Fun Facts

In Albania, nodding the head means no, and shaking the head means yes.

Every year, Mexico sinks about 10 inches.

Buckingham Palace has 602 rooms.

Toilets in Australia flush counter clockwise.

Writing in ancient Greece had no spaces between the words.

The worlds number one producer and consumer of pork is China.

Rising sea levels from global warming could cause major flooding in Shanghai, Guangzhou, and other Chinese coastal cities by 2050 leaving about 76 million homeless.

The town of Tidikelt in the Sarah once went ten years with out rain.

It snowed more in the Grand Canyon that it did in Minneapolis in the past.

Public telephones in Israel are no longer operated by tokens. They now use magnetic cards the size of credit cards.

The oldest exposed surface on the Earth is New Zealand’s south island.

Hong Kong has the world’s largest double-decker tram fleet in the world.

The driest place on the earth is a series of valleys near Ross Island in Antarctica where no rain has fallen for the past 2 million years.

Tasmania has the cleanest air in the world.

The first telephone book ever issued had 50 names. It was published in New Haven, CT, by the New Haven District Telephone Co. in Feb, 1878.

Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.

In the great fire of London in 1666 half of London was burnt down, but there was only 6 injuries.

There are 1,792 steps to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

The yo-yo was originally used as a weapon in the Philippines.

Every Swiss citizen is required to have access to a bomb shelter by law.

Only four countries in the world start with D, Denmark, Dominica, Djibouti, Dominican Republic.

Cyprus has a map on its flag.

South Africa used to have 2 official languages, now it has 11.

Mexico once had three presidents in one day.

If Texas were a country, it’s GNP would be the 5th largest of any country.

An earthquake on December 16, 1811 sent the Mississippi River backward.

The Angel Falls in Venezuela are nearly 20 times taller than Niagara Falls.

The English Channel grows 300 mm per year.

During winter in Moscow, the skating rinks cover more than 25,000 sq. meters of land.

If you travel across Russia, you will cross 7 time zones.

Brazil got its name from the nut, not the other way around.

Until the 18th century, India produced almost all the worlds diamonds.

The furthest point from any ocean would be in China.

The city of Istanbul straddles two separate continents, Asia and Europe.

The Forth Railway Bridge is a meter longer in summer than in winter due to thermal expansion.

Canada’s national sport is Lacrosse, not hockey.

There are no public toilets in Peru.

Canada banned beauty contests in 1992 claiming they were degrading.

At the height of its power in 400 BC, Sparta had 50,000 slaves and 20,000 citizens.

Donald Duck comics were banned in Finland because he doesn’t wear pants.

The US consumes 25% of the world’s power.

Flying from London to New York by concord, due to time zones, you can arrive 2 hours before you leave.

Montpelier, Vermont is the only state capital without a McDonalds.

Hong Kong has the most Rolls Royces per capita.

Alaska is the state with the highest percent of people who walk to work.

Iceland consumes more Coke than any other nation.

San Francisco has the only mobile National Monument, the cable cars.

The national anthem of Greece has 58 verses, no one knows them all.

New Jersey grows 2/3 of the world’s eggplant.

On a Canadian $2, the flag over the Parliament building is the US flag.

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 the books that would occupy the building.

The infinite sign is called a lemniscate.

The first prime number after 1,000,000 is 1,000,003.

The 772-778 digits of PI are 9999998.

The largest prime number is 13,395 digits long.

2 and 5 are the only prime numbers that end in 2 and 5.

1 and 2 are the only numbers where they are values of the numbers of factors they have.

If you need to remember PI, just count the number of letters in each work in the following sentence. “May I have a large container of coffee?” If you are polite, say “Thank You.” and get two more decimals. [3.141592653.....]

The foreign city most visited by Americans is Tijuana.

Every male over 18 is considered part of the Arizona malitia if they live in the state.

A golden razor removed from King Tut’s tomb was still sharp enough to use.

All gondolas in Venice, Italy must be painted black, unless they belong to a high official.

St. Stephan is the patron saint of bricklayers.

The 16th century astronomer Tycho Brahe lost his nose in a duel with one of his students over a math computation. He wore a silver nose ever since.

