popularized Gypsy music under their own signatures. Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies are but transcriptions of Gypsy melodies that he had heard on the Hungarian and Roumanian plains. 

Other than humans, pigs are the only animals who can get a sunburn. That's why they waddle in mud.

John Lennon's middle name was Winston.

Michelangelo died at the age of 88.

The first perfect nine innings baseball game (pitcher pitches 27 outs, no hits, no runs) was achieved by John Lee Richmond on 12 June 1880.

The collecting of Beer mats is called Tegestology.

The first automobile racetrack in America was the 'Indianapolis Motor Speedway', which consisted of 3 million cobblestones.

Draughts is older than chess.

A soccer ball has 32 panels.

Darts is the most popular sport played in Britain.

The name of the reindeer in the 'Original Eight,' usually named as 'DONNER' is actually named 'DonDer'....  [Source: original source printings of poem ]

Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a spacesuit damages them.  [Source: Everything there is to know (by Tim Hunkin)]

O Canada was proclaimed the national anthem on July 1, 1980, a century after being sung for the first time.

A key element of the Canadian flag - the stylized maple leaf - was designed by Mr. Jacques St. Cyr, while the proportions of the flag were outlined by Mr. George Bist, a World War II veteran, and the precise colouration of the flag defined by Dr. Gunter Wyszechi. The final determination of all aspects of the new flag was made by a 15-member parliamentary committee, which is officially credited with the design.

Canada is a constitutional monarchy and a federal state with a democratic parliament. The Parliament of Canada, in Ottawa, consists of the House of Commons, whose members are elected, and the Senate, whose members are appointed. On average, members of Parliament are elected every four years.

There are only 3000 visible stars in our sky

The sun orbits the center of the galaxy at a rate of 155m/sec but it still takes 320 million years to make one complete orbit

If each count was a second it would take 12 days to count to a million and 32 years to count to a billion..

The billionth digit in pi is nine

A female orgasm is a powerfull painkiller (because of the release of endorfines), so headaches are in fact a bad excuse not to have sex.

The geographic center of the United States is located in South Dakota. 

1972 Monte Carlo has a one of a kind front end. The only year like them

The word Orang Utang means 'jungle man' in Bahasa, the indigenous language to Malaysia, Papua New Guinea and much of the Phillipines. There are so many regional dialects, that people living 5 miles apart in Sarawak, the largely jungled area of island Malaysia often cannot understand each other.

Malaysia has older indigenous rainforests than Brazil.

Marie Antoinette, wife of Louis XIV (I think it was him, may be one more or less) of France, was a major factor in the peasants' uprising against the monarchy. When she was told that the peasants were starving, as there was no bread, she was famously villified for replying with 'Well, let them eat cake'. This in itself was a misquote, as she actually said 'Let them eat brioche' which is a slightly sweeter bread mixture. The sentiment remains the same however, that she couldn't understand the concept of poverty.

There is no place in the British Isles where you can be more than 80 miles from the sea.

The world famous traditional British clothing & department store, Marks & Spencers, was started in the covered market in Leeds, West Yorkshire as Marks & Spencer's Penny Bazaar, with a catch line of 'Don't ask the price, it's a penny'

The Egyptians used a value of pi with an error of less than one in ten thousand when they built the pyramids.

It is very common for young budgie birds to suffer from strokes. If the bird does not die, it will often have paralysis most commonly in it's legs and feet.

There is only one state in the continental US (48 states) that borders a single other state - Maine.

That little plastic thing on the end of a shoelace is called an 'aglet'.

The one millionth digit after the decimal point in the definition of pi is a 1... i.e 3.141.............1

If all the hot dogs that americans comsume in one year were laid out, it would stretch from earth to moon, and back.

Celery has negative calories. It takes more energy to eat it than celery has to begin with.  [Source: isacc asimov's book of facts]

More cattle are bought and sold in Amarillo, TX than anywhere else in the country.

The largest helium deposit in the world lies underneath Amarillo, TX

If you add together all the numbers on a Roulette Wheel (1 to 36) the total is 666.

Did you know that if Lee Harvey Oswald had not been shot, and not convicted for killing President Kennedy, he WOULD have been convicted for killing Officer Tippet? Yep, not many people know anything about Officer Tippet. While fleeing from the Texas Book Depository Building, Oswald was spotted by a cop that had just heard about the assassin's description. When he came after Oswald, Oswald shot him with a pistol and left him for dead. Then he went into a theater, watched some of "Hell Is War", and got apprehended. That brings me to that Kennedy/Lincoln thing that was brought up here...John Wilkes Boothe shot Lincoln in a theater and ran to a barn, Oswald shot Kennedy from a barn and ran to a theater.

The Citibank building in New York City had a structural flaw, and had the potential to fall down. There was a misunderstanding between the Engineer and the Contractor and the building was not built right. When the flaw was caught in 1978 (a year after completion) it was found that there was a 50% chance of collapse during winds over 78 mph. (typical in a hurricane). At the same time there was a hurricane heading up the East Coast heading straight for NYC. The Engineer and building owner secretly had the flaw corrected in the middle of the night (some of the bracings were bolted instead of being welded). There were rumors about the 'glowing Citibank building' because the welding could be seen across the skyline. It was estimated that 156 blocks would have been demilished due to the domino effect the building would start had it fallen over.  [Source: Archived in the Boston Globe]

Betsy Ross had a fully formed set of teeth when she was born.  [Source: More useless facts]

RULE OF THUMB: Before thermometers were invented, brewers would dip a thumb or finger into the mix to find the right temperature for adding yeast. Too cold, and the yeast wouldn't grow. Too hot, and the yeast would die. The thumb in the beer is where we get the phrase 'rule of thumb'.
HONEYMOON: It was the accepted practice in Babylon 4,000 years ago that for a month after the wedding, the brige's father would supply his son-in-law with all the mead he could drink. Mead is a honey beer, and because their calendar was lunar based, this period (the 'honey month') was often referred to as the 'honey moon'.

P'S and Q'S: Long before computerized cash registers, records of beer purchases were posted on a board indicating 'P' for pints and 'Q' for quarts. Tavern owners would remind the barmaids to 'mind their P's and Q's' in order to recieve proper payment.  [Source: Hog's Head Beer Cellar Newsletter- 10/97]

Contrary to popular belief, the Moon does have an atmosphere. It is very thin. If you took all of the molecules in one cubic centimeter of atmosphere from the Moon and lined them up, they would fit inside the period of this sentence. If you took a cubic centimeter of atmosphere from the earth as sea level and lined all of the molecules up, it would go from the earth to the Moon and back again two and a half times.

The Sun puts out more energy in one second than mankind has used since the beginning of time.

The Sun shrinks in diameter by 5 feet every hour.

If you could shrink the Milky Way down to the size of North America, our Solar System would fit inside a coffee cup.

If you could hold a square mile of sunshine in your hand, it would weigh 3 pounds

Nightmare On Elm Street (it is said) is based on a real story. The story goes that Wes Craven was in a coffee shop reading the newspaper when he stumbled upon a story. A boy was afraid to go to sleep because of nightmares. He tried to stay up. He failed. His dad found him the next morning, dead, with four razor type slahes on his chest. Police officials said that the wounds were not self inflicted, nor was there any sign of a break in. Weird huh? Think about this story while you go to sleep tonight.  [Source: A Nightmare On Elm Street obsessee who says he saw it in a Wes Craven interveiw.]

The only McDonalds with a turquoise 'm' is located in TX. All other McDonalds have to have yellow arches.

In England (and possibly in America) the law on part-repayment of debt is very ancient. It dates back to a case called 'Pinnell's Case', from the 17th century. What it says is that if you make an agreement with someone to pay part of a loan as full payment, the person whom you are repaying can still sue you for the rest, even if he promised he wouldn't. What's the way out of this? Bizarrely, to pay him the agreed amount, plus something else which isn't money. Because courts don't look at whether a payment is worth the value that is claimed for it, you can pay off a $1,000,000 debt (if the creditor agrees) with $1 and a McDonald's fry, and the court will hold that the creditor valued the McDonald's fry at $999,999. What you mustn't do is just pay money: pay money plus something else. (Actually, I suppose this could be quite a useful fact).  [Source: Cheshire, Fifoot and Furmston - the Law of Contracts]

The legal principle that the King is subject to the law was a relatively recent invention in English law (from which American law has descended). In a 17th century case called 'the Case of the Proclamations', King James I decreed that London was getting too big, and so no more building would be allowed. He was taken to court by a (brave!) subject who claimed that the law wasn't valid because Parliament didn't agree. The King claimed that he was King, and so what he said went. The courts replied: 'The King hath no power nor prerogative in this realm save what the law of the land allows him.' and thus the principle behind the Separation of Powers was established.  [Source: Constitutional & Administrative Law degree course]

Only male turkeys (Toms) gobble, females make a clicking noise.

In Greek mythology Europa was a mistress of Zeus to whom he appeared as a gentle white heifer. Zeus persuaded her to take a ride on his back, and then he carried her away across the sea. Hence the name for Europe.[Source: NASA]

Sherwood Park, Alberta, Canada is the largest Hamlet in the world. A hamlet is an urban area with 'a small cluster of houses and no mayor or central government'. Most hamelts have a population of around 20-30 people. Sherwood Park has over 45,000 people and no mayor or central government.

If you were standing on the rim of a black hole, theoretically (if you were alive...) you would be looking at the back of your head.

182,000 of the 581,942 bridges in the United States are rated unsafe for traffic. That's 31.3%!! And there isn't enough money in the budget to replace ANY of them.  [Source: The Detroit News]

Napoleon had a great interest in the Ancient Egyptian pyramids. He calculated that there was enough stone in the Great Pyramid of Gizeh to build a wall 10 feet high and 1 foot thick around the entire border of France.

111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

The only letter not appearing on the periodic table is 'J'. 

Dolly, the genetically cloned sheep, was called Dolly because the genetic material had to be cloned in a rapidly dividing cell culture. The team used mammary gland tissue for this procedure. Dolly was called Dolly because Dolly Parton had big breasts.

The synthetic drug ectasy, occurs naturally in certain mosses and such like. Reindeer eat these mosses and the reindeer are 'harvested' by reindeer hunters, who collect their urine. As only approximately 10% of the ectasy is metabolised the hunters proceed to drink the reindeer urine to get high. The urine is then collected from the hunter and passed around the group to another hunter, who proceeds to drink up himself. Funny what people will do for kicks isn't it? 

The first J.C. Penney's was in Kemerer, Wyo.

The 'Grand jury' that you hear about on the news, newspapers, etc. is actually held in total secrecy with the only evidence presented being that of the prosecution. The accused cannot utter one word in his or her defense. Furthermore the jurors are STRICTLY forbidden to speak publicly about what went on behind those closed doors. So when you hear that 'So-and-so was indicted by a grand jury' you must know that the government evidence was the only evidence presented. SCAREY but true.

The cruise liner, Queen Elizabeth II, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns. 

Soap Operas are so called because they were originally used to advertise soap powder. In America in the early days of TV, advertisers would write stories around the use of their soap powder.

Most people know that the legendary trumpet player Louis Armstrong was nicknamed Satchmo. However, did you know that Satchmo was short for Satchel Mouth?

66% of Japan is covered in forest!

It was in 1752 when the modern world changed New Year's Day to January 1st. It had previously been March 25th. Before the Calendar Adjustment Act of 1751, Great Britain and it's U.S. colonies celebrated New Year's Day on March 25th because it is Lady Day and the Feast of Annunciation. For some nations, New Year's has been celebrated on January 1 ever since 1752. 

Heating oil creates the hottest flame of any home heating fuel. It's 400? hotter than natural gas or propane and makes electric heat and heat pumps shiver in comparison. Because it's so hot, your home heats up faster and needs less fuel. 

Medieval Jewish mystics practiced rolling in the snow to purge themselves from evil urges. They were the first snow angels.

The tallest mountain in the world from base to summit is located on the island of Hawaii. The dormant volcano Mauna Kea measures over 30,000 feet tall when measured from its ocean base to summit, several hundred feet higher than Mt. Everest in the Himalayas.

A whale's penis is called a dork. 

Armadillos have four babies at a time and they are always the same sex. 

Armadillos are the only animal besides humans that can get leprosy. 

The "L. L." in L. L. Bean stands for Leon Leonwood. 

Recreational boaters spent about $17.7 billion on boats, motors, trailers and accessories in 1996. 

In 1938, Chester Carlson invented xerography out of two natural phenomena already known: materials of opposite electrical charges are attracted, and certain materials become better conductors of electricity when exposed to light. By combining these phenomena in a unique way, he was able to create a new process for making cheap, fast, good copies on plain paper.

The famous split-fingered Vulcan salute is actually intended to represent the first letter ("shin," pronounced "sheen") of the word "shalom." As a small boy, Leonard Nimoy observed his rabbi using it in a benediction and never forgot it; eventually he was able to add it to "Star Trek" lore. 

Most people think of the Meridian Line as a solid fixed point. However, in reality it is simply a north/south line which would move whenever the astronomer altered the position of his meridian telescope. The Ordnance Survey used Bradley's Meridian in its charts, although we are more familiar with Airy's line.

In the Brazilian jungle, women of the Apinaye tribe bite of portions of their mates eyebrows during intercourse.

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

The Eiffel tower grows six inches every year. In the summer the metal expands to make the tower grow but also in the winter the metal contracts to shrink the tower back down.

Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer.

Electrical storms are thought to make a person dream more frequently in sleep.

Mexican free-tailed bats sometimes fly up to two miles high to feed or to catch tail-winds that carry them over long distances at speeds of more than 60 miles per hour.

Mr. Rogers was an ordained minister.

"Flow Control" is the way your computer and your modem manage the speed of the incoming data. If the data comes into the modem so fast that the computer cannot read it correctly, the computer needs a way to tell the modem to pause, and a way to tell it to resume. Also, if the computer can accept data faster than it is arriving, it needs to tell the modem that it's ok to send faster. This mechanism is flow control.

During the Middle Ages, very few people--including the average knight--could read or write. Since the Church played such a large role in medieval life, learning took place in the monasteries, where books were written and the first libraries were kept.

Becoming a knight was no easy matter. The process began at an early age, as there were many things to learn--not only about arms and welfare, but about courtesy as well. At age 7, a boy would be sent away to begin his training--to learn the use of arms, to practice wrestling and leaping into the saddle in full armor. By age 14, he became a squire, learning good manners and the meaning of honor. He learned about hunting and taking care of his lord's armor, brushing it and repairing it when necessary. Finally, when the time came for him to be made a knight, the squire would be ceremonially bathed and dressed in white robes, then spend the night in prayer with his sword and armor on the chapel altar. The following morning, he would make an oath in church to devote his life to the service of God and chivalry. 

Moses Maimonides, 12th century physician to the Egyptian Khalif, prescribed snow as a cure for the hot Cairo summers. 

The word calendar comes from Latin and means 'to call out.' 

Pope Stephen II (March 24, 752) had the shortest reign of any pope, only two days. No, he did not die, he stepped down two days after the cardinals selected him. 

Sir Isaac Newton was an ordained priest in the Church of England. 

Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.

Of the entire Hebrew scriptures, the Book of Job contains the most references to snow. Hence the expression, "snow Job."

The Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland was a symbolic character for the hat makers in towns of the late 1800's. The large felt hats of the day had supports made out of mercury. The mercury caused a organic form of psychosis (brain damage) to develop in the hat makers causing them to be declared crazy. 

GMT entered British homes by way of the BBC which broadcast the chimes of Big Ben to greet New Year 1924. The "pips" were the brain-child of Frank Dyson, who discussed the idea with Frank Hope-Jones, who favoured a "5 pip" signal. In February 1924, Dyson broadcast to the nation, inaugurating the service. Later he presided over a dinner when Hope-Jones was guest of honour. A guest remembered Hope-Jones' link with time signals and handed him 6 orange pips on a plate. Hope-Jones then made a flamboyant presentation of the 6th pip to Dyson.

In a recent survey of newborn babies, researchers have determined the most popular boys' names. They include Michael, Matthew, Sean, Brendan, and Brian. Interestingly enough, for the third year in a row, the LEAST popular boy's name was "Lumpy". 

Although the cast of "The Facts of Life" went from 9 girls down to 4 throughout its seven year run on television, amazingly enough, the net weight of the cast members remained roughly the same. 

If your eyes are six feet above the surface of the ocean, the horizon will be about three statute miles away. 

Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, John Hancock and Charles Thomson. Most of the rest signed on August 2, but the last signature wasn't added until 5 years later. 

Some biblical scholars believe that Aramaic, the language of the ancient Bible, did not contain an easy way to say "many things" and used a term which has come down to us as 40. This means that when the bible -- in many places -- refers to "40 days," they meant many days. 

Hydroxydesoxycorticosterone and hydroxydeoxycorticosterones are the largest anagrams. (An anagram is a word formed by reordering the letters in another word.)

Sailors on board a ship, even when out at sea, can feel earthquakes.

When Ronald Reagan was President and he got his first hearing aid, the sale of hearing aids went up in the United States by 40%. 

2 out of 5 husbands tell their wife daily that they love them. 

Physicist Murray Gell-Mann named subatomic particles known as quarks for a random line in James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, "Three quarks for Muster Mark!" 

Playing cards were issued to British pilots in World War II. If captured, they could be soaked in water and unfolded to reveal a map for escape. 

The quantity of consonants in the English language is constant. 

John Lennon was born to Julia Lennon after 30 hours of labor on October 9, 1940.

In the movie "Dances with Wolves", not one animal was injured during its filming, although there was a horse named "Dutch" who came down with a nasty case of the runs. 

For the courtly knight and his lady, fashion was very important because fine dress was a mark of status. The nobility spent large sums of money on imported cloth, such as silk from Italy and velvet from France. Ordinary people wore simple garments, often made of rough wool, which were designed for useful wear. Babies were wrapped in swaddling bands with the mistaken idea that this would give them straight limbs. 

The Hawaiian Archipelago consists of over 130 scattered points of land stretching some 1,600 miles in length from the Kure Atoll in the north to the Island of Hawaii in the south.

In 1984, when Michael Jackson was on American TV advertising Pepsi, his commercials were included in the TV listings and often attracted a larger audience than the programmes they interrupted

The Astronomer Royal was supposed to make his findings known to the scientific community. He was often reluctant to do so and information was sometimes forcibly taken from him. This led to conflicts between such luminaries as Newton & Halley.

If someone were to visit all the Smithsonian museums and read all of their plaques for only a second each, that person could not read every piece of information that the Smithsonian holds. 

Ben and Jerry's send the waste from making ice cream to local pig farmers to use as feed. Pigs love the stuff, except for one flavor: Mint Oreo. 

If you toss a penny 10,000 times, it will not be heads 5,000 times, but more like 4,950. The head picture weighs slightly more, so it ends up on the bottom slightly more often. 

Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older. 

A new film producer was having trouble with a visual gag. It was during the days of silent cinema and he wanted to show a man slipping on a banana skin. He asked the advice of Charlie Chaplin. "Do I show the man first and then the banana skin, or the skin first and then the man? Whichever way I do it, it won't be new to the audience because they've seen it all before." before." Chaplin thought about this for a while and then replied, "First, show the skin, then show the man, then show the skin once again. Then show the man stepping over the skin and falling down a manhole!"

Women, according to the U.S. National Health Survey team, have more headaches than men. 

When the divorce rate goes up in the United States, toy makers say the sale of toys also rises. 

Paul McCartney wrote the song Lovely Rita, Meter Maid for the album Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band after getting a parking ticket from a female warden in Abbey Road

The original story from Tales of 1001 Arabian Nights begins, "Aladdin was a little Chinese boy." 

Michigan has the most registered boats in the USA - 947,601 - and American Samoa, with 153, has the least. 

At an international conference in 1884, 25 countries met to fix a standard world meridian. Many countries expressed their opposition to Greenwich Meridian Line becoming the world standard, since a large number of countries had their own lines. Greenwich was finally chosen, mainly because 72% of ships used charts showing the Greenwich Meridian and the American railway system also recognised Greenwich. Algeria, a French dependent, made its point by insisting that GMT be expressed as "Paris Mean Time diminished by 9mins 21secs" which amounts to GMT but avoids use of the word Greenwich.

Midwives played a central role in female health and healing during the Middle Ages. Herbs were an important part of their practice. Participating in a rich oral culture, they passed down the secrets of herbal lore from woman to woman over hundreds of years. The cravings of pregnancy were very different for the medieval mother-to-be: unlike the modern yen for pickles and ice cream, she'd seek to have potter's earth or chalk or coals. Yum! Medieval recipe for cure of acne: "the rout of dragons made clean and cut into thin roundels" and steeped for nine days in white wine. 

In a recent interview with 10 prominent sex therapists, the question was posed, "What is the most important aspect in love making?" One said 'relaxation', Three said 'honesty', and a whopping Six out of Ten said 'staying awake'. 

Goethe couldn't stand the sound of barking dogs and could only write if he had an apple rotting in the drawer of his desk. 

If you are locked in a completely sealed room, you will die of carbon dioxide poisoning first before you will die of oxygen deprivation. 

Dr. Miles Compound Extract of Tomato, a patent medicine, went on the market in the 1830s - it was ketchup. 

New York, Marriott Marquis hotel. One potential reveler from upper New York state began trying to make a reservation for New Year's Even 1999 in 1983-- before this luxury hotel was even built. "As a boy, this gentleman spent New Year's in New York," explains Molly Dwortzan, a senior manager at the Marriott Marquis who declined to release the man's name for privacy reasons. Apparently he was so moved by his youthful experience, he decided to spend the last New Year's of the 20th century in the Big Apple. To reward his sincerity, the hotel chain is giving him a complimentary room overlooking Times Square for his entire family on Dec. 31, 1999. 

Winston Churchill, who claimed that he could remember life inside his mother's womb, was born in the ladies toilet at a society ball.

The original nomenclature of mental deficiency should be kept in mind when used in everyday conversation. For instance, an "idiot" is classified as a feeble-minded person who performs at the potential age of 3 years; an "imbecile" displays a mental age of 3 to 7 years; a "moron" has the potential age of between 8 to 12 years; and a "dufus" has no specific limitations in mental capacity but is aware of the subtle themes in "Baywatch". 

The average person, some experts estimate, speaks about 31,500 words per day. 

SHAKESPEARE: Although universally regarded as a genius, William Shakespeare was the son of a globemaker and was given only an average education. Always intensely curious about the world around him, Shakespeare would later rely on scenes remembered from his childhood, common country customs and superstitions, fairs and other popular entertainments as raw material for his plays. 

Ballroom dancing is a major at Brigham Young University. 

Over 355 bird species live in Alaska. In the Inside Passage and South-central, bald eagles follow the salmon runs. In December, eagles concentrate in Pasagshak and Kodiak. Up to 3,500 bald eagles feed on late runs of salmon in the Chilkat River near Haines. Between May and August, the Nome area hosts a variety of Asian birds, shore birds, and raptors.

More than 50% of American bat species are in severe decline or already listed as endangered. Losses are occurring at alarming rates worldwide.

George Eastman, inventor of the Kodak camera, hated having his picture taken. 

Margarine was developed in the 1800's by a Frenchman who was searching for a substitute for butter, which was costly and scarce at the time. First called "oleomargarine," derived from the Greek word margarites (meaning pearl) and the Latin term oleum (meaning oil), "oleomargarine" first came to the U.S. in the late 1800s. Today, the term oleomargarine has been shortened by common usage to "margarine."

Between the years of 1988 and 1991, the most commonly stolen car in the United States was the 1986 Chevrolet Camaro. In fact, 1 out of every 5 Camaros built in the year of 1986 ended up being stolen. This is in sharp contrast to the least stolen car of the same period - The Dhaitsu Shanker. Of the 243 Shankers manufactured in that 4 year period, none of them were stolen. Although one was left in front of a K-mart for 5 straight hours with the engine running, and the words "Take me for a free test drive" spray-painted in red on the hood. 

"Three dog night" (attributed to Australian Aborigines) came about because on especially cold nights these nomadic people needed three dogs (dingos, actually) to keep from freezing.

The phrase "back to square one" (or "back at square one", which was the original way of saying it) comes from football radio commentaries from the 1930s. There being no picture, these live reports would explain the position of play by dividing the football pitch into numbered grids and "square one" was just in front of the goal ...... so, when a ball went out of play and resulted in a goal kick, the play was "back at square one".

In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak. 

The "Secret Treaty of London" enabled Italy to enter World War I

The Baby Ruth candy bar was not named after Grover Cleveland's daughter or Babe Ruth, like many people think. It's actually named after the company's founder's (Otto Schnering) mother's maiden name.

The can-can was originally performed by French prostitutes. The idea was that they danced with no underwear on, thereby displaying their "wares" for potential customers.

Men working on railroad track repair groups are called "gandy dancers." 

More than 5 million West Africans speaks the language of Twi-Fante. 

Shakespeare's tombstone in Stratford's Holy Trinity Church bears this inscription, said to have been written by him:
Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear
to dig the dust enclosed here.
Blest be the man that spares these stones,
and curst be he that moves my bones.

In the U.S. there is, on average, three sex change operations per day.

With the help of a 1000 member marching band, the mayor of New York City, Rudolph Guiliani kicked off the 1000 day countdown to the new millennium on Sunday April 6th. Times Square is often called the soul of any New Years Eve celebration. 

The release of Star Wars in 1977 was beset by many problems, not the least being lack of enthusiasm by the film's distributors. In fact, so sure were they that the film would not appeal to a mass audience they wanted to split it into 20 minute segements and release it as a kids' Saturday morning serial.

The band Duran Duran got its name from an astronaut in the 1968 Jane Fonda movie "Barbarella." 

Cleo and Caesar were the early stage names of Cher and Sonny Bono. 

The most popular name for a boat in 1996 was Serenity.

