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Miscellaneous Trivia 1

One incorrect assumption about hypnotism is that people who are weak minded are the most susceptible. Apparently weak-minded docile people are the in fact the least susceptible to hypnotism. It seems that the best subjects are those people possessing a high intelligence. Some people have mistakenly believed that hypnotised people can be made to do things unaware or against their will. This is not so. It cannot be done without the subject’s cooperation and a person cannot be persuaded to do anything under hypnosis that is usually offensive to them or against their normal character.

If all of the gold produced in the last 5 centuries in the world were melted down, there would be enough gold for one cube 15.25m or 50 foot on each side.

Beeswax, salt and oil were used to preserve Egyptian mummies and the actual procedure could take up to 70 days. The body was wrapped in bandages and covered with wax to make them waterproof. But where did the word "mummy" actually come from? The Persian word for the wax used in the preservation was "mum" and the Arab word was "mumia". So it had nothing to do with them being a parent at all. About 2,500 years ago, the Greek historian Herodotus went on holidays to look at an ancient tourist attraction. Herodotus went to look at the three great pyramids at Giza. The pyramids were old even at that time, as they were apparently over 2,000 years old.

In 1979 there were more dentists proportionately in Ann Arbor in Michigan in the USA than in other city in that country. In addition there was also another strange statistic: there were proportionately more burglaries occurring there than in any other city. The statisticians could find no connection between the two. When you think of the African climate, you immediately think of warm climates and hot jungles. But did you know that the Nile River has frozen over at least twice, in 829 and 1010AD?

In eastern Siberia that temperature can become so extremely cold that a person’s breath can be seen and heard. As a person breathes out, their breath freezes in the air and falls down with a soft crackling kind of sound.

For some strange reason, politicians and members of the legal profession are banned from entering in the world’s biggest liar championships in the UK. The world champion in 1998 was John Graham. Would you really want to be known as the world’s best liar? I think I’d rather have a world record like Felipe Carbonell of Peru who told 345 jokes in one hour in 1993.

German chemists developed a processing for making petrol out of coal during World War II. During and after the war, many trucks were converted to run on the fumes from normal, everyday firewood. The drivers could make more fuel if they ran out, by picking up wood along the side of the road.

After Benjamin Franklin published information on lightning rods, some ladies in Europe began wearing lightning rods on their hats and even dragged along a ground wire.

Mrs B Clark was swimming in Lake Okanagan in Canada in 1974 when she felt something heavy come in contact with her legs. A 1.2m high and 2.5m long hump rose out of the water and moved away from her. Mr Clark noticed that the body was dark grey striped and that the creature had a forked horizontal tail that was approximately 1.5-3m behind its hump. The length of the creature was estimated at between 7.6 and 9m but was only 0.9 to 1.2m across. I’m sure Mrs Clark’s tale must have met with scepticism, but the description oddly enough fits a supposedly extinct serpentine whale. That episode took place in Canada. Perhaps this is what people have been seeing in the Loch Ness.

Most of us know that sharks sometimes bite, but one scientists by the name of Stewart Springer was actually bitten by a baby shark. Mr Springer was examining the mother shark and the baby shark bit him while his hand was still inside his mother’s belly.

Two hundred years ago a poor Boston ship captain was forced to sit for 2 hours in stocks for “lewd and unseemly behaviour”. The captain had just returned from a 3 year voyage and was punished for kissing his wife in public.

In 1969, Dorothy Retallack found through experimentation, that plants are affected by music. It was found that rock music stunted the growth of some plants and other plants were weak with small leaves and very short roots. In one experiment, after several weeks of rock music, all of the marigolds had died. But not far away from the deceased marigolds, identical plants were absolutely blooming. These marigolds were listening to classical music. These findings suggested that rock'n'roll music was therefore not healthy for human beings, but classical music was. Yet in other experiments in later years, it was found that different plants responded positively to rock'n'roll and grew faster and taller than similar plants listening to classical music. Perhaps it has less to do with the music, and more to do with the species of plant. A bit like human beings, we each have distinct tastes and respond differently to various styles of music.

Julius Rosenberg of Canada was awarded the Medal of Bravery in 1994. Julius was only 5 years old when he saved his three year old sister from a black bear. How did young Julius save his sister? He growled at the bear and scared it off. Dr James Barry became a general in Queen Victoria’s army. After entering the medical corps, Dr Barry served as a surgeon for 40 years and eventually became Inspector-General of hospitals. In 1865 after Dr Barry died, they discovered something James had kept hidden all of those years, he was in fact a woman.