The ashes of the average cremated person weighs 9 pounds.

Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of unwanted people with out killing them, use to burn their house down. Hence the expression “To get fired.”

The longest chapter of the Bible is Psalm 119.

There are 2 credit cards for every person in the Untied States.

The United States has never lost a war in which mules were used.

The ridges on the sides of coins are called milling.

At latitude 60 degrees south, you can sail all the way around the world.

The saguaro cactus, found in the southwestern United States doesn’t grow branches until it is 75 years old.

The average mouse pad is 8.75 inches by 7.5 inches.

Oak trees don’t have acorns until they are at least 50.

A two-bit moon is in the first quarter.

Every Swiss citizen is required to have access to a bomb shelter.

Paul Revere rode on a hose that belonged to Deacon Larkin.

Most Americans’ car horns beep in the key of “F”.

Men are 6 times more likely to be struck be lightning than women.

It is estimated that millions of trees in the world are from squirrels that forget where they bury them.

Ernest Vincient Wright wrote a novel “Gadsby” with over 50,000 words--non with the letter E.

Of all the words in the English language, the word set has the most definitions.

A toothpick is the object most often choked on by Americans.

Every 45 seconds a house catches fire.

The sun is 330,330 times larger than the Earth.

The most used letter in the alphabet is E and the least is Q.

There are more than 50,000 earthquakes throughout the world every year.

The original name for the butterfly was flutterby.

Dogs and cats, are either right of left handed.

The opposite sides of a dice always add up to seven.

Nose prints are used to identify dogs like humans use fingerprints.

Bulls are colorblind, therefore will usually charge at a matador’s waving cape no matter what color it is.

Smelling bananas and/or green apples can help you lose weight.

A hard working adult sweats up to 4 gal. per day. Most evaporates before they realize it though.

The average ice berg weighs 20,000,000 tons.

The poison-arrow frog has enough poison to kill about 2,200 people.

A lump of pure gold the size of a matchbox can be flattened into a sheet the size of a tennis court.

After eating, a housefly regurgitates its food and then eats it again.

The first car ever to be stolen was a Peugeot in 1896.

The White House was painted white to cover the scorch marks left when the British army set fire to it in the war of 1812.

The speed of light is 1,802,617,500,000 furlongs per fortnight.

5,780 starts are visible to the naked eye under ideal viewing conditions of Earth.

Empress Marie-Theresa of Austria was 4’11” tall and weighed 21 stone.

In the US, the ‘on’ position for lights is ‘up’.

Queen Anne was buried in a square coffin.

The hour of scampering is usually around tea-time, according to the Vorlon/Human Translation Dictionary.

According to ancient Chinese astrologers, 70% of omens were bad.

In Australia, Durex is a brand of sellotape.

The Danish word for condom is ‘svangerskabsforebyggendemiddel’.

The word ‘haywire’ is not the legacy of an early and futile experiment in the transmission in electricity.

The address of the start of the display memory on a ZX81 is given by PEEK(16396)+256*PEEK(16397).

The 3,000,000,000th decimal digit of PI is an 8.

On Pitcarin Island, it is a criminal offense to shout “Ship Ahoy” when there is no ship in sight.

Icelandic phone books are listed by given name rather than surname.

The population of Outer Mongolia have recently been issued with surnames.

Polar bears are left-handed.

Earth worms are hermaphrodites.

There is no single word in the English language for the back of the knee.

The word set has the most definitions than every other word.

Japan is the only country every to have changed its capital to a city whose name in an anagram of the previous capital (Tokyo and Kyoto).

Bank robber John Dillinger played professional baseball.

If you toss a penny 10,000 times, it will not land heads 5,000 but more like 4,950 because the heads picture weighs more.

The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.

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

If your eyes are 6’ above the surface of the ocean, the horizon will be about 3 statute miles away.

The longest work in the English language, according to the Oxford English Dict. is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. The only other word with the same amount of letters is its plural: pneumonoultramicroscopiscilicovolcanoconioses.

Hydroxydesoxycorticosterone and Hydroxdeoxycorticosterones are the largest anagrams.

Los Angeles 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.

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

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

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

The company providing the liability insurance for the Republican National Convention is San Diego is the same firm that insured the maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic.