The first Asian American in the U.S. Senate was Hawaii's Hiram Fong. Descended from Chinese immigrants, Fong was elected to the Senate in 1959.

Alaska is so big it encompasses dozens of ecosystems. In a place of such enormous variety; don't be surprised to find the unusual - like a desert of sand dunes in Kobuk Valley National Park.

The earliest Polynesians crossed over 2,000 miles of open ocean to find Hawaii without the aid of navigational instruments. Relying on keen observations of nature, Polynesian navigators could direct their large double hulled ocean canoes across the Pacific to accurate landfalls. Polynesian voyagers were navigating long distance runs in the Pacific almost 1,000 years before Columbus. 

The Kentucky Derby Glass made its debut in 1938. First used as a water glass for the track restaurant, the mint julep glass has been a part of the Derby tradition for nearly 60 years. 

Experienced waitress say that married men tip better than unmarried men. 

Moose are the most anti-social animal, they do not hang out with other moose. The procreation ritual is simple, the female moose calls out, male moose come running, the female picks, and within a few moments they all go on their way. 

It only takes a male horse 14 seconds to copulate. 

Choroti women, of the same area as the Siriono, are expected to spit in their partners faces during sex.

Glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.

The debate will no doubt continue, but the experts are pointing to Caroline Island in the country of Kiribati where one can see the first light from land (6:05 GMT+14). If you're out at sea, that's a whole different story. Caroline Island has no real population to speak of. The next closest place with any type of civilization is London, Christmas Island, also in Kiribati (6:29 GMT+14). 

The state fruit of New York is the apple. The apple was adopted as the State fruit in 1976.

In 1996, over 87 million Americans participated more than once in some type of recreational boating activity (fishing, sailing, motorboating, water skiing, canoeing, etc.). 

The last Royal Hawaiian flag to be defended during the U.S. led coup d'etat of 1893 was aboard a Japanese gunboat. The Japanese Imperial Navy gunboat Naniwa refused to strike the Royal Hawaiian flag from it's mast during it's anchorage in Honolulu Harbor . After firmly resisting all threats from the newly installed rebel government, the Naniwa was finally ordered to lower the colors by the Japanese government. The captain of the Naniwa later went on to become the greatest naval commander in the history of Japan. Capt. Heihachiro Togo is credited with destroying the combined Russian Baltic and Pacific fleets in a single battle during the Russo-Japanese War, thus galvanizing Japans status as a world power in the early 20th century.

Dinah Washington holds the record for the longest gap between charting records in the UK. Her first single, September In The Rain, last appeared in the charts in January 1962. She charted again with Mad About The Boy in April 1992 - an incredible 30 years later!

The word gem comes from the Latin gemma meaning bud. The story of the precious stones is much like that of the blooming of flowers. Like tiny buds that burst into beautiful blossoms, dull lumps of mineral matter can be cut and polished into brilliantly flashing or beautifully glowing gems. 

Rubies are more valuable than sapphires because they are more rare. The best come from Burma. Opals are valued for their color flashes. The finest opals in the world come from Australia. 

Actress Sissy Spacek got so into the part of Carrie that she slept with fake pig's blood all over her to ensure continuity.

Hawaii was originally called the Sandwich isles. The great English navigator Capt. James Cook so named the islands in 1778 in honor of his patron the Earl of Sandwich ( who is also credited with creating the edible type sandwiches).

All doors exiting a public building must swing outwards. That way if there is a fire, or something else to cause a stampede, no one will get crushed, by everyone else trying to get out, while they are trying to pull the door open. 

Tropical rain forests throughout the world are being cut down at the rate of 3000 acres per hour. 

Germany holds the title for most independent inventors to apply for patents. 

The average cost of having a recreational boat towed if it breaks down on the water is $263. 

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. 

Diamonds have great power to reflect light, bend rays of light, and to break light up into all the colors of the rainbow. But to produce the greatest possible brilliance in a diamond, many tiny sides, or facets, must be exactly the right size and shape and must be placed at exactly the right angle. Most finished diamonds have 58 facets. The cut of the diamond affects its value, because a stone that is not properly proportioned does not have as much brilliance as a stone that is well cut. The cut also refers to the shape. Diamonds are cut into a number of different shapes depending on the nature of the rough stone and the position of the inclusions. 

Money isn't made out of paper, it's made out of cotton. 

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 the shirts to Hawaii for servicing.

The words for north, south, east and west are the same in English as in Chinese and Brazil's Tupi Indians.

It is illegal to swim in central park.

There were 240 pedestrian fatalities in New York City in 1994.

A noisy restaurant is 100,000 times as loud as a watch ticking. Rock Concert 1,000,000,000 times as loud. Loud headphones 10,000,000,000. Shotgun blast 1,000,000,000,000.

The underwater mating song of the toadfish is so loud that sometimes it can be heard by humans on the shore.

The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History houses the world's largest shell collection, some 15 million specimens. A smaller museum in Sanibel, Florida owns a mere 2 million shells and claims to be the worlds only museum devoted solely to mollusks. 

The abbreviation for 1 pound, lb., comes from the astrological sign Libra, meaning balance.

There are thirteen blimps in the world.

The average surface temperature of the earth climbed to a record high in 1995, 58.7 F. Moreover, the years 1991 through 1995 were warmer than any similar five-year period, including the two half-decades of the 1980s, the warmest decade yet recorded. 

The Chinese government is funding a scientific expedition to search for human-like ape-men reported to live in remote mountain areas of central China. The massive search will begin April 22 in Shennongjia Valley in central Hubei province. 

If you took a standard slinky and stretched it out it would measure 87 feet.

Most American's car horns beep in the key of F.

Sir Walter Raleigh (1554-1618) was among the first Westerners to become addicted to tobacco. He was so fond of the evil weed that he refused to stop smoking even while being executed. His pipe was reportedly found clenched between his teeth even after his head was removed from his body by the ax. The capital of N.Carolina, the leading tobacco producer in the U.S., bears his name. 

There are 336 dimples on a regulation golf ball.

1/100 of a second is called a "jiffy".

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. 

The first coin minted in the United States was a silver dollar. It was issued on October 15, 1794.

There is absolutely no documented proof that Betsy Ross designed the American Flag.

Atila the Hun was a dwarf. Pepin the Short, Aesop, Gregory the Tours, Charles 3 of Naples, and the Pasha Hussain were all less than 3.5 feet tall.

Horses and Rabbits cannot vomit. 

Counterfeiters pay attention... A quarter has 119 grooves around the edge of it & a dime has 118.

Every year, a ton of cement is poured for every person on earth.

Australian scientists have identified some species of baby spiders that bite off the limbs of their mothers and slowly dine on them over a period of weeks. The researchers hypothesize the maternal sacrifice keeps the young from eating one another. 

The names of all the continents end with the letter they start with.

In mid 1992 the world contained 1.833 billion Christians.

Ratio of the world's Christian population to nonreligious people is 2:1.

The dot over the letter 'i' is called a tittle.

The symbol on the "pound" key (#) is called an octothorpe.

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."

Sarin, the nerve gas believed to have been used in the recent Tokyo subway attack, can be made by anyone with an undergraduate degree in chemistry using easily obtainable chemicals and a formula readily available on the Internet. The agent, a type of organophosphate pesticide, causes paralysis by interfering with the breakdown of acetylcholine at nerve junctions.

Between 1989 and 1994 natural disasters cost Californians $32 billion dollars.  On that same day, 99 American families fall below the poverty line. 

Somewhere near 33 new consumer products are introduced every day. 13 of them are toys. 

Almost 18 million pounds of medical trash is generated each day in the U.S. 

Each of us generates about 3.5 pounds of trash each day. Most of our personal trash consists of paper products. 

Someone constructs 12 new golf holes every day. 

That condensed water vapor in the sky left behind by a high-flying jet is a contrail.

The odds of being in a plane crash are about 700,000 to 1.

135 million cars travel the nation's streets, roads, and interstates each day.

35 MPH is the average speed most cars travel on interstate highways during peak morning and afternoon rush.

"I am." is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.

Walt Disney had wooden teeth. 

The hundred billionth crayon made by Crayola was Perriwinkle Blue. 

Montana mountain goats will butt heads so hard their hooves fall off. 

Lightning strikes the United States 20-30 million times every year.

Carolus Linnaeus, the 18th century Swedish botanist and pioneering taxonomist, in his " Systema Naturae", published in 1775, classified the orangutan as belonging to the genus homo. However, he had never seen a specimen of the ape. Nor had he seen any of another species which he included in the same genus, the mysterious cat-tailed people " Homo caudatus" which, according to a contemporary account, once consumed the entire crew of a ship--captain and all. 

The Australian emu holds the land speed record for birds at 31 mph.

Jetskis produce more pollution per year than barges, tugboats, and cruise ships combined.

Lightning, with a temperature hotter than the sun's surface, only forms in clouds with large quantities of ice. Electric charge is generated during the melting and freezing process.

A bolt of lightning travels at speeds of up to one hundred million feet per second, or seventy-two million miles per hour.

How's this for a long book title? After becoming the first European to cross North America by land north of Mexico, Sir Alexander MacKenzie chronicled his journey in this book: "Voyages from Montreal on the River St. Lawrence through the Continent of North America to the Frozen and Pacific Oceans."

Mosquitoes are the common vector for malaria, encephalitis, yellow fever and dengue fever. Mosquitoes live mostly on nectar and rotting plant material. The female bites humans and many other animals including frogs and snakes to provide additional nutrition for her eggs.

During freezing conditions spraying fruit can help protect itself from freezing. The heat given off by the heating process protects the fruit. The ice then forms a barrier of protection from the outside air.

Lost time in traffic could cost American businesses up to 100 billion dollars per year.

The typical American family has 2-3 cars that each log in 15,000 miles per annum.

The very first ice cream cone appeared in St. Louis at the 1904 World's Fair.

Knitted socks discovered in Ancient Egyptian tombs have been dated back as far as the 3rd century A.D.

9% of Americans report having been in the prescence of a ghost.

The world's largest four-faced clock sits atop the Allen-Bradley plant in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 

No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, and purple.

The international telephone dialing code for Antarctica is 672. 

The average person falls asleep in seven minutes. 

There are 2,598,960 five-card hands possible in a 52-card deck of cards. 

There are 1,929,770,126,028,800 different color combinations possible on a Rubik's Cube. 

Americans spend 1.5 billion dollars every year on toothpaste. Crest is the best-selling brand.

Hershey's Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it's kissing the conveyor belt.

The golf ball market is worth $602 million.

4/10 adults have guns in their homes

The Earth's magnetic field is not permanent. It reverses polarity every few hundred thousand years.

14% of the gross national product goes into health care.

The typical American makes 2.2 pilgrimages to the supermarket every week.

31% of us arrive at our grocery store with a list, but it dosen't matter since 2/3 of our purchases are unplanned.

If you measure the height of the shelves you will find that the best products are between 51 & 53 inches off the ground.

The "huddle" in football was formed due a deaf football player who used sign language to communicate and his team didn't want the opposition to see the signals he used and in turn huddled around him. 

When we examine the shelves we stand about 4 feet away.

Queen Victoria eased the discomfort of her menstrual cramps by having her doctor supply her with marijuana. 

In 1994, 73,866 million eggs were produced in the U.S. proving once again the U.S. has the best darn chickens in the world.

The world's largest collection of preserved human brains is maintained in a WW II era bomb shelter beneath the Runwell Psychiatric Hospital in Essex, England. 8,000 brains collected over the past 40 years are available for researchers to study. The collection has already provided valuable information on boxing-associated brain damage, schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease. 

The typical person spends 35-40 minutes in the grocery store. Every minute thereafter you will spend about $2 per minute.

Research has shown that decreasing the background music from 108 beats/minute to 60/minute slows your cart down and you will buy up to 38% more.

Not all of West Virginia voted to go with the North. When the State of West Virginia was formed from Virginia in 1863 the three western counties in Virginia voted to go with West Virginia, but West Virginia didn't take them because they were poor. Instead they took three counties that voted to stay with Virginia, because they were richer and they had the B&O railroad.

In Los Angeles, there are fewer people than there are automobiles. 

About a third of all Americans flush the toilet while they're still sitting on it. 

You're more likely to get stung by a bee on a windy day that in any other weather. 

An average person laughs about 15 times a day. 

Abnormally high concentrations of carbon dioxide in the vicinity of Mammoth Mountain, a volcano in eastern California have led the US Forest Service to close down a nearby campsite amid reports of near-asphyxiation among campers and forest rangers. Today, there is no summit activity at the volcano, but enough carbon dioxide is seeping out on the flanks to kill large patches of trees 

The fastest tectonic movement on Earth, 24 cm per year, is at the Tonga microplate near Samoa.

It takes 43 of your muscles to form a frown, but only 17 to make a smile. 

Research indicates that mosquitoes are attracted to people who have recently eaten bananas. 

The condom - made originally of linen - was invented in the early 1500s. 

Olympus Mons, a volcano found on Mars, is the largest volcano found in the galaxy. It is 370 miles across and rises up 15 miles. Volcanoes on Lo, a moon of Jupiter, produce a poisonous gas called sulphur, instead of lava. One fifth of Earth's flowing lava occurs in Iceland. About 40 percent of Iceland's energy is geothermal. Iceland also has a geothermic phenomena called a geyser. The only other geysers in the world are found at Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming and Rotorua, New Zealand. 

A Saudi Arabian woman can get a divorce if her husband doesn't give her coffee. 

Preliminary figures indicate that nearly 13,000 people from 41 states developed Lyme disease in 1994. Early treatment with common antibiotics will effectively resolve most cases of the tick-borne infection, but people who do not seek immediate treatment risk developing arthritis and mental disorders.

Tamoxifen is the most commonly prescrived antiestrogenic drug used in hormone therapy to treat breast cancer. In many cases the presence or absence of estrogen and progesterone can alter the growth rate of breast cancers. In these cases the cancer is said to be hormone-dependent. This means there is a receptor in the cell (proteins called estrogen receptors) that lets the estrogen molecule enter the cancer cell and promote growth. When estrogen comes in contact with the cells carrying these estrogen receptors, the estrogen binds with the receptors in a way that induces growth of these cancer cells. Tamoxifen can work to block the estrogen receptors that stimulate cancer cell growth. 

George Washington was not the first president of the United States. The first president was John Hanson, Maryland's representative at the Continental Congress. On November 5,1781, Hanson was elected by the Constitutional Congress to the office of "President of the United States in Congress Assembled." He served for one year. 

Put simply, a carbonated beverage is a drink with carbon dioxide in it. Carbonated beverages are prepared by adding a flavor concentrate (syrup) and sugar to water, which is then mixed and carbonated under pressure with CO2 gas. They have been made by this general procedure for the past 100 years.

On average, every twelve ounce glass of soda contains from two to four grams of CO2, and every year, the average American consumes forty-seven gallons of soda

The Neanderthal's brain was bigger than ours. 

In 1865 opium was grown in the state of Virginia and a product was distilled from it that yielded 4 percent morphine. In 1867 it was grown in Tennessee: six years later it was cultivated in Kentucky. During these years opium, marijuana and cocaine could be purchased legally over the counter from any druggist. 

More than 200 biotech products have now reached the advanced stages of clinical trials. This includes 52 anti-cancer drugs and 36 infection-fighting compounds 

In the developing world, fertility rates vary in inverse proportion with literacy rates. For example, Afghanistan, with a female literacy rate of only eight percent has a fertility rate of 6.9 per 1,000 population. Thailand, in contrast, has a literacy rate of 88% and a fertility rate of 2.6/1,000. 

The most common name in the world is Mohammed.

The word "samba" means "to rub navels together."

The term, "It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye" is from Ancient Rome. The only rule during wrestling matches was, "No eye gouging." Everything else was allowed, but the only way to be disqualified was to poke someone's eye out.

Over 30 million people in the US "suffer" from Diastima. Diastima is having a gap between your front teeth. 

The ancient Egyptians worshipped a sky goddess called Nut.

In 1976 Sarah Caldwell became the first woman to conduct the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. 

Your right lung takes in more air than your left one does. 

The home team must provide the referee with 24 footballs for each National Football League game. 

The only domestic animal not mentioned in the Bible is the cat. 

Women's hearts beat faster than men's. 

Pollsters say that 40% of dog and cat owners carry pictures of the pets in their wallets.

Summer heat getting you down? Perhaps you could book a room at "The Ice Hotel" in Jukkasjarvi in Swedish Lapland. The hotel, a large igloo, includes a restaurant, cinema and wedding chapel. 

Only two U.S. states have experienced volcanic eruptions: Hawaii and Washington. 

Jet engine uses a special kerosene for its fuel. The combination of kerosene and gasoline is called JP4. Tracing the chemical formula for this fuel is hard as it is a very complex mixture of many liquids. Most of jet internal combustion engines nowadays use highly refined kerosene. The process in combustion usually reduces jet fuels to water, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and small fractions of carbon particles, un-reacted bits of the original hydrocarbons, and nitrous oxides. The high concentration vapor released by jet engines is very dangerous as it is an explosive substance. Kerosene has different property than gasoline (which is being used in automobiles) that it has a higher boiling point of 200 - 300 Celsius and it contains hydrocarbons of 12 - 16 carbon atoms. 

The biggest volcano on Earth is Mauna Loa, located in Hawaii. In the 1930s airplanes dropped bombs to try to stop or reroute the Hawaiian lava flows. In 1980, more than 6 million trees were uprooted or flattened by the blast of Mount St. Helens in Washington. The ash from Mount St. Helens spread 930 miles to the east. 

Park rangers in northeast Tasmania have reported spotting a rare Tasmanian tiger, which had been thought to be extinct. Also called the thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus), or the marsupial wolf, the animal is about a meter long, has black stripes and an unusual backwards facing pouch. Once the top of food chain throughout Australia, the thylacine was hunted to extinction in mainland Australia because of its liking for sheep.

Bubble gum contains rubber. 

You can only smell 1/20th as well as a dog. 

Only 55% of all Americans know that the sun is a star. 

The newly remade "Star Wars" movie contains only four and a half minutes of new footage.

There are more plastic flamingos in America than real ones. 

The clippings from one acre of grass can produce 235 pounds of nitrogen, 77 pounds of phosphorus and 210 pounds of potassium in a single season. 

Lee Harvey Oswald's cadaver tag sold at an auction for $6,600 in 1992. 

Anthrax (Bacillus anthracis) was the first bacillus ever seen and identified under the microscope. The discovery by Robert Koch in 1876 led Louis Pasteur to developed an attenuated anthrax vaccine, the first such vaccine. This in turn led him to develop the rabies vaccine. Anthrax is a highly infectious animal disease which can be transmitted to humans on contact.

During a 24-hour period, the average human will breathe 23,040 times; exercise 7 million brain cells; and speak 4,800 words. 

The typical human body gives off the amount of heat equivalent to a a 100-watt lightbulb.

Bone is stronger, inch for inch, than the steel in skyscrapers.

The Human brain has a capacity of 1 trillion bits or about 116.4153 gigabytes. (although recent research goes against this, estimating a value along the lines of 200 megabytes)

Adults have about 18 square feet of skin. It weighs 6 pounds.

When breathing one inhales 1 pint of air.

Risk of having a heart attack is 50% higher on Mondays.

The Piraroa Indians of Venezuela roast tarantulas over an open fire and eat them. They taste like nuts.

More than three billion pounds of toxic chemicals were released into the environment in the U.S in 1992 (the last year for which complete records are available). Another four billion pounds of toxics were placed in offsite disposal sites. 

The queen termite can live up to 50 years and have 30,000 children every day and 500,000,000 children in its life.

April is Earthquake Preparedness month. For a little added incentive, consider this- The most powerful earthquake to strike the United States occurred in 1811 in New Madrid, Missouri. The quake shook more than one million square miles, and was felt as far as 1,000 miles away. 

Kurdish villages in northern Iraq are currently being overwhelmed by an invasion of thousands of poisonous snakes including rattlesnakes and yellow vipers. The snakes moved into buildings destroyed by Saddam Hussein's troops and proliferated following an unusually mild winter. 

Mosquitoes have teeth. 

We are in the middle of an ice age. Ice ages include both cold and warm periods; at the moment we are experiencing a relatively warm span of time known as an "interglacial period." Geologists believe that the warmest part of this period occurred from 1890 through 1945 and that since 1945 things have slowly begun freezing up again. So much for the greenhouse effect. 

Spotted skunks do handstands before they spray. 

Visitors to Columbia should be careful what they drink, warn authorities. Criminals have taken to slipping 'burundanga' into the cocktails of unsuspecting businessmen. Burundanga is obtained from a local plant of the nightshade family called borracherra. When refined it yields scopolamine. The victim loses consciousness and has no recollection of what has transpired...and in the meantime is relieved of various valuables.

Shamrocks, worn on St. Patrick's Day in Ireland, tend to wilt by the end of the day. A team of scientists at University College of Dublin have developed a new method of growing shamrocks in a polymer gel solution that produces wilt-free plants. However, they note, the seeds were imported from New Zealand.

Why are those gossip-hunting spies called eavesdroppers? It is because in Middle English, the water that falls from the eaves of a house was called eavesdrop, and eavesdropper was first used to describe someone who would stand close to a house in order to hear what was going on inside. 

Less than 7% of the population donates blood 

The words "assassination" and "bump" were invented by Shakespeare.

The United States has 5% of the world's popluation, yet consumes 25% of it's energy supply. 

Only one in 10,000 loggerhead turtle eggs successfully progress from hatchling to adult. Hazards on the beach include crabs, raccoons, seagulls and humans. Once they get into the water the hatchlings must survive a host of sharks and fish. 

The Roman emperor Commodos collected all the dwarfs, cripples, and freaks he could find in the city of Rome and had them brought to the Colosseum, where they were ordered to fight each other to the death with meat cleavers.

It seems that cows are grazing animals. They pretty much like to graze on grass. Grass is found on the ground in the cows' pastures. Other things are also found on the ground in the cows' pastures; things like nuts, bolts, nails and bits of barbed wire. These things, unlike grass, do not sit well in a cows digestive system. Some cows have even died (Oh NO!) from eating these metal things and then trying to pass them through their digestive system. So...for years now, the farmers have been feeding new born cows magnets. These magnets stay in the cows' stomachs their whole life. Now the cows don't have to pass the metal things through their digestive systems. The cow magnets hold onto the metal. 

Nobel laureate physicist P.A.M. Dirac was married to the sister of Nobel Laureate physicist Eugene Wigner.

A water-balloon filled with one cubic foot of water weighs 62.4 lbs. 

The first toilet ever seen on television was on "Leave It To Beaver". 

High-wire acts have been enjoyed since the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Antique medals have been excavated from Greek islands depicting men ascending inclined cords and walking across ropes stretched between cliffs. The Greeks called these high-wire performers neurobates or oribates. In the Roman city of Herculaneum there is a fresco representing an aerialist high on a rope, dancing and playing a flute. Sometimes Roman tightrope walkers stretched cables between the tops of two neighboring hills and performed comic dances and pantomimes while crossing.

Betsy Ross was born with a fully formed set of teeth. 

Betsy Ross's other contribution to the American Revolution, beside sewing the first American flag, was running a munitions factory in her basement. 

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

Devo's original name was going to be De-evolution. They shortened it to Devo.

The word electricity derives from the Greek word 'elektron' meaning amber. The Greeks noted that rubbing amber produced a static charge. 

Steely Dan got their name from a sexual device depicted in the book 'The Naked Lunch'. 

Hypnotism is banned by public schools in San Diego. 

Willard Scott was the first Ronald McDonald.

In Vermont, USA, it is illegal for women to wear false teeth without the written permission of their husbands.

There are 12 letters in the Hawaiian alphabet.

Abraham Lincoln's son's life was once saved by John Wilkes Booth's brother.

In LA, USA, a man may legally beat his wife with a leather strap, as long as it is less than 2 inches wide.

The last Coast Guard radio navigation station still using Morse code transmitted its last message on March 31, 1995 from Chesapeake, Virginia. Morse first demonstrated his telegraph to Congress in 1884, sending the famous message from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore, Md., "What hath God wrought?" Morse's sequence of dots and dashes resembles the modern digital code which forms the basis of modern computer programs.

The "caduceus" the classical medical symbol of two serpents wrapped around a staff - comes from an ancient Greek legend in which snakes revealed the practice of medicine to human beings. 

The phrase, if yelled out in a crowded shopping mall that will attract the most people is: "I DROPPED MY DIAMONDS!"

Second hand tobacco smoke is the third leading preventable cause of death, after active tobacco smoking and alcohol use. Environmental tobacco smoke, as it is also called, contributes to more than 50,000 deaths per year in the U.S. alone. SOURCE: UCSF study, JAMA 4/5/95, v.273, n.13. 

Natural gas, which is the major constituent, is a clean fuel. For the same energy, it produces 40% or more and less carbon dioxide when it burns. It is a major contributor to the greenhouse effect than coal and 25% less than oil. Moreover, natural gas contains almost no sulfur. Unlike coal and oil, it produces little sulfur oxide when it burns, the main contributor to acid rain. Also, there are no combustion residues, such as dust and ash, and no radioactive waste to dispose of. Natural gas is immediate and local compared to oil and nuclear energy.

A new man-made fountain opposite the Gateway Arch in St. Louis is now the world's highest geyser, at 600 feet. The geyser's is powered by three 800 hp pumps and discharges water at up to 200 feet per second. The geyser will keep 1,100 gallons of water, weighing 9,200 pounds, in the air when in operation. 

Long ago, the people of Nicaragua believed that if they threw beautiful young women into a volcano it would stop erupting. 

40% of McDonald's profits come from the sales of "Happy Meals".

The dolphins that live in the Amazon River are pink.

Vanilla is used to make chocolate.

The average adult has 10-12 pints of blood in his body

In 1994, total pizza sales in the United States exceeded $20 billion

The only father & son to be in the White House were John Adams and John Quincy Adams.

