| Completely Useless Facts |
| The shortest French word with all five vowels is "oiseau", meaning bird. Arachinbutyrophobia is the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth. You share a birthday with at least nine million other people in the world. A whale's penis is called a dork. In seventeenth-century Japan, no citizen was allowed to leave the country on penalty of death. Anyone caught coming or going without permission was executed on the spot. 50,000 of the cells in your body will die and be replaced with new cells all while you have been reading this sentence. It would take 81 billion Lego bricks (2 studs wide, 4 studs long) stacked on top of each other to reach the moon and go back to earth. Jupiter's moon Io is the most volcanically active object in the solar system. Bananas are the most popular fruit in America. The average person eats 33 lbs of bananas a year. Over 4 million tons of bananas are imported into the United States every year. All the planets in our solar system could be placed inside the planet Jupiter. Assuming that each fold neatly overlaps its opposite side, a dollar bill can be folded only six times – seven, if put into a vise. Humans and dolphins are the only species that have sex for pleasure. Hummingbirds cannot glide or soar as other birds do, however they are the only bird that can hover continuously. In 1888, as estimated 300,000 mummified cats were found at Beni Hassan, Egypt. They were sold at $18.43 per ton, and shipped to England to be ground up and used for fertilizer. 20th US President James Garfield was the second to be shot in office. Doctors tried to find the bullet with a metal detector, but the device failed because Garfield was placed on a bed with metal springs, and no one thought to move him. He died on September 19, 1881. Every minute, two hundred babies are born in the world. Honeybees have hair on their eyes. Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer. Nanotechnology has produced a guitar no bigger than a blood cell. The guitar, 10 micrometers long, has six fully operational strings. On Venus, the Sun rises in the west and sets in the east, the opposite of on Earth. It's illegal to buy corn flakes in Columbus on Sundays. It is believed that Shakespeare was 46 around the time that the King James Version of the Bible was written. In Psalms 46, the 46th word from the first word is shake and the 46th word from the last word is spear. The biggest cake ever was baked in New Jersey, USA and weighed 17 tonnes- the weight of about 7 elephants. Months that begin with a Sunday will always have a "Friday the 13th." The American National Sausage and Hot Dog Council says when kids were asked what they would like on their hot dogs if their moms weren't watching, 25% said they would prefer chocolate sauce. The word "prestidigitation" means to play tricks with your hands so quickly that those who are watching are unaware of what you have done. Barbados, in the eastern West Indies, is one of the world's most densely populated countries. Spencer Eldon was the name of the naked baby on the cover of Nirvana's album Nevermind. Only sixteen Concordes were ever made, the last in 1980. On New Year's Eve 1994, one Concorde plane carried wealthy revelers on a 32-hour trip to nowhere. These travelers, who paid $23,000 apiece for the trip, rang in the New Year twice because they twice crossed the International Date Line. A stack of $1 bills one-mile high would be worth more than $14 million. Potatoes were banned in Burgundy in 1910 because it was said, "frequent use caused leprosy." In 1974, Lauren Hutton earned $100,000 as the first model to sign an exclusive contract with the Revlon cosmetic company. The horror movie "The Ring" was filmed at the overnight campout location of a popular Christian summer camp in Bellingham, WA. The Moon weighs 81 billion tons. If you are hedenophobic, you have a fear of pleasure. All of the clocks in the movie "Pulp Fiction" are stuck on 4:20. It is not against the law in the U.S. to be a drug addict. In 1962, the Supreme Court called imprisonment for being an addict cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the Bill of Rights. A day on Jupiter is about 9 hours, 50 minutes, 30 seconds at the equator. By law, information collected in a U.S. census must remain confidential for 72 years. The muskellunge, a fierce fighting fish that can weigh in at around 70 pounds, is the official state fish of Wisconsin. One year of a dog's life is not really equivalent to seven years of a human's life. A more accurate system is for the first year to be 15 human years, the second year to be 25, and then every year after two counts as four human years. The song with the longest title is 'I’m a Cranky Old Yank in a Clanky Old Tank on the Streets of Yokohama with my Honolulu Mama Doin’ Those Beat-o,Beat-o Flat-On-My-Seat-o, Hirohito Blues' written by Hoagy Carmichael in 1943. He later claimed the song title ended with “Yank” and the rest was a joke. The hairless area of roughened skin at the tip of a bear's snout is called the rhinarium. 