A N I M A L F A C T S
An ostrich's eye is bigger than it's brain. (This applies to most of my friends, as well.)
A whale's penis is called a dork.
Armadillos have four babies at a time and they are always all the same sex.
Reindeer like to eat bananas.
The longest recorded flight of a chicken is thirteen seconds.
You can only eat "like a horse" if you put away 15 lbs. of hay, and 9 lbs. of grain daily.
A pig's orgasm lasts for 30 minutes.
A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.
If NASA sent birds into space they would soon die; they need gravity to swallow.
The Sanskrit word for "war" means "desire for more cows".
Most lipsticks contain fish scales.
C L O T H I N G F A C T S
A cumberbun is to be worn with the pleats pointing up. Supposely this is effective for catching crumbs at dinner.
Angora wool comes from rabbits, not sheep.
Which was invented first, outerwear or underwear? first, outer wear was underwear.
E N G L I S H L A N G U A G E F A C T S
Most commonly used letter in our alphabet is E; least used is Q..most commonly used word is THE .
There are just 2 words in the English language that contain all the vowels in their regular order: facetiously & abstemiously.
The 3 most common languages in the world are: English, Spanish, and SIGN !
Can you come up with any words that contain 3 consecutive letters in alphabetical order? Crabcake, deft, hijack, first.
There is no word in that rhymes with orange, silver, purple, or month.
The word "set" has the most definitions.
I AM, is the shortest complete sentence.
Skiing is the only word with double i.
Dreamt is the only word that ends in "mt".
The names of all continents end with the same letter that they start with.
The first letters of the months July through November, in order, spell JASON.
Try to say the alphabet without moving your lips or your tongue- every letter will sound exactly the same !
Stewardesses is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand.
There is a 7- letter word that contains 10 words without rearranging any of its letters: THEREIN: the, there, he, in, rein, her, here, ere, herein, therein
You would have to count to 1,000 to use the letter "a" to spell a whole number.
The longest word: pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (supposedly name of lung disease- but dictionary editors describe the word as made up).
WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PARAGRAPH?
It looks so ordinary that you'd think nothing was wrong with it at all, and in fact nothing is. But it is unusual, why? If you study it and think about it, you may find out, but you must do it without coaching. If you work at it long, its curio sity in it will dawn on you.(There's no E in it).
F O O D F A C T S
There is no such things as naturally blue food; even blueberries are purple.
Apples are more efficient than caffeine in keeping people awake in the morning.
A watermelon is actually a berry.
No two corn flakes look the same.
Vanilla is used to make chocolate.
The average ear of corn has about 800 kernels arranged in even rows (16).
Lemons have more sugar in them than strawberries.
It takes about 4 pounds of grapes to produce a single pound of raisins.
Honey is the only natural food that is made without destroying any kind of life.
Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intraveneously.
Cherries taste great, but if you eat the leaves or twigs of a cherry tree, you could die.
M & M's candy stands for the initials of the inventors (Mars & Murrie).
The annual harvest of an entire coffee tree is required to make 1 pound of ground coffee.
A banana is about 75% water. They grow on a rhizome, not a tree. You are more likely to be a target for mosquitoes if you consume bananas.
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 meat & milk intake.
Hershey Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it is kissing the conveyor belt.
Raw cashews are edible, but the "cashew apple" is poisonous. The reason you can't buy cashews in the shell is because they grow on the "outside" of the cashew apple- the only: seed in the world which grows on the outside of its fruit.
Eating 8 oz. of potato chips is like eating an 8 oz. potato with 12-20 tsp of vegetable oil added to it.
Celery has the unusual effect that the more you eat, the skinnier you become. It takes more energy to eat celery than the calories it contains.
It takes about 548 peanuts to make a 12oz. jar peanut butter. A peanut contains 26% protein- a higher percentage than in eggs, dairy products, and many cuts of meat & fish contains no cholesterol.
G E O G R A P H Y F A C T S
The Dutch town of Abcoude is the only reasonably sized town/city in the world that begins with ABC.