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

Dr. Samual 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 13 seconds.

The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin in WWII killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.

Wilma Flintstones’s maiden name was Wilma Slanghoopal, and Betty Rubble’s maiden name was Betty Jean McBricker.

A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.

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.

If NASA send birds into space, they would soon die because they need gravity to breath.

Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.

The characters Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street were named after Bert the cop and Ernie the taxi driver in Frank Capra’s “It’s A Wonderful Life.”

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 the stomach’s contents then swallows it back down.

Armored knights raised their visors to identify themselves when they rode past kings. This became the modern military salute.

White Out was invented by the mother of Mike Nesmith (From the Monkees).

Sylvia Miles had the shortest performance ever nominated for an Oscar with “Midnight Cowboy” Her entire role lasted only six minutes.

Charles Lindbergh took only 4 sandwiches with him on his famous transatlantic flight.

Goth couldn’t stand the sound of barking dogs and could only write if he had an apple rotting in the drawer of his desk.

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 from battle wounds; 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. It was Willy. The skipper’s real name was Jonas Grumby. It was mentioned once in the first episode on the radio’s newscast about the ship wreck.

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

Playing cards were issued to British pilots in WWII. If they were captured, they could be soaked in water and unfolded to reveal a map for escape.

The “L.L.” in L.L. Bean stands for Leon Leonwood.

Ivory bar soap floating was a mistake. They had been overtaxing the soap formula causing excess air bubbles that made it float. Customers wrote in 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 eight floors for the cat to realize what is occurring, relax, and correct itself.

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 the ones in the Civil War. The cannonballs were stacked in a pyramid formation, called a brass monkey. When it got cold outside, they would crack and break off... Thus the saying.

Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every 2 weeks so it doesn’t digest it self.

The Sanskrit word for war means desire for more cows.

A walla-walla scene is one where extras pretend to be talking in the background--when they say walla-walla it looks like they are actually talking.

The phrase “rule of thumb” is derived from an old English law that stated that you couldn’t beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.

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

Stewardess is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand.

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

Armadillos have four babies at a time and they are always the same sex.

Armadillos are the only animal besides humans that can get leprosy.

To escape the grip of a crocodile’s jaws, punch your thumbs into its eyeballs.

Reindeer like to eat bananas .

A pig’s orgasm lasts for 30 minutes.

Ben and Jerry’s sends the waste from making ice cream to local pig farmers to use as feed, pigs love the stuff except for Mint Oreo.

“Three dog night” attributed to Australian Aborigines came about on especially cold nights these nomadic people needed three dogs (dingoes actually) to keep from freezing.

Every time you lick a stamp, you consume 1/10 of a calorie.

Physicist Murry Gell-Mann named the sub-atomic particles known as quarks for a random line in James Joyce, “Three Quarks for Muster Mark”.

A group of owls is called a parliament.

A group of larks is called an exaltation.

A group of officers is a mess.

A group of ravens is called a murder.

A group of geese is a gaggle.

A group of whales is a pod.

A group of kangaroos is called a mob.

A group of rhinos is called a crash.

A group of frogs is called an army.

All fifty states have a city named Greenville although the spelling varies.

Illinois has the most personalized license plates of any state.

Pittsburgh, PA is the only city in the US with three sports teams that all wear the same colors.

The letter “J” doesn’t appear anywhere on the periodic table of elements.

Months that begin with a Sunday will always have a Friday the 13th.

On the new 100 dollar bills, the time on the clock tower of Independence Hall is 4:10.

A coat hanger is 45 inches long if straightened.

A-1 Steak Sauce contains both orange peel and raisins.

If you stretch a standard Slinky out flat, it measures 87 feet long.

A broken clock is correct twice a day.

Playing cards in India are round.

The shortest war in history was between Zanzibar and England in 1896. Zanzibar surrendered in 38 minutes.

Each of us generated about 3.5 pounds of rubbish a day, most of it is paper.

The condensed water vapor is the sky left behind by jets is called a contrail.

Children grow faster in the springtime.

The most collect calls are made on fathers day.

No piece of paper can be folded more than 7 times.

