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. that's where the phrase, "goodnight, sleep tight" came
from.
The sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." uses
every letter in the alphabet. (developed by Western Union to test telex/twx
communications)
The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without
repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.
When opossums are playing
'possum, they are not "playing." They actually pass out from sheer
terror.
The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch
every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account
the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.
The term
"the whole 9 yards" came from W.W.II fighter pilots in the Pacific. When
arming their airplanes on the ground, the .50 caliber machine gun ammo belts
measured exactly 27 feet, before being loaded into the fuselage. If the
pilots fired all their ammo at a target, it got "the whole 9
yards."
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.
An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
The name Jeep
came from the abbreviation used in the army for the "General Purpose"
vehicle, G.P.
The cruise liner, Queen Elizabeth II, moves only six
inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.
Nutmeg is extremely
poisonous if injected intravenously.
No NFL team which plays its home
games in a domed stadium has ever won a Super Bowl.
The first toilet
ever seen on television was on "Leave It To Beaver."
Only one person
in two billion will live to be 116 or older.
In Cleveland, Ohio, it's
illegal to catch mice without a hunting license.
It takes 3,000 cows
to supply the NFL with enough leather for a year's supply of
footballs.
Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for
dating are already married.
There are an average of 178 sesame seeds
on a McDonald's Big Mac bun.
The world's termites outweigh the world's
humans 10 to 1.
The 3 most valuable brand names on earth: Marlboro,
Coca-Cola, and Budweiser, in that order.
When Heinz ketchup leaves the
bottle, it travels at a rate of 25 miles per year.
Ten percent of the
Russian government's income comes from the sale of vodka.
On
average, 100 people choke to death on ball-point pens every year.
In
10 minutes, a hurricane releases more energy than all the world's nuclear
weapons combined.
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" or what 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 to mind their own 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.
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