Chile- a country with the world's driest desert, the coldest ice fields, and the longest mountain chain.
Warmest ocean water on earth is in the Persian Gulf, averages 85- 96F.
New Zealand is the only country in the world that contains every type of climate.
Netherlands, most densely populated country in the world, followed by Belgium, then Japan.
The only continent with no active volcanoes is Australia.
PERTH (Australia)- the most isolated city on the planet..200 miles across impenetrable desert from the next city of any size.
It is too cold to ice skate in Antartica; even under your own weight, the ice won't melt long enough to let the blades slip.
9/10 of the earth's snow & ice is there, and is larger than the U.S.
Alaska is the northernmost, westernmost, and easternmost state in the U.S. It is easternmost because the Aluetian Islands extend past the 180 degree line of longtitude, putting them in the Eastern hemisphere.
The ice at the South Pole is about 2 miles deep.
The U.S.time zones include Alaska, Hawaii-Aluetian, & Samoa.
Not counting Hawaii, which state is mostly surrounded by water? N.J.
Key West is closer to Havana than to Miami.
The southernmost city in the U.S. is Na’alehu, Hawaii.
There is a Springfield in every state in the U.S.
The Grand Canyon will hold about 900 trillion footballs.
Niagara Falls could fill 4,000 bathtubs in one second.
Main ranks #32 on the list of most numerous street names in America. Park is # 1.
The narrowest street in the U.S. is said to be Treasury St. in St. Augustine, Fla. An average man can span it with outstretched arms.
You can figure out which way is south, if you are near a tree stump; the growth rings are wider on the south side.
Vines in the Northern Hemisphere grow counter-clockwise, just as water going down a drain; and for the same reason (the Coriolis effect)
H I S T O R Y F A C T S
Turn of the century...Jan 1, 2001-- Our calendar year began with the year 1 (no year 0); so the second century didn't really begin until Jan 1, 101.
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.
Dr. Samuel Mudd was the physician who set the leg of Booth (Lincoln's assassin), and whose shame created the expression of ignominy- "his name is Mudd".
The telephone was 51 years old before one was installed on the desk of the President of the U.S.
No U.S. President has ever had a key to the White House front door.
Dec 7, 1941 was also the morning Nazi's at Kulmhof death camp in Poland, gassed the first group of the Holocaust's 6 million martyred.
Armored knights raised their visors to identify themselves when they rode past their king. This custom has become the modern military salute.
Charles Lindberg took only four sandwiches with him on his famous transatlantic flight.
If you see a statue of a person on a horse in the park, and the 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. (Tom's note: If the horse is standing on the person, the person died because his horse did not like him.)
The "Battle Hymn of the Republic", "Yankee Doodle", "America" and "Hail to the Chief", 4 of America's most patriotic melodies, all were written by Europeans.
H U M A N B O D Y F A C T S
The distance between the E Y E S typically is equal to the width of the eye.
Each of the more than 200 lashes on each eye is shed every 3-5 months.
The human eye perceives green more quickly than red. Vision experts say red for danger, and green for safety is exactly the wrong way around.
The only part of the body that has no blood supply is the cornea in the eye. It takes in oxygen directly from the air.
Everyday, blinking causes the eye to be closed for about 1/2 hour.
Figure the length of your F O O T is about 15% of your height..."Rule of thumb" says the length of your foot is about the distance from the elbow to your wrist (forearm).
Nobody ever gets poison ivy on the soles of their feet.
An athelete should remember to blow dry your toes to prevent athlete's foot; or it is said you can ward it off with underarm antiperspirant on your feet.
Your fingernails grow 4 times faster than your toenails...
The human foot has 26 bones: 7 in ankle, 5 in instep, 14 in toes.
The skin on the sole of your feet is about 40X thicker than any other skin on your body.
When you run, the pounding on your feet is 3 - 4 times your body weight.
