Trivial trivia

Who's to say how trivial what is and what the hell is 'true'. Ja, and actually the Internet is already stuffed to the gills with trivia.

British mobile users 2009

A survey done by Right Mobile Phone a UK online mobile phone retailer of 3138 British users found again the importance of keeping close to the people they love:

• 78% of people tell someone they love them using a mobile on a daily basis
• 82% of people love to hear from their partners or people they deeply care for on a daily basis
• On average people have 95 contacts in theur address book but 69% call or text less than 8 people a week
• 18% do not pick up when their parents call
• 58 per cent of mobile phone users (74 million in use in the UK) admit to only making one call a day, with 44 per cent of landline users doing less than that

Source: UsaageWatch.com

Twitter users 2009

• Twitter's user growth is no longer accelerating. The rate of new user acquisition has plateaued at around 8 million per month. There are overall 50 milion active users.
• Over 14% of users don't have a single follower, and over 75% of users have 10 or fewer followers.
• 38% of users have never sent a single tweet,
• and over 75% of users have sent fewer than 10 tweets.
• 1 in 4 registered users tweets in any given month.

Source: UsaageWatch.com

Lesser trivia 2008

• The typical American eats 263 eggs a year.
• The fastest growing nail is on the middle finger.
• In 1961, an IBM 7090 computer calculated Pi to 100,265 digits. The average human body weighs forty times more than the brain.
• After eating too much, your hearing is less sharp.
• A person swallows approx. 295 while eating dinner.
• The oldest known vegetable is the pea.
• Jack is the most common name in nursery rhymes.
• The avocado has the most calories of any fruit.
• The first zoo in the USA was in Philadelphia.
• The letter N ends all Japanese words not ending in a vowel.
• France has the highest per capita consumption of cheese.
• The hardest bone in the human body is the jawbone.
• Approx. 4000 people are injured by teapots each year.
• The typical American consumes 27 pounds of cheese each year.
• The shortest English word that contains the letters A, B, C, D, E, and F is feedback
• The ostrich has a 46 foot long small intestine.
• The state of California raises the most turkeys out of all of the states.
• The most sensitive finger on the human hand is the index finger.
• The typical hen lays 19 dozen eggs a year.
• A scallop has 35 blue eyes.
• The left leg of a chicken is more tender than the right one.
• The only dogs that don't have a pink tongue is the chow and the Chinese sharpei .
• Iceland was the first country to legalize abortion in 1935.
• The giraffe has the highest blood pressure of any animal.
• The dumbest domesticated animal is the turkey.
• Russia has the most movie theaters in the world.
• The strongest muscle in the human body is the tongue.
• Most car accidents that are fatal occur on Saturday.
• An Oscar weighs seven pounds.
• It takes the typical person seven minutes to fall asleep.
• Gabriel Fahrenheit invented the mercury thermometer.
• The Eiffel Tower has 1792 steps.
• The mongoose was barred live entry into the U.S. in 1902.
• Dry fish food can make goldfish constipated.
• The stall closest to the door in a bathroom is the cleanest, because it is the least used.
• 54% of Americans prefer to "fold" their toilet paper rather than "wad" it.
• Your urine will turn bright yellow if you eat too much asparagus.
• 111,111,111 x 111,111,111=12,345,678,987,654,321
• There are more people alive today than have ever died.
• The Library of Congress contains 327 miles of book shelves.
• There are 5 varieties of twins.
• The longest word in the English language is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis. It has 45 letters. antidisestablishmentarianism doesn't even come close.
• An ostriches eye is larger than its brain.
• 'Typewriter' is the longest word that can be typed using only the top row on a standard keyboard.