Due to precipitation, for a few weeks, K2 is bigger than Mt. Everest.

The US standard railroad guage (distance bewteen rails) is 4ft, 8.5 inches.

Most gemstones contain several elements. Except the diamond, it’s all carbon.

The smoke detector was invented in 1969.

Barbie’s measurements, if she were life size, 39-29-33.

More people are killed by donkeys annually than are killed in plane crashes.

1 in every 4 Americans have appeared on television.

You were born with 300 bones, but when you get to be an adult, you only have 206.

You burn more calories sleeping than you do watching TV.

There are ten human body parts that are only three letters long (eye, hip, arm, leg, ear, toe, jaw, rib, lip, gum)

If you go blind in one eye, you only lose about 1/5th of your vision but all your sense of depth.

Oak trees do not produce acorns until they are fifty years of age or older.

Most of the vitamin C in fruits is in the skin.

The average life of a taste bud is 10 days.

Women blink nearly twice as much as men.

A bowling ball need only tilt 7.5 degrees to fall.

People say that popping your bones will cause arthritis when you get older. It only pops air pockets and does not cause arthritis.

The first product to have a bar code was Wrigleys gum.

The king of hearts is the only king with out a moustache.

Human teeth are almost as hard as rocks.

Human thigh bones are as strong as concrete.

The electric chair was invented by a dentist.

Blond people have more hair than dark haired people do.

Six ounces orange juice contains the daily requirement for vitamin C.

American Airlines saved $40,000.00 in 1987 by removing 1 olive from each first class salad.

One ragweed plant can release as many as one billion grains of pollen.

The term ‘hay fever’ originated in England, where some people suffered allergic symptoms during hay pitching time. When the symptoms became sever, workers often felt feverish.

A jumbo jet uses 4,000 gallons of fuel to take off.

Venus is the only planet that spins clockwise.

The first CD pressed in the US was Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born in the USA’.

The thumbnail grows the slowest, the middle nail grows the fastest.

The toes of mummies are wrapped individually.

There is cyanide in apple pipes.

Apples, not caffeine, are more efficient at waking you up.

When you sneeze, all your bodily functions stop, even your heart.

Our eyes never grow, our nose and ears never stop growing.

The 57 on Heinz ketchup bottles represents the number of varieties of pickles the company once had.

If you lock your knee while standing long enough, you will pass out.

The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets.

Brain damage occurs at an internal temperature of 105 degrees Fahrenheit.

Tom Sawyer was the first novel written on a typewriter.

Most dust particles in your house are made from dead skin.

The Volskswagen was originally called the “Strength Through Joy Wagon”

Just twenty seconds worth of fuel was left when Apollo 11 landed on the moon.

Sterling silver contains 7.5% copper.

The active ingredient in smelling salts is ammonia.

Minus 40 degrees Celsius is exactly the same as minus 40 Fahrenheit.

If your senses are working normally you can:
Feel on you fingertips or face a pressure that depresses you skin .00004 inch.
See a small candle flame from 39 miles away on a clear, dark night.
Smell one drop of perfume diffused through a three room apartment.
Taste .04 ounce of table salt dissolved in 530 quarts of water.
Feel the weight of a bee’s wing falling on your cheek from less that .5 inch away.
Distinguish among more than 300,000 different color variations.
Gauge the direction of a sound’s origin based on a .00003 second difference in its arrival from ear to ear.

Men can read smaller print than women.

Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.

In the 40’s, the FCC assigned Ch. 1 to mobile services which is why there is no channel 1 on the TV.

Rubber bands last longer if refrigerated.

Peanuts are an ingredient in dynamite.

You can not swallow and breath at the same time thanks to the Epiglottis.

The book most stolen from libraries in the US is the bible, second is the Koran, and third is the study guide for the police academy entrance exam.

Commercial aircraft tires are filled with nitrogen. There is moisture in normal air which can form ice and unbalance the wheel assemblies.

The movie “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” was based on the book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Ronald Dahl. The movie’s title was different because during the seventies, “Charlie” was considered a racial slur.

Twice as many men as women fall out of hospital beds.

In every episode of Seinfeld, there is a Superman, or a reference to him.