In 2000 BC, Egyptians used crocodile dung as a contraceptive.

Dr. Seuss coined the word "nerd" in his book If I Ran the Zoo.

The condom is named after Dr.Charles Condom.

1/3 of Taiwanese funeral processions includes a stripper.

Marie Curie (1867-1934) will become the first woman to rest in the Pantheon, the French national mausoleum reserved for that countries heroes. This honor joins the list of many other firsts associated with Curie. In 1903 she became the first woman to receive the Nobel prize (for physics). In 1911 she became the first person to win a second Nobel prize (for chemistry).

Today's average household in the USA contains more computer power than existed in the world before 1965.

The average desktop computer contains 5-10 times more computing power than was used to land a man on the moon.

George Washingtons false teeth were made of whale bone. His inauguration speech was 183 words long and took 90 seconds to read.

The most playing cards ever held fanned in one hand, so that each card could be read, was 310 cards.

The number of dolphins killed in the fishing nets of commercial tuna boats declined from 133,174 in 1986 to 4,080 in 1994. This signficant improvement stills falls short of current U.S. laws. 

According to Douglas Adams, a Salween is the faint taste of dishwashing liquid in a cup of fresh tea.

How many people on this planet share your birthday?... about 10 million.

In 1993, 800,000 iguanas were imported into the U.S for use as pets, an increase from 28,000 in 1986. 

If two flies were left to reproduce without predators or other limitations for one year, the resulting mass of flies would be the size of the Earth!

Back in medieval times, no one trusted each other. Everyone was a potential enemy. When two people approached they would stick out their hands to each other to show the stranger they were not carrying a weapon. Both strangers were put at ease knowing that they were not about to be killed. This action of outstretched hands grew and evolved to the modern gesture we know as the handshake.

Coca-Cola was originally green.

The word "decimate" originated because of a disciplinary method used by the Romans. If an army performed poorly during battle, every tenth soldier would be killed. (From the Latin "decimare", derived from "decimus", or tenth.)

The Ulysses Solar Mission revealed that matter flows outward from the South Pole of the Sun at a rate of one million tons per second.

Of all the words in the English language, the word set has the most definitions. 

Chinese scientists have identified an unusual "ozone valley'' over the western Tibet-Qinghai plateau with alarmingly low levels of atmospheric ozone, more than ten percent less than in other areas in the same latitude. Chinese and US researchers are evaluating the potential causes of the hole (probably pollution) and potential health problems, including skin cancer.

When DDT was first introduced during WW II, new recruits were given DDT-impregnated uniforms and entire city populations (e.g. Naples) were 'dusted' with the chemical. 

The favorite horses of both Alexander the Great (Bucephalos) and Julius Caesar both had atavistic mutations- extra toes. Horses normally have only one toe per foot, but are descended from horses with three or four toes on each limb.

One human hair can support 3kg. 

If one would claim that the shade of the stop light had changed from red to green due to the Doppler effect, he/she would have been going fast enough to earn a $140 million fine. 

Every year, spain produces enough olives to feed every man, woman, and child 70.

A 2x4 is 1 1/2" x 3 1/2". 

If Texas were a country its GNP would be the fifth largest of any country on earth.

Texas has the second largest outcroping of granite in the world and... it's pink granite .. called enchanged rock (largest is stone mountain Georga (not pink)).

The word "trivia" comes from the Latin "trivium" which is the place where three roads meet, a public square. People would gather and talk about all sorts of matters, most of which were trivial.

Burglars in Larch Barrens, Md., tried to cut through a safe using a Lazer Tag gun.

More people eat their macaroni and cheese with a fork than with any other utensil.

An average of 13 boxes of jello are purchased every second in the united states.

The little hole in the sink that lets the water drain out, instead of flowing over the side, is called a "porcelator." 

A little known fact about Roman architecture is that they were one of the first civilizations to use cement. The Roman's actually discovered cement by accident. A volcano (I believe it was Mount Vesuvius) dumped the raw materials together in one place and provided enough heat to form raw cement. The Roman's were able to mine cement from the area and use it in their buildings. Many of the ancient buildings in the area are made of cement or concrete (cement mixed with sand and gravel) covered with a layer of marble.

When Einstein died he gave his brain to scientists, and they are still picking at it today to surch for signs of a genius.

In Toy Story, the carpet designs in Sid's hallway is the same at the carpet designs in The Shining.

It has been calculated that in the last 3,500 years, there have only been 230 years of peace throughout the civilized world. 

The hotel that Lloyd and Harry go to in Dumb and Dumber is the Stanley Hotel. The Stanley Hotel is Stephen King's inspiration for The Shining, and was the place were they fimed The Shining TV mini-series.

AM and PM stand for "Ante-Meridian" and "Post-Meridian," respectively, and A.D. actually stands for "Anno Domini" rather than "After Death." 

When they filmed The Shining the TV mini-series, the little boy who played Danny had to stay in room 217. His mom didn't want him to, for it might have scared the boy. So they taped another number on the door.

Leif Erikson was the first European to set foot on North America in the year 1000. Not Colombus.

In the Canadian Rockies there are 69 naturally occurring species of mammals. It is very common to see elk, deer, bighorn sheep, coyote and black bear throughout Jasper park.

Weightlifting first appeared on the original Olympic program in Athens in 1896. It reappeared in 1904, and has been on the program permanently since 1920.

Ties in weightlifting are awarded to the lifter with the lighter bodyweight. If the lifters' bodyweights are exactly the same, the tie is awarded to the lifter who lifted first.

In 1916 Mount Edith Cavell was named to honor the heroic British nurse executed during World War 1 for assisting prisoners of war to escape German-occupied Belgium. 

Essay in French means 'to try, attempt'.

Mexico once had three presidents in one day.

Blonds have more hair than dark-haired people.

Six ounces of orange juice contains the minimum daily requirement for Vitamin C. Orange juice helps the body absorb iron more easily when consumed with a meal. 

A single bushel of corn can produce: 
32 pounds of cornstarch or 33 pounds of corn sweetener or
2.5 gallons of ethanol PLUS
1.6 pounds of corn oil
11.4 pounds of 21% protein gluten feed
3 pounds of 60% gluten meal 
One bushel of corn will sweeten more than 400 cans of soda. 
Ohio Corn Marketing Program

Did you know that during 1994-95, the drugs used to treat hypertension and cardiovascular disease in the elderly (65 years and over) cost an average of $200 per person? That's more than a 500 per cent increase over 1985-86, when the cost was only $36.56 per person.
Instititute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences

The largest indoor stage ever built was for Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame World Premiere at the Superdome; 1/3 ACRE, 123 feet by 123 feet. 

Jasper National Park protects over 10,800 square kilometres of the Rocky Mountain ecosystem which includes a diversity of wildlife, plants, rivers, lakes, glaciers, and magnificent mountains. 

Animators drew nearly 6.5 MILLION black spots for the film "101 Dalmations".

The toes of mummies are wrapped individually. 

After Charles II's Restoration in 1660, the first May Day was celebrated with a 134-foot cedar Maypole erected on The Strand in London.

The average lifespan of a major league baseball is 7 pitches. 

The first Ferris Wheel stood 264 feet high, had 36 pendulum cars which carried 60 passengers each (total of 2,160 riders), weighted 1,200 tons and was powered by two 1,000 horsepower engines. The Ferris wheel was designed by George Washington Gale Ferris, and was opened to the public on June 21st, 1893 at the World's Columbian Exposition. Ferris contracted the construction of the Ferris wheel to a dozen steel companies, since it was so large that no single steel company could produce it. It was produced for a cost of $350,000 (in 1893). The Ferris wheel was so popular that it's cost was
recovered within a few weeks, at the exposition. Palisades Amusement Park Historical Society

The Australian $5, $10, $20, $50 and $100 notes are made out of plastic. 

Cleavage is actually a term for how a crystal breaks in specific ways more easily than others depending on its natural shape. A diamond is very hard but if you hit it just right it will cleave very easily. 

In ancient Greece, "idiot" meant a private citizen or layman.

The palms of your hands and the soles of your feet cannot tan.

Tycho Brahe wore an artificial nose made of gold and silver.

Louis XIV took only 3 baths in his lifetime. (?!!?)

The Wright brothers' first flight was shorter than the wingspan of a Boeing 747.

277 medical institutions in the United States operate an organ transplant program.
The National Organ Procurement & Transplantation Network

Polls show further that three-quarters of the public finds television entertainment too violent. When asked to select measures which would reduce violent crime "a lot," Americans chose restrictions on television violence more often than gun control.
American Medical Association

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 smaller, 'lower case' letters. 

Volleyball is the most popular sport played in American nudist camps. 

Montgomery was the birthplace of the Civil War as well as the modern Civil Rights Movement. 
Montgomery Homepage

Montgomery is the birthplace of music great Nat King Cole, pop singers Clarence Carter and Toni Tenille, Metropolitan Opera singer Nell Rankin, and blues legend Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton.
Montgomery Homepage

The Oklahoma bombing suspect obtained a copy of the "Turner Diaries," a book which advocates the violent overthrow of government, off the Internet.
American Medical Association

The famous physicist and inventor, Tesla, rumourdly developed a ray gun.
Scientific America

The airplane Buddy Holly died in was the "American Pie." 

Seoul, the South Korean capital, just means "the capital" in the Korean language. 

Babies are born without knee caps. They don't appear until the child reaches 2-6 years of age. 

Einstein discovered the reason for meandering in rivers and streams.

No piece of paper can be folded in half more than 7 times.

Scorpions can withstand 200 times more nuclear radiation than humans.

There are four cars and eleven lightposts on the back of a ten-dollar bill.

The most collect calls are made on Father's Day.

Rhode Island is the smallest state with the longest name. The official name, used on all state documents, is Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.

Children grow faster in the springtime.

The 57 on Heinz ketchup bottle represents the number of varieties of pickle the company once had.

A peanut is neither a pea nor a nut.

The average garden variety caterpillar has 248 muscles in its head.

If you lock your knees while standing long enough, you will pass-out.

Montana has a bear:person ratio of 4:1, deer:person ratio 9:1 yet no posted speed limit.

The youngest letters in the English language are "j," "v" and "w."

The celebration of Maryland Day began in Maryland's schools in 1903. That year, teachers from around the State agreed that a special day needed to be set aside for school programs that would help students appreciate the State and its history. They chose March 25 as the day to call Maryland Day. It was on that day in 1634 that Maryland's first colonists left their ships, the Ark and the Dove, and came ashore to give thanks for a safe passage across the Atlantic Ocean.

Played throughout the world today, the sport of lacrosse is derived from a Haudenosaunee game of great antiquity called, in Oneida, Ga-lahs.

The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets.

61,000 people are airborne over the US any given hour.

The Benwood on French Reef in the Florida Keys is known as one of the most dived shipwrecks in the world. It's a 340-foot-long metal freighter in 30 to 45 feet of water. You'll see schools of sergeant majors and other colorful fish among the patches of coral in the area.

Due to precipitaion, for a few weeks, K2 is taller than Mt. Everest.

The middle finger, as opposed to other fingers, is given because in midevil times, the middle finger, a useful finger, was cut off as a form of punishment. So, it is shown as in 'Hey, I still have my middle finger!" 

Sweden has the least number of murders annually. 

Leonardo da Vinci could write with one hand and draw with the other at the same time. 

The smoke detector was invented in 1969.

The number of inmates in state and federal prisons has increased more than five-fold from less than 200,000 in 1970 to 1,053,000 by 1994. An additional 490,000 are held in local jails.
The Lindeman Center

In fiscal year 1995, state and federal governments planned $5.1 billion in new prison construction, at an average cost of $58,000 for a medium security cell.
The Lindeman Center

Illinois Avenue, GO, B&O Railroad, Free Parking and Tennessee Avenue are the five aquares in Monopoly on which you're most likely to land, excluding Jail.

The radioactive substance, Americanium - 241 is used in many smoke detectors.

Lawsuits filed by California inmates cost the taxpayers more than $25 million in 1994.

4,363 prisoner lawsuits were filed in 1994. That compares to 1,719 in 1984.

53,312 immate lawsuits were filed nationwide in 1994.

California staff attorneys are being paid $98 per hour to defend the state against the prisoner claims.

Go get a buck (you know, a one dollar bill)...Now, look on the back. That pyramid you see on the back of the buck is actually the reverse side of the Great Seal of the United States (the well-known eagle on the front). The pyramid represents strength and permanence and has been left unfinished to signify the future growth of the country, and its pursuit of perfection. (The original designers were an optimistic bunch.) Look closely and you'll see 1776 printed along the bottom in Roman numerals. The eye surrounded by the sunburst represents the Deity. The Latin translates to "He has favored our undertakings" and "A new order of the ages."
The Buck Book

Tom Sawyer was the first novel written on a typewriter.

St. Petersburg, FL had 427 consecutive days of sunshine.

The parachute was invented by Leonardo da Vinci in 1515.

Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks otherwise it will digest itself.

Elizabeth I of England suffered from anthophobia, a fear of roses.

New Jersey was once called Albania.

Beethoven dipped his head in cold water before he composed.

One of Frank Gilbreth's first "motion studies" concerned the age-old craft of bricklaying. Bricklayers stooped over to pick up every brick and then stooped again to get mortar. Mr. Gilbreth designed and patented special scaffolding to reduce the bending and reaching, increasing output over 100%. At the time, unfortunately, unions resisted his improvements, and most workers persisted in using the old, fatiguing methods. 

The US Standard railroad gauge (distance between rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches

Ever wonder where the term "Work Smarter...Not Harder" originated? Allan F. Mogensen, the creator of Work Simplification, coined the phrase in the 1930s. The 1990s equivalent term is probably "Business Process Reengineering." 

Octopi have gardens. 

The phrase: "the whole nine yards" does not, in fact, stem from football. Nine square yards is the amount of material needed to make a fine suit. 

There are 296 steps to the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. 

A kangaroo can't jump unless its tail is touching the ground. 

If Barbie were lifesize, her measurements would be: 39-23-33.

Handel's Messiah was written in 3 weeks. 

A fifteen letter word with no letters repeated is "uncopyrightable". 

Alaska is one fifth of the size of the contiguous United States, and borders two oceans and three seas. 

Tornadoes travel along the ground at between 0 and 60 mph.

A fierce gust of wind blew 45-year-old Vittorio Luise's car into a river near Naples, Italy, in 1983. He managed to break a window, climb out and swim to shore -- where a tree blew over and killed him.

Hay fever is the sixth most prevalent chronic condition in the United States.

To store beets, remove the greens and leave about one inch of stem attached (to prevent loss of color and nutrients when cooked). Store in plastic bag and refrigerate up to three weeks. The cooked leafy greens provide vitamin A and potassium, and are low in calories.

Every Swiss citizen is required by law to have a bomb shelter or access to a bomb shelter. 

The mother of Monkees' Mike Nesmith invented White Out. 

Craven Walker invented the lava lamp, and its contents are colored wax and water. 

Ever wonder why typewriter or computer keyboards are arranged in the so-called "QWERTY" pattern? It was because, in the early days of mechanical typewriters, proficient typists could type so fast that the keys frequently jammed against each other. In an effort to space often-used keys apart to prevent jamming, the familiar but illogical QWERTY pattern was developed. 

China is the most preferred tourist destination for Macau travellers.
Asia Travel Market

"PAPYRUS" was favored by the ancient Egyptians as a surface for drawing and painting. The pulp of papyrus, a seed, was widely used until the source was almost exhausted. A Miscellany of Artist's Wisdom compiled by Diana Craig

If you say "laugh it off" you are quoting shakespeare. 

Before 1859, baseball umpires were seated in padded chairs behind home plate. 

In February in Madison, Wis., during a routine search of Leonard Hodge, 22, who had been arrested for failure to carry a driver's license, police found cocaine in his underwear. According to a police spokesman, Hodge attempted to exculpate himself by saying the undershorts he was wearing were not his. (Wisconsin State Journal, 2-3-96)

The term "hay fever" originated in England, where some people suffered allergic symptoms during hay-pitching time. When the symptoms became severe, workers often felt feverish.

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

The surface speed record on the moon is 10.56 miles per hour. It was set in a lunar rover. 

The planet Saturn has a density lower than water. So if there was a bathtub large enough to hold it (which would be pretty weird to begin with), Saturn would float. 

It's said that the height of a wave is half of the winds speed in MPH

In October, a Redondo Beach, Calif., police officer arrested a driver after a short chase and charged him with drunk driving. Officer Joseph Fonteno's suspicions were aroused when he saw the white Mazda MX-7 rolling down Pacific Coast Highway with half of a traffic-light pole, including the lights, lying across its hood. The driver had hit the pole on a median strip and simply kept driving. According to Fonteno, when the driver was asked about the pole, he said, "It came with the car when I bought it." 
(Torrance Daily Breeze, 10-24-95)

Americans spend an estimated $500 million each year on allergy treatments. 

In the great fire of London in 1666 half of London was burnt down but only 6 people were injured

During WWII, Americans tried to train bats to drop bombs. They failed. 

160 cars can drive side by side on the Monumental Axis in Brazil, the world's widest road. 

There are 1,792 steps to the top of the Eiffel Tower. 

All 17 children of Queen Anne died before she did. 

The 'spot' on 7UP comes from its inventor who had a red eye. he was albino. 

Groundhog's day comes from a German legend but the animal was a porcupine. 

The Chinese built a battery that has lasted 400 years. 

Chang is the most common last name. 

A jumbo jet uses 4,000 gallons of fuel to take off. 

Venus is the only planet that rotates clockwise. 

The first CD pressed in the US was Bruce Springsteen's 'Born in the USA'

Tomatoes and cucumbers are fruits. 

Montpelier, Vermont, is the only U.S. state capital without a McDonald's. 

One of the reasons marijuana is illegal today because cotton growers in the 30s lobbied against hemp farmers --they saw it as competition.

The IRS would need at least 15 3/4 miles of shelves to store the tax forms they receive each year. 

There are as many as 78 scenes in a single X-Files episode.

A downburst is a downward blowing wind that sometimes comes blasting out of a thunderstorm. The damage looks like tornado damage, since the wind can be as strong as an F2 tornado, but debris is blown straight away from a point on the ground. It's not lofted into the air and transported downwind. 

American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in first class. 

Diphenhydramine, one of the original antihistamines, is used as a sleeping capsule.

The average person spends about two years on the phone in a lifetime. 

Some insects can live up to a year without their heads. 

101 Dalmatians and Peter Pan (Wendy) are the only two Disney cartoon features with both parents that are present and don't die throughout the movie. 

One ragweed plant can release as many as one billion grains of pollen.

The Red Sea is not Red. Like all bodies of water it appears blue. Its original name is the "Reed Sea" (Yam Suf, in Hebrew). Its modern name is the result of a 17th century typographical error by an English printer. In typesetting a new English translation of a Latin version of the Bible, an "e" was dropped, rendering "Red" in place of "Reed." However, the mountains of Edom to the East turn so red towards sunset, that the mistaken name is ironically appropriate.
IsraelVisit Homepage

Rabbits can suffer from heat stroke. 

There are more donut shops per capita in canada than in any other country. 

Under the "Not too good for kids" category...If you live in Blue Earth, Minnesota, and you are under 12 years old, you can not chat on the phone unless a parent is present in the room!

If you live in Michigan, did you know it's illegal to place a skunk inside your bosses desk?

Some strawberries, called everbearing, produce berries throughout the summer and fall. 

The strawberry plant has seeds on the outside skin rather than having an outer skin around the seed, as most berries do. They do not however, normally reproduce by seeds. When the fruit is developing, the plant sends out slender growths called runners. These look like strings. They grow on the ground and send out roots in the soil. The roots produce new plants which grow and bear fruit. Sometimes these plants are taken from the soil and replanted to start a new plantation of strawberry plants.

The strawberry, as we know it, was originally grown in northern Europe, but species are also found in Russia, Chile, and the United States. The first American species of strawberries was cultivated about 1835. 

President John Quincy Adams owned a pet alligator which he kept in the East Room of the White House. 

President John F. Kennedy could read 4 newspapers in 20 minutes. 

George Washington carried a portable sundial. 

All U.S. Presidents have worn glasses, some of them just didn't like to be seen with them in public. 

Before winning the election in 1860, Abraham Lincoln lost eight elections for various offices. 

Taft's special "fat man" bathtub was big enough for four average-sized men. 

Washington's second inaugural address was 133 words long. 

David Rice Atchinson was President of the United States for exactly one day. 

President Andrew Jackson spent most of his adult life with a bullet no more than two inches away from his heart as a result of a duel he fought before becoming President. 

Abe Lincoln's mother died when the family dairy cow ate poisonous mushrooms and Ms. Lincoln drank the milk. 

Ulysses S. Grant smoked 20 cigars a day. 

Taft was the last President with facial hair. 

Jimmy Carter is a speed reader (2000 wpm). 

Bill Clinton is the first left-handed American president to serve two terms. 

President Garfield could simultaneously write in Latin with one hand and in Greek with the other. 

"John has a long moustache" was the coded-signal used by the French Resistance in WWII to mobilize their forces once the Allies had landed on the Normandy beaches. 

According to historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson loved the soda Fresca so much he had a fountain installed in the Oval Office that dispensed the beverage, which the president could operate by pushing a button on his desk chair. Fresca is a grapefruit- flavored soda sold on the East Coast. 

Gerald Ford was once a male model.

The Tower of Independence clock on the back of a U.S. $100 dollar bill shows the time as 4:10. 

Most burglaries happen above the first but below the seventh floor's in hotel. (Due to the fact that most fire hoses can't go above the sixth) 

X-Files episodes are shot in 12-14 hour days, 10 months a year.

Indonesia is an Islamic country where 87% of the religious is Muslim. 6% is Protestant, 3% Roman Catholic, 2% Hindu, 1% Buddhist and 1% has a different religion. The official language is Bahassa Indonesia (a modified form of of Malay). At school all students learn English and on the street a lot of people speak a little bit English. Still some people (mostly older people) speak Dutch. Further there are a lot of local languages. From the total population 82% can read and write.

The Volkswagen was originally called the "Strength-Through-Joy-Wagon." 

In Kentucky, it is illegal to carry ice cream in your back pocket. 

Nude models at two of scotlands art colleges have gone on strike a time or two in recent years demanding more pay and that the minium studio temperature be 70 degrees F. 

The United States has never lost a war in which mules were used. 

The U.S. Naval Observatory declares American time. 

Bob Dole is 10 years older than the Empire State Building. 

The door to the cave in which a bear hibernates is always on the north slope. 

Ketchup was once used as a medicine in the United States. In the 1830s it was sold as Dr. Miles's Compound Extract of Tomato.

The Chinese lettered goldfish is covered with Chinese characters, achieved through thousands of years of crossbreeding.

Bills are only printed in seven demoninations now. Think you can name who appears on each of them? Well, in case you don't have any of the new (or old) $100 dollar bills stashed in your piggy bank, here are the answers...
$1 - George Washington
$2 - Thomas Jefferson
$5 - Abraham Lincoln
$10 - Alexander Hamilton
$20 - Andrew Jackson 
$50 - Ulysses S. Grant
$100 - Benjamin Franklin

When glass breaks, the cracks move at speeds of up to 3,000 miles per hour. 

There are 78 synonyms for the adjective red listed in Roget's Thesaurus including: rubicond, erubescent, rufescent, ferruginous, cramoisy and vermeil.

The kerosene fungus can live in jet fuel tanks. If there is a minute amount of water in the tank, the fungus can use the fuel as food. 

Fingernails have a life span of three to six months. That's how long it takes them to grow from base to tip, progressing at the pace of 1.5 inches a year -- or 0.000000047 inches a second. 

The liquid inside young coconuts can be used as substitute for blood plasma. 

The surface area of the lungs in an adult human is 90 square yards. By comparison, the surface area of the skin is only about one square yard. 

What the hot dog is to America, fish and chips are to England and gyros to Greece, the felafel is to Israel. A traditional felafel sandwich consists of 6 ground, deep-fried chick pea balls stuffed into a pita (pocket bread), along with a portion of traditional Israeli salad (finely cut up tomatoes and cucumbers) and tehina (sesame) sauce.
IsraelVisit Homepage

Men are 1.6 times more likely to undergo by-pass surgery than women.
ICES Working Paper #5

Public telephones in Israel are no longer operated by tokens as they were in the past. They are now operated by a magnetic card known in Hebrew as a telecart. These plastic cards, the same size and shape as a credit card, are available at post offices, some hotel receptions desks, street kiosks, and dispensing machines.
IsraelVisit Homepage

The number of possible ways of playing the first four moves per side in a game of chess is 318,979,564,000. 

Every 24 hours a leaking water faucet with an opening the size of a pin will waste 170 gallons. 

Just twenty seconds' worth of fuel remained when Apollo 11's lunar module landed on the moon. 

Mailing an entire building has been illegal in the U.S. since 1916 when a man mailed a 40,000-ton brick house across Utah to avoid high freight rates. 

Americans use over 16,000 tons of aspirin a year. 

Lightning strikes the earth somewhere more than seventeen million times every day, or about two hundred times every second 

Seventy percent of the dust in your home consists of shed human skin.

Original 'Indian Yellow' was obtained at Monghyr, a town in Benghal, from the urine of cows which had been fed on mango leaves. It was found in the bazaars of Panjab in the form of large balls, having an offensive urinous odor. True Indian yellow has been absent from the market for some time; its production is said to have been prohibited in 1908. Present day Indian yellow colors are made of synthetic pigments, alternatives that are less fugitive and less offensive to the nose!
Source: The Art Paper, Daler-Rowney Newspaper for Artists, Spring 1994. 

In Greene, New York, you cannot walk backwards and eat peanuts on the sidewalks during a concert.

In Hartford, Connecticut, you may not, under any circumstances, cross the street walking on your hands!

