I have searched high and low, over and under to compile some totally useless facts that someone somewhere might actually find useful. They are scattered everywhere and I have to use my trusty lenses to scope them out and compile them into one truly useless post. Enjoy, there might be more to come.
- If you lined up all the slinkies ever made in a row they could wrap around the Earth 126 times.
- In medieval Japan, dentists extracted teeth with their hands.
- Technically speaking, a female "dude" is known as a "dudine."
- Belgians have tried to deliver mail using cats. It didn't work.
- In ancient Egypt, pillows were made of stone.
- In the middle ages chicken soup was considered an aphrodisiac.
- Ancient Rome had a rent-a-chariot business.
- In snow skiing, most men fall on their faces while most women fall on their behinds.
- Ropesville, Lariat, and Loop are all towns in Texas.
- The average cat has 24 whiskers.
- Fort Worth Texas was never a fort.
- There are more telephones than people in Washington D.C.
- The Oval Office is only 22 feet long.
- When astronomer Tycho Brahe lost the tip of his nose in a duel he replaced it with a gold one.
- The fish reel was invented around 300 A.D.
- Grocery shoppers spend an average of 8 minutes waiting in line at the supermarket.
- The average cost of a movie ticket in 1940 was 24 cents.
- If you are standing on a mountain top and the conditions are just right you can see a lit match from 50 miles away.
- There are 68,000 miles of phone line in the Pentagon.
- When the golf ball was introduced in 1848, it was called a “gutta-percha.”
- The average car in Japan is driven 4,400 miles per year, in the U.S. its 9,500 miles per year.
- The gnomon is the thing that casts the shadow on a sundial.
- The oldest person to ever be issued a driver's license in the U.S. was 109.
- The Statue of Liberty's fingernails weigh about 100 pounds apiece.
- A rouleau is another name of coins wrapped in a roll of paper.
- A single pair of Elvis' underpants has an estimated value of $1,300.
- In the 13th century, Europeans baptized children with beer.
- The typewriter was invented before the fountain pen.
- Before Prohibition, the most common form of drinking beer at home was drinking it out of a bucket filled at a local pub or brewery.
- The U.S. has never lost a war in which mules were used.
- Louis XIV owned 413 beds.
- If you were to count off 1 billion seconds it would take you 31.7 years.
- The Pentagon spent $50 million on Viagra for American troops and retirees in 1999.
- Each year, Americans use enough foam peanuts to fill ten 85-story buildings.
- The parents of the groom pay for the weddings in Thailand.
- Alaska is the state with the highest percentage of people who walk to work.
- The London Zoo employs an "entertainment director" for the animals.
- Blue neckties sell best, red ones sell second best.
- Top 4 high school hazing sports: swimming, diving, soccer, lacrosse.
- It is said the average person speaks only 10 minutes a day.
- The U.S. Postal Service owns 176,000 cars and trucks, the largest civilian vehicle fleet on earth.
- It is legal for the dead to vote if they die after they mail out their absentee ballot.
- In Venice, Venetian blinds are known as "Persian Blinds."
- Benjamin Franklin gave guitar lessons.
- When medieval Europeans burned witches, their families had to pay for the firewood.
- The two steps at the top and the two at the bottom are the four most dangerous steps in a stair case.
- French and African marigolds both come from North America.
- India has an estimated 550 million voters.
- It is illegal to water a garden in the rain in Montreal Canada.
- Minnesota has 99 lakes named mud lake.
- Adolph Hitler had his own private 15 car train named Amerika.
- You can lose your driver's license in Athens, Greece for being "poorly dressed" or "unbathed."
- Adults have, on average, 2 gallons of air in the space between their skin and their cloths.
- An exocannibal is a cannibal that eats only enemies and an indocannibal eats only friends.
- Al Capone's older brother Vince was a policeman in Nebraska.
- When the ancient Greeks played cards, aces were known as "dogs."
- The most used expression of any language is "OK."
- The average computer worker types 90,000 keystrokes in an 8-hour work shift.
- About 21,000 commercial airline flights are scheduled daily in the U.S. with only about 5,000 planes available to fly them.
- When Shakespeare moved to his new home, he named it "New Home".
- There is no ice covering Iceland.
- The electric chair was invented by a dentist.
- Oregon has the most ghost towns of any other state.
- Wyoming Valley is so difficult to find because it is in Pennsylvania.
- The sun is visible 24 hours a day during the summer months in Reykjavik, Iceland.
- The busiest stretch of highway in the U.S. is New York's George Washington Bridge.
- The first golf rule booklet was published in Scotland in 1754.
- The highest denomination ever minted by the U.S. Treasury was the $100,000 bill, the lowest was the 5 cent bill.
- Quotation marks have only been around for about 300 years, they're the youngest punctuation marks in the English language.
- India imported ice harvested from ponds in the U.S. in the 19th century.
- Warsaw is the city with the largest Polish population on earth, Chicago has the second largest.
- In the 1820's, a temperance movement tried to ban coffee and nearly succeeded.
- In 1912, the Archbishop of Paris declared dancing the tango a sin.
- Another word for volleyball is minonette.
- There are 118 groves etched into U.S. dimes, 119 in quarters.
- In the 1500's England's Queen Elizabeth I outlawed wife beating after 10 p.m.
- Freud charged the equivalent of $8.10 per hour for his therapy lessons.
