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When I was teaching, I would put up an unusual or strange fact for my kids to ponder every day. It helped them to think of something to write for their daily journal entries. I thought I'd share some with you, although the journal entry is optional (smile). If you have any additions, please feel free to contact me at the e-mail below.
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A 72-year-old Chicago woman handed over $44,000 of life savings to a building company who promised they could cure her
house of "cancer of the brick."
A Jury in Oklahoma needed just 20 minutes to convict a man brought before them on a charge of armed robbery. In court, the
victim of the robbery stood up and clearly identified the man as the perpetrator. This provoked the enraged defendant into
leaping up and calling him a liar at the top of his voice. "I should have blown your head off," he said then hurriedly added, "...if I'd been the one who was there..."
It is estimated that millions of trees in the world are accidentally planted by squirrels who bury nuts and then forget where they hid them.
Men are 6 times more likely to be struck by lighting than women.
A whip does not make a cracking sound because it hits something... it does because the tip of the whip is traveling faster than the speed of sound (760 miles per hour).
There are 6 coins made in the United States, all of them have the face looking left... except one - The penny!
A woman's heart beats faster than a man's heart. A whale's heart beats only nine times a minute.
It is impossible to sneeze and keep your eyes open at the same time.
More than 99.9% of all the animal species that have ever lived on earth were extinct before man ever walked on earth.
The original name for the butterfly was 'flutterby.' Butterflies taste with their hind feet.
A hippo can run faster than a man.
The longest one-syllable words in the English language are "screeched" and "strengths."[This second contribution was kindly given to me by Michael Wells. Thanks, Michael!]
Rome, Italy (March 1999): One panel of Gaetano Previati's 1912 triptych "Fall of the Angels" hung upside down for three months in Rome's leading modern art museum, until a group of students spotted the blunder, the daily Il Messaggero reported Wednesday. Previati, who died in 1920, was one of the leading artists of the Milan Divisionist school, an non-representational (or abstract) style which apparently can stymie even an expert.
"Stewardesses" is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand. [You're gonna try it now, aren't you?]
The name for Oz in the "Wizard of Oz" was thought up when the creator, Frank Baum, looked at his filing cabinet and saw A-N, and O-Z, hence "Oz." [Good thing they didn't have rolodexes then.]
The characters Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street were named after Bert the cop and Ernie the taxi driver in Frank Capra's "It's A Wonderful Life."
A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.
The giant squid has the largest eyes in the world. [Yup, and did you know that the ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain?]
On an American 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.
Guetersloh, Germany: Two motorists had an all-too-literal head-on collision in heavy fog near the small town of Guetersloh. Each was guiding his car at a snail's pace near the center of the road. At the moment of impact their heads were both out of the windows when they smacked together. Both men were hospitalized with severe head injuries. Their cars weren't scratched.
The Ramses brand condom is named after the great pharaoh Ramses III who fathered over 160 children.
The longest place-name still in use is Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwenuakitanatahu, a New Zealand hill.
"Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt."
All of the clocks in Pulp Fiction are stuck on 4:20.
On a Canadian two-dollar bill, the flag flying over the Parliament building is an American flag. [This is because we're secretly building up Canada as a backup plan in case this whole America thing is a bust.]
Boston, Massachusetts (March 1999): When his daughter brought home a report card with nearly failing grades in math, Dale Robinson allegedly got angry -- but not with her. The following morning, he went to the Jeremiah Burke High School, confronted her math teacher in the hallway, and beat him up. "We anticipate some parents will always be concerned or unsatisfied around report card time," said school headmaster Steven Leonard. "But in this case, the value system seems to be a little warped."
Bats always turn left when exiting a cave.
The Greek mathematician Euclid published Elements around 300 BCE, which set forth the principles of Euclidean geometry. Elements is said to be one of the most frequently translated and studied books in the world. Euclid's geometry includes postulates subsequently learned by students for more than 2,000 years.
Jean-Paul Sartre rejected the 1964 Nobel Prize in literature, explaining that to accept such an award would compromise his integrity as a writer.
Recycling one glass jar saves enough energy to watch TV for three hours.
One in every four Americans has appeared on TV. [My next theory is that three out of every four Americans actually thinks they're going to someday.]
The $100 dollar bill accounts for approximately 80% of U.S. currency in circulation abroad.
The praying mantis is the only insect that can turn its head. The better to bite the head off of its mate. [I could add a snide remark here, but I won't.]
April 27, 1998 as many as 20,000 people logged in to chat with Koko the gorilla who answered questions in what was called the first ever "interspecies chat" on the Internet. [I strongly suspect that many of those who try to entice me to chat online are close relatives of Koko. If you didn't get that last, you're one of them.]
The composer Gioacchino Rossini, probably best known for his piece "Barber of Seville," also composed pieces with titles such as "Anchovies,"Radishes," and "Hors d'oeuvres." [They do say musicians starve in the early years...food must have been on his mind.]
A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
92% of pay cable TV programs contain violence.
Ernest Vincent Wright wrote a novel, "Gadsby", which contains over 50,000 words -- none of them with the letter E.
In India it costs less to have sex with a prostitute than it does to buy a condom.
Two-thirds of the people in the world have not made a phone call.
Donald Duck comics were once banned from Finland because he doesn't wear pants. [Anyone who is mortified at the thought of an almost asexual cartoon character without pants should be flailed with wet noodles until they get a clue.]
One of the reasons J.S. Bach chose to write the Coffee Cantata is that coffee used to be considered a wicked vice. All sorts of laws were passed against it, some places even had spies roaming the city, sniffing the air trying to catch people in the act of roasting coffee beans. As an addition, Americans consume 4,848 cups of coffee per second, 24 hours a day.
The word 'skepticism' is one of the longest words that you can type in which you alternate each hand during the typing.
You know that myth about bulls and red capes? Bulls are colorblind. [I'd try to gore people too if someone stuck barbed spears in my butt.]
The Guillotine, invented in April 1792, was originally designed as a humane way to execute prisoners condemned by the Revolutionary French National Assembly. The guillotine was last officially used as recently as September 10,1977 by the French. [I guess they kind of lost their heads about it.]
The Anopheles mosquito, which carries the malaria parasite Plasmodium is responsible for half of the human deaths in history, outside of war and accidents, since the stone age.
The world's three richest people have assets that exceed the combined wealth of the 48 least developed countries, according to a recent United Nations report on global inequality.
The sky is shrinking and has been doing so for the past 40 years, scientists have discovered. About five miles of sky have been lost since 1958, and that figure may double over the next century. Researchers studying the Earth's upper atmosphere, 56 miles up, said the contraction is probably a result of the greenhouse effect.
A monkey was once tried and convicted for smoking a cigarette in South Bend, Indiana. [Yep...another Indiana story. Them folks is weird.]
The Panda bear is expected to become extinct by about 2040, barring a drastic change of events. Artificial insemination could delay the extinction of the giant panda by about 60 years or more, according to scientists who want to use the technique to produce more pandas. (Source: CNN/Associated Press)
June 2, 1999: Using laser beams like tweezers, Japanese Graduate student Yasuharu Arai has managed to tie incredibly tiny knots in strands of DNA. (Source: CNN)
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