A typical double-bed mattress contains as many as two million house dust mites (Demodex folliculorom)

A 10-gallon hat barely holds 6 pints.

It costs $6,400 to raise a medium-size dog to age eleven.

Hallmark makes cards for 105 different relationships.

A creep is a metallurgical term for when something that is normally very strong bends because of gravity. This happens to many metals at high temperatures, where they won't melt but they will "creep". 

Necking is a metallurgical term for when a metal part starts to break. For Example a metal cylinder will begin to decrease its diameter or "neck" shortly before it breaks. 

Jimmy Carter was the first U.S. president to have been born in a hospital.

The amount of gold dissolved in the oceans is nearly ten million tons, which is about 180 times the total amount of gold dug in mines in the entire history of humanity 

In the 19th century, the British Navy attempted to dispel the superstition that Friday is an unlucky day to embark on a ship. The keel of a new ship was laid on a Friday, she was named H.M.S. Friday, commanded by a Captain Friday, and finally went to sea on a Friday. Neither the ship nor her crew were ever heard of again.

If space debris already circling the globe continues to increase at its current rate, the chance that a space shuttle will collid with debris will increase to 1-in-10 flights by the year 2000 

Don't know why, but people living in mountain states eat 30% more cookies than other people. 

One in five of the world's 2.5 million medical doctors are Russian. 

"Naked" means to be unprotected. "Nude" means unclothed. 

It seems longer to be sure, but a common housefly only lives for two weeks. They also prefer to breed in the center of a room. 

The average life span of an umbrella is 1 1/2 years. 

Tiger cubs are born blind and weigh only about 2 to 3 pounds (1 kg), depending on the subspecies. They live on milk for 6-8 weeks before the female begins taking them to kills to feed. Tigers have fully developed canines by 16 months of age, but they do not begin making their own kills until about 18 months of age.
The Tiger Information Center

Dairy products make up 29% of all food consumed in the United States. 

A U.S. House subcommittee determined that the chances your doctor is a phony are 1 in 50. 

The onion is actually a lily.

Cats have over 100 vocal sounds, whereas, dogs only have about 10.

People speak at a rate of about 120 wpm. 

Issac Asimov is the only author to have a book in every Dewey-Decimal category. 

You can sail all the way around the world at 60 degrees South latitude. 

Every day in the United States, people steal $20,000 from coin-operated machines. 

Americans spend $300 million on clothes every day! 

Roses cut in the afternoon last longer than ones cut in the morning. 

America's first nudist organization was founded in 1929, by 3 men. 

When he's feeling amorous, the male sea otter grabs the female's nose with his teeth. 

In 1681, the last dodo bird died. 

You can only smell one twentieth as well as a dog. Deodorant does help the situation some. 

The tango originated as a dance between two men for partnering practice. 

An earthquake on Dec. 16, 1811 sent the Mississippi River backwards. 

Pound for pound, wood is stronger than steel. 

Most gemstones contain several elements. The exception? The diamond. It's all carbon. 

A silicon chip a quarter-inch square has the capacity of the original 1949 ENIAC computer, which occupied a city block. 

If the population of the Earth continued to increase at its present rate indefinitely, by 3530 A.D. the total mass of human flesh and blood would equal the mass of the Earth. By 6826 A.D. it would equal the mass of the known universe. 

The average bank teller loses about $250 every year. 

By the end of the Civil War, between one-third and one-half of all U.S. paper currency in circulation was counterfeit. 

The Massachusetts Bay Colony issued the first paper money in the colonies which would later form the United States in 1690. 

To support the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress chartered the Bank of North America in Philadelphia as the nation's first "real" bank in 1781. 

On the brink of bankruptcy and pressed to finance the Civil War, Congress authorized the United States Treasury to issue paper money for the first time in the form of non-interest bearing Treasury Notes call Demand Notes in 1861.

One of the many Tarzans, Karmuela Searlel, was mauled to death on the set by a raging elephant. 

In 1990, a security thread and microprinting were introduced in $50 and $100 notes to deter counterfeiting by technologically advanced copiers and printers. 

Notes currently produced are the $1 note, 45% of production time; the $5 and $10 notes, 12% each; $20 note, 26%; $50 note, 2%; and $100 note, 3%. 

There are two distinct parts to Newfoundland and Labrador. The island of Newfoundland, located at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, is about half way between the centre of North America and Western Europe. Its location has always been key to its history. The Vikings landed here 1,000 years ago and established the first European settlement in the New World. During the past two centuries the island has been the landing site of the first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable, the jump-off for the first non-stop air crossing of that great ocean and the spot where Marconi received the first trans-Atlantic wireless message. 

The names of communities and geographical features attest to Newfoundlanders' sense of humour. You'll laugh all the way from Bumble Bee Bight to Ha Ha Bay to Chase Me Further Pond. At Heart's Content you'll find just that, plus the cable station from where telegraph messages traversed the first Trans-Atlantic cable.

Colgate faced a big obstacle marketing toothpaste in Spanish speaking countries. Colgate translates into the command "go hang yourself."

"Bookkeeper" is the only word in English language with three consecutive double letters.

Detroit, Michigan is the world's largest border city.

In order to build up an immunity to bad humors generally, some Europeans during the Black Death spent an hour a day sniffing in a latrine.
Book: The Black Death

Kitchen dishcloths and sponges, notorious for harboring bacteria which can cause foodborne illnesses, can be sanitized by using a household microwave oven. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin and the University of California-Davis eliminated E coli 0157:H7 and Staphylococcus and other bacteria by exposing cotton dishcloths and cellulose sponges to microwaves for one minute at the highest setting.

Downtown Oshawa, Ont. is built upon quicksand. Special support posts were placed under buildings when constructed because there is no solid bedrock.

The largest US state, east of the Mississippi River is Georgia.

The U.S. city with the highest rate of lightning strikes per capita is Clearwater, Florida.
National Geographic

There are more Barbie dolls in Italy than there are Canadians in Canada.
Mattel 

In cooking, six drops make a dash.

Yak's milk is pink

The blood depicted in the shower scene of the movie "psycho" was really chocolate syrup.

The Eisenhower interstate system requires that one mile in every five must be straight. These straight sections are usable as airstrips in times of war or other emergencies.

The Boston University Bridge (on Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts) is the only place in the world where a boat can sail under a train driving under a car driving under an airplane.

Emus cannot walk backwards.

The United States government keeps its supply of silver at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, NY.

There are only thirteen blimps in the world. Nine of the thirteen blimps are in the United States.

John Wilkes Booth's original plan was to kidnap Abraham Lincoln and probably was going to hold him for ransom. 

Lincoln once had a dream right before the fall of Richmond that he would die. He dreamt that he was in the White House, he heard crying and when he found the room it was coming from he asked who had died. The man said the President. He looked in the coffin and saw his own face. A week later Lincoln died. 

Lincoln was shot on April 14, 1865 on Good Friday and in 1995 Good Friday was also on April 14.

When Booth shot Lincoln, some people thought it was part of the play. 

Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and James Monroe all died on July 4th. Jefferson and Adams died at practically the same minute of the same day.

President Grover Cleveland was a draft dodger. He hired someone to enter the service in his place, for which he was ridiculed by his political opponent, James G. Blaine. It was soon discovered, however, that Blaine had done the same thing himself.

President John Tyler had fifteen children. 

George Washington was not the first president of the United States. The first president was John Hanson, Maryland's representative at the Continental Congress. On November 5,1781, Hanson was elected by the Constitutional Congress to the office of "President of the United States in Congress Assembled." He served for one year. 

George Washington left no direct descendants. Though his wife Martha had four children by a previous marriage, Washington never sired a child to continue his line.

James Buchanan was the only United States president never to marry. During his term in office, his niece Harriet Lane played the role of First Lady.

President Ulysses S. Grant was once arrested during his term of office. He was convicted of exceeding the Washington speed limit on his horse and was fined $20. President Franklin Pierce was Arrested while in office for running over an old woman with his horse, but the case was dropped for insufficient evidence in 1853. 

Andrew Jackson was the first President to be the object of an assassination attempt. Jackson had attended a funeral, and a man named Richard Lawrence came up to him and fired a pistol at point-blank range. The pistol misfired, and before anyone could react, Lawrence pulled another pistol and it too misfired! Instead of running or taking cover, President Jackson preceded to beat the man over the head with his cane. The odds were astronomical that two pistols would misfire.

David Prowse was the guy in the Darth Vader suit in Star Wars. He spoke all of Vader's lines, and didn't know that he was going to be dubbed over by James Earl Jones until he saw the screening of the movie.

Camel's milk does not curdle.

"Mr. Mojo Risin" is an anagram for Jim Morrison.

The word "modem" is a contraction of the words "modulate, demodulate." (MOdulateDEModulate)

Many hamsters only blink one eye at a time.

In every episode of Seinfeld there is a Superman somewhere.

The name Jeep came from the abbreviation used in the army for the "General Purpose" vehicle, G.P.

Since 1896, the beginning of the modern Olympics, only Greece and Australia have participated in every Games.

February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.

It takes a lobster approximately seven years to grow to be one pound.

There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.

Roger Ebert is the only film critic to have ever won the Pulitzer prize.

Columbia University is the second largest landowner in New York City, after the Catholic Church.

An iguana can stay under water for 28 minutes.

The first Ford cars had Dodge engines.

Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.

In the last 4000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.

The highest point in Pennsylvania is lower than the lowest point in Colorado.

Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously. It's also a potent hallucigen.

If you have three quarters, four dimes, and four pennies, you have $1.19. You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar.

Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than all of the Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined.

Lincoln Logs were invented by Frank Lloyd Wright's son.

The only two days of the year in which there are no professional sports games (MLB, NBA, NHL, or NFL) are the day before and the day after the Major League All-Star Game.

Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.

The word accordion comes from the German word "akkord," which means "agreement, harmony."

"A pound of termites has more nutrients than a pound of beef or pork," says Frank French of Georgia Southern University. He teaches his students that there are more food sources around them than they think. Students are urged to create new recipes using foods such as wild plants, but more points are given if the students use bugs. The catch: students have to eat their creations as part of their assignment. French doesn't shirk his responsibilities: he eats them too. He notes that roast crickets, for instance, "taste like a fat-laden hors d'oeuvre." However, "the legs aren't very palatable, and the heads are quite objectionable." (AP) ...Mostly, the students learn that the "mystery meat" in the cafeteria may not be so bad after all. 

It is illegal to have sex in the nude in your back yard or front yard for that matter. However it is legal if your wearing a pair of socks or any other piece of clothing.

Wayne's World was filmed in two weeks. 

Ratio of number of breast enhancements each year in Los Angeles compared with number performed in the Eastern U.S.: 4 to 1. Ratio of faces lifts each in L.A. to number in New York: 2 to 1.

The first submarine to sink a ship in combat was the Hunley in 1862. It sailed for the Confederate States of America (the south in the Civil War) and was made from an old steam engine boiler. It sank one of the ships blockading Charleston, SC harbor. Incidently, the Hunley *also* sank and is currently being raised by a historical group with the help of the U.S. Navy.

The central phenomenon which enables *all* vacuum tubes (or valves to the British) to work is the "boiling" off of electrons from the cathode when the cathode is heated to about 300 degrees Fahrenheit. This phenomenon was discovered and pattened by Thomas Edison, and he named it the Edison effect. (The picture tube in your computer monitor uses the Edison effect to operate.)

The state flower of Texas is the Bluebonnet. The state tree of Texas is the pecan.

The laws about carrying wirecutters in your back pocket and shooting buffalo from a moving train have been repealed (I think...check it out.)

In Malaysia, where barn owls were introduced to control plagues of rats, each barn owl family killed about 1,300 rats a year!

Tom Cruise's name was Thomas Mapother, before he changed it 

The longest place-name still in use is Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaunga-horonukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu, a New Zealand hill. 

Every year has at least one Friday the 13th

The Romans took the Greek Perzoma, the first constructed underwear, and the Etruscan succinta, a belt, and created the bikini for athletic use. 

In a lifetime we replace our skin approximately 1000 times. 

Ironically, for their first year (1979) nuclear polka band Brave Combo didn't have an accordionist. Then, in 1980 because of Joe King Carrasco and Joe Nick Patoski, the band got a gig in New York. Three weeks before they were to play there, keyboard player Carl Finch decided to trade in his Fender Rhodes for a beginner's accordion.

As Finch puts it, just the sight of the accordion was enough to win over the crowd and national press. Since then, Finch says that watching the transformation of peoples' attitidues toward accordions has been one of his most rewarding experiences; the band has even seen accordion ensembles in Japan. He also says that one of his favorite aspects about the instrument is that it's so physical and responsive to a player's emotions. Finch, who led the accordion parade scene in David Byrne's movie "True Stories," adds that Byrne is a charter member of the Dallas chapter of the Texas Accordionists Association.

The volume of the Earth's moon is the same as the volume of the Pacific Ocean.

Spam was invented in 1937. 

Researchers at the University of Oklahoma have started a study of the way tornados carry debris away from the ground. Historical reports show that paper can be carried more than 200 miles before settling back to earth. But records of such events are sparse, and those they have found "you have to take with a grain of salt," one researcher said. So why bother? They want to create a model "that would be of use to forecasters if a tornado were to hit a hazardous waste site," she said. They have compiled a number of interesting reports so far. A cow was thrown 10 miles in 1878, a pillow went 20 miles in 1913, a jar of pickles travelled 18 miles in 1917, and, in one 1953 storm, trousers went 30 miles and a wedding gown a full 50 miles. (AP) ...Yes, but they had a head start since they were thrown, not just carried off. 

The Saginaw River in Michigan is the shortest river in the world.

Most published species of dinosaurs have been published within the last 20 years.

In 1822, Mary Ann Mantell of Sussex, England became the first person in history to discover a dinosaur fossil while correctly identifying it as something that was a part of a large reptile; earlier discoveries were identified as giant men, dragons, and other such large, dead things. However, her husband, Dr. Gideon Mantell, took credit for the discovery and identified the teeth that she found as part of an Iguanodon. Later, he wrongfully identified a body part as a horn, which turned out to be part of the creature's thumb.

One of the lenses at the University of Texas' McDonald Observatory has a nick in it because a worker there got mad at something and shot at it.

In France there's a place called Y. In Japan there's a place called O.

Four fire ant species are found in Texas, three of which are native to the state. The tropical Solenopsis geminata Fabricus and southern Solenopsis xyloni McCook are the most common.

Side oats grama is the official state grass of Texas.

According to the ancient Chinese, swinging your arms cures headache pain. 

The worlds largest crossword-puzzel contained 82951 cells 

The phone number for the White house is 202-456-1414

Normally there are born 94 females to 100 males. But among quadruplets there are 156 females for evrey 100 males.

Guam has seven public elementary schools.

Length of beard an average man would grow if he never shaved: 27.5 feet. 
Amount of time an average man spends shaving: 3350 hours.
Number of whiskers on the face of the average man: 30,000.
Number of inches whiskers grow per year 5.5. 

Clouds fly higher during the day than the night. 

7'1" Basketball star Wilt Chamberlain's parents were 5'8".

The average person looks at 8 houses before actually buying one.

The A & P was the first chain-store business to be established. It began in 1842.

A Canadian marine biologist claims to have cultured the world's biggest abalone pearl. Measuring 27 millimetres (just over one inch) across its base, the pearl is approximately five millimetres bigger than its next-largest known counterpart which was cultured in Japan. 
Simon Fraser University

The Grand Canyon was not seen by a white man until after the Civil War. It was first entered on May 29,1869, by the geologist John Wesley Powell.

Wyoming was the first state to allow women to vote. 

Border collies are the most intelligentbreed of dog.

The average child will eat 15 pounds of cereal in a year.

The average college student produces 640 pounds of solid waste each year, including 500 disposable cups and 320 pounds of paper. 
The Earth Work's Group Recycler's Handbook

There were 5,345 landfills in the U.S. and its terrorities in 1992. 

A total of 67% of waste was landfilled in 1992, compared to 81% in 1980 and 62% in 1960. 

More than 15 million tons of waste destined for landfills had to cross a state line to get there. This may change dramatically depending on how the U.S. Supreme Court resolves its upcoming flow control cases. At least 27 states currently have flow control laws. 

At the current pace, we'll be generating 222 million tons of waste by the year 2000. Currently about 130 million tons of MSW ends up in landfills each year (NSWMA). 

In a recent survey of World Wastes subscribers, of those owning landfills, 53% expect their site to remain open 10+ years;

12% said 5 to 9 years; 7% reported 3 to 4 years and a whopping 26% said less than 3 years. 

Subtitle D regulations will provide minimum standards for the nation's public and private landfills. It involves the use of composite liners and having an elaborate monitoring system. The costs of the regs. will result in a regionalized approach for volume-based business and a dramatic decrease of publicly owned facilities. Also specifies that landfill obtain an amount sufficient to close and cap the site and perform care and maintenance for 30 years after closure. 

The equivalent of ten city blocks of rainforest is destroyed every minute, that's an area the size of Pennsylvania lost every year. 

7% of the earth's dry land surface is rainforest, home to more than 50% of the world's plants and animals. 

A bulldozer must remove 60 rainforest trees to reach one mahogany tree. 

The National Cancer Research Institute found that women who eat meat on a daily basis are almost 4 times more likely to get breast cancer than those women who eat little or no meat. 

86% of fish landings in 1989 were marine 

15 of the world's 17 largest fisheries are overfished or in trouble 

Less than 30% of the coral reefs in Japan, Philippines and Costa Rica are in good or excellent condition 

People who regularly start each day eating a bowl of cold breakfast cereal tend to consume more fiber and calcium -- but less fat -- than people who breakfast on other foods. 

S.E. Asia. In parts of the world such as India where elephants are regularly paraded, well-intentioned (and usually foreign) Onlookers will occasionally offer a quart or two of hard liquor to an elephant. Often, the drunken elephant will "run amok" and end up getting shot in order to protect the crowd.

The snow goose completes its 3,000 mile return to its Arctic home at an altitude of 3,000 feet and an average speed of 50 miles per hour. It achieves this task on a diet of grass, bulbs, berries and slugs. 

The risk for developing malignant melanoma has increased 1,800% in the US since 1930. The cancer now claims a life every hour. 

The ongoing Australian campaign to eliminate its non-native rabbit population by spreading a bunny-killing virus may be working too well. The public is now being warned to be on the alert for hungry eagles attacking motorists on some highways. 

Bubonic plague killed millions of people throughout Europe in the Dark Ages. In 1996, five cases of plague were reported in the U.S. 

Percentage of high school seniors with an A average who smoke cigarettes daily: 7. 

Percentage of seniors with a D average who smoke daily: 46. 

Researchers have found the fossilized remains of what may be the first vertebrate to fly. Born 250 million years ago, Coelurosauravus jaekeli, was a one-foot long lizard with strange detached rod-like bones in wing area.

"X" goes first in Tic-Tac-Toe

Jeff Norton's the only Edmonton Oiler who doesn't wear socks under his skates.

Traditionally, a jury's decision must be unanimous, although it is legal for a state to allow a majority vote in designated cases. When a jury's member can't agree, it is called a hung jury. When jurors notify a judge that they are deadlocked, the judge usually ends the trial. A new trial is held later with new jurors.

The Constitution requires 12 members for juries in Federal courts. While 12 is the traditional number of jurors, some state courts occasionally have fewer than 12 persons on a jury. 

North Carolina's Mount Mitchell, at 6,684 feet, is the tallest mountain in the East. When first measured in 1835, it was the highest point in what was then the United States. The nation's highest peak now is Alaska's Mount McKinley, which stands 20,320 feet. 

An estimated 25 million Americans travel in the nation's 9 million RVs. Over half of likely RV buyers are age 30 to 49. 

Athletic shoe industry leader Nike spent an estimated $120 million on advertising in 1994. Number two Reebok spent $70 million.

The world's largest single mineral hot spring is located in Wyoming's Hot Springs State Park. Millions of gallons of water containing at least 27 different minerals flow through the spring every 24 hours, always at a constant temperature of 135 degrees Fahrenheit.

70% of all boats sold are used in fishing. 

A body of water was the favorite destination of those responding to last year's Recreation Roundtable survey. An ocean, lake, reservoir or river was the choice for about 40% of the respondents. 

Fiberglass proved the most popular hull material in a majority of states, with 5.5 million fiberglass boats registered overall.
Metal boats came second with 4 million registrations. Wooden boats numbered 279,530. Inflatable craft registrations numbered 65,807. 

62,955 commercial passengers went whitewater rafting in Maine in 1994, a 4.3% increase over the previous year. 

Americans are accorded about 130 leisure days per year. In comparison, first-century Romans had only 66 free days per year, while three centuries later their imperial descendants enjoyed 175.Englishmen of the early 16th century had over 200 days off, but the Khmer Rouge allowed Cambodians fewer than 40 work-free days per year in the 1970s.

The Finlandia Vodka Clean Water Challenge is the world's longest endurance kayak race and the biggest purse in paddlesports. The race, which kicks off in Chicago on July 11 and finishes in New York City on August 10, will cover approximately 800 miles of waterways. The total purse is $75,000.

A few Wright flyers were equipped with radiotelegraphs. This early avionics system required a radio operator to ride along just to operate the radio. 

Many of today's small planes are better equipped electronically than the airliners of the 1950s. A typical four place aircraft can be equipped with satellite navigation, dual 760 channel communication radios, an electronic moving map system, weather radar, an autopilot, and more.

The Boeing 777 relies completely on its avionics systems. The triple- redundant flight control system is completely "fly-by-wire." In other words, this airliner has no control cables or hydraulics attached between the control surfaces and the control wheel; when the pilot moves the control wheel, a computer comunicates with another and moves the control surface. All of the avionics systems aboard this aircraft use built in test equipment (BITE) that automatically troubleshoots faults.

Mrs. Karen Creamo was the original creator of mayonnaise. On Monday, 16 May 1927, Mrs. C. was trying to create a special treat for her family. She decided to create a sauce to put on the roast beef that she was roasting in the oven, and her creation, mayonnaise, has become loved by millions. 

Mayonnaise is being studied as a substitute for silicon in breast implants. 

The ball of food that your tounge creates during chewing is called a "bolus"

The Panama Canal actully runs North/South.

The free "Hair Club for Men" Video is actully 11:22 min. long.

Number of human beings who could be fed by the grain and soybeans eaten by U.S. livestock: 1,300,000,000

Number of people who will starve to death this year: 20,000,000 

A mere ounce of dioxin could kill 10 million people

Less than 1 out of every quarter million slaughtered animals is tested for toxic chemical residues.

Ice Cream was invented in China in about 200 B.C., when a soft, milk & rice mixture was further solidified by packing it in snow.

Roman emperors are alleged to have sent slaves to mountain tops to bring back fresh snow which was then flavored and served as part of their famous food orgies.

The first hand-crank ice cream freezer was invented in 1846 by Nancy Johnson.

In 1851, Jacob Fussell, a milk dealer in Baltimore, converted his milk plant into the first ice cream plant in the United States.

In 1921, the comissioner of Ellis Island made the decision to treat all incoming immigrants to a taste of something truly American, by serving them ice cream as part of their first meal.

In 1943, Brigham's ice cream parlours offered three flavors of ice cream--vanilla, chocolate, and coffee--and sold hot fudge sundaes for 20-cents, or 25-cents with nuts.

On August 7, 1977, Dennett D'Angelo set a world record for eating 3 pounds, 6 ounces of ice cream in 90 seconds.

In 1994, Brigham's used 1,400,000 pounds of sugar to make its delicious ice cream and frozen yogurt products.

New Englanders enjoy a hearty 39 pints of ice cream annually, or about 14 pints more per year than the average American.

The average medium size piano has about 230 strings.

The total string tension in a concert grand is close to Thirty Tons.

There are over 10 MILLION pianos in American homes, businesses, and institutions.

The first practical piano with an escapement mechanism for the hammers and capable of being played softly and loudly was built in 1726 by an Italian, Bartolomeo Cristofori (1655-1731).

During the past 100 years there have been approximately 5000 Brands of pianos placed on the market. Most are still on display in homes or elsewhere.

Pianos are made of thousands of pieces of wood glued together to form various parts of the playing mechanism as well as the cabinet. Felt, buckskin, paper, steel, iron, copper, and other materials are also used.

Yamaha, established in 1887 was the first piano manfacturer in Japan.

Independent studies show that children who learn piano tend to do better in school. This is attributed to the discipline, eye-hand coordination, social skills building, learning a new language (music) and the pleasure derived from making your own music

Buckingham palace has over 600 rooms

In the Renaissance, two armies clashed in The Battle of Grandson. The victors completely killed the opposing army, but woke the next morning freezing cold. They pulled the clothes from the dead army and tried to put them on over their own. The clothes didn't fit, so they had to slash the garments to get them on.

The rumba originated in Cuba

Norman Stingley invented the Super Ball

In the 1960s, animal behavior researchers studied the effects of various substances on spiders. When spiders were fed flies that had been injected with caffeine, they spun very "nervous" webs. When spiders ate flies injected with LSD, they spun webs with wild, abstract patterns. Spiders that were given sedatives fell asleep before completing their webs.

Mary Shelly wrote "Frankenstein" at age 19.

Coca-Cola contains neither coca nor cola.

Pepsi originally contained pepsin, therefore the name.

An enneahedron is solid with nine faces.

Sunbeams that shine down through the clouds are called crespucular rays.

In Evanston, Il. a man was pulled over and the cops found 13 grams of crack between his cheeks. That is the most crack ever held in a person's mouth before.

Stewardesses is the longest word that can be typed using only the left hand.

0.3% of all road accidents in Canada involve a moose.

The one-hundred eleventh element is known as "unnilenilenium"

Each unit on the Richter Scale is equivalent to a power factor of about 32. So a 6 is 32 times more powerful than a 5! Though it goes to 10, 9 is estimated to be the point of total tetonic destruction. 2 is the smallest that can be felt unaided.

