A Gardeners Forum Forums Members History Forum Life 2005 Useless (but fun!) Trivia

They were most likely stow aways on a boat

Ethernet is a registered trademark of Xerox, Unix is a registered trademark of AT&T.

The newest dog breed is the Bull Boxer, first bred in the United states in 1990-91.

The first hard drive available for the Apple ][ had a capacity of 5 megabytes.

South of Tucson, Arizona, all road signs are in the Metric System.

In many cases, the amount of storage space on a recordable CD is measured in minutes. 74 minutes is about 650 megabytes, 63 minutes is 550 megabytes.

The real name of Astro (the dog fromThe Jetsons) is "Tralfaz" -- his real owner appeared one day to claim him but wound up giving him back to the Jetsons.

Charlie Brown's father was a barber.

The original story from Tales of 1001 Arabian Nights begins, "Aladdin was a little Chinese boy."

Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intraveinously

When a film is in production, the last shot of the day is the "martini shot", the next to last one is the "Abby Singer".

Of the six men who made up the Three Stooges, three of them were real brothers (Moe, Curly and Shemp.

Ohio is listed as the 17th state in the U.S., but technically it is number 47. Until August 7, 1953, Congress forgot to vote on a resolution to admit Ohio to the Union.

It is a misdemeanor to kill or threaten a butterfly -- so says City Ordinance No. 352 in Pacific Grove, California.

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.

Other than fruit, honey is the only natural food that is made without destroying any kind of life! What about milk, you say? A cow has to eat grass to produce milk and grass is living!

When Saigon fell the signal for all Americans to evacuate was Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" being played on the radio.

The Fort George Point in Belize City was formed by the silt runoff of Hurricane Hattie.

If you lace your shoes from the inside to the outside the fit will be snugger around your big toe.

Only 1/3 of the people that can twitch their ears can twitch only one at a time.

The expression "What in tarnation" comes from the original meaning: "What in eternal damnation"

Gary Burgough who played Walter Radar O'Reily on M*A*S*H has a deformed left thumb. If you watch closely you will see that he never shows his left hand.

Only two states' names begin with double consonants: Florida and Rhode Island.

The volume of the Earth's moon is the same as the volume of the Pacific Ocean

Ingrown toenails are hereditary.

The Cincinnati Reds baseball team name was officially changed to the Redlegs during the anti-communist movement.

Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance.

"Xmas" does not begin with the Roman letter X. It begins with the Greek letter "chi," which was used in medieval manuscripts as an abbreviation for the word "Christ" (xus = christus, etc.)

The ampersand (&) is actually a stylised version of the Latin word "et," meaning and."

The largest city in the United States with a one syllable name is Flint, Michigan.

The most common name in the world is Mohammed.

Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than all of the Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined.

On the cartoon show 'The Jetsons', Jane is 33 years old and her daughter Judy is 15.

In Mel Brooks' 'Silent Movie,' mime Marcel Marceau is the only person who has a speaking role.

Only humans and horses have hymens.

No NFL team which plays it's home games in a domed stadium has ever won a Superbowl. (Texas Stadium, home of the Cowboys, is not a dome, there is a large hole in the roof.)

The word "set" has more definitions than any other word in the English language.

The first toilet ever seen on television was on "Leave It To Beaver". Wally and Beaver had a baby alligator which they kept in the toilet.

In the great fire of London in 1666 half of London was burnt down but only 6 people were injured

The most eastern part of the western world is located in Ilomantsi, Finland.

"Hara kiri" is an impolite way of saying the Japanese word "seppuku" which means, literally, "belly splitting."

The term the "Boogey Man will get you" comes from the Boogey people,who still inhabit an area of Indonesia. These people still act as pirates today and attack ships that pass. Thus the term spread "if you don't watch out the Boogey man will get you."

The Saturn V moon rocket consumed 15 tons of fuel per second.

The state with the longest coastline in the US is Michigan.

Race car is a palindrome.

We will have four consecutive full moons making two blue moons in 1999 (January 2 and 31, March 2 and 31.) The only other time it happened this century was in 1915 (January 1 and 31, March 1 and 31.)