A manned rocket can leave the earth and reach the moon in less time than it once took for a stagecoach to travel the length of England. In the 1880’s in the US Midwest, town laws were passed which prohibited the sale of ice-cream sodas on Sunday. In Illinois, some clever soda fountain owners bypassed the law by leaving out the carbonated water and just serving the ice-cream and the syrup. These became known as a “Sunday Soda”. Eventually the name was shortened to “Sundae”.

Mr and Mrs McCoy were American slaves of African descent, who escaped to Canada where their son Elijah was born. Later Elijah made his way to Detroit where he obtained work as on oiler on the railroad. Machinery in those days, had to be frequently shut down and oiled by hand. After working with these machines, Elijah McCoy invented the lubricating cup which was a simple device that made lubricating by hand unnecessary. He also patented over 50 other inventions connection with lubricating devices and many of these are still in use on railroads and steamships in many parts of the world. In McCoy’s day, no important machines were complete with a McCoy lubricating cup. And if the machine had this cup, it was the known as “the real McCoy”.

We’ve all heard of penicillin, but what most people don’t know is that it was discovered by accident in 1928. In England Alexander Fleming accidentally left a glass dish for bacteriological experiments uncovered. Upstairs another experimenter was careless with his experiments and allowed some mould he was using to drift out. It drifted through an open window and some landed in Fleming’s uncovered glass dish. When Alexander Fleming returned the next day, he found that the mould had killed off some of the bacteria in the dish.

In the 15th to 17th century in England, it was thought that the colour red was helpful to the sick. When patients had a fever, there were dressed in red nightgowns and people placed red objects around them to make the fever go down.

An A-bomb involves nuclear reactions and should be called a nuclear bomb. An normal TNT bomb involves atomic reaction and should therefore be called an atomic bomb.

Many in the older generation will know the song “It’s a long way to Tipperary” but few people know that it was written because of a wager in a pub in Stalybridge, Cheshire in 1912. A group of actors challenged Jack Judge who wrote the words and his music friend Harry J Williams to write a song and perform it in the same day. Within 24 hours the two had written the song “It’s a long way to Tipperary” and Jack Judge sang it at the Stalybridge Grand Theatre.

Shoes were made by hand until the 1850’s and were really just “straight”. They could be worn on either left or right feet and there were 2 widths of shoe: slim and fat. Once machines came into the production of shoes, shoes were then made for left and right feet.

There are billions of possible moves in chess. In fact, in the first four moves on each side of the chessboard, there are 318,979,564,00 possible moves. Stretching over more than 1/20 of the earth’s circumference, the Great Wall of China is 4,023.36km long and was built over a period of 1,700 years. There was so much stone used in its construction that there is enough stone to build a 2.4m wall around the whole world.

In Japan the word “nine” sounds like the word for “suffering” and the word for “four” sounds just like the word for death. Because of this, there are no rooms numbered 9 or 4 in many hotels or hospitals in Japan.

From 1896 to 1996, only 5 countries have always been represented at the summer Olympic Games. These include France, Greece, Great Britain, Switzerland and Australia.

Half of the world’s population dwells in only 4 countries: India, the United States, the Soviet Union and China. The remaining half of the population live in more than 160 countries. Actually China has almost 1/8 of the world’s people.

Fire investigators on Maui determined the cause of a blaze that destroyed a $127,000 home. It was claimed that a short in the home-owner's newly installed fire prevention alarm system started the blaze. “This is even worse than last year,” said “The distraught home-owner, when someone broke in and stole my new security system.”

More than 2,000 years ago Archimedes the mathematician and inventor may have used solar energy as a weapon. Several ancient writers mentioned that Archimedes reflected sun rays onto the Roman fleet which had sailed against his home town of Syracuse between 215 and 212BC. The Roman fleet caught on fire. These stories were discounted for many years but experiments in 1973 with 50 bronze-painted mirrors actually proved that the sun’s rays reflected on a boat caused it to catch alight.

The godson of Elizabeth I was an amateur poet by the name of John Harington. Whilst banished from court he built a house near Bath and installed the first flushing lavatory which he named Ajax. The Queen was so impressed with the invention that she ordered one.