• Stewardesses is the longest word that can be typed with only the left hand, while lollipop is the longest with the right hand. (when following the rules for typing).
• The Pentagon, in Arlington, Virginia, has twice as many bathrooms as is necessary. When it was built in the 1940s, the state of Virginia still had segregation laws requiring separate toilet facilities for blacks and whites.
• The sentence "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" uses every letter in the English language.
• Elvis had a twin brother named Aaron, who died at birth, which is why Elvis' middle name was spelled Aron; in honor of his brother.
• A goldfish will eventually turn white when placed in a dark room.
• It was first discovered on a space mission flight that a frog could throw up. First it throws up its stomach, uses it's forearms to dig out the food and then swallows it stomach back down.
• White Out was developed my Mike Nesmith's mother (formerly of The Monkees)
• Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks, otherwise it will digest itself.
• "I am" is the shortest complete sentence in the English language (some would say "I do" is the longest).
• Light travels at 186,000 miles per second.
• Jupiter is larger than all the other planets in our solar system combined.
• It takes 8 minutes for the light from the sun to reach our eyes.
• The nearest star (besides our sun) is 4.6 light years away.
• If you could find a big enough water source, Saturn would float since its density is less than water.
• There are 88 constellations.
• Iceland consumes to most Coca-Cola per capita than any other country.
• All porcupines float in water.
• Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than for the U.S. treasury.
• 98% of American drivers think they drive better than anyone else.
• "Kemo Sabe" means "soggy shrub" in Navajo.
• A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
• A monkey was once tried and convicted for smoking a cigarette in South Bend, Indiana.
• A porpoise swims slowly in a circle as it sleeps.
• A Saudi Arabian woman can get a divorce if her husband doesn't give her coffee.
• A small tribe named the Todas in southern India doesn't greet each other with a handshake, they thumb their noses.
• All the clocks in 'Pulp Fiction' are stuck on 4:20.
• About 96% of American children can recognize Ronald McDonald.
• About a third of all Americans flush the toilet while they're still sitting on it.
• According to one poll, nearly 3/4 of all American women wear a bra that is the wrong size.
• Amount American Airlines saved in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in first class: $440,000
• An average person laughs about 15 times a day.
• An eagle can kill a young deer and fly away with it.
• An estimated 6,000 American teenagers lose their virginity every day.
• An Indian woman can legally wed a goat.
• Armored knights raised their visors to identify themselves when they rode past their king. This custom has become the modern military salute.
• At one time in Holland it took four years to train to be a hatmaker but only three years to train to be a surgeon.
• Average life span of a major league baseball: 7 pitches.
• Average number of people airborne over the US any given hour: 61,000.
• Aztec emperor Montezuma II had a nephew, Cuitlahac, whose name meant "plenty of excrement."
• Ballroom dancing is a major at Brigham Young University.
• Bird droppings are the chief export of Nauru, an island nation in the western Pacific.
• Blueberry Jelly Bellies were created especially for Ronald Reagan.
• Bubble gum contains rubber.
• Camel's milk does not curdle.
• Canada is an Indian word meaning "Big Village".
• Captain Jean-Luc Picard's fish was named Livingston.
• Captain Kangaroo won five Emmy awards.
• Captain Kirk never said "Beam me up, Scotty," but he did say, "Beam me up, Mr. Scott".
• Carnivorous animals will not eat another animal that has been hit by a lightning strike.
• Certain frogs can be frozen solid then thawed, and continue living.
• Chances of a white Christmas in New York: 1 in 4
• Chances that a burglary in the US will be solved: 1 in 7