Your H A I R is about as strong as aluminum.. which grow about 1 / 72" per day, or 1/2" per month. The rate & thickness of growth is unaffected by cutting. In an average lifetime it will grow 25 ft. Between 50-60 a day are shed (which increase s in spring & fall). Human body will produce about 350 miles of hair in a lifetime.
Your HEART doesn't "skip a beat" exactly; What it does sometimes is pulse prematurely with a minibeat you can't even feel; then makes up for it with a bigger beat which gets your attention. On average, it beats 35 million times per year. Wome n's hearts beat faster than men's.
Your B R A I N is 80% water; weighs up to 3 lbs.
Your blood actually is less fluid (or more solid) than your brain.
1/3 of your brain deals with what you see.
Your brain uses 25% of all the oxygen that your breathe.
It can hold the same amount of information as 500 sets of encyclopedias.
If you unfolded your brain, it would cover an ironing board.
If you could harness the power used by your brain, it could power a 10-watt light bulb.
Nerve impulses from the brain travfel as fast as 170 mph.
The brain receives about 9 gallons of blood every hour.
The brain is immune to pain! Any pain from injury, illness or whatever, is perceived by the brain. It has no receptor cells (like we have in other parts of our bodies) that sense pain. There are a lot of surgical procedures that are carried ou t on the brain whilst the patient is awake- the skull & surrounding tissue is numbed by anaesthetic; after this a patient feels no pain.
8% of people in the world have an extra rib.
Your mouth produces up to 1.5 quarts (2 drinking glasses) of saliva each day.
Just like fingerprints, no 2 lip prints or tongue prints are alike.
You have 5 spines: cervical (neck) thoracic (where ribs attach) lumbar (lower back) sacral (pelvic) coccyx (tail bone).
D I M P L E : a point where the skin is attached to the muscle under it.
Your body if normal, makes its own alcohol; about 1 oz. each day.
The amount of blood within your body is essentially constant, about 7% of your body weight. You get a whole new bloodstream every 3 months. With one heartbeat, about 5 tlbsp of blood is pumped..each day more than 2,000 gallons.
The human skeleton weighs about 20 pounds on the average.
On average, the human head weighs 10 pounds.
Your digestive tract is 30 feet long.
cerumin impaction - ear wax.
It takes 17 muscles to smile, and 43 to frown (every 2,000 frowns is worth 1 wrinkle), 72 muscles to speak one word.
Your most active muscles are in your eye.
The most powerful muscle in your body is the jaw muscle.
Your body has over 40 miles of nerves.
The "funny-bone" is not a bone-- it is a nerve in the elbow.
Human bones are stronger than concrete.
The average person is about 1/4 inch taller at night.
Heavy beer drinkers hardly ever get diarrhea because bacteria causes diarrhea; beer makes stomach acid which kills bacteria.
Your stomach produces a new layer of mucus every 2 weeks; otherwise it will digest itself. Every 3 days, your body makes a new lining for your stomach.
The liver has over 500 functions; including stores vitamins and removing harmful chemicals from the blood. Even if up to 80% of it is removed, the liver will continue to function, and will grow again to its original size.
Between the time of death and the onset of rigor mortis in a body, the contraction of muscles can cause the body to turn over on its side.
During a 24 hr period, the average human will breathe 23,040 times, exercise 7 million brain cells, speak 4800 words.
By day 23, an embryo has the making of a heart, brain & spinal cord. A human fetus acquires fingerprints at the age of 3 months.
Your spinal cord, if typical is 1/2 inch thick.
Most sensitive finger- forefinger. There are an estimated 50,000 nerve endings per sq. inch in your fingertips.
The small intestine is 22 ft long.
Skin is thickest at the back..1/6 inch..Human skin sheds continually, and the outer layer of skin is entirely replaced every 28 days.
A sneeze comes out your mouth & nose at almost 100 mph.
Your left lung is smaller than your right lung- to make room for your heart.
You grow about 1/4 inch at night when asleep.
M O N E Y F A C T S
There are 118 ridges on the outside of a dime.