There is some Minoan art that portrays a rather spectacular piece of acrobatics involving a bull. It seems that the acrobat must face a charging bull, somehow grasp its horns and then complete a somersault over the back of the bull before landing on the ground. Surely this feat is impossible. Either that, or whoever painted it had a vivid imagination not based on reality.

In Coalbrookdale, England the world’s first iron bridge was built in 1782. The bridge was the product of 3 generations of one gamily – the Darbys. The first generation to be involved was Abraham Darby I who developed the use of coke. Then the son manufactured the cast iron for the bridge. And lastly, the grandson actually constructed the bridge.

In 1999, an English schoolboy slept through his train stop so the rail staff contacted his mother Julie Collins. The rail staff advised her that he was safe and sound and Mrs Collins asked them to put her sun into a taxi and send him home. Unfortunately Mrs Collins was not aware that her son slept all the way to Scotland. The drive back in the taxi was a rather long one and the cost of the cab was over 200 pounds.

Now don’t all rush out and buy one, but there is an invention in the UK which may be a real benefit to women all over the world. It’s a device that ensures the toilet seat is always left down! Run by the batteries, the device has no wires, levers or pedals but uses an infrared sensor fastened to the underside of the lid. When the user moves away, the seat automatically closes.

During a tornado in Kansas in 1958, a woman was pulled out of her house and carried 18.3m away. After she landed, virtually unharmed, she found herself next to a phonograph record titled “Stormy Weather”. Then there was the tornado which struck Ancona in Italy. It lifted a baby in its pram 15m into the air and then set it down safely 90m away. Astonishingly, the baby never even woke up.

You’ve probably heard of many countries that have changed their names over the years. You may even be aware that in 1935 Persia changed its name to Iran. But did you know that Persia’s name before that was actually Iran.

In the Victorian era it was customary for men to raise their hats to the ladies. Unfortunately this could be rather a problem if the gentlemen had his arms full of parcels for example. In 1896 in the Washington Sate, James Boyle invented a self-tipping hate. The mechanism was activated by a simple nod, which sprang the clockwork mechanism in the crown into action. Hats off to that idea!

I think that sometimes we regard the USA as a very modern and forward thinking nation in many ways. But were you aware that there were 15 nations BEFORE the USA that gave women the right to vote in 1920? The earliest country was New Zealand in 1893, then Australia in 1902 and Finland in 1906.

The word "girl" during the 13th century meant any young child, both male and female.

Can you think of a word to rhyme with any of the following: month, orange, silver or purple? Apparently there are no words that rhyme with them.

One of Britain’s greatest admirals was Viscount Horatio Nelson. But the poor fellow was always seasick during his voyages.

The New York Times published an apology to a Professor 49 years after they scoffed at his theories about space travel. Later his theories were proven correct.

In 1908 there was an enormous explosion in Siberia that is thought to have been ten times more powerful the Hiroshima bomb. Scientists examined the site but could find no explanation for the explosion and there did not seem to be any evident or meteorites or a comet. To date there has been no explanation for the explosion.

A baby born in Exeter in England was born on Edward VIII's coronation day and was christened Coronation. When she grew up she married a Mr Street and then became Coronation Street.

85% of all of the greenery on the planet is the plant life of the oceans.

Did you know that a glass window and a brick wall are made from the same main ingredient. That ingredient is sand.

In 1996 in NZ, Alan McKay blew the world's largest bubble measuring 32m long.

In old times, the Egyptians had rather unusual waiters. They actually trained baboons to wait on tables.

The record for climbing 100 storeys of stairs was set by Dennis Martz in 1978. Mr Martz climbed those 100 storeys in 11 min 23.8 sec.

Blackbird was a chief of the Omaha Indian tribe. When he died he was buried sitting on his favourite horse.

Columbus's first voyage cost Spain $6,000. In one century, that investment brought a return of $1,750,000.

Perhaps people who have rainwater tanks are onto something. Did you know that rain contains vitamin B12?

Napoleon suffered from a condition called ailurophobia, otherwise known as the fear of cats.

Mount Everest is taller today than it was 100 hundred ago. It has grown 30.5cm.

The Soviet Union is so wide that it covers 11 time zones.

In Springfield, Virginia a shop which sold tropical fish and supplies called itself, "Tanks a Lot".

The man who was the voice of Bugs Bunny was called Mel Blanc. What few people know is that he was allergic to carrots.

In Britain's Parliament House, the Speaker of the House is not actually allowed to speak.

The world's most common name is in fact - Mohammed.

