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I found all of these facts at Ebaum's World and Tom Lianza. Random Facts
- Ancient Egyptians shaved off their eyebrows to mourn the deaths of their cats.
- Europe is the only continent without a desert.
- A human being loses an average of 40 to 100 strands of hair a day.
- Goodyear rubber company researched and concluded that shoes wear out faster on the right foot than the left.
- It takes about 142.18 licks to reach the center of a tootsie pop.
- A quarter has 119 grooves on its edge, a dime has one less groove.
- Babies are born without knee caps. They don't appear until the child reaches 2-6 years of age.
- Flamingos can only eat with their heads upside down.
- A lump of pure gold the size of a matchbox can be flattened into a sheet the size of a tennis court.
- Horses can sleep standing up.
- The catfish has over 27,000 taste buds, that makes the catfish rank #1 for animal having the most taste buds.
- Shakespeare spelled his own name several different ways.
- There are more than 10 million bricks in the Empire State Building.
- A jellyfish is 95% water.
- Donald Duck comics were banned in Finland because he doesn't wear pants.
- The U.S. Government will not allow portraits of living persons to appear on stamps.
- Your brain is 80% water.
- The sun is 330,330 times larger than the earth.
- A car traveling 100 mph would take more than 29 million years to reach the nearest star.
- Mel Blanc (the voice of Bugs Bunny) was allergic to carrots.
- The billionth digit of pi is 9.
- More money is printed daily for the Monopoly game than by the U.S. Treasury.
- Eggplant is a member of the thistle family.
- Kermit the Frog is left handed.
- The only country whose name begins with an A but doesn't end in an A is Afghanistan.
- The quartz crystal in your wristwatch vibrates 32768 times a second.
- St. Stephen is the patron saint of bricklayers.
- The placement of a donkey's eyes in its' head enables it to see all four feet at all times.
- Assuming Rudolph was in front, there are 40320 ways to arrange the other eight reindeer.
- Elephants are the only animal that can't jump.
- Research indicates that mosquitoes are attracted to people who have recently eaten bananas.
- At the current rate of growth, one out of every three people will be an Elvis impersonator by the year 2010.
- The hundred billionth crayon made by Crayola was Periwinkle Blue.
- Woodpecker scalps, porpoise teeth and giraffe tails have all been used as money.
- The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets.
- More people are killed annually by donkeys than die in air crashes.
- Pickled herrings were invented in 1375.
- The distance between an alligator's eyes in inches is directly proportional to the length of the alligator in feet.
- 'Toki doki kuruma de kayotte imasu' means 'Sometimes I commute by car' in Japanese.
- The lifespan of a taste bud is ten days.
- It takes forty minutes to hard boil an ostrich egg.
- Shirley Temple always had 56 curls in her hair.
- The pupil of an octopus' eye is rectangular.
- Camels milk does not curdle.
- Murphy's Oil Soap is the chemical most commonly used to clean elephants.
- All porcupines float in water.
- Average speed of Heinz ketchup from the mouth of an opened bottle: 25 miles per year.
- Belief in the existence of vacuums used to be punishable by death under church law.
- Carnivorous animals will not eat another animal that has been hit by a lightning strike.
- The Sanskrit word for war translates as 'wanting more cows.'
- There is a 1 in 685,000 chance that you will accidentally drown in your own bath.
- Mickey Mouse was banned in Romania in 1935 because it was felt that he was too scary for children.
- Bamboo can grow three feet in twenty-four hours.
- Mosquitoes have forty-seven teeth.
- If the bottom two rows of keys on your keyboard suddenly failed, the longest word you could still be able to type out is 'typewriter.'
- There are 2,500,000 rivets in the Eiffel Tower.
- Queen Victoria was the first European monarch to use a telephone.
- A pound of termites has more nutrients than a pound of beef or pork
- The male scorpion fly gets other males to bring him food by imitating a female fly.