• Chances that an American lives within 50 miles of where he/she grew up: 1 in 2
• Chicken soup was considered an aphrodisiac in the Middle Ages.
• Cinderella's slippers were originally made out of fur. The story was changed in the 1600s by a translator.
• City with the highest per capita viewership of TV evangelists: Wash., DC.
• City with the most Rolls Royces per capita: Hong Kong (though that may have changed after China took possession of it)
• Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them, used to burn their houses down - hence the expression "to get fired."
• Coca-cola was originally green.
• Columbia University is the second largest landowner in New York City, after the Catholic Church.
• David Prowse was the guy in the Darth Vader suit in Star Wars. He spoke all of Vader's lines, and didn't know that he was going to be dubbed over by James Earl Jones until he saw the screening of the movie.
• Despite the many rat-infested slums in New York City, rats bite only 311 people in an average year. But 1,519 residents are bitten annually by other New Yorkers.
• Donald Duck's middle name is Fauntleroy.
• Drivers tend to drive faster when other cars are around. It doesn't matter whether they are in front, behind or beside them.
• Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.
• During his entire lifetime, Herman Melville's timeless classic of the sea, 'Moby Dick', only sold 50 copies.
• Each unit on the Richter Scale is equivalent to a power factor of about 32. So a 6 is 32 times more powerful than a 5! Though it goes to 10, 9 is estimated to be the point of total tectonic destruction (2 is the smallest that can be felt unaided.)
• Einstein couldn't speak fluently when he was nine. His parents thought he might be retarded.
• Emus and kangaroos cannot walk backwards, and are on the Australian coat of arms for that reason.
• Estimated percentage of American adults who go on a diet each year: 44
• 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.
• Facetious and abstemious contain all the vowels in the correct order, as does arsenious, meaning "containing arsenic."
• February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.
• First novel ever written on a typewriter was "Tom Sawyer".
• Goethe couldn't stand the sound of barking dogs and could only write if he had an apple rotting in the drawer of his desk.
• Sloopy Hang On is the official rock song of Ohio.
• Hawaiian alphabet has 12 letters.
• Hypnotism is banned by public schools in San Diego.
• If you are locked in a completely sealed room, you will die of carbon dioxide poisoning before you will die of oxygen deprivation.
• If you bring a raccoon's head to the Henniker, New Hampshire town hall, you are entitled to receive $.10 from the town.
• In 75% of American households, women manage the money and pay the bills.
• The last dodo bird died in 1681.
• In 1976, a Los Angeles secretary formally married her 50-pound pet rock.
• In 1980, a Las Vegas hospital suspended workers for betting on when patients would die.
• In 1980, the Yellow Pages accidentally listed a Texas funeral home under frozen foods.
• In 1980, there was only one country in the world with no telephones - Bhutan.
• In 1983, a Japanese artist made a copy of the Mona Lisa completely out of toast.
• In 1984, a Canadian farmer began renting ad space on his cows.
• In 1984, a New Jersey man opened a summer camp for Cabbage Patch dolls.
• In 1987, a 1,400-year-old lump of still-edible cheese was unearthed in Ireland.
• In high school, Robin Williams was voted "Least Likely to Succeed."
• In Kentucky, 50% of the people who get married for the first time are teenagers.
• In Los Angeles, there are fewer people than there are automobiles.
• In the 1940s, the FCC assigned television's Channel 1 to mobile services (two-way radios in taxicabs, for instance) but did not re-number the other channel assignments. That is why your TV set has channels 2 and up, but no channel 1.
• In the great fire of London in 1666 half of London was burnt down but only 6 people were injured.