The saying "be with you in a jiffy" is actually a real unit of time. A jiffy is 1/100th of a second.

Giuseppe Demai of Naples was an incredible medical find. He was born with two hearts.

I'm sure everyone has heard of Big Ben in London. But did you know that Big Ben is not the name of the clock, it is the name of 13½ ton chime of the clock.

It's not commonly known that Alexander Graham Bell actually invented two telephones.

When Fred Astaire made his first screen test for MGM, the verdict was that he couldn't act, was slightly bald, but could dance a little.

In London, there was a sign hanging over a shop that sold fireplace fixtures. The name of the shop was "Amazing Grates."

You have probably heard about the famous Stradevarious violin, but did you know that even the varnish on a violin can affect its tone.

Rolls Royce state that their cars do not actually break down. They simply "Fail to proceed."

Have you always been teased about your freckles? Next time someone makes a comment, you can just smile sweetly and say, "I'm simply lentiginous."

A man who called himself "the Exterminator" once ate 28 cockroaches in 4 minutes.

Experiments with carnivorous plants have found that although the plants love steak, unfortunately cheese can give them a deadly indigestion.

Do you enjoy a good chile con carne? Then to make authentic chile con carne, apparently you should add a piece of dark chocolate to the meat mixture.

The human bone is incredibly strong. Human bone the size of a matchbox can support 9 tonnes which is 4 times as much as concrete can bear.

Masai warriors believe it is polite to spit at each other in greeting.

Of the first 23 US astronauts who flew on space missions, 21 were either firstborn sons or were an only child.

The famous painter Picasso's full name was Pablo Diego Jose Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Maria de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santisima Trinidad Ruiz Picasso. I guess if he'd signed his full name on his paintings, he wouldn't have left room for anything else.

The first British building to be fitted with a lightning conductor was St Paul's Cathedral.

An old wives tale in Scotland suggests that if a person walks any distance between two redheaded women, it is a sign that they will soon come into money.

Ancient Egyptians were the first ones to discover the health benefits of antibiotics. Apparently people were treated with mouldy bread.

Every 2 weeks your stomach has to make a new layer of mucus, otherwise it will digest itself.

In the USA in 1995, twice as much Monopoly money as real money was printed.

A larger portion of your brain is used to control your thumb than the sum total used to control your stomach and chest.

In 1872 at Hill End in NSW the largest ever gold-bearing nugget was found. The nugget yielded more than 85kg of gold.

The largest piece of hail every recorded as having struck the earth, was 3.8cm in circumference and weighed 751grams.

It is claimed that Shakespeare came up with the words, critic, auspicious and bump.

In the known universe, man's 1.36kg brain is the most complex and orderly arrangement of matter.

If you are feeling cold, then put on a hat. 80% of our body's heat escapes through the head.

Apparently Icelanders loves books. They read more books per capita than any other people in the world.

The Eiffel Tower shrinks and grows. Depending on the temperature, the 300m tall tower can vary by as much as 15.3cm.

A volcano has more power than the largest tidal wave, biggest earthquake or greatest hurricane.

The chapel of Santa Isabel de Hungria in Spain is the smallest church in the world. It's total floor space is an area of only 1.96m2.

The world's population increases daily by an average of approximately 240,000 people or 167 per minute.

The first human cannonball in the world was "Zazel" in 1877 who was shot about 6.1m in London.

You've probably heard about salesmen who could sell refrigerators to Eskimos. Well, Eskimos actually do use refrigerators to keep their food from freezing!

One of the passengers in the very first submarine was King James I.

Harpaxophobia is the fear of robbers and phobophobia is a fear of fears.

We usually think that the heart is to the left side of the body, but it is actually almost exactly in the middle.

Did you know that the little bit of nose that separates the nostrils is known as the Columella nasi.

Sylvain Dornon walked all the way from Paris to Moscow via a place called Vilno in 1891 which is a distance of approximately 2,900km. What makes this little feat remarkable is the fact the Sylvain walked all the way on stilts!

During World War II, milk from young coconuts was successfully used as blood plasma.

Did you know that President Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy and that President Kennedy had a secretary called Lincoln.

Should you ever decide to visit Tibet, you would do well to remember the traditional greeting is to bow low and then stick out your tongue three times.

The old wives tale which suggests we shouldn't go swimming for at least an hour after swimming because of the danger of cramps is not actually true and has been disproven on numerous occasions.

The human brain has so many signal connections that there are more connections than would be in a telephone exchange connecting everybody on earth.

