Strange Facts

Zane · May 12, 2001

I'm not sure how much of these are true, but its fun to read them!

Strange Facts

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*Hummingbirds can't walk.

*The dunce cap of schoolhouse fame originates from a paper cone that

was placed on the heads of accused witches during the Middle Ages. When

Joan of Arc was martyred, she was wearing one of them.

*Despite the hump, a camel's spine is straight.

*"Rhythm" and "syzygy" are the longest English words without vowels.

*The largest eggs in the world are laid by a shark.

*Jacques Cousteau invented scuba gear while in the French resistance

during World War II.

*More people are killed each year from bees than from snakes.

*A rat can last longer without water than a camel.

*There are more nutrients in the cornflake package itself than there

are in the actual cornflakes.

*Peanuts are used in the production of dynamite.

*The bubbles in Guinness Beer sink to the bottom rather than float to

the top like all other beers. No one knows why.

*Soda water does not contain soda.

*A female ferret will die if it goes into heat and cannot find a

mate.

*The lifespan of a tastebud is ten days.

*Crocodiles swallow stones to help them dive deeper.

*When opossums are playing possum, they are not "playing." They

actually pass out from sheer terror.

*Liquid paper was invented by Mike Nesmith's (of the Monkees) mother,

Bette Nesmith Graham, in 1951.

*The turkey was wrongly named after what was thought to be it's

country of origin.

*More money is printed daily for the Monopoly game than by the U.S.

Treasury.

*There is a city called Rome on every continent.

*Flying from London to New York by Concord, due to the time zones

crossed, you can arrive 2 hours before you leave.

*The names of the three wise monkeys are: Mizaru: See no evil,

Mikazaru: Hear no evil, and Mazaru: Speak no evil.

*There are no rivers in Saudi Arabia.

*Anteaters prefer termites to ants.

*Nine pennies weigh exactly one ounce.

*Every Swiss citizen is required by law to have a bomb shelter or

access to a bomb shelter.

*It takes 8.5 minutes for light to get from the sun to earth.

*Spain literally means 'the land of rabbits.'

*Earth is the only planet not named after a God.

*If you put a raisin in a glass of champagne, it will keep floating

to the top and sinking to the bottom.

*Non-dairy creamer is flammable.

*Snails can sleep for 3 years without eating.

*The car in the foreground on the back of a ? bill is a 1925

Huptmobile.

*In the Andes, time is often measured by how long it takes to smoke a

cigarette.

*A species of earthworm in Australia grows up to 10 feet in length.

*Dr. Seuss and Kurt Vonnegut went to college together. They were even

in the same fraternity, where Seuss decorated the fraternity house walls

with drawings of his characters.

*Turkey's often look up at the sky during a rainstorm. Unfortunately

some have been known to drown as a result.

*The bat on the Bacardi symbol is there because the soil where the

sugar cane grows is fertile from the excessive guano (bat droppings.)

*Catgut comes from sheep not cats.

*A lion's roar can be heard from five miles away.

*Due to gravitational effects, you weigh slightly less when the moon

is directly overhead.

*If you can see a rainbow you must have your back to the sun. If you

don't, you can't see it.

*St. Bernards, famous for their role as alpine rescue dogs, do NOT

wear casks of brandy around their necks.

*It's rumored that sucking on a copper penny will cause a

breath-alyzer to read 0.

*There are only three cities that are named exactly after the state

they are located in: Maine, ME; New York, NY; and Wyoming, WY.

*The launching mechanism of a carrier ship that helps planes to take

off could throw a pickup truck over a mile.

*Only female mosquitoes bite.

*A duck's quack doesn't echo. No one knows why.

*The placement of a donkey's eyes in its' heads enables it to see all

four feet at all times.

*There is about 200 times more gold in the worlds oceans, than has

been mined in our entire history.

By raising your legs slowly and laying on your back, you can't sink

in quicksand.

*The "save" icon on Microsoft Word shows a floppy disk, with the

shutter on backwards.

*Blonde beards grow faster than darker beards.

*From the age of thirty, humans gradually begin to shrink in size.

*Roosters can't crow if they can't fully extend their necks.

*Human hair and fingernails do not continue to grow after death.

*The fingerprints of koala bears are virtually indistinguishable from

those of humans, so much so that they could be confused at a crime scene.

*The Nobel Prize resulted from a late change in the will of Alfred

Nobel, who did not want to be remembered after his death as a propagator

of violence - he invented dynamite.

*Months that begin on a Sunday will always have a "Friday the 13th."

*Pogonophobia is the fear of beards.

*Oak trees do not have acorns until they are fifty years old or

older.

*No animal, once frozen solid (i.e., water solidifies and turns to

ice) survives when thawed, because the ice crystals formed inside cells

would break open the cell membranes. However there are certain frogs that

can survive the experience of being frozen. These frogs make special

proteins which prevent the formation of ice (or at least keep the

crystals from becoming very large), so that they actually never freeze

even though their body temperature is below zero Celsius. The water in

them remains liquid: a phenomenon known as 'supercooling.' If you

disturb one of these frogs (just touching them even), the water in

them quickly freezes solid and they die.

*It is illegal to be a prostitute in Siena,Italy, if your name is

Mary.

*The United States government keeps its supply of silver at the U.S.

Military Academy at West Point, NY.

*Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about

ten.