• Isaac Asimov is the only author to have a book in every Dewey-decimal category.
• It cost 7 million dollars to build the Titanic and 200 million to make a film about it.
• It's against the law to catch fish with your bare hands in Kansas.
• Kotex was first manufactured as bandages, during WWI.
• Lee Harvey Oswald's cadaver tag sold at an auction for $6,600 in 1992.
• Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.
• Lincoln Logs were invented by Frank Lloyd Wright's son.
• Lorne Greene had one of his nipples bitten off by an alligator while he was host of "Lorne Greene's Wild Kingdom."
• Men can read smaller print than women; women can hear better.
• Men get hiccups more often than woman.
• Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than all of the Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined.
• Millie the White House dog earned more than 4 times as much as Pres. Bush in 1991.
• Money isn't made out of paper, it's made out of linen (cotton).
• Most cows give more milk when they listen to music.
• Murphy's Oil Soap is the chemical most commonly used to clean elephants.
• No one knows why, but 90 percent of women who walk into a department store immediately turn to the right.
• Non-dairy creamer is flammable.
• Number of US states that claim test scores in their elementary schools are above national average: 50
• Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously.
• Only 55% of all Americans know that the sun is a star.
• Only animal besides human that can get sunburn: Pig. ** Recieved this from Amanda: "...This is untrue: horses with unpigmented skin, and no hair (such as those with light colored/unpigmented muzzles) get sunburned... I own one such horse and during the summer months we have to use sunblock or his skin gets red, blistered, and peels." -fp
• Only bird that can fly backwards: Hummingbird.
• Only continent without reptiles or snakes: Antarctica.
• Only first lady (recorded) to carry a loaded revolver: Eleanor Roosevelt.
• Only food that does not spoil: honey.
• Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.
• Contrary to popular belief Ostriches never stick their heads in the sand.
• Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.
• Pamela Anderson Lee is Canada's Centennial Baby, being the first baby born on the centennial anniversary of Canada's independence.
• Percentage of American men who say they would marry the same woman if they had it to do all over again: 80.
• Percentage of American women who say they would marry the same man: 50.
• Percentage of Americans that eat at McDonalds each day: 7.
• Percentage of Americans who have visited Disneyland or Disney World:70.
• Percentage of Americans who regularly attend religious services: 43.
• Percentage of Americans who say that God has spoken to them: 36.
• Percentage of bird species that are monogamous: 90.
• Percentage of mammal species that are monogamous: 3.
• Percentage of men who say they are happier after their divorce or separation: 58.
• Percentage of women who say they are happier: 85.
• Pollsters say that 40% of dog and cat owners carry pictures of the pets in their wallets.
• Portion of Harvard students who graduate with honors: 4/5
• Portion of ice cream sold that is vanilla: 1/3
• Portion of land in the US owned by the government: 1/3
• Portion of potatoes sold that are French-fried: 1/3
• Portion of US annual rainfall that falls in April: 1/12
• Proportional to their weight, men are stronger than horses.
• Racecar spelled backwards is racecar.
• Madam spelled backwards is madam
• Rene Descartes came up with the theory of coordinate geometry by looking at a fly walk across a tiled ceiling.
• Research indicates that mosquitoes are attracted to people who have recently eaten bananas.
• Sherlock Holmes never said "Elementary, my dear Watson."
• Sigmund Freud had a morbid fear of ferns.
• Sir Isaac Newton was an ordained priest in the Church of England.
• Smartest dogs: 1) border collie; 2) poodle; 3) golden retriever
• Some biblical scholars believe that Aramaic (the language of 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.