Ah, this explains it - did you know that the jaw muscle can work much longer than any other muscle before it gets tired!

In Daghestan, in the Soviet Caucasus, a mountain once moved approximately 2km in 8 days. This was caused by heavy rains and an underground river swell which caused the mountain to float that distance.

People in Damascus once banned yoyos because they believed they were causing a drought.

If you're right-handed, the nails on your right hand will grow faster than the nails on your left hand and vice versa.

Prince Charles Is called "Number one fellah belong missus Queen" in Pidgin English.

Even famous and brilliant people can make mistakes. One of Shakespeare's plays "Julius Caesar" referred to a clock striking. The only problem with that phrase is the fact that clocks didn't come into existence for about a thousand years after Caesar died.

Did you know that a peanut is not actually a nut - it's a legume, which means it grows underground. Nuts grow on trees.

You've probably heard of the famous pavement outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre in the USA which has imprints from the feet and hands of many famous stars. But did you know they include Betty Grable's leg-prints, Trigger's hoof-prints and also an imprint of Jimmy Durante's nose.

Did you know that Mexico's official name is the United Mexican States and not just Mexico? Did you know that there is no nation called Holland? The Dutch homeland is actually called Koninkrijk der Nederlanden or Kingdom of the Netherlands.

The old nursery rhyme "Ring a Ring l Roses" actually was made up about something rather nasty. It refers to the marks caused by the plague.

During a kiss as many as 278 bacteria colonies are exchanged.

How short was the shortest war in history? It was 38 minutes long - it was between Zanzibar and England in 1896.

There's only one city in the United States named merely "Beach." It is found in North Dakota, which does not have any access to an ocean.

The winged hat worn by the ancient Greek god Hermes (or, in Roman mythology, Mercury) was called a "petasos."

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.

Studies have confirmed that men who are exposed to a lot of toxic chemicals, high heat, and unusual pressures, such as jet pilots and deep-sea divers, are more prone to father girls than boys.

In Iceland, people are listed by their first names in the phone book.

How do police handcuff a one-armed man? Since they can only hand-cuff one of his wrists, they attach the other manacle to his belt.

A City Council order in Belvedere, California, reads: "No dog shall be in a public place without its master on a leash."

Green algae can grow undisturbed on the fur of the sloth (a mammal) because it is so slow moving.

The longest name in the world is Adolph Blaine Charles David Earl Frederick Gerald Hubert Irvin John Kenneth Lloyd Martin Nero Oliver Paul Quincy Randolph Shermasn Thomas Uncas Victor William Xerxes Yancy Zeus Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorft Sr.

In the USA, the Bible is the most shoplifted book.

Michaelangelo, born in March 1475, was a prolific Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect and poet and his full name was Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni.

The US President, James Garfield had something in common with Leonardo da Vinci. Garfield could write Greek with one hand and Latin with the other - at the same time! Leonardo da Vinci could write with one hand and draw with his other one - also simultaneously.

Mozart created a musical composition for the piano that required a player to use two hands as well as his nose to play the piece.

It is said that the kings in a deck of cards each represent a great king from history. They include Julius Caesar who is represented by the King of Diamonds, Alexander the Great who is shown as the King of Clubs, Charlemagne who is symbolised by the King of Hearts, and King David who is represented by the king of spades.

The loop on a belt that holds the loose end is called a "keeper."

Do you remember those wonderful characters, Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street? Apparently they were named after Ernie the taxi driver and Bert the cop in Frank Capra's movie "It's A Wonderful Life."

Have you ever wondered about the military salute? It seems like kind of a strange way to show respect for your superiors in the military. But apparently it originated in medieval times, when knights in armour lifted their visors to reveal their identity.

Large noses are considered beautiful to the San Blas Indian women of Panama. In fact, they try to accentuate the size of their noses, by painting black lines down the centre.

The space between the thumb and the extended forefinger is called the purlicue.

Something or someone that uses two languages, or is bilingual, can also be called "diglot."

If for some strange reason you wanted to get some lungs from an average adult, unfold them and flatten them out, the lungs would cover an area as large as a tennis court. But I think someone might make a racket about that!

A rather unique telegram was sent to Eleanor Roosevelt from the 1939 World's Fair in New York. The telegram was sent using only the current from some electric eels.

While diamonds are usually considered the most precious of stones, a large, near flawless emerald is worth considerably more than a diamond of the same size.

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