- Christopher Columbus's fee for "discovering" America was about $300.
- A person sneezing was the first thing Thomas Edison filmed with his movie camera.
- A champagne cork can travel as fast as 100 mph when it is popped.
- The "five golden rings" in the Twelve Days of Christmas weren't originally rings, they were ringed necked pheasants.
- Elvis was nearsighted and owned $60,000 worth of prescription sunglasses when he died.
- It isn’t a "big band" unless it has 14 different instruments.
- The most popular T.V. show in Venezuela is the "Miss Venezuela Pageant."
- None of the characters in Shakespeare’s plays smoke.
- If you refrigerate your rubber bands, they last longer.
- Police are sometimes called the "fuzz" because London police used to wear fuzzy helmets.
- There are more than 5,500 islands in the British Isles.
- The oldest vehicle in human history is a floating log.
- Saunas outnumber cars in Finland.
- Oklahoma is the U.S. state with the highest population of Native Americans. It has no Indian Reservations.
- If an entire family is overweight, the odds are the dog is too.
- A gozzard is a person who owns geese.
- Plants can suffer from jet lag.
- Spain’s Queen Isabella bathed only twice in her entire lifetime.
- The word "gullible" is not in the dictionary.
- The longest one syllable word in the English language is "screeched."
- A straightened coat hangar is 44 inches long.
- September 20th is "Love your teeth day" in China.
- The ice cream cone was originally a way to hold flowers, not ice cream.
- There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.
- In ancient times, Iron cost more than gold.
- Mel Blanc, who played the voice of Bugs Bunny, was allergic to carrots.
- Leather has enough nutritional value to sustain life for a short time. Charlie Brown's father was a barber.
- Parker Brothers prints roughly 50 billion dollars worth of Monopoly money each year.
- On average, there are 333 squares of toilet paper on each roll.
- The "Mexican Hat Dance" is the official dance of Mexico.
- Being unmarried can shorten a man's life by ten years.
- Onland fired usually move quicker uphill than downhill.
- In 2002, the most popular boat name in the U.S. was Liberty.
- American car horns beep to the tone of F.
- 1 in every 4 Americans has appeared on T.V.
- More money is spent on gardening than any other hobby.
- A rat can last longer without water than a camel.
- Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks or it will digest itself.
- The dot over the letter "i" is called a tittle.
- A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continuously from the bottom of the glass to the top.
- A female ferret will die if it goes into heat and cannot find a mate.
- Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.
- A 2 X 4 is really 1-1/2" by 3-1/2".
- During the chariot scene in "Ben Hur," a small red car can be seen in the distance (and Heston's wearing a watch).
- On average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily!
- (That explains a few mysteries....)
- Sherlock Holmes NEVER said, "Elementary, my dear Watson."
- Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made of wood.
- The number of possible ways of playing the first four moves per side in a game of chess is 318,979,564,000.
- There are no words in the dictionary that rhyme with orange, purple and silver.
- Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a spacesuit damages them.
- The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin in World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.
- Weatherman Willard Scott was the first Ronald McDonald.
- If one places a tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death. (Who was the sadist who discovered this??)
- Bruce Lee was so fast that they actually had to s-l-o-w film down so you could see his moves. That's the opposite of the norm.
- The first CD pressed in the US was Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA."
- The original name for butterfly was flutterby.
- The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from an old English law which stated that you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.
- The first product Motorola started to develop was a record player for automobiles. At that time, the most known player on the market was Victrola, so they called themselves Motorola.
- Roses may be red, but violets are indeed violet.
- By raising your legs slowly and lying on your back, you cannot sink into quicksand.
- Celery has negative calories. It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with.
- Charlie Chaplin once won third prize in a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest.
- An old law in Bellingham, Washington, made it illegal for a woman to take more than three steps backwards while dancing!
- The Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from public libraries.
- The glue on Israeli postage is certified kosher.
- Bats always turn left when exiting a cave!
- In the 1400's a law was set forth that a man was not allowed to beat his wife with a stick no thicker than his thumb. Hence we have "the rule of thumb"
- The first couple to be shown in bed together on prime time TV was Fred and Wilma Flintstone.
- Men can read smaller print then women can; women can hear better.
- It is impossible to lick your elbow.
- The State with the highest percentage of people who walk to work: Alaska
- The average number of people airborne over the US any given hour: 61,000
- Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.
- The first novel ever written on a typewriter: Tom Sawyer.
- The San Francisco Cable cars are the only mobile National Monuments.
- 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321
- Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history:
- Spades - King David
- Hearts - Charlemagne
- Clubs -Alexander, the Great
- Diamonds - Julius Caesar
- 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.
- In Shakespeare's time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes. When you pulled on the ropes the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on. Hence the phrase......... "goodnight, sleep tight."
- It was the accepted practice in Babylon 4,000 years ago that for a month after the wedding, the bride'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 was called the honey month, which we know today as the "honeymoon".
- In English pubs, ale is ordered by pints and quarts... So in old England, when customers got unruly, the bartender would yell at them, "Mind your pints and quarts, and settle down."
- It's where we get the phrase "mind your P's and Q's"
- Many years ago in England, pub frequenters had a whistle baked into the rim, or handle, of their ceramic cups. When they needed a refill, they used the whistle to get some service. "Wet your whistle" is the phrase inspired by this practice.