Did you know that Lady Bugs are becoming extinct because of parasites that feed on them.

Did you know that during summer time on the west coast of Norway, you can have all four seasons in one day?

Jaw muscles are the strongest muscles in the body. Fifteen kilos per square centimeter.

Pain travels through the body at 350 feet per second.

Over 1500 left handed people die per year using products for right handed people.

You can go to Paradise and Hell in Michigan—both are towns in that state
Since female locusts eat their male partners after mating, it kind of makes you wonder if their any gay locusts.

To have your picture taken by the first cameras, you would have to sit still for 8 hours .

In England during the reign of Queen Victoria, it was illegal to be a homosexual but not a lesbian. The reason was when the Queen approved the law, she didn’t believe women would do that.

Hawaii has the largest consumption of Spam in the US.

It takes 17 facial muscles to smile, but 42 to frown.

If you toss a penny 10,000 times, it will not be heads 5,000 times, but more like 4,950. The heads picture is heavier, so it will land down more.

The human brain is so complex that it would cost over 8 billion for anyone to program, and sell a computer to do all the things that it does.

It is impossible to have gray eyes.

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

If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months, and 6 days, you would have produced enough energy to heat one cup of coffee.

In the summer, walnuts get suntanned.

There are more brown M&M's in plain M&M's than in Peanut.

7’1” Basketball star Wilt Chamberlain’s parents were 5’8”.

The average person looks at 8 houses before buying one.

The Jolly Green Giant is 68 years old (1998).

The average child will eat 15 pounds of cereal in a year.

“The Chief” in BC, Canada is the worlds second largest rock.

In Japan, 20% of all publications sold are comic books.

The average adult male grows 1 pound of facial hair in 10 years.

The sale of vodka makes up 10% of the Russian government’s income.

A red-headed man is more likely to go bald than anyone else.

November 19th is Have a Bad Hair Day.

Lard has more calories than any other food.

The average fingernail grows 4 times as fast as the average toenail.

There are 12 letters in the Hawaiian alphabet.

In 2,000 BC, Egyptians used crocodile dung as a contraceptive.

1/3 of Taiwanese funeral processions include a stripper.

The Statue of Liberty’s mouth is 3 feet wide.

The only contemporary words that end in –gry are angry and hungry.

The Hundred Years War lasted for 116 years.

The USA bought Alaska from Russia for 2 cents per acre.

There is ¼ pound of salt in every gallon of sea water.

Luke Skywalkers name was changed at the last minute from Starkiller in order to make it less violent.

95% of food poisoning cases are never reported.

One billion seconds is about 31.7 years.

The words “assassination” and “bump” were invented by Shakespeare.

40% of McDonald’s profits come from the sales of “Happy Meals.”

Vanilla is used to make chocolate.

Melting an ice cube in your mouth burns about 2.3 calories.

Most raindrops are round or doughnut shaped, not rain dropped shaped.

American astronauts must be under 6 feet tall.

Kentucky produces more whiskey than any other US state combined.

Coca-Cola was originally green.

It would take 7 billion particles of fog to fill a teaspoon.

Lemons contain more sugar than strawberries do.

The jugular vein is an artery, not a vein.

The worlds longest game of Monopoly lasted more then 660 hours.

The Atlantic Ocean is saltier than the Pacific Ocean.

50% of bank robberies take place on Friday’s.

The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the body to squirt blood up to 30 feet.

If you fart consistently for 6 years, 9 months, you would pass enough gas to make an Atomic bomb.

On average, more people fear spiders than death.

The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue.

A peanut is not a nut, it is a legume.

It is impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

American’s eat on average 18 acres of pizza every day.

The first letters of July through November, in order spell Jason.

No 2 corn flakes look alike.

You can’t kill your self by holding your breath.

In most advertisements, including news papers, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10 .

The winter of 1932 was so cold that Niagra falls froze completely solid.

It’s impossible to get water out of a rimless tire.

Approximately 97.35618% of all statistics are made up.

Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour.

In 1977 there were 37 Elvis impersonators in the world. In 1993, there were 48,000. At this rate, by the year 2010, 1 out of every 3 people will be an impersonator.

The average person swallows three spiders annually.

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