- The longest recorded flight of a chicken is thirteen seconds.
- Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks otherwise it will digest itself.
- Armadillos are the only animal besides humans that can get leprosy.
- If you started counting, and said one number every second, it would take you 33 years to get to 1 billion.
- 20 newborn opossums can fit into a tablespoon.
- A shark can grow a new set of teeth in a week.
- Brazil got it's name from the nut, not the other way around.
- The Milky Way galaxy contains 5 billion stars larger than our sun.
- The number of UFO sightings constantly increase when Mars is nearest the Earth.
- Crocodiles swallow stones to help them dive deeper.
- Goldfish can suffer motion sickness.
- Giraffes are unable to cough.
- During it's lifetime an oyster changes its sex from male to female and back several times.
- Squids can commit suicide by eating their own tentacles.
- Shark's teeth are literally as hard as steel.
- Turkey's often look up at the sky during a rainstorm. Unfortunately some have been known to drown as a result.
- The aquatic animal, the Red Sponge, can be broken into a thousand pieces and still reconstitute itself.
- In Ancient Peru, when a woman found an 'ugly' potato, it was the custom for her to push it into the face of the nearest man.
- The magic word 'Abracadabra' was originally intended for the specific purpose of curing hay fever.
- Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, never phoned his wife or his mother, they were both deaf.
- William Shakespeare's father's first name was John.
- Sesaism times square is another word for bada-geint.
- There are more nutrients in the cornflake packet itself than there are in the actual cornflake.
- A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why.
- It is possible to lead a cow upstairs but not downstairs, because a cows' knees can't bend properly to walk back down.
- A full-grown bear can run as fast as a horse.
- A polar bears' fur is not white, it's clear.
- Walt Disney had wooden teeth.
- Donald Duck's middle name is Fauntleroy.
- Slinkies were invented by an airplane mechanic; he was playing with engine parts and realized the possible secondary use of one of the springs.
- The Roman Emperor Nero used to eat leeks to try to improve his singing voice.
- After his first concert appearance Elvis Presley was advised to consider becoming a lorry driver.
- Children grow faster in springtime than they do the rest of the year.
- A yak has the skeleton of a bison, the hair of a goat, the tail of a horse, the head of a cow, and grunts like a pig.
- The measurement of a yard was instituted by Henry I, who decided it should be the distance from the end of his nose to his thumb.
- Horses do not have collar bones.
- For more than 2000 years a cow's moo was used as a unit of distance in India.
- An elephants trunk can hold 6.6 litres of water.
- The characters Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street were named after Bert the cop and Ernie the taxi driver in Frank Capra's 'Its A Wonderful Life'.
- All of the clocks in the movie Pulp Fiction are stuck on 4:20.
- In Mel Brooks' 'Silent Movie,' mime Marcel Marceau is the only person who has a speaking role.
- Pulp Fiction cost $8 million to make - $5 million going to actor's salaries.
- Spot, Data's cat on Star Trek: The Next Generation, was played by six different cats.
- Deborah Winger did the voice of E.T.
- Alfred Hitchcock didn't have a belly button. It was eliminated when he was sewn up after surgery.
- Telly Savalas and Louis Armstrong died on their birthdays.
- Donald Duck's middle name is 'Fauntleroy.'
- Betsy Ross was born with a fully formed set of teeth, and is the only real person to be a Pez head.
- Bob Dylan's real name is Robert Zimmerman.
- ABBA got their name by taking the first letter from each of their first names (Agnetha, Bjorn, Benny, Anni-frid.)
- Kelsey Grammar sings and plays the piano for the theme song of Fraser.
- Who's that playing the piano on the 'Mad About You' theme? It's Paul Reiser himself.
- Mr. Rogers is an ordained minister.
- Hugh 'Ward Cleaver' Beaumont was an ordained minister.
- John Lennon's first girlfriend was named Thelma Pickles.
- 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.
- Tommy Lee Jones and Al Gore were freshman roommates at Harvard.