'Destination Moon', released in 1951, was a film that predicted man landing on the moon. 18 years later, Neil Armstrong took the first step - making reality of what had seemed like complete fantasy in 1951. Between ages 30 and 70, a nose may lengthen and widen by as much as half an inch and the ears may be a quarter-inch longer - due to the fact that cartilage is one of the few tissues that continue to grow as we age. If one were to unravel the entire human alimentary canal (esophagus, stomach, large and small intestines), it would reach the height of a three-story building. Sucking petrol through a vacuum cleaner causes it to catch fire. The "Yongle dadian," an encyclopedia of the Chinese Ming dynasty, had 22,937 chapters in 10,000 volumes. Over 2,000 Chinese scholars worked on the book for 5 years before it was finished. An Irish gypsy is called a Tinker. People spend an average of 2 weeks of their life kissing. The Statue of Liberty's mouth is 3 feet wide. The statue weighs 450,000 pounds, or 225 tons. The copper sheeting weighs 200,000 pounds. There are 167 steps from the land level to the top of the pedestal, 168 steps inside the statue to the head, and 54 rungs on the ladder leading to the arm that holds the torch. Eighty percent of the people hit by lightning are men. Using chemicals to get "high" isn't as new as one may think. Nitrous oxide was discovered in 1800. When inhaled, it was found to give a giddy, intoxicated feeling and to release the emotions. People laughed inanely, so it was called "laughing gas." For a while, parties were organized at which people sat around inhaling its fumes. If a pin was heated to the same temperature as the center of the Sun, it's heat would set alight everything within 60 miles of it. Electric Christmas tree lights were first used in 1895. The idea for using electric Christmas lights came from an American, Ralph E. Morris. The new lights proved safer than the traditional candles. In 1660 a boy at Eton College, United Kingdom, was beaten for not smoking. It was believed that tobacco smoke was fumigatory against the plague. The average 4 year old laughs 400 times per day, whereas the average adult is doing well if they average 15 laughs a day. Scientists have found that the skin of the armpits can harbor up to 516,000 bacteria per square inch, while drier areas, such as the forearm, have only about 13,000 bacteria per square inch. The Germans considered Casablanca (1943) a propaganda film and made it illegal to show in German theaters during World War II. Even after the war, only a censored version was allowed to be shown in Germany; all references to Nazis were removed. The shortest verse in the Bible consists of two words: "Jesus wept" (John 11:35). In the Egyptian Pyamids, the length of the diagonal across the base divided by the perpedicular hight gives Pi to ten decimal places. All gondolas in Venice, Italy must be painted black, unless they belong to a high official. In 1983, a Japanese artist, Tadahiko Ogawa, made a copy of the Mona Lisa completely out of ordinary toast. The IRS employees tax manual has instructions for collecting taxes after a nuclear war. Gloucestershire airport in England used to blast Tina Turner songs on the runways to scare birds away. There is a town in Texas called Ding Dong. In 1990, the population was only twenty-two people. A B-25 bomber airplane crashed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building on July 28, 1945. The spray WD-40 got its name because there were forty attempts needed before the creation of the ?water displacing? substance. India has a Bill of Rights for cows. The first ever ?World Summit on Toilets? was held in Singapore in November 2001. Emilio Marco Palma was the first person born in Antarctica in 1978. A chicken once had its head cut off and survived for over eighteen months, headless. Until the 1960's men with long hair were not allowed to enter Disneyland. In New Mexico, over eleven thousand people have visited a tortilla chip that appeared to have the face of Jesus Christ burned into it. In only eight minutes, the Space Shuttle can accelerate to a speed of 27,000 kilometres per hour. On November 29, 2000, Pope John Paul II was named an "Honorary Harlem Globetrotter." Coconuts kill more people in the world than sharks do. Approximately 150 people are killed each year by coconuts. An octopus has 8 hearts. Blonde beards grow faster than darker beards. Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa on a piece of pinewood, 77 cm x 53 cm (30 in. x 20 7/8 in.) in the year 1506. The fear of the number 13 is "triskaidekaphobia", and the fear of long words is "hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia". In Paraguay, duelling is legal only if both participants are registered Blood donors. The first envelopes with gummed flaps were produced in 1844. In Britain, they were not immediately popular because it was thought to be a serious insult to send a person's saliva to someone else. Cows can sleep while standing on all four legs, but they only dream when they sleep lying down. In 1980, the Yellow Pages accidentally listed a Texas funeral home under frozen foods. The ampersand (&) was once a letter of the English alphabet. James Madison's face appears on a 5,000 bill. The original title of Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice was First Impression. The saguaro cactus requires thirty years to grow just one branch. The average person over fifty will have spent 5 years waiting in lines. Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than all of the Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined. Colgate faced a big obstacle marketing toothpaste in Spanish speaking countries. Colgate translates into the command "go hang yourself." Sixty thousand miles of vessels carry blood to every part of your body The brain reaches its maximum weight at age 20 - about 3 pounds. Over the next 60 years, as billions of nerve cells die within the brain, it loses about 3 ounces. The brain begins to lose cells at a rate of 50,000 per day by the age of 30. The tongue is the only muscle in the human body that gets stronger as you get older. There was a prehistoric horse breed (called eohippus) that was about the size of a housecat. March 9th is Useless Facts and Trivia day. The condensed water vapor trail left behind by jets and rockets is called a contrail. The first person other than royalty to be portrayed on a British stamp was William Shakespeare in 1964. In October 1995, the potato became the first vegetable to be grown in space. NASA and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, created the technology with the goal of feeding astronauts on long space voyages, and eventually, feeding future space colonies. A marine catfish can taste with any part of its body. The female marine catfish hatches her eggs in her mouth. The launch of the teddy bear began in response to reports that Theodore 'teddy' Roosevelt, president of the United States, refused to kill a bear cub whilst on a hunting trip in 1902. Every year 12 percent of the U.S population is arrested. The largest light bulb was a 1-foot-long 75,000-watt bulb, hand-blown at the Corning Glass Works, to celebrate the 75th anniversary of Thomas Edison's invention of the incandescent lamp. If all of the animals on Earth were weighed together, ants would make up 10% of that weight. In ancient Egypt, killing a cat was a crime punishable by death. Tooth enamel is the hardest substance manufactured by the human body. Tortoises, otherwise mute, make grunting noises only when they mate. The nose cleans, warms, and humidifies over 500 cubic feet of air every day. A poodle fell from a balcony in Buenos Aires in October 1988. It killed three people. One was struck on the head, the second run over by a bus while watching, the third witnessed the event and died from a heart attack. In Hartford, Connecticut, USA, it is illegal for a husband to kiss his wife on Sundays. The phrase "Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey" is an old naval saying. A monkey was a brass plate bolted to the deck of the ship, which iron cannon balls were stored on. When it got very cold the brass would contract, but the iron cannon balls would not and therefore they would fall off the brass monkey! A bibliophile is a collector of rare books. A bibliopole is a seller of rare books. Chocolate contains the same chemical, phenylethylamine, that your brain produces when you fall in love. But don't have too much - an excess of phenylethylamine makes people very nervous. Disney World in Florida was opened to the public in 1971. The amusement park was the largest in the world, set within 28,000 acres. It required a $400-million investment, and did not do well during the first year it was opened. Only 10,000 people visited Disney World during that initial year. With time, however, the attendance numbers rose to more than 10,000 people an hour. Hershey kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it's kissing the conveyor belt. A raindrop falls at about 7 miles per hour. During menstruation, the sensitivity of a woman's middle finger is reduced. The word "four" has four letters. In the English language there is no other number whose number of letters is equal to its value. The name Oz, as in "The Wizard of Oz," was thought up when the author and creator, L. Frank Baum, looked at his filing cabinet and saw A-N and O-Z, hence "Oz." In Britain, the law was changed in 1789 to make the method of execution hanging. Prior to that, burning was the modus operandi. The last female to be executed by burning in England was Christian Bowman. Her crime was making counterfeit coins. Thom Yorke, lead singer from Radiohead, only has sight in one eye. Japan is one of the most competitive soft drink markets in the world. Approximately 1,000 new soft drinks are launched in Japan every year, of which only a small number survive. There are more than 7,000 different soft drinks sold in the country. The country with the most post offices is India with over 152,792, compared with just over 38,000 in the United States. 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. A whip makes a cracking sound because its tip moves faster than the speed of sound. 79 percent of Americans give their dogs holiday and/or birthday presents. 111,111,111 multiplied by 111,111,111 equals 12,345,678,987,654,321 A pregnant goldfish is called a twit. There were 15,700,003 Model T Ford's manufactured, all in black. A hedgehog's heart beats ,on average, 300 times a minute. Mary Stuart became Queen of Scotland when she was only six days old. |
| Most of the useless facts posted here were taken from Useless Fact of The Day, or AmusingFacts.com. Background image, Skysong, taken from digitalblasphemy.com. |