Friday, May 18, 2007

Useless Trivia

I tried to confirm these on Snopes, but the ones I looked up weren't there, so I'm taking that as a OMG THEY ARE TOTALLY TRUE sign.

Bank robber John Dillinger played professional baseball.

If you toss a penny 10000 times, it will not be heads 5000 times, but more like 4950. The heads picture weighs more, so it ends up on the bottom.

The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.

The housefly hums in the middle octave, key of F.

A pig's orgasm lasts for 30 minutes. ( Lucky pig!)

If your eyes are six feet above the surface of the ocean, the horizon will be about three statute miles away.

The longest word in the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. The only other word with the same amount of letters is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconioses, its plural. (I've seen this before, but nobody can tell me what it means - obviously a lung issue, but Merriam-Webster doesn't recognize it.)

Los Angeles's full name is "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula."

Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.

An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.

Mel Blanc (the voice of Bugs Bunny) was allergic to carrots.

The band Duran Duran got their name from an astronaut in the 1968 Jane Fonda movie "Barbarella.

Cleo and Caesar were the early stage names of Cher and Sonny Bono.

Ben and Jerry's send the waste from making ice cream to local pig farmers to use as feed. Pigs love the stuff, except for one flavor: Mint Oreo.

The company providing the liability insurance for the Republican National Convention in San Diego is the same firm that insured the maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic. (100,000 points to anyone who can name the company....)

Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer.

Dr. Samuel A. Mudd was the physician who set the leg of Lincoln's assassin John Wilkes Booth...and whose shame created the expression for ignominy, "His name is Mudd."

The longest recorded flight of a chicken is thirteen seconds.

The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin during World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.

Wilma Flintstone's maiden name was Wilma Slaghoopal, and Betty Rubble's Maiden name was Betty Jean Mcbricker.

A pregnant goldfish is called a twit. (Ya hear that JC??)

111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

The Ramses brand condom is named after the great pharaoh Ramses II who fathered over 160 children. (I bet Christmas was a nightmare at his house.)

If NASA sent birds into space they would soon die, they need gravity to swallow. (Some of us girls are that way too.. HAHAHAHAHA HAAAAAA...)

Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors. (Still thinking about that pig.....)

It was discovered on a space mission that a frog can throw up. The frog throws up its stomach first, so the stomach is dangling out of its mouth. Then the frog uses its forearms to dig out all of the stomach's contents and then swallows the stomach back down again. (EWWW)

Armored knights raised their visors to identify themselves when they rode past their king. This custom has become the modern military salute.

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.

Gilligan of Gilligan's Island had a first name that was only used once, on the never-aired pilot show. His first name was Willy. The skipper's real name on Gilligan's Island is Jonas Grumby. It was mentioned once in the first episode on their radio's newscast about the wreck. (Jonas Grumby - what a cool name!)

In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak. (HAHAHAHA)

Playing cards were issued to British pilots in WWII. If captured, they could be soaked in water and unfolded to reveal a map for escape. (If anyone knows any British pilots from WWII, ask them if this is true.)

Ivory bar soap floating was a mistake. They had been overmixing the soap formula causing excess air bubbles that made it float. Customers wrote and told how much they loved that it floated, and it has floated ever since.

Studies show that if a cat falls off the seventh floor of a building it has about thirty percent less chance of surviving than a cat that falls off the twentieth floor. It supposedly takes about eight floors for the cat to realize what is occurring, relax and correct itself. (splat)

The saying "it's so cold out there it could freeze the balls off a brass monkey" came from when they had old cannons like ones used in the Civil War. The cannonballs were stacked in a pyramid formation, called a brass monkey. When it got extremely cold outside they would crack and break off... Thus the saying.

Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks, otherwise it will digest itself.

The Sanskrit word for "war" means "desire for more cows." (snicker)

The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from an old English law which stated that you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb. (I learned this in the movie Boondock Saints.. the guy in the movie said maybe it should be called "rule of wrist.")

101 Dalmatians and Peter Pan (Wendy) are the only two Disney cartoon features with both parents that are present and don't die throughout the movie.

The Baby Ruth candy bar was actually named after Grover Cleveland's baby daughter, Ruth.

A whale's penis is called a dork. (So many inappropriate comments, so little time......)

Armadillos have four babies at a time and they are always all the same sex. (AWWWW, baby armadillos are adorable. I want one!)

To escape the grip of a crocodile's jaws, push your thumbs into its eyeballs -- it will let you go instantly.

Reindeer like to eat bananas. (I never thought I'd be jealous of a pig...)

A group of unicorns is called a blessing.
Twelve or more cows are known as a "flink." (JC? Ya getting this?)
A group of frogs is called an army.
A group of rhinos is called a crash.
A group of kangaroos is called a mob.
A group of whales is called a pod.
A group of geese is called a gaggle.
A group of ravens is called a murder.
A group of officers is called a mess.
A group of larks is called an exaltation.
A group of owls is called a parliament.

Physicist Murray Gell-Mann named the sub-atomic particles known as quarks for a random line in James Joyce, "Three quarks for Muster Mark!"

Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie. (Sudden craving for bacon....)

The phrase "sleep tight" derives from the fact that early mattresses were filled with straw and held up with rope stretched across the bedframe. A tight sleep was a comfortable sleep.

"Three dog night" (attributed to Australian Aborigines) came about because on especially cold nights these nomadic people needed three dogs (dingos, actually) to keep from freezing. (stupid pigs)

1 comment:

heartinsanfrancisco said...

I was traumatized when Falina, Bambi's mommy, was killed.

I watched whales mating at the Coney Island Aquarium with my two older children, who were 4 and 5 at the time. (The dork was surprisingly small.) Then we went for ice cream.

And a group of pre-teens is called a giggle of girls.