*Most Americans' car horns beep in the key of F.

*Soweto in South Africa was derived from SOuth WEst TOwnship.

*Other than humans, black lemurs are the only primates that have blue

eyes.

*There were no squirrels on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts until

1989.

*Blueberry Jelly Bellies were created especially for Ronald Reagan.

*While at Harvard University, Edward Kennedy was suspended for

cheating on a Spanish exam.

*Barbie's full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts.

*Montpelier, Vermont is the only U.S. state capital without a

McDonalds.

*The correct response to the Irish greeting, "Top of the morning to

you," is "and the rest of the day to yourself."

*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.

*Residents of the island of Lesbos are Lesbosians, rather than

Lesbians. (Of course, lesbians are called lesbians because Sappho was

from Lesbos.)

*The Chinese ideogram for 'trouble' depicts two women living under

one roof'.

*It is a criminal offence to drive around in a dirty car in Russia.

*The cruise liner, Queen Elizabeth 2, moves only six inches for each

gallon of diesel that it burns.

*Woodward Avenue in Detroit, Michigan carries the designation M-1,

named so because it was the first paved road anywhere.

*Some Eskimos have been known to use refrigerators to keep their food

from freezing.

*Ralph Lauren's original name was Ralph Lif****z.

*Cat urine glows under a blacklight.

*On the new one hundred dollar bill the time on the clock tower of

Independence Hall is 4:10.

*The first product Motorola started to develop was a record player

for automobiles. At that time the most known player on the market was the

Victrola, so they called themselves Motorola.

*Women blink nearly twice as much as men.

*Hindu men believe(d) it to be unluckily to marry a third time. They

could avoid misfortune by marrying a tree first. The tree (his third

wife) was then burnt, freeing him to marry again.

*The province of Alberta in Canada has been completely free of rats

since 1905.

*A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.

*There are no clocks in Las Vegas casinos.

*Chop-suey is not a native Chinese dish, it was created in California

by Chinese immigrants.

*A dragonfly has a lifespan of twenty-four hours.

*A ten-gallon hat holds three-quarters of a gallon.

*On an American one-dollar bill, there is an owl in the upper

left-hand corner of the "1" encased in the "shield" and a spider hidden

in the front upper right-hand corner.

*It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

*"Evian" (the bottled water) spelled backwards is "naive."

*Bingo is the name of the dog on the Cracker Jack box.

*There are four cars and eleven lightposts on the back of a

ten-dollar bill.

*The numbers '172' can be found on the back of the U.S. ? dollar

bill in the bushes at the base of the Lincoln Memorial.

*If you are locked in a completely sealed room, you will die of

carbon dioxide poisoning before you will die of oxygen deprivation.

*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

May 12, 2001

Hey, that's some pretty neat stuff.

I won't sit here and argue about most of them. One, though, shows that the author of this was not much of a drinker.

The bubbles in Guinness beer do sink. However this is not "unlike all other beers". Many "stout" beers(it is actually just called Guiness Stout, not Guiness Beer) are pressurised by nitrogen, not CO2 as are most beers. The "sinking bubbles" or "cascading effect" as it is commonly called is due to the natural carbonation of the beer carrying the heavier nitrogen to the top of the glass and the nitrogen falling to the bottom. This seemingly never-ending process slows as the nitrogen id eventually released into the surrounding air.

Many "stouts" do this; Guiness, Murphy's, John Smith's, those are the only ones I can think of right now.

Drink more beer!

Frank S · May 12, 2001

It looks like someone had a little too much time on his hands tonight.

BTW,I really don't expect anyone to believe this but I can keep my eyes open when I sneeze.

May 12, 2001

Never tried. My eyeballs might just blow right the #### out and that would just be a mess.

I'd have to lay this chair all the way back to see the screen.

Now wait a minute...hmmm, lay back and see the screen... ACHOO!!!!!

Nope; tis sucks;ebrtind is hard to cee wud the colord runnin alloker teplaz Xajn't type werty shyt etyr. I;mgoon to bed.

General Lee 01 · May 12, 2001

I've got a strange, spooky fact for you guys too.

*In the movie, "The Wizzard of Oz", right after the scene where the Wicked Witch throws Fireballs at the Scarecrow from a Rooftop, When they go skipping "We're of to see the wizzard, the wonderful Wizzard of OZ". If you look ahead in the direction that they're skipping, you'll notice a figure that looks like it "dips". (it looks like an ostredge bowing down, peckeing at the ground, then plops back up". It's believed that the image is a stage-helper who hanged himfself and they say the "motion" is him hanging himself.

May 12, 2001

In the movie "Three men and a Baby", there are three scenes that take place in the living room that are weird. In the first, you can see a shot gun standingup in the middle of the room. In the next two, there is a boy standing up against the wall. Supposedly, this 10 year ols kid killed himself on this set some time ago.....

OOOOOOOHHHHHH, Creeeeeeeppppppyyyyyy, heheheheheheh

76BBSub · May 12, 2001

Fascinating.

Quite fascinating.

Jpshostr · May 13, 2001

Per every 1000 participants, more people are seriously hurt or killed playing ping pong than people hunting.

May 13, 2001

Quote: from Jpshostr on 11:28 pm on May 12, 2001
Per every 1000 participants, more people are seriously hurt or killed playing ping pong than people hunting.

I remember reading that!