My Little List of Amusing Irrelevant Facts
A "jiffy" is an actual unit of time equal to 1/100th of a second.
A monkey was once tried and convicted for smoking a cigarette in South
Bend, Indiana.
A Saudi Arabian woman can get a divorce if her husband doesn't give her
coffee.
A sneeze zooms out of your mouth at over six hundred miles per
hour.
About seventy percent of Americans who go to college do it just to make
more money.
An average person laughs about fifteen times a day.
An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
Aztec emperor Montezuma had a nephew, Cuitlahac, whose name meant "plenty
of excrement."
Bird droppings are the chief export of Nauru, an island nation in the
western Pacific.
Bubble gum contains rubber.
Canada is an Indian word meaning "Big Village."
Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without
killing them use to burn their houses down--hence the expression "to get
fired."
Donald Duck comics were banned in Finland because he doesn't wear
pants.
Dr. Seuss pronounced "Seuss" such that it rhymed with "rejoice."
Einstein couldn't speak fluently when he was nine. His parents thought he
might have been retarded.
Even if you cut off a cockroach's head, it can live for several
weeks.
Every person has a unique tongue print.
Every time Beethoven sat down to write music, he poured ice water over his
head.
Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie.
Hershey's Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks
like it's kissing the conveyor belt.
Hypnotism is banned in public schools in San Diego.
"I am." is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.
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.
In Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart never said "play it again, Sam."
In 1980, a Las Vegas hospital suspended workers for betting on when
patients would die.
In 1980, there was only one country in the world with no
telephones--Bhutan.
In Kentucky, fifty percent of the people who get married for the first
time are teenagers.
In Los Angeles, there are fewer people than there are automobiles.
In seventy-five percent of American households, women manage the money and
pay the bills.
It's against the law to catch fish with your bare hands in Kansas.
"Kemo Sabe" means "soggy shrub" in Navajo.
Kotex was first manufactured as bandages, during WWI.
Lee Harvey Oswald's cadaver tag sold at an auction for $6,600 in
1992.
Mel Blanc (the voice of Bugs Bunny) was allergic to carrots.
Millie the White House dog earned more than four times as much as
President Bush in 1991.
Money isn't made out of paper, it's made out of cotton.
More people are killed annually by donkeys than die in air crashes.
Mosquitos have teeth.
Most American car horns honk in the key of F.
Most cows give more milk when they listen to music.
Most lipstick contains fish scales.
No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, and
purple.
Only fifty-five percent of all Americans know that the sun is a
star.
Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, John
Hancock and Charles Thomson. Most of the rest signed on August 2, but the
last signature wasn't added until 5 years later.
Penguins can jump as high as six feet in the air.
Pollsters say that forty percent of dog and cat owners carry pictures of
the pets in their wallets.
Sherlock Holmes never said "elementary, my dear Watson."
Sigmund Freud had a morbid fear of ferns.
Some toothpastes contain antifreeze.
Spotted skunks do handstands before they spray.
The average bank teller loses about $250 every year.
The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.
The average person is about a quarter of an inch taller at night.
The condom, made originally of linen, was invented in the early
1500s.
The first known contraceptive was crocodile dung, used by Egyptians in
2000 B.C.
The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.
The international telephone dialing code for Antarctica is 672.
The longest recorded flight of a chicken is thirteen seconds.
The most common name in the world is Mohammed.
The Neanderthal's brain was bigger than yours.
The phrase "it's all fun and games until someone gets their eye pokes out" is
from Ancient Rome. The only rule during wrestling matches was "no eye
gouging." Everything else was allowed.
The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from and old English law which
stated that you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your
thumb.
The sex organ on a male spider is located at the end of one of its
legs.
The sound of E.T. walking was made by someone squishing her hands in
Jello.
The term "the whole 9 yards" came from WWII fighter pilots in the South
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 three best-known western names in China: Jesus Christ, Richard Nixon,
and Elvis Presley.
The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin during World War II
killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.
The word "samba" means "to rub navels together."
The world population of chickens is about equal to the number of
people.
There are more plastic flamingos in America than real ones.
There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.
Thomas Edison was afraid of the dark.
Twenty-seven percent of U.S. male college students believe life is "a
meaningless existential hell."
Until 1965, driving was done on the left-hand side on roads in Sweden. The
conversion to right-hand was done on a weekday at 5pm. All traffic stopped
as people switched sides. This time and day were chosen to prevent
accidents where drivers would have gotten up in the morning and been too
sleepy to realize that *this* was the day of the changeover.
You can only smell 1/20th as well as a dog.