The Basset Horn, a kind of alto clarinet, was named after its inventor -- a man named Horn. "Basset" is from "Basetto," or "little bass" in Italian.

There are more bald eagles in the province of British Columbia then there are in the whole United States.

Lincoln Logs were invented by Frank Lloyd Wright's son.

The "second unit" films movie shots that do not require the presence of actors.

Pulp Fiction cost $8 million to make - $5 million going to actor's salaries.

The world's second largest pipe organ is located at the Organ Grinder on 82nd avenue in Portland, Oregon.

Games Slayter, a Purdue graduate, invented fiberglass.

One of the reasons marijuana is illegal today because cotton growers in the 30s lobbied against hemp farmers -- they saw it as competition. It is not chemically addictive as is nicotine, alcohol, or caffeine.

Olympic Badminton rules say that the bird has to have exactly fourteen feathers

The music group Simply Red is named because of its love for the football team, Manchester United, who have a red home strip.

In case you ever find yourself piloting a dogsled, shout "Jee!" to make the dogs turn left and "Ha!" to go right.

Richard Nixon left instructions for "California, Here I Come" to be the last piece of music played at his funeral ("softly and slowly") were he to die in office.

The earliest document in Latin in a woman's handwriting (it is from the first century A.D.) is an invitation to a birthday party.

Spot, Data's cat on Star Trek: The Next Generation, was played by six different cats.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard's fish was named Livingston.

Hydrogen gas is the least dense substance in the world, at 0.08988 g/cc
Hydrogen solid is the most dense substance in the world, at 70.6 g/cc

The longest U.S. highway is route 6 starting in Cape Cod, Massachusetts going through 14 states, and ending in Bishop, California...

Wow. Whoever complied this has way too much time on his or her hands!! I am still trying to get past the Oliver Cromwell one!

LOL

No joke...but some of them are really neat!

I'm not even halfway through the list that was sent to me. :rolleyes:

These are great, Barleychown! Thanks for taking the time to post them.

Six of them?!

I'm not a big Stooges fan but I believe, and someone else can correct this, that Moe and Larry stayed the same but there were two Curly's and a Shemp. Which still only equals 5 so I'm not sure where the sixth one is either,

Was there a guy named Joe, too??? I'm gonna go look this up !

The six are Moe Howard, Larry Fine, Curly Howard, Shemp Howard, Joe Besser, and Curly Joe DeRita.

Actually, I just saw on the news last week that they made a new breed of dog...something crossed with a Spaniel I think...but I can't really remember. I'm gonna have to look around for it.

My friend came up with a new breed a couple of years ago...Bull Mastiff & Great Dane....you talk about a horse of a dog...that bad boy is HUGE!!!! We use to breed Great Danes...but he always wanted a Bull Mastiff (which I think is suppose to be the largest breed of dog) so, he mixed bred...and created a monster! The good thing is that Bubba has the personality of a Dane...but the size of the mastiff...looks like a horse out there grazing...

Okay, that was totally off topic..sorry...


~V~

The movie "Paris, Texas" was banned in the city of Paris, Texas, shorty after its box office release.

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".

Pickled herrings were invented in 1375.

The number of the trash compactor in Star Wars (20th Century Fox, 1977) is 3263827.

Each year there is one ton of cement poured for each man, woman, and child in the world.

At McDonalds in New Zealand, they serve apricot pies instead of cherry ones.

The word "samba" means "to rub navels together."

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 Baseball All-Star Game.

The international telphone dialing code for Antarctica is 672.

A byte, in computer terms, means 8 bits. A nibble is half that: 4 bits. (Two nibbles make a byte!)

A full seven percent of the entire Irish barley crop goes to the production of Guinness beer.

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 airport in La Paz, Bolivia is the world's highest airport.

The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.

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

Chicago is closer to Moscow than to Rio de Janeiro.

Original copy of the Declaration of Independence is lost. The copy in Washington D.C. is what is referred to as a holograph. That is a term for a handmade copy of a document and is not the same as a laser produced hologram.

Singpore is the only country with one train station.