If you have 3 quarters, 4 dimes, 4 pennies, you have $1.19. You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar.
There are eight "1"s, and seven "one's" on a $1 bill (not counting the serial numbers).
If you toss a penny 10,000 times, it will not be heads 5000 times, but more like 4950; the heads picture weighs more, so it ends up on the bottom.
The face of a penny can hold 30 drops of water.
You would have to fold a piece of American currency back & forth about 4,000 times before it would easily tear.
S P A C E / S C I E N C E F A C T S
Just 20 seconds of fuel remained when Apollo11's lunar module landed on the moon.
If you could drive to the sun at 55 mph- it would take about 193 years. One square inch of the sun's surface shines with the intensity of 300,000 candles.
Astronauts in the space shuttle are weightless not because there is no gravity in space, but because they are in free fall around the Earth.
"What goes up must come down", so it was once said. Not true. Space age science teaches that anything on earth that goes up faster than about 6.82 miles per second doesn't come down, just keeps on going.
If you are locked in a completely sealed room, you will die of carbon dioxide poisoning first, before you will die of oxygen.
The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube, and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.
A handheld sparkler burns at a temp of 1800F.
Moisture, not air, causes super-glue to dry.
A knot is 1 nautical mph; or 1.15 statute mph.
As you sip soda through a straw; it is not your suction but the weight of the air outside the straw that pumps the soda into your mouth.
Diamonds are flammable.
S P O R T S F A C T S
The home team must provide the referee with 24 footballs for each NFL game.
All that rubber thread wound into a golf ball will stretch just about as far as a golfer might drive the ball off the tee- 285 yards.
When a golf ball is kept in the freezer until its core gets extremely cold, it loses resilences, and won't fly nearly as far as a normal ball, not even after its cover warms up to the touch. (sometimes used by practical jokers & cheats).
Researcher's say they have proven scientifically, that Nolan Ryan's fastest fast ball, was a fraction faster than the blast velocity of the fastest sneeze on record.
W E A T H E R F A C T S
Flood, hurricane, tornado, earthquake, ice storms- have not been the disaster that has killed most people, it's fog!
The natural phenomena that has killed more people is heat waves.
Reconsider dust..No dust, no clouds; No clouds, no rain!
No lightning bolt is straight. A typical bolt is only 2-4 inches wide, but 2 miles long. The downward flow of energy can reach 100 million volts, followed by a reverse flow at half the speed of light, measuring 10,000 amperes- all in split seconds . The return stroke is what we perceive as a flash of intense white light. For every slow count of 5 between seeing the flash, and hearing the bang, you are 1 mile from the lightning’s point of contact.
It generates temperatures 5,000 times hotter than those found at the sun's surface. It travels at speeds of up to 72 million mph.
Sleet is different from hail. It occurs in winter precipitation situations; thunderstorms produce hail.
The energy given off by a hurricane in a day would power the entire U.S. for 3 years.
When the weather begins to grow hotter, ants walk faster. They head for higher ground when a storm is coming.
Wind- flows horizontally, draft- flows vertically.
For a snowstorm to become a blizzard, the temperature must drop to 10 degrees or lower, and the wind must be blowing at least 32mph or faster. In addition, snow should be falling with such intensity that you can't see more than 500 ft. Even a bl izzard, though, probably leaves a lot less water than a serious rainstorm. That's because snowflakes have a lot of air in them. In fact, you need about 10" of snow to create the amount of water found in an inch of rain.
Rain contains vitamin B12...The average raindrop reaches a top speed of 22 mph.
The temperature in eastern Siberia can get so cold that the moisture in a person's breath can freeze in the air, and fall to the ground.
M I S C E L L A N E O U S F A C T S
Letter parties: If a host threw an "H" party; everything placed & eaten had to begin with H. (ham, hot dogs, hamburger, harmonica, Hide & Seek).
Many fisherman pad the undersides of their tackle boxes, knowing fish can hear anything scraped along the bottom of the boat.