Source: Floyd Pinkerton, his site is chock a block full of all sorts of goodies.

• Out of every 100 people, ten weren’t fathered by the man they believe is Dad
• Fetuses masturbate
• Most corporations pay no federal income tax in America
• George Washington embezzled government funds
• Gandhi refused to let his dying wife take penicillin yet took quinine to save himself

Source: topsecret.com

• Only male turkeys (toms) gobble. Females (hens) make a clicking noise.
• The starfish extends its stomach out through its mouth (turning it inside out) to grab hold of and consume its food.
• A crocodile can't move its tongue, because it's attached to the roof of its mouth.
• If you pick up a grasshopper it will likely spit a brown liquid. Most people refer to this liquid as tobacco juice.
• The first VCR was made in 1956 by Charles Ginsburg and Ray Dolby. It sold for a whopping $75,000.
• Leonardo da Vinci invented scissors.

Source: Funtrivia.com is set up so as a Q&A

• Coca-Cola was originally green
• Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than the US Treasury
• It is possible to lead a cow upstairs but not downstairs. Smartest dogs: 1) Scottish border collie; 2) Poodle; 3) Golden retriever.
• Dumbest: Afghan hound.
• Hawaiian alphabet has 12 letters.
• Men can read smaller print than women; women can hear better.
• Amount American Airlines saved in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served first class: $40,000
• City with the most Rolls Royce’s per capita: Hong Kong
• State with the highest percentage of people who walk to work: Alaska
• Percentage of Africa that is wilderness: 28%. Percentage of North America that is wilderness: 38%
• Barbie’s measurements if she were life size: 39-23-33
• Average number of days a West German goes without washing his underwear: 7
• Percentage of American men who say they would marry the same woman if they had it to do all over again: 80%
• Percentage of American women who say they’d marry the same man: 50% (oops!)
• Cost of raizing a medium-size dog to the age of eleven: $6,400
• Average number of people airborne over the US any given hour: 61,000.
• Percentage of Americans who have visited Disneyland/Disney World: 70%
• Average life span of a major league baseball: 7 pitches.
• Only President to win a Pulitzer: John F. Kennedy for Profiles in Courage
• Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.
• The world’s youngest parents were 8 and 9 and lived in China in 1910.
• The youngest pope was 11 years old.
• Iceland consumes more Coca-Cola per capita than any other nation.
• First novel ever written on a typewriter: Tom Sawyer.
• A duck’s quack doesn’t echo, and no one knows why.
• In the 1940s, the FCC assigned television’s Channel 1 to mobile services (two-way radios in taxicabs, for instance) but did not renumber the other channel assignments. That is why your TV set has channels 2 and up, but no channel 1.
• The San Francisco Cable cars are the only mobile National Monuments
• The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.
• Hang On Sloppy is the official rock song of Ohio.
• There are coffee flavored PEZ.
• The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days of yore when the engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and figured out how to walk up straight staircases.
• The airplane Buddy Holly died in was the “American Pie.” (Thus the name of the Don McLean song.)
• When opossums are playing ‘possum, they are not “playing.” They actually pass out from sheer terror.
• The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.
• Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history. Spades - King David, Clubs - Alexander the Great, Hearts - Charlemagne, and Diamonds - Julius Caesar.
• 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321
• 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.
• Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them would burn their houses down - hence the expression “to get fired.”
• 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.
• “I am.” is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.
• The term “the whole 9 yards” came from W.W.II 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.”
• Hershey’s Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it’s kissing the conveyor belt.
• 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.
• An ostrich’s eye is bigger that it’s brain.
• The longest recorded flight of a chicken is thirteen seconds.
• The Eisenhower interstate system requires that one mile in every five must be straight. These straight sections are usable as airstrips in times of war or other emergencies.
• David Prowes was the guy in the Darth Vader suit in Star Wars. Spoke all of Vader’s lines, and didn’t know that he was going to be dubbed over by James Earl Jones until he saw the screening of the movie.
• In every episode of Seinfeld there is a Superman somewhere.
• The name Jeep came from the abbreviation used in the army for the “General Purpose” vehicle, G.P.
• The Pentagon, in Arlington, Virginia, has twice as many bathrooms as is necessary. When it was built in the 1940s, the state of Virginia still had segregation laws requiring separate toilet facilities for blacks and whites.
• The cruise liner, Queen Elizabeth II, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.
• Cat’s urine glows under a blacklight.
• The highest point in Pennsylvania is lower than the lowest point in Colorado.
• Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously.
• If you have three quarters, four dimes, and four pennies, you have $1.19. You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar.
• No NFL team which plays its home games in a domed stadium has ever won a Superbowl.
• The first toilet ever seen on television was on “Leave It To Beaver.”
• The only two days of the year in which there are no professional sports games (MLB, NBA, NHL, or NFL) are the day before and the day after the Major League all-stars Game.
• Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.
• The name Wendy was made up for the book “Peter Pan.”