The little bags of netting for gas lanterns (called 'mantles') are radioactive--so much so that they will set of an alarm at a nuclear reactor.

When measuring fonts 'point size' refers to the height of capital letters (one point being one 72nd of an inch). 'Pitch' is a horizontal measurement of the number of letters which can be printed in an inch.

The only capital letter in the Roman alphabet with exactly one endpoint is P.

In the movie "the Right Stuff" there is a scene where a government recruiter for the Mercury astronaut program (played by Jeff Goldblum) is in a bar at Muroc Dry Lake, California. His partner suggests Chuck Yeager as a good astronaut candidate. Jeff proceeds to badmouth Yeager claiming they need someone who went to college. During the conversation the real Chuck Yeager is playing a bartender who is standing behind the recruiters eavesdropping. General Yeager is listed low in the movie credits as 'Fred.'

"Speak of the Devil" is short for "Speak of the Devil and he shall come". It was believed that if you spoke about the Devil it would attract his attention. That's why when your talking about someone and they show up people say "Speak of the Devil"

Maine is the only state whose name is just one syllable.

There are only four words in the English language which end in "-dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.

Nauru is the only country in the world with no official capital. (Its government offices are all in Yaren
District, but there's no official capital.)

South Africa is the only country with three official capitals: Pretoria, Cape Town, and Bloemfontein.

Lucy Ricardo's maiden name was McGillicudy.

Mickey Mouse is known as "Topolino" in Italy.

The red giant star Betelgeuse has a diameter larger than that of the Earth's orbit around the sun.

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

The one-hundred eleventh element is known as "unnilenilenium"

The longest muscle name is the "levator labii superioris alaeque nasi" and Elvis popularized it with his lip motions.

The longest time someone has typed on a typewriter continuously is 264 hrs., set by Violet Gibson Burns.

The Dutch town of Leeuwarden can be spelled 225 different ways.

There was once a town named "6" in West Virginia.

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

A cat has 32 muscles in each ear

An ostrich's eye is bigger than it's brain.

The oldest word in the English language is "town"

The sea wasp is half an inch long at best and more poisonous than any other jellyfish known to man.

Tigars have striped skin, not just striped fur.

Gerald Ford pardoned Robert E. Lee posthumously of all crimes of treason.

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

There are 22 stars surrounding the mountain on the Paramount Pictures logo.

After human death, post-mortem rigidity starts in the head and travels to the feet, and leaves the same way it came -- head to toe.

Police dogs are trained to react to commands in a foreign language; commonly German but more recently
Hungarian or some other Slavic tongue.

A Laforte fracture is a fracture of all facial bones. It would allow one to pull on another face and remove it like a mask if not held on by skin.

Debra Winger was the voice of E.T.

Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt were all cousins through one connection or another. (FDR and Eleanor were about five times removed.)

The Earth-Moon size ratio is the largest in the our solar system, excepting Pluto-Charon.

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 tetonic destruction (2 is the smallest that can be felt unaided.)

Gosh, you were grinding this stuff out so fast that I could barely keep up!

At a dinner meeting one time, Eleanor Roosevelt served the King & Queen of England HOTDOGS? ... cuz that was the only thing she knew how to cook! (The King had never had them before, & asked for seconds!)

Wish I could get away with that! (Well NOT with the King & Queen of England ...I haven't heard back from them yet so I haven't planned the menu! HAHA)... I mean, with Hubby!

BTW Barly, I'm going to Eugene on Fri (noonish) for a Dr appointment... You going to be busy? Maybe we could get together on my way back home. Can I bring you anything... baby Snake plant, Fairy jade, baby Spider? (Maybe we should PM.)

These are all pretty great, Barley. I'm fascinated.

But if camel milk doesn't curdle, what DOES it do?
And the Cromwell thing reminded me of Rasputin-- wasn't he killed about 3 times also?

Hey Vanessa, I'd like to see that dog, off-topic or not! And speaking of off-topic, since one of the facts mentioned "Bank-robber John Dillinger" I'd like to add that "bank-robber John Dillinger" once hit on my grandmother! (Really.)