In the movie Cujo they had to use 5 St. Bernards, plus a head, and a man in a body suit.

They had to use around nine '58 Plymouth Furys for Christine. Only one survived the whole movie.

The book Dennis pulls out in the library in Christine is the book Christine by Stephen King.

In order for the St. Bernards to claw at the car and jump on it in Cujo, they took the dog's favorite toys and put them in speical places. The dogs tried to get them by clawing at the car.

Jack Nicklson had to excercise for the scence in which he chops open the door in The Shining. 

Drew Barrymore was in two Stephen King films: Firestarter and Cat's Eyes.

During the filming of Jurassic Park, Michael Crithon and Steven Spielburg were constantly reminded that the Velociraptor was not as tall as it was in the movie. The common Velociraptor was 4 feet tall. But during the fiming palentologists found a "raptor" dinosaur in Utah. It was the size of the Velociraptors in the movie, so Speilburg and Critchon got off. They named the dinosaur Utahraptor.

The longest word in the English language that has only one vowel is "strengths" (nine letters).

The number 21978, when multiplied by 4, is the same number but with the digits in reverse order.

Through a system of canals, the inland city of Moscow is a port for five seas: the White, the Baltic, the Azov, the Black, and the Caspian.

A companion tomb was originally to have been built facing the Taj Mahal. The companion would have been identical to the Taj Mahal in every way but its black colour.

If electrodes are inserted at opposite ends of a pickle, and electricity is passed through, the pickle will glow.

Mozart's real name was Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart .

Another recent study shows that computer users blink an average of 7 times per minute.

It has been proven that when a salesperson wears a tie, there is a greater statistical difference between making a sale and not making a sale.

If you stretch your veins out in one line, they go 96000 kilometres.

In Turkey the color of mourning is violet. In most Moslem countries and in China it is white. 
2201 Fascinating Facts

In 1897 the federal government of the U.S. recalled $26 million dollars worth of one hundred-dollar bills when a counterfeit bill appeared that was so accurate it almost couldn't be distinguished from the real thing. This was the only time in history that fake money was so well desgined that legitimate currency had to be withdrawn.

Catherine the Great, one of Russia's most famous rulers wasn't Russian. She was German, and her real name was Sophia, not Catherine.

A full moon always rises at sunset. 

The strawberry is technically not a fruit at all. In botanical terms, fruits are seed-bearing structures which grow from a flower's ovaries, and a strawberry is merely the swollen base of the strawberry flower. The plant's true fruits are the small, hard, nut-like pips embedded on the outside of the flesh. The seeds are contained in the pips.

Although there is some evidence that wild strawberries were eaten in prehistoric times, it was not until the 19th century that the popular fruit became widely available.
Reader's Digest Book of Facts

Although the Pony Express was one of the most famous stories of American History, it lasted only nineteen months, from April 1860 to October 1861. It was a complete financial failure.

The biggest Pyramid in the world is not in Egypt. It's actually about sixty miles southeast of Mexico City, Mexico. It covers more than forty acres and the largest Egyptian Pyramid, The Great Pyramid at Giza, covers about 13 acres.

The world`s first test-tube twins were born in June 1981. 

The YKK on the zipper of your Levis stands for Yoshida Kogyo Kabushibibaisha, the worlds largest zipper manufacturer.

Jessie, an Indian elephant, died in Taronga Zoo, Sydney, Australia, in 1939 at the age of 77. 

An average human scalp has 100,000 hairs.

Artificial Christmas trees have outsold real ones every year since 1991.

In 1963, two years into his Presedency, John F. Kennedy`s popularity in the USA was rated in a Gallup Poll at 76 per cent. A few months later, he was assassinated. 

In a year, a person`s heart beats 40,000,000 times. 

A person uses more household energy shaving with a hand razor at a sink (because of the water power, the water pump and so on) than he would by using an electric razor.
2201 Fascinating Facts

In some volcanic areas such as Iceland, the temperature rises beneath the surface of the earth as high as 680 degrees F (360 degrees C) that engineers can tap the geothermal energy by piping hot water from underground to warm nearby homes, offices and factories. An outdoor swimming pool in the Icelandic capital of Reykjavik is heated so effectively by this method that it remains open and in use all year round.
Reader's Digest Book of Facts

Disney`s Donald Duck was originally called Donald Drake. 

A single sheeps fleece might well contain as many as 26 million fibres. 

We usually think of Montreal, Canada as a cold weather city, and Paris, France as a much warmer city than Montreal, but the fact is that Montreal is south of Paris.

King George I of England could not speak English. He was born and raised in Germany and never learned to speak English even though he was King from 1714 to 1727. He left the running of the country to his ministers thereby creating the first government cabinet.

Although people in the majority of countries of the world drive on the right side of roads, there are some fifty nations in which people drive on the left. These include England and many of the former English colonies such as Australia and New Zealand -- but not the U.S. or Canada. There are several non-English countries where people also drive on the left including Japan.
Knowledge in a Nutshell

Napoleon, the famous French general, was not born in France. He was born on the Meditteranean island of Corsica of Italian parents.

There are about 5,000 different languages spoken on Earth.

The Inca tribe in Peru created the decimal system hundreds of years before it was introduced in Europe.

Ancient Egyptian religion divided the human body into 36 parts and each part came under the protection of a god or goddess.

The first U.S. coin to bear the words "United States of America," was a penny piece made in 1727. It was also inscribed with the plain-spoken motto: "Mind Your Own Business." 

97% of all paper money in the US contains traces of cocaine. 

Among the first known "dentists" of the world were the Etruscans. In 700 BC they carved false teeth from the teeth of various mammals and produced partial bridgework good enough to eat with.

Enough exciting pieces of evidence exist to show that map making actually began in the Stone Age.

Cleopatra was more noted for her cunning than her looks, which were plain at best. Legend has it that she actually arranged for herself to meet Julius Caesar by being rolled up inside an oriental rug that she had presented to him as a gift.

Before 1941 fingerprints were not accepted as evidence in court. Up to that time it was not an established fact that no two fingerprints are alike. Today, the only time in which fingerprints will not be allowed as evidence is if the defense can prove that there are in fact two identical sets of fingerprints.
2201 Fascinating Facts

The Pacific Ocean fills nearly a complete hemisphere of the Earth's surface.
Isaac Asimov's Book of Facts

Caligula, the demented Roman Emperor from A.D. 37-41, appointed his favorite horse as consul and coregent of Rome.

During the time that the atomic bomb was being hatched by the United States at Alamogordo, New Mexico, applicants for routine jobs like janitor were disqualified if they could read. Illiteracy; in other words, was a job requirement. The reason: The authorities didn't want their trash or other papers read.
Isaac Asimov's Book of Facts

The first contact lens was actually conceived by Leonardo Da Vinci in the 15th century.

In Venice in the 16th and 17th centuries prostitutes believed that the higher the heel on their shoe the more men would pay for their services. Consequently a law was passed banning the wearing of high heels because they began to trip in the dark and fall into the canals and die.

In ancient Egypt women had more legal rights than those in some countries today. Even when a couple divorced it was understood that the woman was entitled to up to one-half of the estate.

When the Mayflower, which took the pilgrims to America, had eventually outlived her usefulness she was dismantled and then reconstructed as a barn.

The closest relative to the manatee is the elephant, scientists think the elephant crawled back into the sea to become a manatee. 

A personal "first aid kit" was found in King Tut's tomb, which included a finger sling and bandages.

Ophthalmic surgery was one of the most advanced areas of medicine in the ancient world. Detailed descriptions of delicate cataract surgery with sophisticated needle syringes is contained in the medical writings of Celsus (A.D. 14-37)

If Benjamin Franklin had had his way, the Eagle would not be the symbol of the United States. In 1789 he proposed that it be replaced by the turkey.

The Great Pyramid at Giza in Egypt, constructed around 2500 B.C., was the tallest building in the world until the Eiffel Tower was erected in 1889.

Egyptian medical writings contain prescriptions for female contraceptives made from crocodile dung. I guess you could see how this worked!

Between A.D. 1400 and 1520 the Inca emperors of South America built more than 15,000 miles of roads from sea level to high into the Andes Mountains.

A bowl of Wheaties contains twice as much sodium as a bowl of potato chips.
Isaac Asimov's Book of Facts

The first odometer? Writing in the 1st century B.C., the Roman architect Vitruvius introduced the "hodometer" as a device which enables...a carriage on the road...to know how many miles of a journey it accomplished'. Though he recorded detailed designs and descriptions of his invention it was impractical and never built. Centuries later, even Leonardo Da Vinci attempted to reconstruct this device from these plans without success.

One of the preposterous cures for the Black Plague in the 14th century was to place a pig next to the dying person.

The famous battle of Bunker Hill in the American Revlutionary War was not fought on Bunker Hill but actually on nearby Breed's Hill instead.

The world's worst earthquake occured in 1556 in China killing approximately 830,000 people.

In the 3rd to 2nd century B.C, Eratosthenes measured the radius of the earth without the use of precision instruments and came within one-percent of the actual value determined by today's space craft technology.

The hardest word for any lexicographer to define briefly is the Fuegian word "mamihlapinatapai". It means "looking at each other hoping that either will offer to do something which both parties desire but are unwilling to do."

The real name of "the" Bill Gates is William Henry Gates III. Nowadays he is known as Bill Gates (III). By converting the letters of his current name to the ASCII-values and adding his (III), you get the following:

B 66
I 73
L 76
L 76

G 71
A 65
T 84
E 69
S 83

I 1
I 1
I 1
--------------
= 666

Consider the following:

M S - D O S 6 . 3 1
77+83+45+68+79+83+32+54+46+50+49 = 666

W I N D O W S 9 5
87+73+78+68+79+87+83+57+53+1 = 666

The number 17
The cave of Lascaux, painted 17,000 years ago, was discovered by Marcel David, 17 years old. 

The Flood started on the 17th. Noah's Ark landed on the Mount Ararat (alt. 17,000 feet) on the 17th. 

The mummy of King Tutankhamen was wrapped in 17 sheets. 

The Parthenon is 17 columns long. 

The Chinese had a bureaucratic constitution with 17 articles. 

The Alhambra, a beautiful Moorish palace which inspired Escher, is composed of 17 kinds of mosaics (in fact, all of the possible ones). 

Henry VIII's first wife had 17 children who died before their first birthday. 

Shakespeare wrote 17 plays in the 17th century. Hamlet reigned for 17 years. His 17th play (Much ado about nothing) is the only one with a number in its title. 

Beethoven wrote 17 string quartets. The first of Haendel's Water Music took place on July 17, 1717 (the yellow pigs day!).

Domenico Zipoli sailed for South-America in 1717 and landed in July 1717. 

Gossec wrote a symphony in 17 parts. 

Fermat had been working as an agent for 17 years. Then he became a councillor at the Parliament of Toulouse, where he had been working for 17 years. 

There is a famous passage in Plato's Theaetetus in which it is stated that Theodorus (Plato's teacher) proved the irrationality of sqrt(3), sqrt(5), ... `taking all the separate cases up to the root of 17 square feet, at which point, for some reason, he stopped'.

Marconi used 17 of Tesla's patents (cf ST-Magazine 75, p 54). 

On the Atari ST, just after the computer is switched on, 17 files at the maximum can be simultaneously displayed in the desk windows, in text display. 

Hubble Space Telescope observations ruled out the most conservative explanations for 'dark matter,' thought to make up 90% of the mass of the Universe. [NASA]

The Universe was determined to be between 8 and 12 billion years old, younger than previously thought. [NASA]

The Hubble Space Telescope provided the first confirmation of the existence of black holes. [NASA]

The liquid cooling garment worn by astronauts had been adapted to help people born without sweat glands to eliminate excessive body heat. Some people with multiple sclerosis have found that the cool suit relieves their symptoms. In both cases, the cool suit technology enables them to lead much more normal lives. [NASA]

Technology originally used in spaceflight is being adapted for early cataract detection and effective medical treatment.
[NASA]

NASA developed this device to keep human and other cells alive and healthy during space experiments. It is already helping cancer research on Earth by providing a better way to grow and study tumors. [NASA]

The first major air carrier to use a NASA-developed device that warns of dangerous wind-shear conditions. [NASA]

The main engines produce nearly 1 million pounds of thrust and operate about 8 and one-half minutes, from liftoff until the Shuttle achieves orbit. The external tank is jettisoned and burns up in the Earth's atmosphere. [NASA]

The twin Voyager spacecraft mapped the four largest planets in the Solar System. Their mission began with Jupiter in 1979 and concluded with Neptune 10 years later. In their journeys, the Voyager spacecraft investigated 4 planets and more than 50 moons, rewriting astronomy textbooks. [NASA]

Two Viking spacecraft, each divided into a lander and an orbiter, explored Mars in the 1970's. Viking Lander 1 became the first spacecraft from Earth to land on the Red Planet. Findings were both comprehensive and tantalizing. [NASA]

A series of mariner and Pioneer spacecraft in 1960s and 1970's began humankind's initial reconnaissance of the Solar System. One spacecraft, Pioneer 11, became the first object from Planet Earth to leave the Solar System. [NASA]

The Magellan spacecraft completed mapping 95% of the planet Venus, discovered evidence of past geologic activity and performed the first aerobraking maneuver, pioneering a technique that will be used in 21st century planetary exploration. [NASA]

The Galileo spacecraft, on schedule to arrive at Jupiter in 1995, discovered a tiny moon orbiting the asteroid Ida. [NASA]

The Ulysses spacecraft became the first to fly over a polar region of the Sun, and is continuing to map the solar polar regions. [NASA]

NASA-sponsored researchers precisely predicted the impact of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with the planet Jupiter. NASA spacecraft and facilities sponsored an unprecedented campaign to witness and record the event. [NASA]

NASA flew the first Russian cosmonaut on a Space Shuttle mission in 1994, paving the way for a series of joint flights between the Shuttle and the Russian Mir Space Station from 1995- 1997. [NASA]

Seven Space Shuttle flights in 1994 deployed 1.7 million pounds of cargo to space, during a total flight time of 81 days, and carried 42 astronauts aloft. [NASA]

The Space Station program moved from concept to reality: 25,000 pounds of flight hardware were built, and another 75,000 pounds were to be delivered in 1995. [NASA]

The Mercury Seven Foundation was created by the original Mercury astronauts to encourage academic and technological excellence through college scholarships. 

The Apollo 13 Mission was planned as a lunar landing mission but was aborted en route to the moon after about 56 hours of flight due to loss of service module cryogenic oxygen and consequent loss of capability to generate electrical power, to provide oxygen and to produce water. 

Wallops aircraft serve as research platforms for worldwide scientific missions studying forest ecological systems, ice formations, atmospheric phenomena and ocean dynamics and plant life. In addition, the aircraft conduct surveillance flights in support of the Wallops launch range [NASA]

Like the sounding rockets, balloons also provide a cost effective and beneficial means for investigations about the atmosphere, our solar system and the rest of the universe. While carrying instrumentation up to 8,000 pounds (3630 kg), the balloons can fly to altitudes of 23 miles (37 km) for a duration of a few hours to more than two weeks. [NASA]

1958 marked the birth of NASA and the civilian space program. NASA research conducted at Wallops included developing components for the human space program, including capsule escape techniques, maximum pressure tests and recovery systems. Wallops led the way in range support for research in re-entry and life-support systems, Scout launch vehicles, as well as mobile research projects. [NASA]

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Wallops Flight Facility, located on Virginia's Eastern Shore, was established in 1945 by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, as a center for aeronautic research. [NASA]

The Shuttle's Remote Manipulator System (RMS), or robot arm, provided by the Canadian Space Agency, weighs about 905 pounds (411 kilograms) on Earth but can move cargo in space weighing 66,000 pounds (29,938 kilograms), objects about the size of a Greyhound bus. [NASA]

If their heat energy could be converted to electric power, two SRMs firing for two minutes would produce 2.2 million kilowatt hours of power, enough to supply the entire power demand of 87,000 homes for a full day. [NASA]

The four engines of a Boeing 747 jet produce 188,000 pounds (85,277 kilograms) of thrust, while just one SRM produces more than 17 times as much thrust -- 3.3 million pounds (1.5 million kilograms). A pair of SRM's are more powerful than 35 jumbo jets at takeoff. [NASA]

Each of the Shuttle's solid rocket motors burns 5 tons (5,080 kilograms) of propellant per second, a total of 1.1 million pounds (500,000 kilograms) in 120 seconds. The speed of the gases exiting the nozzle is more than 6,000 miles (9,656 kilometers) per hour, about five times the speed of sound or three times the speed of a high-powered rifle bullet. The plume of flame ranges up to 500 feet (152 meters) long. [NASA]

The energy released by the three Space Shuttle main engines is equivalent to the output of 23 Hoover Dams. [NASA]

The liquid hydrogen in the Space Shuttle main engine is -423 degrees Fahrenheit (-153 degrees Centigrade), the second coldest liquid on Earth, and when burned with liquid oxygen, the temperature in the engine's combustion chamber reaches +6,000 degrees F. (+3,316 degrees C.) [NASA]

The Space Shuttle's three main engines and two solid rocket boosters generate some 7.3 million pounds (3.3 million kilograms) of thrust at liftoff. Compare that with America's first two manned launch vehicles, the Redstone which produced 78,000 pounds (35,381 kilograms) of thrust, and the Atlas, which produced 360,000 pounds (163, 926 kilograms). [NASA]

The turbopump on the Space Shuttle main engine is so powerful it could drain an average family-sized swimming pool in 25 seconds. [NASA]

It takes only about eight minutes for the Space Shuttle to accelerate to a speed of more than 17,000 miles (27,358 kilometers) per hour. [NASA]

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the sun and it is the largest planet in the solar system, twice as big as all the other planets combined. Its massive Red Spot is actually the site of a violent storm. The core of the planet contains metals and silicate ices and the atmosphere is composed of ammonia, ammonium, hydrosulfides, water, hydrogen, helium and methane. Galileo Galilei was the first to observe Jupiter's moons with his telescope. To date, there are 16 known moons, including Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. [ISTS]

Radioactive decay is the process by which an unstable element spontaneously breaks up to form a second element. Radioactive elements, such as uranium or lead, are used to date rocks. The oldest Earth rocks are 3.8 billion years old, but the age of the Earth is estimated to be about 4.5 billion years. The moon is also estimated to be the same age as the Earth. [ISTS]

Stars move along an evolutionary path. Most stars, like our sun, are in the main sequence; that is, they are undergoing nuclear fusion (the burning of hydrogen to create helium). Eventually, however, the sun will run out of hydrogen. As it runs out of fuel, its temperature will rise and it will swell up to be about ten times the size it is now. At that point, it will no longer be a main sequence star, but a red giant. The red giant star, Betelgeuse, is approximately 1 100 million km across (about 800 times the size of the sun). [ISTS]

Galaxies come in several different shapes such as spiral, elliptical, irregular, and lenticular (lens-shaped). Most of the galaxies in the universe, including the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy, are spiral galaxies. These galaxies are shaped like disks, with arms of stars spiraling around a central core densely packed with stars. [ISTS]

Next to the sun, the closest star to Earth is Proxima Centauri, which is part of the Alpha Centauri System 4.3 light-years from us. Unlike our Solar System, which of consists only one star, the Alpha Centauri System has three stars orbiting each other. The two larger stars, Alpha Centauri A and B, rotate around each other around every 80 years. Proxima Centauri, a small star about one-tenth the mass of the Sun, orbits around the two larger stars every million years. Of the stars that are within 10 light-years from the Sun, only Alpha Centauri and Sirius are visible to the naked eye of observers on Earth. [ISTS]

Some consider Tycho Brache to be the greatest observer of astronomy of all time. He firmly believed that accurate observations was the key to improving the study of stars, and with the aid of the King of Denmark, he established the observatory, Uraniburg, on the island of Hven, which was considered the best observatory in Europe. Brache studied the supernova of 1572, the comet of 1577 and the motions of the planets. Basing his thinking on traditional Ptolemic views, Brache developed a system in which the planets revolved around the Sun, which in turn revolved around a stationary Earth. Tycho Brache was also the mentor of Joannes Kepler, who would later go against Brache's theories and develop the three laws on planetary motion. [ISTS]

Uranus' rings were first discover in 1977. They are composed of rocky material rich in carbon and dark organic matter. To date, 15 satellites have been found circling Uranus, including Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania and Oberon. It takes 84 Earth years for Uranus to revolve around the sun, and its day is 17.2 hours long. [ISTS]

On March 31, 1781, Sir William Herschel discovered the planet, Uranus, while testing a telescope he had constructed. It is the third largest planet in our solar system and is named after the Roman father of the Earth. The characteristic greenish blue colour of the planet is caused by the methane in its atmosphere, which absorbs the other visible colours in the electromagnetic (light) spectrum. [ISTS]

Most of the heavy elements that exist were created either by nuclear fusion or by supernova explosions. That means that the elements in our bodies originated from stars.

Like Uranus, the plane of Pluto's equator is at almost right angles to the plane of its orbit. [The Nine Planets]

There are some who think Pluto would be better classified as a large asteroid or comet rather than as a planet. [The Nine Planets]

Pluto is the second most contrasty body in the Solar System. [The Nine Planets]

Pluto was discovered in 1930 by a fortunate accident. Calculations which later turned out to be in error had predicted a planet beyond Neptune, based on the motions of Uranus and Neptune. Not knowing of the error, Tombaugh at Lowell Observatory in Arizona did a very careful sky survey which turned up Pluto anyway. [The Nine Planets]

In Greek mythology, Pluto (Greek: Hades) is the god of the underworld. [The Nine Planets]

Pluto is smaller than seven of the solar system's moons: the Moon, Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Titan and Triton. [The Nine Planets]

Pluto is the farthest planet from the Sun and by far the smallest. [The Nine Planets]

Neptune's magnetic field is, like Uranus's, oddly oriented and probably generated by motions nearer the surface than the center of the planet. [The Nine Planets]

Neptune has rings. [The Nine Planets]

Like Uranus and Jupiter, Neptune's rings are very dark but their composition is unknown. [The Nine Planets]

Like Jupiter and Saturn, Neptune has an internal heat source -- it radiates about twice as much energy as it receives from the Sun [The Nine Planets]

Neptune's blue color is the result of absorption of red light by methane in the atmosphere. [The Nine Planets]

Because Pluto's orbit is so eccentric, it sometimes crosses the orbit of Neptune. Since 1979 Neptune has actually been the most distant planet from the Sun; Pluto will again be the most distant in 1999. [The Nine Planets]

Neptune has been visited by only one spacecraft, Voyager 2 on Aug 25 1989. Almost everything we know about Neptune comes from this encounter. [The Nine Planets]

In Roman mythology Neptune (Greek: Poseidon) was the god of the Sea. [The Nine Planets]

Uranus's magnetic field is odd in that it is not centered on the center of the planet and is tilted almost 60 degrees with respect to the axis of rotation. It is probably generated by motion at relatively shallow depths within Uranus. [The Nine Planets]

Uranus's blue color is the result of absorption of red light by methane in the upper atmosphere. [The Nine Planets]

Like the other gas planets, Uranus has bands of clouds that blow around rapidly. But they are extremely faint, visible only with radical image enhancement of the Voyager 2 pictures. [The Nine Planets]

Uranus's atmosphere is abut 83% hydrogen, 15% helium and 2% methane. [The Nine Planets]

Uranus is the ancient Greek deity of the Heavens, the earliest supreme god, who was the father of Cronus (Saturn) and of the Cyclopes and Titans (predecessors of the Olympian gods). [The Nine Planets]

Uranus is larger in diameter but smaller in mass than Neptune. [The Nine Planets]

Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun and the third largest (by diameter). [The Nine Planets]

Like the other jovian planets, Saturn has a significant magnetic field. [The Nine Planets]

Saturn's outermost ring, the F-ring, is a complex structure made up of two narrow, braided, bright rings along which 'knots' are visible. [The Nine Planets]

Saturn's rings are extraordinarily thin: though they're 250,000 km or more in diameter they're no more than 200 meters thick. [The Nine Planets]

Saturn's interior is similar to Jupiter's consisting of a rocky core, a liquid metallic hydrogen layer and a molecular hydrogen layer. Traces of various ices are also present. [The Nine Planets]

Saturn is the least dense of the planets; its specific gravity (0.7) is less than water. [The Nine Planets]

Saturn was first visited by Pioneer 11 in 1979 and later by Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. [The Nine Planets]

In Roman mythology, Saturn is the god of agriculture. The associated Greek god, Cronus, was the son of Uranus and Gaia and the father of Zeus (Jupiter). [The Nine Planets]

Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest. [The Nine Planets]

In July 1994, Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 collided with Jupiter with spectacular results. As of December 1994 the debris from the collision is still visible. [The Nine Planets]

Unlike Saturn's, Jupiter's rings are dark . [The Nine Planets]

Jupiter has a huge magnetic field, much stronger than Earth's. [The Nine Planets]

Jupiter is just about as large in diameter as a gas planet can be. If more material were to be added, it would be compressed by gravity such that the overall radius would increase only slightly. A star can be larger only because of its internal (nuclear) heat source. (But Jupiter would have to be at least 100 times more massive to become a star.) [The Nine Planets]

Jupiter radiates more energy into space than it receives from the Sun. [The Nine Planets]

Jupiter and the other gas planets have high velocity winds which are confined in wide bands of latitude. The winds blow in opposite directions in adjacent bands. [The Nine Planets]

Jupiter probably has a core of rocky material amounting to something like 10 to 15 Earth-masses. [The Nine Planets]

Jupiter was first visited by Pioneer 10 in 1973 and later by Pioneer 11, Voyager 1, Voyager 2 and Ulysses. [The Nine Planets]

Jupiter is the fourth brightest object in the sky [The Nine Planets]

Jupiter (a.k.a. Jove; Greek Zeus) was the King of the Gods, the ruler of Olympus and the patron of the Roman state. Zeus was the son of Cronus (Saturn). [The Nine Planets]

Jupiter is more than twice as massive as all the other planets combined (318 times Earth). [The Nine Planets]

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and by far the largest. [The Nine Planets]

Mars has no global magnetic field. [The Nine Planets]

A small number of meteorites (the SNC meteorites) are believed to have originated on Mars. [The Nine Planets]

Like Mercury and the Moon, Mars appears to lack active plate tectonics. [The Nine Planets]

The interior of Mars is known only by inference from data about the surface and the bulk statistics of the planet. [The Nine Planets]

Though Mars is much smaller than Earth, its surface area is about the same as the land surface area of Earth. [The Nine Planets]

Mars's orbit is significantly elliptical. One result of this is a temperature variation of about 30 C at the subsolar point. [The Nine Planets]

The first spacecraft to visit Mars was Mariner 4 in 1965.