Source: John Carroll University

• Honey is the only food that does not spoil. Honey found in the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs has been tasted by archaeologists and found edible.
• Libra, the Scales, is the only inanimate symbol in the zodiac.
• Swans are the only birds with penises.
• The only lizard that has a voice is the Gecko.
• The only one of his sculptures that Michelangelo signed was the "The Pieta," completed in 1500.
• The only part of the human body that has no blood supply is the cornea in the eye. It takes in oxygen directly from the air.
• Average number of eggs laid by the female American Oyster per year: 500 million. Usually only one oyster out of the bunch reaches maturity.
• Average number of hummingbirds required to create the weight of 1 ounce: 18.
• Humans shed about 600,000 particles of skin every hour - about 1.5 pounds a year. By 70 years of age, an average person will have lost 105 pounds of skin.
• It takes a lobster approximately 7 years to grow to be one pound.
• On average women say 7,000 words per day. Men manage just over 2000.
• The FDA allows an average of 30 or more insect fragments and one or more rodent hairs per 100 grams of peanut butter.
• Barbers at one time combined shaving and haircutting with bloodletting and pulling teeth. The white stripes on a field of red that spiral down a barber pole represent the bandages used in the bloodletting.
• The New York phone book had 22 Hitlers listed before World War II ... and none after.
• A chameleon's tongue is twice the length of its body.
• A zebra is white with black stripes.
• At the end of the Beatles' song "A Day in the Life", an ultrasonic whistle, audible only to dogs, was recorded by Paul McCartney for his Shetland sheepdog.
• Brown eggs come from hens with red feathers and red ear lobes; white eggs come from hens with white feathers and white ear lobes. Shell color is determined by the breed of hen and has no effect on its quality, nutrients or flavor.
• Camels have three eyelids to protect themselves from blowing sand.
• Carnivorous animals will not eat another animal that has been hit by a lightning strike.
• Elephant tusks grow throughout an elephant's life and can weigh more than 200 pounds. Among Asian elephants, only the males have tusks. Both sexes of African elephants have tusks.
• Female chickens, or hens, need about 24 to 26 hours to produce one egg. Thirty minutes later they start the process all over again. In addition to the half-hour rests, some hens rest every three to five days and others rest every 10 days.
• Lassie was played by several male dogs, despite the female name, because male collies were thought to look better on camera. The main "actor" was named Pal.
• Owls have eyeballs that are tubular in shape, because of this, they cannot move their eyes.
• Rats can't throw-up.
• Sharks apparently are the only animals that never get sick. As far as is known, they are immune to every known disease including cancer.
• The "caduceus" the classical medical symbol of two serpents wrapped around a staff - comes from an ancient Greek legend in which snakes revealed the practice of medicine to human beings.
• The blood of mammals is red, the blood of insects is yellow, and the blood of lobsters is blue.
• The bones of a pigeon weigh less than its feathers.
• The cheetah is the only cat in the world that can't retract its claws.
• The English Romantic poet Lord Byron was so devastated upon the death of his beloved Newfoundland, whose name was Boatswain, that he had inscribed upon the dog's gravestone the following: "Beauty without vanity, strength without insolence, courage without ferocity, and all the virtues of man without his vices."
• The hummingbird, the loon, the swift, the kingfisher, and the grebe are all birds that cannot walk.
• The last member of the famous Bonaparte family, Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte, died in 1945, of injuries sustained from tripping over his dog's leash.
• The phrase "raining cats and dogs" originated in 17th Century England. During heavy downpours of rain, many of these poor animals unfortunately drowned and their bodies would be seen floating in the rain torrents that raced through the streets. The situation gave the appearance that it had literally rained "cats and dogs" and led to the current expression.
• The term "dog days" has nothing to do with dogs. It dates back to Roman times, when it was believed that Sirius, the Dog Star, added its heat to that of the sun from July3 to August 11, creating exceptionally high temperatures. The Romans called the period dies caniculares, or "days of the dog."
• There is no single cat called the panther. The name is commonly applied to the leopard, but it is also used to refer to the puma and the jaguar. A black panther is really a black leopard.
• When a female horse and male donkey mate, the offspring is called a mule, but when a male horse and female donkey mate, the offspring is called a hinny.
• When the Black Death swept across England one theory was that cats caused the plague. Thousands were slaughtered. Ironically, those that kept their cats were less affected, because they kept their houses clear of the real culprits, rats.
• Contrary to popular belief, dogs do not sweat by salivating. They sweat through the pads of their feet.
• French poodles did not originate in France. Poodles were originally used as hunting dogs in Europe. The dogs' thick coats were a hindrance in water and thick brush, so hunters sheared the hindquarters, with cuffs left around the ankles and hips to protect against rheumatism. Each hunter marked his dogs' heads with a ribbon of his own color, allowing groups of hunters to tell their dogs apart.
• The common belief that dogs are color blind is false. Dogs can see color, but it is not as vivid a color scheme as we see. They distinguish between blue, yellow, and gray, but probably do not see red and green. This is much like our vision at twilight.
• Chocolate contains phenylethylamine (PEA), a natural substance that is reputed to stimulate the same reaction in the body as falling in love.
• In 1900, Queen Victoria sent her New Year's greetings to the British troops stationed in South Africa during the Boer War in the form of a specially molded chocolate bar.
• One plain milk chocolate candy bar has more protein than a banana.
• The American Heart Association recommends that daily cholesterol intake not exceed 300 mg. A chocolate bar is actually low in cholesterol. A 1.65 oz. bar contains only 12 mg! A one oz piece of cheddar cheese contains 30 mg of cholesterol - more than double the amount found in a chocolate bar.
• The botanical name of the chocolate plant is Theobramba cacao, which means "Food of the Gods."
• The term "white chocolate" is a misnomer. Under Fedaral Standards of Identity, real chocolate must contain chocolate liquor. "White" chocolate contains no chocolate liquor.
• The theobromine in chocolate that stimulates the cardiac and nervous systems is too much for dogs, especially smaller pups. A chocolate bar is poisonous to dogs and can even be lethal.