- Ralph Lauren's original name was Ralph Lifshitz.
- Of the six men who made up the Three Stooges, three of them were real brothers (Moe, Curly and Shemp.)
- Wayne's World was filmed in two weeks.
- The sound of E.T. walking was made by someone squishing her hands in Jello.
- An ostrich's eye is bigger than it's brain.
- Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.
- The muzzle of a lion is like a fingerprint - no two lions have the same pattern of whiskers.
- A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.
- A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.
- The giant squid has the largest eyes in the world.
- Horses and rabbits cannot vomit.
- A donkey will sink in quicksand but a mule won't.
- The average garden variety caterpillar has 248 muscles in its head.
- The male gypsy moth can 'smell' the virgin female gypsy moth from 1.8 miles away.
- A dragonfly has a lifespan of 24 hours.
- When opossums are playing opossum, they are not 'playing.' They actually pass out from sheer terror.
- A full grown bear can run as fast as a horse.
- A lion's roar can be heard from five miles away.
- Penguins can jump as high as 6 feet in the air.
- When snakes are born with two heads, they fight each other for food.
- Most cows give more milk when they listen to music.
- The fingerprints of koala bears are virtually indistinguishable from those of humans, so much so that they could be confused at a crime scene.
- Certain frogs can be frozen solid then thawed, and continue living.
- A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why.
- Even if you cut off a cockroach's head, it can live for several weeks.
- You can only smell 1/20th as well as a dog.
- Spotted skunks do handstands before they spray.
- The world population of chickens is about equal to the number of people.
- A monkey was once tried and convicted for smoking a cigarette in South Bend, Indiana.
- Millie the late White House dog earned more than 4 times as much as President Bush in 1991.
- Pollsters say that 40 percent of dog and cat owners carry pictures of the pets in their wallets.
- You're more likely to get stung by a bee on a windy day than in any other weather.
- Research indicates that mosquitoes are attracted to people who have recently eaten bananas.
- Canada is an Indian word meaning 'Big Village.'
- Los Angeles's full name is 'El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula' and is abbreviated to 3.63% of its size.
- When the University of Wyoming Cowboys play football at home, the stadium becomes the state's largest city.
- Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.
- In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak.
- Every male over the age of 18 is considered part of the Arizona Militia according to the state's constitution.
- Texas is the only state that is allowed to fly its state flag at the same height as the U.S. flag.
- 49.6% of U.S. residents live in the Eastern time zone.
- Most Americans' car horns beep in the key of F. The telephone dial tone is also in the key of F.
- 2% of U.S. male college students believe life is 'a meaningless existential hell.
- In Kentucky, 50 percent of the people who get married for the first time are teenagers.
- Croatia was the first country to recognize the United States in 1776.
- There are only 14 blimps in the world, and 10 of them are in the U.S.
- In 75% of American households, women manage the money and pay the bills.
- In Los Angeles, there are fewer people than there are automobiles.
- About a third of all Americans flush the toilet while they're still sitting on it. {Who studied this and why?}
- A Saudi Arabian woman can get a divorce if her husband doesn't give her coffee.
- Bird droppings are the chief export of Nauru, an island nation in the Western Pacific.
- Only 55 percent of all Americans know that the sun is a star.
- The average bank teller loses about $250 every year.
- A full seven percent of the entire Irish barley crop goes to the production of Guinness beer.
- The Japanese word 'Arigato', meaning 'thank you', is derived from the Portuguese word 'Obrigado.'
- Portugal once had a thriving trade with Japan.
- In 1980, there was only one country in the world with no telephones - Bhutan.
- About 70 percent of Americans who go to college do it just to make more money.
- The three best-known western names in China: Jesus Christ, Richard Nixon, and Elvis Presley.
- Hypnotism is banned by public schools in San Diego.
- There are more plastic flamingos in America than real ones.
- The first known contraceptive was crocodile dung, used by Egyptians in 2000 B.C.
- Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer.
- Charles de Gaulle's final words were, 'It hurts.',
- The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.
- Napoleon constructed his battle plans in a sandbox.
- Virgina Woolf wrote all her books standing.
- Sigmund Freud had a morbid fear of ferns.
- Isaac Asimov is the only author to have a book in every Dewey-decimal category.
- Alexander the Great was an epileptic.
- Aztec emperor Montezuma had a nephew, Cuitlahac, whose name meant 'plenty of excrement.'
- Thomas Edison was afraid of the dark. (Hence, the light bulb?)
- If you told someone that they were one in a million, you would be saying there were about 1,800 of them in China.
- Lizzie Borden was acquitted.
- Every person has a unique tongue print.
- Your right lung takes in more air than your left one does.
- Women's hearts beat faster than men's.
- Every time Beethoven sat down to write music, he poured ice water over his head.
- Ingrown toenails are hereditary.
- The average person is about a quarter of an inch taller at night.
- Einstein couldn't speak fluently when he was nine. His parents thought he might be retarded.
- An average person laughs about 15 times a day.
- Lee Harvey Oswald's cadaver tag sold at an auction for $6,600 in 1992.
- The Neanderthal's brain was bigger than yours is.
- The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets.
- The letters KGB stand for Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti.
- To 'testify' was based on men in the Roman court swearing to a statement made by swearing on their testicles.
- The Chinese ideogram for 'trouble' depicts two women living under one roof.
- The Chinese words for crisis and opportunity are the same.
- The word 'karate' means 'empty hand.'
- Pinocchio is Italian for 'pine eyes.'
- 'Kemo Sabe' means 'soggy shrub' in Navajo.
- A hamlet is a village without a church and a town is not a city until it has a cathedral.
- The symbol on the 'pound' key (#) is called an octothorpe.
- The average ear of corn has eight-hundred kernels arranged in sixteen rows.
- Almonds are members of the peach family.
- Cranberries are sorted for ripeness by bouncing them; a fully ripened cranberry can be dribbled like basketball.
- If you put a raisin in a glass of champagne, it will keep floating to the top and sinking to the bottom.
- Bubble gum contains rubber.
- Some toothpastes contain antifreeze.
- Most lipstick contains fish scales.
- The bubbles in Guinness Beer sink to the bottom rather than float to the top like all other beers. No one knows why.
- On a Canadian two dollar bill, the flag flying over the Parliament Building is an American flag.
- 26 states are listed across the top of the Lincoln Memorial on the back of the $5 bill.
- Charlie Brown's father was a barber.
- Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously.
- In most advertisements, the time displayed on an analog watch is 10:10 because it make the watch look like it's smiling.
- Bingo is the name of the dog on the Cracker Jack box.
- The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.
- Dartboards are made out of horsehairs.
- The only planet without a ring is earth.
- A bowling pin needs only to tilt 7.5 degrees in order to fall down.
- Jupiter's core is in fact made of a non-metal, hyrdogen, but due to the immense pressure inside Jupiter the core has become a metal.
- The launching mechanism of an aircraft carrier ship that helps planes to take off could throw a pickup truck over a mile.
- The average sixty minute audio cassette tape has 562.5 feet of tape in it, nearly two football fields long.
- The ashes of the average cremated person weigh nine pounds.
- The 'save' icon on Microsoft Word shows a floppy disk, with the shutter on backwards.
- Assuming Rudolph was in front, there are 40,320 ways to arrange the other eight reindeer.
- If you stretch a standard Slinky out flat, it measures 87 feet long.
- Barbie's measurements if she were life size: 39-23-33.
- Kotex was first manufactured as bandages, during W.W.I.
- A sneeze zooms out of your mouth at over 600 m.p.h.
- The condom - made originally of linen - was invented in the early 1500's.
- In 1980, a Las Vegas hospital suspended workers for betting on when patients would die.
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