The Roman god Mars was a god of agriculture before becoming associated with the Greek Ares

Mars (Greek: Ares) is the god of War.. [The Nine Planets]

The Moon has no global magnetic field. [The Nine Planets]

A total of 382 kg of rock samples were returned to the Earth by the Apollo and Luna programs. [The Nine Planets]

In addition to the familiar features on the near side, the Moon also has South Pole-Aitken on the far side which is 2250 km in diameter and 12 km deep making it the the largest impact basin in the solar system and Orientale on the western limb which is a splendid example of a multi-ring crater. [The Nine Planets]

The Moon has no atmosphere. Recent evidence from Clementine that suggested that there might be water ice in some craters near the Moon's poles has turned out to be inconclusive. But the possibility still exists that ice may exist mixed with lunar soil. [The Nine Planets]

Due to its size and composition, the Moon is sometimes classified as a terrestrial 'planet' along with Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. 

Earth has a modest magnetic field produced by electric currents in the core. [The Nine Planets]

The Earth is the densest major body in the solar system. [The Nine Planets]

Earth is the only planet whose English name does not derive from Greek/Roman mythology. The name derives from Old English and Germanic. [The Nine Planets]

Venus has no satellites. [The Nine Planets]

Venus has no magnetic field, perhaps because of its slow rotation. [The Nine Planets]

The oldest terrains on Venus seem to be about 800 million years old. Extensive volcanism at that time wiped out the earlier surface including any large craters from early in Venus's history. [The Nine Planets]

There are no small craters on Venus. It seems that small meteors burn up in Venus's dense atmosphere before reaching the surface. [The Nine Planets]

There are strong (350 kph) winds at the cloud tops but winds at the surface are very slow, no more than a few kilometers per hour. [The Nine Planets]

Venus's rotation is somewhat unusual in that it is both very slow (243 Earth days per Venus day, slightly longer than Venus's year) and retrograde. [The Nine Planets]

Since Venus is an inferior planet, it shows phases when viewed with a telescope from the perspective of the Earth. [The Nine Planets]

Venus (Greek: Aphrodite; Babylonian: Ishtar) is the goddess of love and beauty. The planet is so named probably because it is the brightest of the planets known to the ancients. (With a few exceptions, the surface features on Venus are named for female figures.) [The Nine Planets]

Venus's orbit is the most nearly circular of that of any planet, with an eccentricity of less than 1%. [The Nine Planets]

Venus is the second planet from the Sun and the sixth largest. [The Nine Planets]

Mercury has no known satellites. [The Nine Planets]

Mercury has a small magnetic field whose strength is about 1% of Earth's. [The Nine Planets]

Mercury's interior is dominated by a large iron core whose radius is 1800 to 1900 km. The silicate outer shell (analagous to Earth's mantle and crust) is only 500 to 600 km thick. At least some of the core is probably molten. [The Nine Planets]

Temperature variations on Mercury are the most extreme in the solar system ranging from 90 K to 700 K. The temperature on Venus is slightly hotter but very stable. [The Nine Planets]

Mercury has been visited by only one spacecraft, Mariner 10. It flew by three times in 1973 and 1974. Only 45% of the surface was mapped [The Nine Planets]

Mercury has been known since at least the time of the Sumerians (3rd millennium BC). It was given two names by the Greeks: Apollo for its apparition as a morning star and Hermes as an evening star. Greek astronomers knew, however, that the two names referred to the same body. Heraclitus even believed that Mercury and Venus orbit the Sun, not the Earth. [The Nine Planets]

In Roman mythology Mercury is the god of commerce and thievery, the Roman counterpart of the Greek god Hermes, the messenger of the Gods. The planet probably received this name because it moves so quickly across the sky. [The Nine Planets]

Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun and the eighth largest. [The Nine Planets]

It is possible that beneath Europa's surface ice there is a layer of liquid water, perhaps as much as 50 km deep. If so, it would be the only place in the solar system besides Earth where liquid water exists in significant quantities.

Europa's surface is not at all like anything in the inner solar system. It is exceedingly smooth: no features more than a few hundred meters high have been seen.

Europa is slightly smaller than the Moon. 

Europa was a Phoenician princess abducted to Crete by Zeus, who had assumed the form of a white bull, and by him the mother of Minos. 

Europa is the second of the Galilean moons. 

The Milky Way is estimated to contain 100,000,000,000 stars

Comets' tails point away from the Sun at all times. Thus, when a comet is moving away from the Sun, its tail is actually leading. Comet tails are caused by dust and gas being lost from the comet and then pushed away from the Sun by the solar wind (charged particles moving out from the Sun) and by radiation pressure from the Sun. [SJI Sky and Space]

The largest mountain in the Solar System is Olympus Mons on Mars. At a height of over 26 km (16 mi.), it is nearly 3 times taller than Mt. Everest. Olympus Mons is also enormous in its width: 600 km (360 mi.) across. [SJI Sky and Space]

Comet Hyakutake's orbit will carry it over 1000 astronomical units from the Sun before it once again heads back towards the Sun in another 7,000 years (1 astronomical unit = the average distance from the Earth to the Sun = 93 million miles = 150 million km). Such large orbits are not unusual for long-period comets. For comparison Pluto is on average 40 astronomical units from the Sun and orbits the Sun once every 248 years. [SJI Sky and Space]

Some of the objects visible in Hubble Space Telescope images are nearly four billion times fainter than the limits of human vision. [SJI Sky and Space]

Our Solar System, by virtue of its proper motion through our galaxy (the Milky Way) is moving at a speed of 43,000 miles per hour toward the globular cluster of stars known as M13 in the constellation Hercules. [SJI Sky and Space]

Size comparisons: About 1000 Earths would fit inside Jupiter, and about 1000 Jupiters would fit inside the Sun. [SJI Sky and Space]

Stump your friends: who was the last astronaut to fly in space alone in a spacecraft? For you space buffs who immediately thought of Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper, think again. It was Apollo 17 command module pilot Ron Evans, who circled the Moon alone while astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt went to the surface. [SJI Sky and Space]

It takes radio signals from Earth (traveling at the speed of light: 186,000 miles per second) approximately 9 hours to reach the Pioneer 10 spacecraft, which is the most distant object built by humans. It takes another 9 hours for the spacecraft's response to reach Earth. [SJI Sky and Space]

It takes radio signals from Earth (traveling at the speed of light: 186,000 miles per second) approximately 9 hours to reach the Pioneer 10 spacecraft, which is the most distant object built by humans. It takes another 9 hours for the spacecraft's response to reach Earth. [SJI Sky and Space]

The Voyager spacecraft delivery accuracy at Neptune (100 km or 60 mi.) (62 mi), divided by the trip distance of 7,128,603,456 km (4,429,508,700 mi), was the equivalent of sinking a 3630 km (2260 mi.) golf shot, although Voyager, as opposed to a golf shot, was allowed a few minor trajectory adjustments along the way. [SJI Sky and Space]

The average radiation dose per minute absorbed by the Galileo spacecraft during its orbital mission is equivalent to what the average person receives in a whole year on Earth. On December 7, as it made its closest approach to Jupiter, the radiation dose per minute to Galileo exceeded by several times what a person on Earth would receive in their entire lifetime and would have been quite lethal to a human. [SJI Sky and Space]

The amount of power transmitted by the Galileo spacecraft's radio is about the same amount used by a refrigerator light bulb--about 20 watts. By the time they reach Earth, the radio signals from Galileo are incredibly weak (about a billion times fainter than the sound of a transistor radio in New York as heard from Los Angeles). [SJI Sky and Space]

The Galileo probe, weighing in at 339 kilograms (750 pounds), will enter Jupiter's atmosphere at 170,000 kilometers per hour (106,000 mph), or more than 50 times faster than a bullet shot out of a rifle. The probe will experience deceleration forces as high as 230 times Earth's gravity. In about two minutes, the orbiter's speed will be slowed to about 1,600 kilometers per hour (1,000 mph). [SJI Sky and Space]

Each of the Space Shuttle's solid rocket boosters burns 5 tons of propellant per second. [SJI Sky and Space]

A Space Shuttle and its boosters ready for launch are the same height as the Statue of Liberty but weigh almost three times as much.[SJI Sky and Space]

Pioneer 11's speed going past Jupiter was over 107,000 mph, the fastest speed ever traveled by a human-made object. [SJI Sky and Space]

The Space Shuttle main engine weighs 1/7th as much as a train engine, but delivers as much horsepower as 39 train engines. [SJI Sky and Space]

It only takes the Space Shuttle about 8 minutes to accelerate to its orbital speed of more than 17,000 miles per hour.[SJI Sky and Space]

Jupiter's moon Ganymede is the largest moon in the Solar System, and is larger than the planets Mercury and Pluto. [SJI Sky and Space]

The Earth's Moon has only about 1/80th the mass of Earth. [SJI Sky and Space]

A Blue Moon is the second of two full Moons that fall in the same month. This can occur because full Moon's occur roughly every 29.5 days. A Blue Moon occurs roughly every two and three-quarter years. So, now you know how long once in a Blue Moon really is. [SJI Sky and Space]

All four giant planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) have ring systems. As of 20 years ago, only Saturn was known to have rings. Saturn's ring system is by far the largest and most developed of the four. [SJI Sky and Space]

From the Jupiter-facing side of the moon Amalthea, Jupiter would fill up a huge chunk of sky: equivalent to going from the horizon to half way above the horizon. [SJI Sky and Space]

The atmospheric pressure you would experience on the surface of Venus is approximately equal to the pressure you would experience 3000 feet (approx. 1 km) down in the Earth's oceans, i.e., about 90 times the pressure at the Earth's surface. [SJI Sky and Space]

Our moon has only one eightieth the mass of the Earth. [SJI Sky and Space]

If you added up the mass of all of the thousands of known asteroids in the asteroid belt, the total would be less than ten percent the mass of the Earth's moon. [SJI Sky and Space]

On average, the distance from Pluto to the Sun is approximately 40 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun. Put a different way, if a scale model were constructed with the Sun on the California coast and the Earth about 75 miles inland, then on the same scale Pluto would be in New York. [SJI Sky and Space]

The Great Red Spot on Jupiter is a hurricane-like storm system. It is large enough that two Earths could fit across it. The Red Spot has been around since at least the early 1600's when it was first detected shortly after the invention of the telescope. [SJI Sky and Space]

The surface of Venus is obscured by clouds at ultraviolet, visible, and infrared wavelengths, which is why the Pioneer and Magellan spacecraft used radar to penetrate the clouds and image the surface. [SJI Sky and Space]

Did you know that some of the moons in our Solar System are larger than some of the planets? Jupiter's moon Ganymede, the largest moon in the Solar System, and Saturn's moon Titan are both larger than the planets Mercury and Pluto. The Earth's Moon, Jupiter's moons Callisto, Io, and Europa, and Neptune's moon Triton are all larger than Pluto, but smaller than Mercury. [SJI Sky and Space]

Jupiter's moon Europa may have a liquid water 'ocean' far beneath its water ice covered surface.[SJI Sky and Space]

Jupiter's magnetosphere is the largest single structure inside the Solar System. If you could see it with your eyes, it would appear larger than our full Moon. [SJI Sky and Space]

Almost all of the Oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere has been produced by living organisms. Oxygen accounts for 21% of our atmosphere, with Nitrogen making up 78%, and a mixture of other gases composing the remaining 1%. Oxygen only occurs as a minor constituent in the atmospheres of other planets in our Solar System. [SJI Sky and Space]

The largest canyon system in the Solar System is Valles Marineris on Mars. It is more than 3000 miles long and so would stretch from California to New York. In some places it reaches 3 miles in depth and 200 miles in width. [SJI Sky and Space]   (15 September 1997)

Pluto's elliptical orbit sometimes brings it inside of the orbit of Neptune for a few years. We are currently in one of those periods, so right now Neptune is the farthest planet from the Sun. [SJI Sky and Space]

Did you know that water ice may exist in the bottoms of craters at Mercury's poles, based upon radar data taken in recent years. Even though Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun, and extremely hot over most of its surface, ice may exist at the bottoms of some polar craters because the crater floors are permanently shadowed by the crater rims. [SJI Sky and Space]

Did you know that the most volcanically active body in the solar system besides the Earth is Jupiter's moon Io. Erupting volcanoes were discovered on Io by the Voyager spacecraft. [SJI Sky and Space]

Did you know that liquid water does not currently occur on Mars because of the cold temperatures and low atmospheric pressures. Only water ice and water gas (vapor) are stable. However, large channels on Mars appear to have been cut by outflows of liquid water during Mars' distant past which may have had warmer temperatures and a much thicker atmosphere. [SJI Sky and Space]

Australia is the only country to have monotremes. These are mammals that lay eggs but suckle their young on milk once they have hatched. The animals are the platypus and the echidna.< BR>  

Count 'em for yourself. EVERY ear of corn has an even number of rows of kernels. 

New Ulm, Minnesota has the largest, free standing Glockenspiel in the United States. 

It has been rumored that when Shakespeare was suffering from writers block, he would masterbate and when he was finished he could continue writing fresh again.

There are no words that rhyme with orange, apple, banana, purple, or silver!

When Texas joined the Union the first time, a clause was included that allowed the state to suceed at any time, but since it joined the Confederacy during the Civil War and was defeated it is considered conquered territory and lost its right to suceed. 

$1.91: That's how much money you could have if you had one of every one of the US coins minted.

Every day the average person sees at least one thing relating to a cow (be it a poster, a cow type print, a picture, or a real cow)

Paul Revere is credited for engraving the plates for the first paper money printed in the United States. 

THERE ARE ONLY 47 STATES IN THE UNITED STATES, NOT 50; KENTUCKY, PENNSYLVANIA AND MASSACHUSETTS ARE COMMONWEALTHS

Of all the American States Alaska is the farthest North, West, and East. (Attu and the Rat Islands, among others, are in the 170 to 180 degrees east longitude block)

Chevrolet made so many of their world famous 'Small Block' V8 engines that if you laid them out end to end they would circle the earth 7.5 times.

Hitler was a vegetarian.

The WORLD'S TALLEST MAN was Robert Wadlow who was 8'11' tall (2.72 metres), weighed 440lbs (200kgs) and wore a size 37AA shoe.

Bangkok's official name is actually hideously long and roughly translates to 'Great city of angels, the repository of divine gems, the great land unconquerable, the grand and prominent realm, the royal and delightful capital city full of nine noble gems, the highest royal dwelling and grand palace, the divine shelter and living place of the reincarnated spirits.'

Boys under the age of 10 are twice as likely to show symptoms of hay fever as are girls.

Hay fever is the sixth most prevalent chronic condition in the United States.

There are two versions of Buddy Holly's 'It Doesn't Matter Anymore.' One version starts out with a studio engineer saying '1, 2, 2.' Apparently the guy can't count very well. The other version of the song omits this mathematical genius entirely

In the Beatles 'Day Tripper,' in the last verse after they sing 'tried to please her,' the sound on the right channel drops out completely for a couple of seconds. Amazingly - this happens on the official studio take of the song AND on all known bootleg versions of it! 

In the Beatles' 'Run for Your Life,' John Lennon sings 'I'd rather see you dead little girl than to be with another man.' Lennon stole this line from the Elvis version of the song 'Baby, Let's Play House.' 

Gudrun Zapf-von Hesse, wife of the world renowned type designer, Hermann Zapf, is also a type designer. She designed the beautiful 'Diotima' roman and italic in 1951; 'Smarag d' in 1953; 'Ariadne' in 1954; 'Shakespeare' in 1968; and 'Nofret' in 1986. [from webcom.net]

In 1692 the French King, Louis XIV, ordered the French Academy of Sciences to design a new typeface for the exclusive use of the Imprimerie Royale. A special committee was set up which based the entire type design on strict mathematical principles by subdividing a rectange into 2304 squares using a 64 x 36 layout matrix. (This method pre-dates both Paint-by-Numbers and Etch-a-Sketch by nearly three centuries.)[from webcom.net]

Following the instructions in his will, John Baskerville (1706-1775), the great type designer and printer was buried standing-up in an old windmill on his estate at Easy Hill, near Birmingham, England.

In the 16th century, King FranØois of France put printers to the stake when he found text or pictorial contents of their books objectionable. 

In ancient Boustrophedon writing every alternate line in the text reads from right to left. Boustrophedon means, 'The way the ox turns', a reference to the continuous U-sha ped pattern of lines in the soil created by the plow pulled by oxen. Several early Latin inscriptions provide examples of this transitional method of writing.

The basis of Arabic numerals, including the newly invented 'zero', probably originated in India around the 6th century and this new knowledge followed the trade routes to th e Arab world. The shape of most of the characters were greatly modified by the Arabs, and the Arabic numerals, as we know them today, were introduced into Europe around the 10th century by the Moores in Spain, although they did not come into general use for several hundred years. The symbol 'zero' was the last one of the group to be accepted.

The letters 'J', 'U', and 'W' were not used by the Romans. Much later, these letters were added to the Latin alphabet. The 'U' was developed from the letter 'V' around the 10th century, the 'W' is the partial overlapping of two 'UU's (double-U) in the 12th century, and 'J' is a modified 'I', which was introduced in the 15th century. The new letters came into general use much later, at various times in different locatio ns. The letters of the alphabet described by D_rer in 1535, still does not contain the characters 'J', 'U', and 'W'. Manuscripts, books, and printer's type specimen sheets from that period provide an interesting historical record of their appearance . 

Rather than pay o50,000 for bedding straw each year, a Surrey famer is having waterbed made for his dairy herd. Alan Bristow, a millionaire farmer designed the beds himself and will make them commercialy available next spring for about o130. 'The cows love them. Given the choice of the beds or lying on the straw, they pick the waterbeds every time.' 

Between 41 and 60 walruses are believed to have died after plunging off cliffs at the Togiak National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. For the last three years members of the non -mating herd that gathers on the refuge's beach every summer have climbed to the top of 30 metre clliffs and fallen to their deaths. 

A recent witch scare in Cameroon has resulted in three men being hanged by panicked mobs. Rumours of 'penis-snatchers' who stole men's genitals with a handshake, began in tow ns between Cameroon and Nigeria. Over the past two months or so, mobs have lynched three men and badly beaten others, in a set of bizarre incidents. Doctors have been unable to confirm any case of missing genitals amongst the alleged victims. (Electroni c Telegraph) 

How did they invent the potato chip? A Native American named George Crumb worked as a chef for Moon's Lake House in New York where a high class crowd convened to take the waters of the spa. A demanding guest reportedly disliked the cut of his French fries one night, and kept on sending the oversized potato strips back to the kitchen for a more refined look. Crumb, finally exasperated by the guest's unreasonable persis tence, decided to cut the potatoes just as skinny as possible. He boiled the slices in fat and presented them to the complaining diner, who was delighted.

Aeschylus, the Greek poet and dramatist, was killed when an eagle flying overhead dropped a turtle on his head.

The average weight of Miss America was 132 pounds in 1954, in 1980 it was 117 pounds. 

The speed of a typical raindrop is 7 miles per hour.

Thirty percent of all resumes are falsified.

According to the World Health Organization, there are approximately 100 million acts of sexual intercourse each day.

Americans receive 50 million tons of junk mail per day, 50% remains unopened. 

Married men in France use more cosmetics than their wives.

In Mexico yellow flowers are a sign of death. In France they represent infidelity. 

Christmas has different meanings in different countries. Christmas Eve in Japan is a good day to eat fried chicken and strawberry short-cake. 

A majority of people are brand loyal to their cigarettes, mayonnaise, toothpaste, coffee, and headache remedies.

Ads for the 1997 Superbowl are reputed to be selling for $1.2 million for a 30-second spot.

In 1960, red wine was the best seller with 75 percent of all sales. It now has dropped to 15 percent of all sales.

A man in Johannesburg, South Africa, shot his 49-year-old friend in the face, seriously wounding him, while the two practiced shooting beer cans off each other's head.

Most people waste 30 minutes every day simply looking for papers lost on their desk tops.

Some of the most powerful earthquakes to rock the planet took place in the direct vicinity of Memphis from 1811 through 1812, and the earthquake was so strong that it caused the Mississippi River (allegedly) to flow backwards for several minutes.

Staten Island residents voted to secede from the city in 1993, but such a move would require state approval.

Rumor has it that the 'Big Apple' is so named because during the depression, many former financiers would travel from their suburban cottages in full suits in order to sell apples on the streets of New York. The rumor goes that several well-to-do families had to make ends-meet by selling apples and the charade became know to many as the 'Big Apple' scam of New York. Since apples have always been a big part of the New York economy the name simply stuck and was eventually promoted by local government.

Broadway, originating from Lower Manhattan at Bowling Green and ending in Albany, is one of the world's longest streets at 150 mi (241 km). The official name of this street is Highway 9. 

The Dutch supposedly bought Manhattan Island from its Native American inhabitants for about $24 worth of beads and trinkets 

The star, Betelguese (pronounced Beetlejucie), is the first star, besides our own sun, to have it's surface photographed.

The average human head weighs eight pounds.

Scruples were a unit of weight used in Apothocaries hundreds of years ago... One scruple was equal to twenty grains and the aprentices were to use the weights in order to measure out 'prescriptions.' However this was very tedious and many times a pinch would do... if caught by the physician the apprentice was often questioned... 'Have you no scruples?' 

Roman soldiers were paid in salt. The words 'soldier' and 'salary' remind us of that.

It's agaist the law to sleep under a hairdryer in Florida.

Glass is actually a liquid; over time, it will 'ooze' down due to gravity's pull. Look at the windows in very old (Colonial) buildings--it will be thicker at the bottom of the pane. 

Illinois has more units of government than any other state (i.e., city,county,township, etc.). Over six thousand. One contributing reason may be the township governments, which are generally six miles square. 

Oakland, CA is the largest California city (in population) with a name NOT Spanish in origin, after Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose, San Fransisco and Sacramento. 

San Jose is the largest city (in population) on San Fransisco Bay, no longer is it San Fransisco. 

According to recent NASA research, a planet once collided with Earth. This tossed enough debris into Earth's orbit to create the moon. 

Princess Di was the most photographed woman in the world. If you took every picture taken of her and put them all together, you'd have a 36 year long movie.

An average orange falls just as fast as a skydiver, including wind drag. It's hard to catch in freefall, though- the 'burble' of disturbed air around the jumper pushes the orange away.

A skydiver in a maxtrack (like a ski jumper leaning over his skis) can achieve a glide ratio of almost 1:1- at 200+ MPH.

While skydivers like to *joke* that freefalling through rain hurts because you hit the pointy ends first, raindrops are actually slightly flattened spheres. Another good story bites the dust...

Bill Gates has been heard saying that he wishes to become the first private citizen put into space. He is worth enough money to fund his own mission to Mars, twice.

There is a correlation between the phase of the moon and the frequency of emergency room cases in hospitals.

If you fold a (large) piece of paper 42 times, the resulting 'tower' will reach the moon.

The Great Wall in China can be viewed from the moon.

Captain Cook and Deaths: From England to Java not one man had been lost to scurvy. Villiers gives the following account of deaths. Buchan had died of epilepsy at Tahiti, Southerland of tuberculosis at Botany Bay, bos'n's mate Reading of an excess of rum at sea, Banks' two servants in the cold near Cape Horn, and three men had been drowned. Batavian conditions were so foul that death was common throughout the sailing community. The effects lingered well into the Atlantic. About the Endeavor crew Villiers continues [At Batavia] Surgeon Monkhouse was the first to die. Tupaia and his serving lad soon followed. Forty more were ill and the whole surviving crew was weakly. [Sailing to the Cape] Astronomer Green, artist Parkinson, Midshipman Monkhouse, the one armed cook, ten sailors, three of the marines, and even the tough old sail-maker died. Four more died at the Cape and after leaving South Africa Robert Molyneaux died and in the North Atlantic Lieutenant Hicks, Cook's Number One finally died of a Consumption which he was not free from when we sailed from England so that -- he hath been dieing ever since, tho he held out tollerable well until we got to Batavia. [Cook 's words]

Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history. Spades - King David, Clubs - Alexander the Great, Hearts - Charlemagne, and Diamonds - Julius Caesar. 

The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.

The names of the three wise monkeys are: Mizaru: See no evil, Mikazaru: Hear no evil, and Mazaru: Speak no evil. 

The only nation who's name begins with an 'A', but doesn't end in an 'A' is Afghanastan. 

The airplane Buddy Holly died in was the 'American Pie.' (Thus the name of the Don McLean song.) 

Non-dairy creamer is flammable. 

The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days of yore when the engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and figured out how to walk up straight staircases. 

The first song played on Armed Forces Radio during operation Desert Shield was 'Rock the Casba' by the Clash. 

St. Stephen is the patron saint of bricklayers.

If you bring a raccoon's head to the Henniker, New Hampshire town hall, you are entitled to receive $.10 from the town. 

Cat's urine glows under a blacklight. 