It is safer to park next to a 4-door car than a 2-door (doors on the 4 are shorter).
1 gallon of fuel moves the QE2 luxury liner about 50 ft (I finally corrected this after receiving numerous e-mails! The original it stated 1 gal = 6 inches of movement).
When driving, you blink less on a city street than on the freeway.
You can go through this doorway backwards about as often as frontwards- your car door.
Most of what you learn in the first 4 years of elementary school will be valid all your life; most of what you learn in 4 years of college won't be.
Skaters in roller rinks go clockwise because most are right-handed; and when they first learn, they want to hold on to the rail.
CD’s read from the inside to the outside edge (reverse of records).
You need 1 alligator for a pair of shoes; 3 for a pair of boots.
Only 1 person in 2 billion will live to be 116 or older.
If you stretch a standard Slinky out flat, it measures 87 feet long.
Water softens whiskers, shaving foam doesn't..it just holds the water. (You won't need shaving foam if you shave in the shower)
What 5-digit number, when multiplied by 4, is the same number with the digits in reverse order? 2 1 9 7 8. (2 1 9 7 8 X 4 = 87912).
111, 111, 111 X 111, 111, 111 = 12. 345. 678. 987, 654, 321.
If you add up the numbers 1-100 consecutively (1 + 2 + 3, etc) it totals 5050.
The 4 most important things to human existence: water, light, air, grass.
When you see a shadow, you see what is not there..it is the lack of the light you see.
The international dialing code for Antartica is 672.
a 2 X 4 is 1 1/2" X 3 1/2".
Oceans go 4 times as deep as mountains go high.
Rubbing orange or lemon peels on yourself makes a good mosquito repellent.
All soaps are detergents, but not all detergents are soaps.. no soap is unscented.
The chronic viewer called a "couch potato", is known in England as a "telly-belly".
The darker the towel, the less absorbent it is; will already have absorbed a lot of the dye.
One cord of wood (4 X 4 X 8 foot stack) produces only 20 copies of the Sunday N.Y. Times.
It takes one 15-20 yr old tree to produce 700 paper grocery bags.
Most Americans are arrested for drunk driving than any other crime.
Sponges hold more cold water than hot water.
Pullicologist- flea expert.
You need 100 pounds of rain to grow 1 pound of grain.
Every 24 hours, a leaking faucet with an opening the size of a pin will waste 170 gallons.
Chewing gum is made from latex, the same rubbery stuff used to make rain boots.
Many flowering plants are known grow faster & bigger when near their own kind than when close to other species.
It takes the insect-eating Venus flytrap only 1/2 second to shut its trap on its prey.
About 85% of the plant life on earth is in the oceans.
The number of possible ways of playing the first moves per side in a game of chess is 318,979,564,000.
SCRABBLE- "quartzy" - across a triple word score with the Z on a double score square (164 points).
Boeing planes fly 17 million miles daily- approximately the distance of 35 round trips to the moon.
A supersonic CONCORDE on schedule travels 400,000 times faster than a snail in a hurry.
The first commercial flight of a 747 was the same aircraft involved in the aircraft's worst plane disaster, in Tenerife.
The amount of nicotine the average pack-a-day smoker inhales in a week (400 mg) would kill a person instantly, if it were taken all at once.
Aloe, the healer- the plant's medicinal sap is used today, the same sort according to Biblical text, to embalm the body of Christ.
Did you know you'd have to lick 35,000 U.S. postage stamps to gain a pound?
The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.
Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.
If you toss a penny 10,000 times, it will not be heads 5,000 times, but more like 4,950 times because the head picture weighs more and therefore ends up on the bottom.
Mel Blanc, the original voice of Bugs Bunny, was allergic to carrots.
The characters Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street were named after Bert the cop and Ernie the taxi driver in Frank Capra's "Its a Wonderful Life".
The Ramses brand condom is named after the great pharaoh Ramses II, who fathered over 160 children.
On Average, 13 people die every year from vending machines falling on them.
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