Trivia
By way of J. Vernon Thomason, original source unknown.
Please let me know if any of these are wrong.
- A rat can last longer without water than a camel.
- Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks or it will digest itself.
- The dot over the letter "i" is called a tittle.
- A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continuously from the bottom of the glass to the top.
- A female ferret will die if it goes into heat and cannot find a mate.
- A duck's quack doesn't echo. No one knows why.
- A 2 X 4 is really 1-1/2" by 3-1/2".
- During the chariot scene in "Ben Hur," a small red car can be seen in the distance (and Heston's wearing a watch).
- On average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily! (That explains a few mysteries... .)
- Donald Duck comics were banned from Finland because he doesn't wear pants.
- Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made of wood.
- The number of possible ways of playing the first four moves per side in a game of chess is 318,979,564, 000.
- There are no words in the dictionary that rhyme with orange, purple and silver.
- The name Wendy was made up for the book Peter Pan. There was never a recorded Wendy before.
- The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin in World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.
- If one places a tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death. (Who was the sadist who discovered this??)
- Bruce Lee was so fast that they actually had to s-l-o-w film down so you could see his moves. That's the opposite of the norm.
- The first CD pressed in the US was Bruce Springsteen' s "Born in the USA."
- The original name for butterfly was flutterby.
- The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from an old English law which stated that you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.
- The first product Motorola started to develop was a record player for automobiles. At that time, the most known player on the market was Victrola, so they called themselves Motorola.
- Roses may be red, but violets are indeed violet.
- By raising your legs slowly and lying on your back, you cannot sink into quicksand.
- Celery has negative calories. It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with.
- Charlie Chaplin once won third prize in a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest.
- Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.
- Sherlock Holmes NEVER said, "Elementary, my dear Watson."
- An old law in Bellingham, Washington, made it illegal for a woman to take more than three steps backwards while dancing!
- The glue on Israeli postage is certified kosher.
- The Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from public libraries.
- Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a spacesuit damages them.
- Bats always turn left when exiting a cave!
Another set, same source
- A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.
- A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.
- A crocodile cannot stick out its tongue.
- A dragonfly has a life span of 24 hours.
- A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.
- A "jiffy" is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
- A snail can sleep for three years.
- A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.
- Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer.
- All 50 states are listed across the top of the Lincoln Memorial on the back of the $5 bill.
- Almonds are a member of the peach family.
- An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
- Babies are born without kneecaps. They don't appear until the child reaches 2 to 6 years of age.
- Butterflies taste with their feet.
- Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds. Dogs only have about 10.
- "Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt".
- February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have had a full moon.
- In the last 4,000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.
- If the population of China walked past you, in single file, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction.
- If you are an average American, in your whole life, you will spend an average of 6 months waiting at red lights.
- It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
- Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.
- Maine is the only state whose name is just one syllable.
- No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, or purple.
- On a Canadian two dollar bill, the flag flying over the Parliament building is an American flag.
- Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.
- Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.
- Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.
- "Stewardesses" is the longest word typed with only the left hand and "lollipop" with your right.
- The average person's left hand does 56% of the typing.
- The cruise liner, QE2, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.
- The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.
- The sentence: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" uses every letter of the alphabet.
- The winter of 1932 was so cold that Niagara Falls froze completely solid.
- The words 'racecar,' 'kayak' and 'level' are the same whether they are read left to right or right to left (palindromes).
- There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.
- There are more chickens than people in the world.
- There are only four words in the English language which end in "dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.
- There are two words in the English language that have all five vowels in order: "abstemious" and "facetious."
- There's no Betty Rubble in the Flintstones Chewables Vitamins.
- Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.
- TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard.
- Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance.
- Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
- Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks; otherwise it will digest itself.