Lorne Greene had one of his nipples bitten off by an alligator while he was host of 'Lorne Greene's Wild Kingdom.' 

The world's largest wine cask is in Heidelberg, Germany.

Did you know that there are coffee flavored PEZ? 

Hang On Sloopy is the official rock song of Ohio

All porcupines float in water

Blueberry Jelly Bellies were created especially for Ronald Reagan. 

In every episode of Seinfeld there is a Superman somewhere

Pinocchio is Italian for 'pine head.' 

The word 'Checkmate' in chess comes from the Persian phrase 'Shah Mat,' which means 'the king is dead'. 

Emus and kangaroos cannot walk backwards, and are on the Australian coat of arms for that reason. 

The word 'pound' is abbreviated 'lb.' after the constellation 'libra' because it means 'pound' in Latin, and also 'scales'. The abbreviation for the British Pound Sterling comes from the same source: it is an 'L' for Libra/Lb. with a stroke through it to indicate abbreviation. Sames goes for the Italian lira which uses the same abbreviation ('lira' coming from 'libra'). So British currency (before it went metric) was always quoted as 'pounds/shillings/pence', abbreviated 'L/s/d' (libra/solidus/denarius). 

The shape of plant collenchyma cells and the shape of the bubbles in beer foam are the same - they are orthotetrachidecahedrons

Facetious and abstemious contain all the vowels in the correct order, as does arsenious, meaning 'containing arsenic.' 

The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.

The verb 'cleave' is the only English word with two synonyms which are antonyms of each other: adhere and separate. 

The combination 'ough' can be pronounced in nine different ways. The following sentence contains them all: 'A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed.' 

The 'save' icon on Microsoft Word shows a floppy disk, with the shutter on backwards.

The San Francisco Cable cars are the only mobile National Monuments in the U.S.A.

In the 1940s, the FCC assigned television's Channel 1 to mobile services (two-way radios in taxicabs, for instance) but did not re-number the other channel assignments. That is why your TV set has channels 2 and up, but no channel 1. 

Stewardesses and reverberated are the two longest words (12 letters each) that can be typed using only the left hand. The longest word that can be typed using only the right hand is lollipop. Skepticisms is the longest word that alternates hands.

President Clinton, having returned from a visit to Romania, sent a note to thank for the presents received, among which was a 'poncho'. Not being aware of having given Mr Clinton a poncho the Romanian government checked the list of presents and found they had given the President a Romanian flag. After having turned over the communist regime the communist signs were cut out of the middle of the Romanian flag by means of protest. Apparently Mr Clinton mistook this flag for a poncho.

The Chevrolet Nova sold very poorly in Mexico until the marketing people found out that 'nova' in Spanish means 'won't go'. They decided to change the name of the car.

QANTAS, Australia's major international airline, is the only airline in the world never to have crashed, ever!

On a Boeing 747-100B Jumbojet the average weight of a passenger can be 139.58 kg without a problem. (max.payload 70.534 kg./442 pass.)=159.58 kg. -10 kg.(baga ge) = 139.58 kg.

Since there are 31.536.000 seconds in a year, a 33K6 modem can send or receive 1.059.609.600.000 bytes in a year.

A Phone is designed for speaking, not hearing. There are more holes in the horn it's speaking area than there are in the hearing-area

In Holland, it was usual from around the twelfth century to dig a canal around the city, for defense reasons. But as the town grew bigger, a new canal was needed. And after that a new one again. In this way the canals around Amsterdam, Leiden en Delft were founded. And one of the biggest parking and one-way traffic crisis was born...

Fact or fiction? Some people claim that 'cows' is the right answer to the question 'Above which sanctuary in India is it not allowed to fly?'

The average farmer in Wuustwezel (largest agrarian village in Belgium) has about 200 cows.

When opening a bottle of beer you can see some damp coming out of it. The temerature of the damp is -60 degrees Celsius. That's the reason why the damp is so shortened seen.

On the Roman holiday Lupercal (February 14) goats were sacrificed and the blood was smeared on two specially chosen youths. The youths would then run all a round Rome with strips of goat hide in their hands. Women would strive to be beaten with these strips, known as februa (purifiers). Hence, February gets its name as the month of purification. Oxford Classic.

The Roman Lupercalia, a celebration of fertility began on February 14th. The date was later borrowed by the early Christians to celebrate a martyr by the name of Valentine. Oxford Classic.

A woman proudly wearing a valuable pearl necklace is actually displaying an entombed parasitic worm, not a coated grain of sand. The free, spherical pearl is produced when the larvae from a parasitic flatworm, which comes from seabirds, burrows inside the oyster to begin the process. 

Length of time the world's petroleum reserves would last if all human beings ate meat-centred diets: 13 years. Length of time the world's petroleum reserves would last if all human beings are vegetarian diet: 260 years 

How often an acre of U.S. trees disappears: Every 8 seconds 

According to a poll of US travel agents, the Smithsonian Institution is the world's best museum, followed by Louvre in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Prado in Madrid, the British Museum in London, and the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. [Boston Globe]

The first Bryan Baptist Church in Savannah lays claim to being the oldest African-American church in the United States. It was established in 1788, and services are still held. [Boston Globe]

Workers in Bombay average 39.3 paid vacation days a year. That compares with 27.9 days in Paris, 22.1 in London, and 8.6 in Los Angeles. [Boston Globe]

The DNA tower at the entrance to the Epcot's Wonders of Life pavillion at Walt Disney World is 5.5 billion times actual size. That fits perfectly for a human 6 million miles tall. [Boston Globe]

The Oklahoma capitol is the only government center with oil wells on its front lawn, according to the quarterly newspaper Two Lane Roads. [Boston Globe]

The average Chinese family has three bicycles and no car. [Boston Globe]

Madrid's El Rastro is famed for its flea market [Boston Globe]

Lake Webster in Webster, MA also goes by the catchy name of Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggauggaggoggchaubunagungamaugg. [Boston Globe]

Rugby, ND is the geographical center of the continental United States. [Boston Globe]

The earth's lowest point is the Dead Sea. Its surface is 1,312 feet below the level of the Mediterranean. [Boston Globe]

Illinois is home to the world's only 'Chicago'. [Boston Globe]

Dunmow village in England is famous for awarding a side of cured bacon to couples who have not quarreled during the first year of their marriage. [Boston Globe]

The electric chair for executions was 'invented' by Thomas Edison in an effort to demonize his competitor's products. Edison was trying to promote his inferior DC equipment and specified his competitor's AC products to operate the chair. Edison then attempted to claim his competitor's equipment was only good for killing people. 

74% of inmates currently in prison are there for drug related crimes. 

John Adams estimated that at the time of the American Revolution only a third of the population supported the revolution while an equal third continued to support the British Crown. The remaining third didn't much care either way. Almost as many colonists fought on the side of the British as against them. 

WWI killed 9 million. The worldwide movement of troops to fight the war provided the distribution system for the influenza pandemic that followed the war. The pandemic killed 20 million. 

On average, a woman will speak 7000 words over the course of a day while a man will only speak 2000 words in the same period of time. 

Joseph Heller's famous novel was originally titled Catch-18, but his publisher had another '18' book that year so they changed it to Catch-12. 

Last year people spent more than $32 billion on lottery games - more than they spent on the theater, movies, and recorded music combined. 

According to American Programmer, 31.1% of computer software projects get canceled before they are completed, and 52.7% will overrun their initial cost estimates by 189%. 94% of project start-ups are restarts of previously failed projects. 

They still swab the subject's arm with alcohol during an execution by lethal injection. Regardless of any risk of infection, the alcohol causes the blood vessels to rise making it easier to insert the needle. 

Joe Kittinger made the highest intentional skydive in history when in 1960 he jumped out of a balloon at 103,000 ft., and is the only person to have broken the sound barrier with his body alone. 

According to a recent user survey, the average Internet user is 36 years old, college educated, and makes more than $62,000/year. 

The relative average walking speed of pedistrians is affected by the size of the city. All over the world, the larger the city, the faster people walk. 

Over 1000 tornadoes touch down in the USA every year - more than in any other country in the world. 

Each fiber of cotton is a single cell about 3000 times as long as it is wide. 

The term 'Cops' originated with the copper shields and buttons of early police uniforms. 

The IRS has failed its audit by the General Accounting Office for the fourth year in a row. When auditing private citizens, the IRS assumes irregularities demonstrate criminal intent unless their target can prove otherwise. While the IRS routinely incarcerates and/or siezes the assets of private citizens for relatively minor accounting irregularities, government auditors are only willing to consider the chronic irregularities at the IRS 'distrubing'

The new land speed record is held by the tiny Tongan island of Niuatoputapu in the south pacific. The fastest moving land mass on the planet, the island has recently been clocked at almost 10 inches per year. 

The earth's magnetic field pulls the electron beams hitting the cathode ray tube in computer monitors. Every computer monitor has to be calibrated relative to its position in the earth's magnetic field. Adjust a monitor in the northern hemisphere and its colors will be wrong if you plug it into a computer in the southern hemisphere. 

The energy in an average one day hurricane could power the United States for three years.

The tooth is the only part of the human body that can't repair itself. 

Mosquitoes find their their prey by sensing the carbon dioxide in their dinner's breath. So then next time you get attacked, stop breathing ;)

Thinking thin can work as a diet strategy if you concentrate hard enough. Intense concentration can burn as many calories as physical exercise. 

One human brain generates more electrical impulses in a single day than all of the world's telephones put together.

Which is the real party of the rich? Even though the Republicans are the majority, 8 out of the 12 wealthiest people in Congress are Democrats. 

The daily commuter trains arriving or departing Bombay India every 2 minutes were designed to carry 1700 standing passengers, but are routinely packed with over 7000 passengers in what officials call dense, super dense, and hyper dense crush loads. 

Half the population of China is myopic (short sighted), and a further 30% require some sort of vision correction. The market potential for disposable contact lenses is staggering. 

Atmospheric oxygen levels declined from 35% to 28% during the cretaceous period. Could this decline in the oxygen level have contributed to the decline of the dinosaurs?

The sun contains 99% of all the mass in our solar system.

Artichokes, which normally produce fruit in their second year, can be grown as far north as Maine by 'fooling mother nature'. Plant the artichokes indoors 6 weeks before they can be safely put outside in a cold frame. After 6 weeks in the warm indoors, plant the artichokes in the cold frame and keep the temperature just above freezing. After another 6 weeks in the cold frame, plant in the garden. The artichokes will 'think' the warm indoors period was their first summer, and their time in the cold frame was their first winter. When they're finally planted in the garden, they will think they are now in their second summer and will bear fruit.

The concept of the standardized form was developed by the railroads in the 1800's as a control mechanism in response to a series of disasters. The new forms worked so well at documenting and controlling train movements that they were implemented throughout all railroad business operations. Back then nearly every business dealt with the railroads in one way or another, and the concept of standardized forms spread from there to the point where they are today considered a necessary business practice for all manner of commerce. 

Those who promote mass transit often quote the statistic that motor vehicles are the primary cause of smog - implying that private automobiles are the main problem. According to a recent American Automobile Association study, automobiles and light trucks are no longer the main cause of smog in the United States. 2/3rds of the smog in the 10 major cities in the study came from smokestacks, refineries, big trucks, and busses. Since mass transit is a greater cause of pollution than the 'problem' it claims to solve, could it be that our independent freedom of movement is the real 'enemy' the self appointed social engineers are attacking? Its awfully hard to divide and conquer if the 'conquered' keep moving around and mingling.

According to the March/April 1993 D & B report, the US loses an estimated 6 million jobs per year due to information stolen through industrial espionage. The annual US revenue loss due to information stolen through industrial espionage is estimated at $200 Billion.

According to Information Week (Sept. 6, 1993), the annual productivity loss by US Businesses due to employees playing computer games is an estimated $100 Billion - which works out to 2% of the Gross Domestic Product. 

With all the voltage driving a lightning bolt, it's a pretty irresistible force. If it encounters resistance, heat quickly builds up and burns through resistant or insulating materials. Advanced composite materials finding increasing applications in aircraft don't conduct electricity and might be more susceptible to heat damage from a strike. One solution currently in use is to layer or embed metal fibe rs in the composite material to provide the needed electrical conductivity.

The Mayflower, the ship that crossed the Atlantic in 1620 with 102 colonists still exists - sort of. After the ship returned to England from its historic voyage, it was purchased in 1624 by a farmer named Russel. Russel floated the Mayflower up the Thames River to his farm. He disassembled the ship and used the timbers to build a barn that still stands today in Old Jordans, Bucks, UK. William Penn asked to be buried next to the old barn when he died in England in 1726. 

The oldest repair work on the Sphinx was done over 4000 years ago. 

The hottest temperature ever recorded was 136 degrees (Fahrenheit) in Libya on Sept. 13, 1922. The coldest temperature of -128 degrees was recorded in Antarctica on July 21, 1983. 

On average, Americans throw away 20,000 televisions, 150,000 tons of packaging materials, and 43,000 tons of food per day.

Medieval humor: The giant siege catapults used during the 4th Crusade could hurl projectiles weighing up to a quarter ton with enough force to break down the thickest defensive walls. One of these engines of destruction was named 'Bad Neighbor'. 

Captain Cook lost 41 of his 98 crew to scurvy (a lack of vitamin C) on his first voyage to the South Pacific in 1768. By 1795 the importance of eating citrus was realized, and lemon juice was issued on all British Navy ships. 

Fourteen percent of the one million citizens of Nairobi, Kenya carry the AIDS virus. Some 20% of the Kenyan military is infected. 

Bats are the leading cause of rabies in the US. Bat bites led to 12 of the 25 cases of rabies seen in the US since 1980. Dogs are a close second. 

Apollo Lunar Mission number 13 was aborted while enroute to the moon in 1970 because of an explosion of a fuel cell in the service module. The flight left the launching pad at 13:13 (CST) hours military time and the accident occurred on April 13. 

Triskadekaphobia, fear of the number 13, dates back to Nordic mythology. But the combination of Friday and the number 13 seems to have originated with Christ, whose last supper before his arrest seated 13 and he was crucified on a Friday. 

If every commuter carried just one more passenger daily, we'd save 600,000 gallons of gasoline and keep 12 million pounds of pollution out of the atmosphere every year. 

Fifteen members of a high school science class field trip spent an unexpected three days on an ice berg when the ice field they camped on broke free and floated away. They were rescued by helicopter 25 miles from where they began. 

Eleven species of common birds in England are dwindling fast, including sparrows, partridges and skylarks. Their numbers are down 89%, 82% and 58% from 1969, respectively. The decline is attributed to increased use of pesticides.
[Joint Nature Conservancy Committee ]

Citizens of smog-ridden Los Angeles can now avail of snorts of pure oxygen at a number of oxygen bars. Twenty dollars gets you 20 minutes of plain or fruit scented oxygen. 

In Victorian times, estate gardeners never planted grape vines without first burying a dead donkey underneath the plot. 

The average teacher spent more than $400 from his or her own pocket for classroom materials in 1994-1995. 

The direct costs of sleep disorders and sleep deprivation in the United States may have been as much as $15.9 billion in 1990. Some studies indicate that insomnia can be predictive of future mental illness. 

The potato is the most widely grown vegetable in the world. About 1.4 million acres of land in the U.S. are used to produce potatoes each year . About seventy percent (70%) of these potatoes are produced in the northern regions of the country, namely Idaho, North Dakota, Minnesota, Maine and the State of Washington. The annual value of the U.S. crop is estimated to be nearly $3 Billion. 

A cousin to the buckball, a new molecular form of carbon known as the fullerene nanotube, can now be made in the lab. These single carbon molecules are so small that nanotubes sufficiently long to span the 250,000 miles between earth and the moon could be loosely rolled into a ball the size of a poppyseed. 

The tallest man in documented medical history was Robert Pershing Wadlow. Shortly before his death in 1940 in St. Louis, Missouri, at the age of 22, Wadlow was measured at 8 feet, 11.1 inches tall. His height was attributed to a medical condition known as gigantism, in which a tumor of the pituitary gland produces too much growth hormone. 

A fingerprint left at a crime scene can provide enough DNA to profile a suspect, aiding forensic efforts at solving crime. 

Motorists driving near the town of Villa Angel Flores near Culiacan, Mexico were surprised by a shower of live toads. The phenomenon was attributed to a toronado grabbing the the amphibians from nearby pond. 

During World War II some of the top chessplayers were also code breakers. British masters Harry Golombek, Stuart Milner-Barry and H. O'D. Alexander were on the team which broke the Nazi Enigma code. In September 1939, the British chess team had just qualified for the finals in the Buenos Aires Olympiad. When war broke out, they were ordered home on the next ship out. During one watchkeeping at night, Milner-Barry sent out an alarm to the rest of the ship when he thought he spotted a U-boat. It turned out to be a porpoise. 

The Chinese Emperor Wen-ti executed two foreign chessplayers after learning that one of the pieces was called 'Emperor.' He was upset that his title of Emperor could be associated with a mere game and forbade the game. Chinese chess is played on a board 9 squares by 8 and the pieces move on the intersections of the lines rather than the squares, so that the actual playing area is 10 by 9. One of the pieces is a cannon, unknown anywhere else. Chess was not listed as a competitive sport in China until 1956. The Chess Association of China was formed in 1962. It didn't have its first championship tournament until 1974. The first international tournament ever held in China was in 1980. 

The first chessboard of alternating light and dark squares appear in Europe in 1090. 

Chess: Up until the early 20th century, it was mandatory to announce a check. Up until the late 19th century, it was mandatory to say 'check to the queen' or 'gardez' when she was attacked. At one time, if the King and other piece were simultaneously attacked by a piece, it was customary to announce the fact by saying check to both pieces. Up until the early 19th century, an unnanounced check could be ignored. In 1969 in Tallinn, the Westerinen-Tal game had 38 checks in a row. 

The longest delay of a capture of a piece or pawn is 57 moves, played by Chajes-Grunfeld, Carlsbad 1923. The game took over 15 hours and lasted 121 moves. 

Automatons are machines that give the illusion of playing chess. The first automaton was Kempelen's The Turk (1769), followed by Hooper's Ajeeb (1868), then Gumpel's Mephisto (1878). 

During the American Revolution, there was a strong effort by the colonists to rename the pieces to Governor, General, Colonel, Major, Captain, and Pioneer. A boy gave General Rahl of the British Army a note from a spy that George Washington was about to cross the Delaware and attack. The general was so immersed in a chess game that he put the note in his pocket unopened. There it was found when he was mortally wounded in the subsequent battle. 

The first mention of chess in America occurred in 1641 in Esther Singleton's history of Dutch settlers. The first American chess tournament was held in New York in 1843. 

The first official Active Chess (30 minutes per game) tournament was held in Gijon, Spain in 1988 and won by Karpov and Tukmakov. Karpov won the World Active Championship in Mazatlan, Mexico and received $50,000. The organizers of the event donated $100,000 for AIDS research. 

The Japanese confiscated chess books during World War II, thinking they were military codes. Japan did not have an organized chess federation until 1968. Their first national chess tournament took place in 1969

The Adirondack Forest Preserve is the only constitutionally protected forest land in the United States. 

There are no cities within Adirondack Park--the largest area without a city in New York State. 

The Adirondack Park is larger than any of the seven smallest states in the United States. It would take these five national parks added together to equal the size of the Adirondack Park: Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Everglades, and Great Smoky National Parks. 

Fort William Henry, used during the French and Indian War, was the fort in James Fenimore Cooper's novel The Last of the Mohicans.

Queen's University first held classes in 1842--15 years before Canada became a country. This venerable institution was the first to grant degrees in central Canada, and now rates first in the 1996 ranking of Canadian universities. 

Of the entire Hebrew scriptures, the Book of Job contains the most references to snow. Hence the expression, 'snow Job.'

Following the great Jerusalem blizzard of 1900, Zionist visionary Theodor Herzl proposed the 'Uganda option.'

The elders of Safed have 36 different words for snow -- but none for snow removal.

Moses Maimonides, 10th century physician to the Egyptian Khalif, prescribed snow as a cure for the hot Cairo summers.

The best known example of body shape classification was devised by American psychologist William Herbert Sheldon. In 1935 he grouped people into 3 distinct body types: Endomorph, Mesomorph, and Ectomorph. But because people had such a tough time remembering which meant what, in 1942 William devised a new system of classification - fat, skinny, and average. A system which we still use to this day. 

The animal world is well represented in Shakespeare's works. Over 3,000 references to some 180 difference species of animals--both real and imaginary-- have been identified in the plays. Everything from simple country wildlife--birds, bats, hedgehogs, insects, wild boar and deer--to more exotic species--rhinoceros, tiger, elephant and bear, as well as the mythical unicorn, phoenix, and dragon. 

A descendant of farming stock, Shakespeare was steeped in rural tradition, and there is frequent reference in his works to nature--plants, flowers, herbs, and autumn leaves are used to evoke the cycle of the seasons and mark the passage of time.

SHAKESPEARE: Although universally regarded as a genius, William Shakespeare was the son of a glovemaker and was given only an average education. Always intensely curious about the world around him, Shakespeare would later rely on scenes remembered from his childhood, common country customs and superstitions, fairs and other popular entertainments as raw material for his plays. 

Midwives played a central role in female health and healing during the Middle Ages. Herbs were an important part of their practice. Participating in a rich oral culture, they passed down the secrets of herbal lore from woman to woman over hundreds of years. The cravings of pregnancy were very different for the medieval mother-to-be: unlike the modern yen for pickles and ice cream, she'd seek to have p otter's earth or chalk or coals. Yum! Medieval recipe for cure of acne: 'the rout of dragons made clean and cut into thin roundels' and steeped for nine days in white wine. 

Child brides were very common during the Middle Ages. Young girls could be betrothed to male suitors as early as age four. Of course, the actual marriage didn't take place until both were 18 years old. 

For the courtly knight and his lady, fashion was very important because fine dress was a mark of status. The nobility spent large sums of money on imported cloth, such as silk from Italy and velvet from France. Ordinary people wore simple garments, often made of rough wool, which were designed for useful wear. Babies were wrapped in swaddling bands with the mistaken idea that this would give them straight limbs. 

The wealthy enjoyed modern day forms of relaxation: music was welcomed as entertainment and to accompany meals. Dancing in the privacy of one's home or enclosed garden was also a favorite pastime, as well as reading or simple meditation.

The medieval noble did not regard fruit and vegetables as proper food, so meat was the staple at his table, and was served in astonishing quantity. Nobles drank fine wines, and lesser guests drank beer or cider. 

A knight saw himself as a cut above other men. Not only did he excel in the arts of war, he also prided himself on his honor, loyalty and courtesy. Playing an instrument was also one of the skills expected of a courtly knight. 

The lion was the first beast to appear on a shield and was used to signify strength or valor. The lion might be upright, sitting, lying, facing backward or forward, and each posture had its own heraldic description. 

What we have come to call the Plague was brought on a merchant ship from Tana in the Crimea to Messina in Sicily in the year 1347. The ship contained rats that were infected with the disease. The disease took many forms. The Bubonic Plague, carried by fleas on the rats, attacked the lymphatic gland system and caused swelling. Pneumonic Plague attacked the lungs and was more devastating. The plague, called the Black Death, went through Sicily to Italy and then throughout Europe and England. It had reached the entire continent by 1350. During these years, the population dropped by as much as 50%, in some locations much higher. The plague continued to exist into the fifteenth century and with less intensity in the sixteenth and seventeenth century.

In the year 325 AD, the Emperor Constatine summoned all the bishops of the Christian church to a council at Nicaea. The purpose was to decide if Christians had one or two Gods. Alexander, Bishop of Alexandria, argued with one of the members of his church that "The Father", or Yahweh, a name not used much by that time, and "The Son" Jesus were one and the same. Arius, the church member, argued that Jesus was a separate and inferior God. About three hundred bishops attended the council and sided with Alexander that "The Father and The Son were of the same substance." Constantine banished the few who would not agree, and thus set for the future the idea of one God for Christianity.

Johann Gutenberg perfects the process of printing with movable type in 1457. This was a process that dates back much earlier in China. Gutenburg, in the c ity of Mainz, Germany, was the first known  printer to successfully use movable type on a printing press. The oldest surviving book from this method is an edition of the psalms in Latin, printed in 1457 by Gutenburg's son-in-law, Johann Fust.

776 BC is the year of the first recorded Olympic games. The games were staged at the Festival of Zeus at Olympia in the Western Peloponnese.

Many Americans are not tidy, half of us leave our clothes on the floor and 21 percent never make a bed.

The sound of E.T. walking was made by someone squishing her hands in Jello.

353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this will heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as spacecraft re-entering the atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy per second. Each. In short, they will burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and creating a deafening sonic boom in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandth of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force. 

No known species of reindeer can fly. But there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not completely rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen. 

In an attempt to kill Fidel Castro the CIA gave him Exploding Cigars! Also, they soaked his shoelaces in hair remover. The idea was that he would ties up his shoe, and then rub his beard. His beard would eventually fall out, and Fidel would lose all his popularity!

During the Civil War, one small section of Virginia became America's bloodiest battle ground. In an area of barely 20 square miles and including Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, The Wilderness, Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor, more than half a million men fought in deadly combat. Here, more men were killed and wounded during the Civil War than were killed and wounded in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the War with Mexico and all of the Indian wars combined. No fewer than 19 generals-10 Union and 9 Confederate-met death here. 

During the Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1862, 'Stonewall' Jackson marched his force of 16,000 men over 600 miles in 39 days, fighting five major battles and defeating four separate armies totaling 63,000 men.

Some authorities accredit the 26th North Carolina Regiment with having incurred the greatest loss in a single battle recorded in the Civil War. At the Battle of Gettysburg, it lost 708 of its men, or approximately 85 percent of its total strength. In one company of 84 men, every man and officer was hit. The orderly sergeant who made out the report had a bullet wound through both legs. 

