2. Ballroom dancing is a major at Brigham Young University.
3. Some biblical scholars believe that Aramaic (the languageof the ancient Bible) did not contain an easy way to say "many things" and used a term which has come down to us as 40. This means that when the Bible in many places refers to "40 days," they meant many days.
4. No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, and purple.
5. Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them used to burn down their houses - hence the expression 'to get fired'.
6. Canada is an Indian word meaning "Big Village."
7. There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.
8. 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.
9. "I am." is the shortest complete sentence in the English Language.
10. The term "the whole 9 yards" came from WWII fighter pilots in the South Pacific. When arming their airplanes on the ground, the .50 cal. 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."
11. The original story from Tales of 1001 Arabian Nights begins, "Aladdin was a little Chinese boy
12. Winston Churchill was born in a ladies room during a dance.
13. The most common name in the world is Mohammed.
14. The "y" in signs reading "ye olde . . ." is properly pronounced with a "th" sound, not "y." The "th" sound does not exist in Latin, so ancient Roman occupied (present day) England use the rune "thorn" to represent "th" sounds. With the advent of the printing press the character from the Roman alphabet which closest resembled thorn was the lower case "y."
15. The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher (food sanctioned by Jewish law.)
16. Mel Blanc (the voice of Bugs Bunny) was allergic to carrots.
17. Cinderella's slippers were originally made out of fur. The story was changed in the 1600s by a translator.
18. It was the left shoe that Aschenputtel (Cinderella) lost at the stairway, when the prince tried to follow her.
19. 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. The time and day were chosen to prevent accidents where drivers would have gotten up in the morning and been too sleepy to realize *this* was the day of the changeover.
20. Donald Duck's middle name is Fauntleroy.