Source: Corsinet.com has collections of bits and pieces about all sorts of things: a per day collection of great websites, eclectically collectivist.

In the 1400s a law was set forth in England that a man was allowed to beat his wife with a stick no thicker than his thumb. Hence we have “the rule of thumb”
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Many years ago in Scotland , a new game was invented. It was ruled “Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden” and thus the word GOLF entered into the English language.
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The first couple to be shown in bed together on prime time TV were Fred and Wilma Flintstone.
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Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than the U.S . Treasury.
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Men can read smaller print than women can; women can hear better.
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Coca-Cola was originally green.
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It is impossible to lick your elbow.
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The State with the highest percentage of people who walk to work: Alaska
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The percentage of Africa that is wilderness: 28% (now get this...)
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The percentage of North America that is wilderness: 38%
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The cost of raising a medium-size dog to the age of eleven: $ 16,400
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The average number of people airborne over the U.S. in any given hour:
61,000
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Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.
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The first novel ever written on a typewriter: Tom Sawyer.
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The San Francisco Cable cars are the only mobile National Monuments.
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Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history:
Spades - King David
Hearts - Charlemagne
Clubs - Alexander the Great
Diamonds - Julius Caesar
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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.
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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.
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In Shakespeare’s time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes.
When you pulled on the ropes the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on. Hence the phrase “goodnight, sleep tight.”
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It was the accepted practice in Babylon 4,000 years ago that for a month after the wedding, the bride’s father would supply his son-in-law with all the mead he could drink. Mead is a honey beer and because their calendar was lunar based, this period was called the honey month, which we know today as the honeymoon.
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In English pubs, ale is ordered by pints and quarts... So in old England , when customers got unruly, the bartender would yell at them “Mind your pints and quarts, and settle down.”
It’s where we get the phrase “mind your P’s and Q’s”
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Many years ago in England , pub frequenters had a whistle baked into the rim, or handle, of their ceramic cups. When they needed a refill, they used the whistle to get some service. “Wet your whistle” is the phrase inspired by this practice.

Source: Email Rounds

{Tanya Pretorius' Bookmarks: Infoholism, Trivia}