Eighty percent of all wounds during the Civil War were in the extremities.

In the battle of Gettysburg, 1100 ambulances were in use. The medical director of the Union army boasted that all the wounded were picked up from the field within 12 hours after the battle was over. This was a far cry from the second battle of Bull Run, when many of the wounded were left on the field in the rain, heat, and sun for three or four days. 

Many doctors who saw service in the Civil War had never been to medical school, but had served an apprenticeship in the office of an established practitioner. 

The principal weapon of the Civil War and the one by which 80 percent of all wounds were produced was a single-shot, muzzle-loading rifle in the hands of foot soldiers.

About 15 percent of the wounded died in the Civil War; about 8 percent in World War I; about 4 percent in World War II; about 2 percent in the Korean War. 

The chance of surviving a wound in Civil War days was 7 to 1; in the Korean War, 50 to 1. 

Michigan has no official state song, but one, 'Michigan, My Michigan,' is frequently used. The words were written in 1863, and the melody used is that of the Christmas song 'O Tannenbaum.'

The Lake Michigan dune system starts in Indiana and extends all the way up the coast to the Straits of Mackinac, covering 275,000 acres. It is the largest system of freshwater dunes in the world.

In 1931 'The Star Spangled Banner' was adopted as the national anthem, the Empire State Building opened, Wiley Post and Harold Gatty flew around the world, and the Ford Motor Co. produced its 20 millionth auto.

Marie Owen, a patrolman's widow, was the first woman appointed a police officer, in Detroit in 1893.

In 1945 Grand Rapids became the first city to add fluoride to its drinking water to prevent cavities in peoples' teeth.

Debi Horn, a Gibraltar housewife, was the first American to have her mouth wired shut to lose weight. She went from 229 pounds to 156 in seven months. 

A Texas man endured hiccups for 22 years. At one point he couldn't eat or sleep for 4 weeks. When he reached the point where he lost 20 pounds, he checked himself into the hospital. It was later discovered that his spasms were a side effect of some medication he had been taking for another ailment. And believe it or not, the world record holder is Charles Osborne of Iowa who began hiccupping in 1922 while trying to lift a 350-pound hog. As of 1991, the poor guy was still hiccupping.

To make a candle burn longer and drip less, give it a coat of clear varnish. 

If you have problems grasping certain concepts, don't worry, you're not alone. Thomas A. Edison was taught by his mother after schools were unsuccessful at the task. President Woodrow Wilson couldn't read until he was 11. Albert Einstein didn't talk until he was 4 or read until he was 9. 

IRS auditors have NO POWER to change your tax liability without YOUR approval. 

Last year the IRS cancelled 3.89 million penalties, saving taxpayers $3.62 billion. 

More than 200 schools in seven states and Ontario, Canada, have switched from throwaway paperboard milk containers to refillable plastic bottles that can be sterilized and reused. The schools involved in this program help keep 30 million paper cartons out of the waste stream. 

Nearly 40 percent of selected plastic parts, such as fuel tanks and bumpers are rescued from damaged or discarded cars and reused in other automobiles.

After 45 years of TV, most people still turn to their local newspaper to find out what they want to see on the tube. Most will still turn to their news paper to find out what they want to see on the Internet. The newspaper is the starting gate.

In 1752, when the American colonies switched calendars from Julian to Gregorian, Ben Franklin wrote: 'It is pleasant for an old man to be able to go to bed on September 2, and not have to get up until September 14. 

While the Western calendar and the names of its months were inherited from a long line of Roman calendars, the word 'month' itself came from the Anglo- Saxon monath. 

In 1918 the Soviet government dropped 13 days from the year in order to synchronize their calendar with that of other European nations. As a result, the anniversary of the 'October Revolution' (marking the Communist take-over) is now celebrated on November 7.

Muslim Calendar months begin at sunset on the day a thin lunar crescent is first sighted in the sky. Even though the date of a new crescent can be predicted, religious doctrine requires that visual sighting is necessary to determine the start of Islamic months. 

Edgar Allan Poe, who died before Einstein was born, demonstrated the fact that time is a relative thing in his short story Three Sundays in a Week. 

Roman month lengths in 45 B.C., the Julian Calendar's first year, were completely symmetrical. All of the odd numbered months had 31 days and all of th e even numbered months had 30.

When does 1/4 = 1/2> When referring to quarter-phases of the moon! A quarter moon and a half moon are the same thing.

George Washington was born on February 11, 1731. Over twenty years later, in 1752, Great Britain and its American colonies switched calendars f rom Julian to Gregorian. This switch eliminated eleven days from September of that year: September 2 was followed by September 14. At the same time, New Year's Day was changed from March 25 to January 1. Since then, historians have said that Washington was born in 1732, and the anniversary of his birth has been celebrated on February 22.

Serious stamp collectors have something else in common -- they tend to show up for appointments right on time. Or such is the curious contention of a student of human behavior.

Many a sleeper who prefers a hard mattress thinks it tends to keep the back straight. That's not what it does, says a medical specialist. It forces the sleeper to turn over more frequently, thus countering the stiffness that comes from sleeping too long in one position.

A woman stabbed her husband twice for talking during a TV program the two were watching. According to police in Manitoba, Canada, sixty year-old George Armstrong suffered wounds to his hands, face, chest and shoulder, when Margaret Armstrong, 64, allegedly attacked him with a kitchen knife. She claims she repeatedly told him to shut up while she was watching one of her favorite programs. Forty minutes later, a second disagreement broke out, and Armstrong was stabbed again. He was hospitalized and is in stable condition, while his wife is in jail, facing charges of aggravated assault. 

In 1982, Anna Allen was found innocent by reason of insanity after fatally shooting her four year-old son. As a result, she spent six years in a mental hospital. But in 1988, she was released, and allowed to live on her own in Tallahassee, Florida. Last month though, the forty-seven year-old called 9-1-1 and told police that she 'had her cat in the microwave and he was almost done.' Police arrived to find that the looney woman had been cooking her cat in the microwave for over three hours. As a result, Allen was admitted to the Apalachee center for human services, and is not expected to be out for some time. 

The bomb dropped on Nagasaki, August 9, 1945, unleashed 10 kilotons of energy, which is equivilant to 10,000 tons of TNT. The Physicists working on the project said that that was only 1/10 of one percent of the bomb's potential total power. 

A sphere of plutonium no larger than an orange generates 18 kilotons of power. 

When drinking a diet soda while eating a candy bar, the calories in the candy bar are cancelled by the diet soda. 

By the start of 1993, 98% of U.S. households own at least one TV set, 64% have two or more sets. 

The average person sees more than 20,000 TV commercials in a year.

Children who watch 4 or more hours of TV a day spend less time on school work, have poorer reading skills, play less well with friends, and have fewer hobbies than children who watch less TV.

The story that wine is a living thing is a fiction. If it were alive, it would be spoilt. The winemaker doesn't want live microbes active in the wine.

How the bubbles get into the champagne bottle is simpler than it may seeem. When wine ferments, it produces carbon dioxide. When it ferments in a closed container, such as a bottle, the gas is trapped. When you release the pressure by popping the cork, the gas comes out of its dissolved state and you have an effervescing wine.

France's Champagne is generally a white wine, but it's made mostly from red grapes (pinot noir and pinot meunier). 

Wine breathes through the oak staves of the barrel, referred to as 'aging' or 'maturation', a process of slow, controlled oxidation. 

What is terroir? This is a French expression relating to the uniqueness of a wine made from grapes grown on a certain plot of land. It encompasses th e vine's complete growing environment, including climate, aspect, soil, altitude, etc, and the effect all this has on the wine's character. Because of terroir, all the world's great single-vineyard wines are theoretically uncopyable. 

In Venezuela and other equatorial places, there are two vintages each year and the grapevine is never dormant.

The most expensive current-release Australian wine is $2,500 a bottle... and it's not Penfolds Grange. It is Seppelt 100 Year Old Para Liqueur Port. Every year since 1878, Seppelt has put aside a cask of port and, ever since 1978, it has been bottling a 100-year-old, the present one being the 1896. Sepplet is probably the only winery in the world doing this.

Grape varieties do not determine the degree of sweetness in wine; the winemaker does. Any grape can be made into wine as sweet or dry as you like.

Ideally, a wine should be stored on its side at a temperature of 55 degrees, but most wines will keep perfectly well at up to 70 degrees (a cellar or interior closet works well). A wine's worst enemies are heat and fluctuations in temperature. 

A wine glass never should be filled more than half full. This is so the wine can be gently swirled to release its aroma. The best all-purpose wine glass is the 10-ounce tulip shape. 

White wine should be chilled for one hour in the refrigerator, or for 20 minutes in an ice bucket before serving. Red wines should be served at approximately 65 degrees for optimum bouquet and taste. 

Departments officials (referring to Intel's new super computer) said it would take every man, woman and child in the United states 125 years working non-stop with hand-held calculators to perform 1 trillion calculations. (Which Intel's supercomputer can do in one second.)

Memphis has just about the cleanest drinking water in the world. 

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. 

It is illegal to own a dog in Reykjavik 

In Idaho a citizen is forbidden to give another citizen a box of candy larger than 50lb. 

According to a british law passed in 1845, attempting to commit suicide was a capital offense. Offenders could be hanged for trying. 

American rock musician, Terry Kath, died in 1978 while playing Russian Roulette. His last words were 'Don't worry it's not loaded.' 

In the 1700's you could purchase insurance against going to hell, in London England. 

The Sanskrit word for war translates as 'wanting more cows' 

Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM said in 1943, 'I think there is a world market for about 5 computers'. 

The Earth orbits the Sun at an average velocity of approximately 30 kilometers per second (18 miles per second). Planets closer to the Sun travel faster in their orbits and planets further away travel slower.

Comets' tails point away from the Sun at all times. Thus, when a comet is moving away from the Sun, its tail is actually leading. Comet tails are caused by dust and gas being lost from the comet and then pushed away from the Sun by the solar wind (charged particles moving out from the Sun) and by radiation pressure from the Sun.

The Sun looks 1600 times fainter from Pluto than it does from the Earth.

Some of the objects visible in Hubble Space Telescope images are nearly four billion times fainter than the limits of human vision.

Our Solar System, by virtue of its proper motion through our galaxy (the Milky Way) is moving at a speed of 43,000 miles per hour toward the globular cluster of stars known as M13 in the constellation Hercules.

Size comparisons: About 1000 Earths would fit inside Jupiter, and about 1000 Jupiters would fit inside the Sun.

In its six years of operation, the Hubble Space Telescope has observed approximately 8000 objects, which is roughly equivalent to the number of stars that can be seen from the surface of Earth with the naked eye. 

The Space Shuttle flies about 200 miles (330 km) above the Earth's surface (equivalent to roughly half the distance between Los Angeles and San Francisco). In contrast, geostationary (stationary with respect to the Earth's surface) communications satellites have to be lofted approximately 21,500 miles (35,800 km) above the Earth's surface, and the Apollo spacecraft were approximately 227,000 miles ( 378,000 km) above the Earth's surface when they reached the Moon. 

NASA's Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, launched in 1991 aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis, is the heaviest spacecraft ever deployed by a Space Shuttle. 

It takes radio signals from Earth (traveling at the speed of light: 186,000 miles per second) approximately 9 hours to reach the Pioneer 10 spacecraft, which is the most distant object built by humans. It takes another 9 hours for the spacecraft's response to reach Earth. 

The Galileo probe, weighing in at 339 kilograms (750 pounds), will enter Jupiter's atmosphere at 170,000 kilometers per hour (106,000 mph), or more than 50 times faster than a bullet shot out of a rifle. The probe will experience deceleration forces as high as 230 times Earth's gravity. In about two minutes, the orbiter's speed will be slowed to about 1,600 kilometers per hour (1,000 mph).

Each of the Space Shuttle's solid rocket boosters burns 5 tons of propellant per second.

A Space Shuttle and its boosters ready for launch are the same height as the Statue of Liberty but weigh almost three times as much.

The Space Shuttle main engine weighs 1/7th as much as a train engine, but delivers as much horsepower as 39 train engines.

It only takes the Space Shuttle about 8 minutes to accelerate to its orbital speed of more than 17,000 miles per hour.

Jupiter's moon Ganymede is the largest moon in the Solar System, and is larger than the planets Mercury and Pluto.

On average, the distance from Pluto to the Sun is approximately 40 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun. Put a different way, if a scale mo del were constructed with the Sun on the California coast and the Earth about 75 miles inland, then on the same scale Pluto would be in New York. 

The Great Red Spot on Jupiter is a hurricane-like storm system. It is large enough that two Earths could fit across it. The Red Spot has been around since at least the early 1600's when it was first detected shortly after the invention of the telescope. 

Did you know that some of the moons in our Solar System are larger than some of the planets? Jupiter's moon Ganymede, the largest moon in the Solar System, and Saturn's moon Titan are both larger than the planets Mercury and Pluto. The Earth's Moon, Jupiter's moons Callisto, Io, and Europa, and Neptune's moon Triton are all larger than Pluto, but smaller than Mercury.

Jupiter's moon Europa may have a liquid water 'ocean' far beneath its water ice covered surface.

Jupiter's magnetosphere is the largest single structure inside the Solar System. If you could see it with your eyes, it would appear larger than our full Moon.

Almost all of the Oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere has been produced by living organisms. Oxygen accounts for 21% of our atmosphere, with Nitrogen making up 78%, and a mixture of other gases composing the remaining 1%. Oxygen only occurs as a minor constituent in the atmospheres of other planets in our Solar System. 

Pluto's elliptical orbit sometimes brings it inside of the orbit of Neptune for a few years. We are currently in one of those periods, so right now Neptune is the farthest planet from the Sun.

Did you know that water ice may exist in the bottoms of craters at Mercury's poles, based upon radar data taken in recent years. Even though Mercur y is the closest planet to the Sun, and extremely hot over most of its surface, ice may exist at the bottoms of some polar craters because the crater floors are permanently shadowed by the crater rims.

Did you know that the most volcanically active body in the solar system besides the Earth is Jupiter's moon Io? Erupting volcanoes were discovered on Io by the Voyager spacecraft.

Did you know that liquid water does not currently occur on Mars because of the cold temperatures and low atmospheric pressures. Only water ice and water gas (vapor) are stable. However, large channels on Mars appear to have been cut by outflows of liquid water during Mars' distant past which may have had warmer temperatures and a much thicker atmosphere.

The northern lights consume up to a million megawatts of power, approximately the power generating capacity of the United States.

Icebergs last for different periods of years, depending upon their size and construction. Icebergs have been known to take as much as 200 years to melt. 

Sir John Murray estimates the volume of the lakes in the world at 2000 cubic miles, and the water of the ocean at 324,000,000 cubic miles. 

When the shores of a stream are described as right or left hand, going down stream is assumed. 

The winter of 1847-48 was so extraordinarily severe in the country that heavy ice formed in Lake Erie. When it was broken up during the latter part of March, the winds swept the ice into the entrance of the Niagara River at Buffalo, where it Jammed in a solid mass, completely chocking the outlet of Lake Erie, with the result that on March 29, 1848, the falls of Niagara were practically dry.

The height of a mountain may be determined in several ways - by the aneroid barometer of by vertical angles and also by line of a spirits level. This is known as leveling and is considered the most accurate procedure. 

The Hydrographic Office says there is barely a perceptible tide in the Great Lakes. It is called a seiche and is partly due to atmospheric conditions. 

The River Rhone, which is generally regarded as the swiftest river in the world, attains a velocity of 40 miles an hour in parts of its course. 

The highest tide in the world is in the Bay of Fundy, Canada, where there is a rise of 53 feet.

About one-third of the patents of the world are taken out in the U.S. 

Benjamin Franklin, ranked as the greatest inventive genius of his age, never asked for nor received a patent for any of his inventions or disco veries. 

The evaporation from a large oak or beech tree is from ten to twenty-five gallons in twenty-four hours. 

One hundred years ago 50 to 55 degrees was considered a good house temperature. Fireplaces provided the heat in those days. When stoves came into use, about 90 years ago, the temperature rose to 62 degrees. With the increasing use of furnaces, some 50 years ago, a heat of 72 degrees was quite usual. Today a temperature of 70 degrees is considered standard. 

The Bureau of Standards says that the highest temperatures of artificial heat are atteained by electric arcs, with exception of instantaneous effects of condenser discharge. Tungsten arc under high pressure of inert gas has been taken to over 5000 degrees F. 

It is estimated that only six or seven people in a million are struck by lightning. 

The Bureau of Standards says the statement concerning the thermometer that will measure the heat of a candle five miles away is correct. There is in the Bureau an instrument to measure the heat of a single star, which is made so delicate that it is responsive to the heat of a candle several hundred miles away. 

Silver is considered the best conductor of electricity. 

The Bureau of Standards says that the electron is the fastest thing in the world. 

Damascus is thought to be the oldest city of the world. The origin of the city is unknown. However its foundation is attributed to Joseph us Uz, the son of Aram. 

The technical term applied to a government run by women is a gynarchy. 

The first vessel of the British navy was the Great Harry, a three masted vessel built in 1509 at a cost of $72 414 

Greenland was named by the Norwegian explorer Eric the Red. Upon his return from Greenland in 985, he gave the new country that name in order to make people more willing to move there. 

Neither Bolivia nor Paraguay has a sea cost or seaport. 

The peachmond is a new fruit reported from Mexico as a hybrid between the peach and the almond. 

Some vines have tiny suckers on their creepers and can cling to and climb an almost perfectly smooth wall.

There are about 6,000 distinct species of grasses in the world. Of these, about 60 are important cultivated plants.

The palmyra palm is employed for more purposes than perhaps any other plant, upward of 800 uses being recorded for its various parts. 

Chestnut is most commonly used to make telephone poles.

New Jersey has a spoon museum featuring over 5,400 spoons from every state and almost every country. 

The Dutch town of Abcoude is the only reasonably sized town/city in the world whose name begins with ABC.

The word denim comes from 'de Nimes', or from Nimes, a place in France. 

King Louis XIX ruled France for a total of fifteen minutes.

After the Bible, the most translated book in the world is Cervantes' 'Don Quixote'

Dog saliva is an antiseptic and can help to heal wounds. Recent studies suggest human saliva may also have healing qualities.

The Spanish word 'esposa' means both 'wife' and 'handcuff'.

The snow carnival scheduled for May 1, 1953, in Sheridan, Wyoming, was canceled because of too much snow.

The whip is the first man-made invention to break the sound barrier.

Kansas's state song is 'Home On The Range.'

'Racecar' is the longest single-word palindrome in the English language.

Pennies are not legal tender in amounts over twenty-five, unless the recipient chooses to accept them. IOW, if a debtor owes you more than twenty-five cents and spitefully tries to pay you in pennies, you can legally refuse to accept them, without affecting the debt.

The ridges on the sides of coins are called reeding or milling. 

The German Kaiser Wilhelm II had a withered arm and often hid the fact by posing with his hand resting on a sword, or by holding gloves. 

West Virginia is the only state in the Union without a natural lake. 

Assuming Rudolph was in front, there are 40320 ways to arrange the other eight reindeer. 

The most common name in Italy is Mario Rossi.

Goulburn Valley Grammar School, situated in Shepparton, Victoria, Australia, first started in 1981, with the first classrooms being held in the local football clubrooms.

Queen Elizabeth II uses the initials ER. ER stands for Elizabeth Regina, Regina being the Latin word for Queen. Should Charles become King, he will use the initials CR, R being Rex, the Latin word for King.

Which town prides itself on being the 'Apple Capital of the World?' It's Wenatchee, Washington. And the proud folks there have proved it. They baked the the biggest apple pie in the world -- 44 feet long. Thirty-two thousand pounds of apples and six hours later, the world record was theirs. 

THE OLD TIME RADIO SHOW 'THE LONE RANGER' ON WXYZ-DETROIT HAD A SPIN OFF SHOW 'BATMAN', BRUCE WAYNE, IT TURNS OUT IS THE LONE RANGERS NEPHEW.

Craps is by far the best casino game to play. With basic bets, the player only loses 14 cents out of every ten dollars. Blackjack, on the other hand, loses over 50 cents with perfect basic strategy.

The IRS Tax Code of 1954 changed the tax deadline date from March 15th to April 15th.

About 4,000 years ago, a hymn to a brewing goddess was inscribed in a clay tablet. - This hymn to the Sumerian goddess Ninkasi describes how to make malt and describes beer as a drink of the gods.

Recently, a million fraternity brothers rushed to join NASA. The reason: scientists have discovered  beer inspace. Well, not beer exactly. But they did find alcohol: ethyl alcohol, to be precise, the active ingredient in all major alcoholic drinks (antifreeze Jell-O shots, quite obviously, are exempted from this category). Three British scientists, Drs. Tom Millar, Geoffrey MacDonald and Rolf Habing, discovered this interstellar Everclear floating in a gas cloud in the contellation of Aquila (sign of the Eagle, the mascot of Anheuser-Busch! Hmmmmm). Millar and his compatriots have estimated the size of this gas cloud at approximately 1,000 times the diameter of our own solar system; there's enough alcohol out there, they say, to make 400 trillion trillion pints of beer. 

Germany passed a beer purity law in 1516. - The Reinheitsgebot, the Bavarian Beer Purity Law, states beer will be made with only malted grains, water, and hops. Many people believe it mentions yeast, but it doesn't. Yeast was first mentioned in a Munich regulation in 1551.

English = BEER!, Afrikaans = Bier, Bosnian = Pivo, Chinese = Pijiu, Croation = Pivo, Czech = Pivo, Danish = Ol, Dutch = Bier, Esperanto = Biero, Estonian = Olu, Finnish = Olut, Flemish = Bier, French = Biere, German = Bier, Hawaiian = Pia, Hungarian = S"r, Icelandic = Bj?r, Italian = Birra, Japanese = Biiru, Korean = Megju, Latvian = Alus, Lithuanian = Alus, Manx = Lhune, Maori = Pia, Norwegian = Ol, Pig Latin = Eerbay, Polish = Piwo, Portuguese = Cerveja, Russian = Pivo, Scots Gaelic = Beir, Spanish = Cerveza, Swedish = Tl, Turkish = Bira, Welsh = Cwrw, Yiddish = Bir

WIESSE , WEISSBIER, WHEAT ,WHITE are terms for beers made with wheat. LAGERS are made with bottom fermenting yeast and are held in tanks for 2 months at 40 degrees. They tend to be more malty in flavor based on the quality of barley used. Most U.S. beers are lagers (Bud and Miller). ALE'S are brewed at higher temperature than lagers. They tend to have a heavier hop flavor than lagers and are called ales be cause they are made with a top fermenting yeast (works on the top of the beer) 

Zero in tennis is called 'love' because of the zero's resemblence to an egg. Since the scoring in tennis was believed to have originated in France and an egg of course is called 'un eoef' in French, when tennis terms were anglicized, 'eoef' became 'love'. 

It is actually a myth that Texas has been ruled under 'six flags' (which are supposed to be Spain, France, Mexico, the Republic of Texas, the Confederacy, and the U.S.). France never really settled in Texas. Robert La Salle landed in Texas in 1685 founded a settlement entitled Fort St. Louis, but within two years the settlement succumbed to internal division, and then to the Native Americans and disease.

When ocean tides are at their highest, they are called spring tides. When they are at their lowest, they are call neap tides.

Theodore Roosevelt was the first American President to win the Nobel Peace Prize. He won for his arbitration of treaty discussions at the end of the Russo-Japanese War. 

FORTRAN stands for formula translation.

Guam has seven public elementary schools.

Mel Blanc was the voice of all the Warner Brothers cartoon characters except two: Elmer Fudd and Granny.

The Yoruba people of Nigeria have the highest twin birth rates in the world--their women are like to produce twins more than any ethnic/racial group in the world.

One meter of a heavy coaxial submarine telecommunication cable weighs 46 kg.

Good King Wenceslas wasn't good at all - he was just not as bad as the rest of his family. He was also very dead on the Feast of Stephen.

Between 65 and 75 percent of cats respond to catnip (Nepeta cataria). The predilection is inheirited. In responding cats, catnip produces a genuine psychedelic high that lasts anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour. Some cats are affected by other herbs, such as valerian, in a similar way. Catnip is not harmful or addicting in any way, but loses its effectiveness if used too often. Kittens under six months generally do not respond to catnip, and may even be repelled by it. Catnip also has a long and illustrious history in the human pharmacopia, but humans do not experience its psychedelic effects. 

Worth your salt is actually a term taken from Roman Days when soldiers were payed in salt, which would be exchanged on the market as cash.

A vast majority of married men sleep on the right hand side of the bed (facing from the headboard), regardless of race, creed or age. Divorced men often switch to left side.

An object of space debris less than 1/8 in diameter traveling at 22,000 mph would strike an orbiting space station with the equivalent force of a bowling ball traveling 60 mph. [NRC]

The number of triplets born in the US in 1994 (4,594) was more than triple the number born in 1971 (1,034), an increase attributed to older age of the mothers and the use of fertility-enhancing drugs and techniques. 

About 80 percent of all bird species in the world inhabit wetlands. These wetlands provide rest stops for migrating birds with water, bountiful food supplies and shelter. [Aububon] 

More than 20,000,000 seahorses are harvested each year for folk medicinal purposes. The world seahorse population has dropped 70% in the past 10 years. [NOVA] 

Bubonic plague killed millions of people throughout Europe in the Dark Ages. In 1996, five cases of plague were reported in the U.S.

In 1960, an estimated 4,000 people were over 100 years old in the U.S. By 1995 the number had jumped to : 55,000.

The risk for developing malignant melanoma has increased 1,800% in the US since 1930. The cancer now claims a life every hour.

Number of men who have undergone hair transplants: one in 547.

A cash-for-rats campaign has seen the rodent population in Vietnam decline by eight million in the past six months. The governnment instituted the program to safeguard crops. [Reuter]